Drummer In the Dark (8 page)

10

Thursday

W
YNN’S SUITE at the Willard looked vastly different at ten-thirty in the evening. It held the same antique furniture as that morning, the same chest-high floral display and chintz sofa set and two tiled fireplaces. Four brass chandeliers bathed the chambers in a false ruddy glow. An eighteenth-century wall cabinet hid drinks and the entertainment center. The silk wall coverings were in six shades of ivory and bone. Two oils illustrated carriages along Pennsylvania Avenue, instead of the noisy traffic whose cacophony now filtered through his windows. Everything was as perfect as twelve hundred dollars a night could make it. But this time of evening, there was no escaping the barrenness.

Wynn kicked off his shoes, dropped his jacket and tie on the bed, and padded around on carpet as lush and deep as his lawn. The downstairs bar beckoned, but in truth he didn’t want another drink. He wanted whatever could still this restless craving in his gut. No matter how glorious and history-filled the downstairs rooms might be, he knew he wouldn’t find it there. Not when he couldn’t even attach a name to his longing, other than to call it a desire to be anywhere but here.

He telephoned the Florida governor’s mansion, using the private line that connected directly into their living quarters. When his sister answered, he asked, “Are you alone?”

“It doesn’t matter. This is still not—”

“I know, I know. I just want to talk. Where’s Grant?”

“In a meeting downstairs. Power brokers up from Miami. He could be gone for hours. Just a minute.” The phone was put down. He heard the rattle of earrings being set into an ashtray. A long high-pitched zipper. A rustle. Then the phone was lifted back. “All right.”

He settled into the sofa. “I’m having trouble with my staff.”

“What did you expect?” No acid tonight. Just a lightning-fast response from a woman with all the brains and political savvy one head could hold. “You know how much a Washington staffer earns? Less than your former secretary. They live six to an apartment, as cramped at night as they are in your office during the day. These people are up there earning slave wages either because they love the power or because they’re committed to a cause.”

“So why don’t they seem to care about me?”

“You’re the one using the revolving door of elected office. Not them. They’re in this for the long haul.” She gave him a chance to come back for more, then demanded, “Now tell me what’s really on your mind.”

“I am drowning in things I don’t understand.”

“So learn. If you want. It’s your choice, Wynnie. You can do what your staffers tell you, sleep through your committee meetings, show up on the floor only for the votes, find yourself a trustworthy limo driver, become the darling of the Washington party elite. You can jump right onto the social A-list if you want, you know. It’s all there for the asking.”

“Either that or work myself to death.” Thinking of Graham Hutchings and dreading another confrontation with Esther. Wishing he had not agreed to go.

“You can’t have both.” This was Sybel at her best. Seeing with the crystal clarity of one who had never forgotten a single lesson, who knew every debt owed, every favor unpaid. A woman who had been born for the position of queen. “Your staff will teach you, if you want. If you can make them believe you really and truly care.”

“Someone suggested I should pay my respects to Graham.”

“Who told you that?”

“A lobbyist I met last night at the British embassy reception. She said the visit is a necessary protocol up here.”

“It’s good advice, Wynnie. Take it.”

“You know what Esther thinks of me.”

“Nobody said this would be a cakewalk. Just get it over with. In and out in fifteen minutes. Quicker than a visit to the dentist.”

“Your friend was there last night. Father Libretto. Who is he?”

“You just said it. A friend.” Noncommittal. Giving nothing away. “You can’t have enough friends up there, Wynnie. Believe me.”

“How did he get into the reception?”

“Every active priest is considered an emissary of the Vatican. The Vatican has an embassy in Washington. I imagine he requested their assistance.”

“Is he working on this Jubilee thing?”

A sigh. Nothing more. But a signal just the same. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“What I know,” Wynn replied, “is I keep asking simple questions and receive nothing but a runaround.”

“All right. I’ll spell out a few things for you. Father Libretto is one of the leaders of a group called Sant’Egidio.”

“You work with them.”

“So do a lot of other people. They have two objectives, neither of which interests you in the slightest. They seek to feed the poor, and they promote world peace.”

“And this ties into Jubilee?”

“Wynnie, listen to what I’m saying. If you’re going to follow the cocktail circuit, if you’re going to do as Grant told you, then none of this matters. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

“What’s the big secret here, Sybel?”

“There is no secret. It’s just . . .” His big sister seemed at a loss, which seldom happened. “The Jubilee Amendment was Graham’s passion. But it did not begin with him. It’s a world movement to write off all the third world’s outstanding debt.”

He waited. “That’s it?”

“I told you, Wynnie. It doesn’t concern you. Not unless you first make a choice. A hard one.” A note of pleading entered her voice. “You’ve spent the past two years tightening down the clamps on your life. Drawing the walls ever closer. Caring for less and less. I’ve tried everything I know how to get you to open up again. I pray for you, Wynnie. Every night. That something will come along and make you wake up before it’s too late. That you’ll open your eyes and recognize there’s a purpose and a calling that needs you as much as you need it. I know you better than anybody else on earth, and I know how much you have to offer.”

It was Wynn’s turn to pause. His sister had been religious all her life, a product of being eleven years older and knowing their parents that much longer. He knew their parents had been very religious. It was one of the first things that ever came up when anyone spoke of them. Their faith. Their caring. Their passion. Their calling. Sybel had spent a lifetime living up to their memory in her own special way, caring first for him, then for Grant, and always making time for her causes. Building homes for the destitute, feeding the poor, funding free medical clinics, promoting daycare centers in marginal neighborhoods, speaking up for people with no voice of their own.

Wynn had responded differently to the challenge of parents who were no longer there. They had left him at five, a tender age to be burdened with the loss not just of his family but his entire world. Wynn had rebelled. He took refuge in fury, until the relatives who took in the orphaned siblings threw up their hands and threatened them with foster care. Sybel was by this time in her first year of college. Grant was seven years her senior, completing his final year of law school—law review, number one in his class, most likely to succeed, good family, the works. And totally in love with Sybel. She agreed to marry him on the one condition that he make room in their new home for Wynn. She had been equally up front, equally tough, with her baby brother. Behave or leave, one chance, that’s final. Wynn had behaved. As had Grant. They had never become true friends, but peace had reigned. And Sybel had never let go of her faith.

“That’s what this is all about?” Wynn demanded. “A religion thing?”

“You don’t just wake up one day and start caring for people you’ve never met,” Sybel replied. A hint of defensiveness to her words. Or perhaps it was desperation. “First you learn to recognize your Maker, call him by name. Let him redirect your vision and your direction. He must be the one to show you how to care, how to open up, how to live for something more than just yourself.”

Old words, concepts he had heard from her a hundred times before. Given new force by the current situation, swimming against tides that threatened to drown him. “So this is the big choice.”

She caught the tone. Sybel shut down in one harsh breath, becoming as tired and drained as he had ever heard. “Just go to bed, Wynnie. Wake up tomorrow, the sun will be shining, the people will be calling, everyone bowing and scraping and happy for whatever you want to give. Just forget we ever talked. Tomorrow will be full of all the good things you’ve always dreamed about.”

“Sybel, wait, I didn’t—”

But she was already gone.

11

Friday

C
OLIN READY checked his monitor clock. Again. Fifteen minutes to his scheduled meeting with the King. Though there was no move on the Havilland front and everything else seemed in good shape, he was apprehensive. Merely entering Hayek’s presence left him exploring the edge of chaos. And today there was something more. Colin detected a difference to the techie chamber’s machine-processed air. There was nervousness beyond his own, a current strange even for this place. He rose and poked his head outside the cubicle’s padded walls. The techies’ central corridor was empty save for the normal wind-down noises of people preparing for Friday departures. Then he caught a hint of something behind him, a tempest brewing beyond the locked trading room doors. He returned to his desk, logged off, and headed out.

There were two ways to Hayek’s penthouse. Since the compound’s side entrance was used mainly by backroom peons, their elevator rose only as high as the fourth floor. It was then necessary to navigate through the twisted passages of accounting and take the stairs up the final flight. But Colin’s work had earned him a trader’s passkey, which meant he could slip through the unmarked security-coded door, cross the trading room, and take the front elevators directly to the realm of clouds and rain.

He slipped his key into the magnetic slot and entered bedlam. He counted five different battles raging at various points around the trading floor. Edging along the back wall, Colin was pleased to see that his hypersensitive radar had been giving accurate readings. Friday afternoons were usually fairly soporific, the only action coming from traders desperate to balance impossible positions. Today was ground zero.

Normally Colin considered such energy to be a serious kick. Today, the mothlike existence so close to Hayek’s flame left him shaken and separate. He found himself forming dialogue for Lisa Wrede, the young lady who had never agreed to visit this world, and who in fact had wanted nothing more than to draw him away. He had often tried to describe the manic power of such unbridled avarice, wanting her to see how laboring in this secret realm was for him a major league rush. Lisa had responded with either loathing or pity, two great potions for inciting quarrels.

To Colin’s right, the spot desks took up by far the largest section of the floor, as Hayek was a huge player on the international forex markets. Forex was the standard way to denote all foreign exchange dealings. Each desk was assigned one or two specific tasks—dollar-mark, yen-mark, franc-pound, and so on. Each trader answered to a senior trader, who was assigned a certain amount of daily bread. Usually a senior trader handled between a half and three-quarters of a billion dollars in outstanding debt at any given time. Each junior trader under him or her was assigned a lesser amount, depending on seniority and track record. A junior trader was also licensed to trade up to a certain amount without looking for the senior trader’s approval. This amount was usually granted in ten-million-dollar increments. A trader’s limit was raised or lowered depending on his record of profitability and was reassessed every other week. Limits were reviewed more frequently only if the trader moved close to the ax. When a trader carried a loss situation for too long—say, forty-eight hours—or went over his loss budget at evening closedown, that trader was history.

Next to each top trader sat an assistant, there to ensure all trades were recorded and confirmed by accounting. The assistants were all young wannabes, learning the ropes and waiting like vultures for the ax to fall. Their constant hunger was a huge reason why the trading floor remained one of the tensest working environments on earth.

This afternoon the forex action was focused two rows away from where Colin stood. A junior trader shrilled, “I think somebody’s trying to push Canada around! I’ve got three back-to-backs for fifteen each!”

Such sudden moves happened occasionally in late-afternoon trading. A big guy might select what felt like the day’s weakest currency and seek to push the nervous Nellies into panicking before the closing bell. Which was why Alex, the spot market’s senior trader, was on his feet, riding his staff hard, using his voice as a whip. “Buy forty-five!”

The junior trader hesitated. “The price has just pumped up a hundred points.”

A hundred points was a full cent, a huge rise for one afternoon. Enough to draw Colin over to Eric’s desk, where he could watch the action with someone in the know. Alex retorted, “It’s a bluff. Hit the bid.”

The trader handling the Canadian dollar desk was a young woman unused to the frantic muscle hitting her now. She shrilled the words, “I’m offered forty more!”

Eric sat and swiveled his chair around, back and forth, pumping out the energy, watching the scene like he would a favorite movie. Eric’s desk handled dollar-euro, a thousand miles from this afternoon’s action. Eric said to the trader on his right, “Five hundred says she enters meltdown before the market closes.”

“You’re on.”

Eric leaned back, said to Colin, “You want some of the action?”

“I’m just a lowly backroom boy,” Colin replied. “I’ll just sit and watch, thank you.”

Alex shouted back to his junior lady, “Buy forty.”

“Ninety more! And another fifty!”

“Do it all!” The senior trader had sweat rings from his arms to his belt. No surprise there. If he was wrong, if this was a legitimate swing and not a late-afternoon gamble, this would be his last day on the floor. Every trader had a loss limit over which he or she could not stray, at least not for the end-of-day postings. Any time a trader approached the limit, especially this close to the week’s final bell, he entered angina territory. “Who’s the seller here?”

“No word.”

Alex searched out a stray idler, pointing at the woman next to Eric. “You! Find out!”

The subordinate jammed knuckles, speed-dialing broker contacts.

Colin asked, “Shouldn’t you be busy?”

“My markets have gone to sleep,” Eric replied. He inspected his boards with idle satisfaction. “I’m a half mil up on the day and counting down to the first frosty glass. I’m gold.”

Alex yelled, “Give me something!”

The trader next to Eric replied, “I’ve got my number one broker in Canada on the horn. She says it’s definitely not Ottawa.”

If it was the Canadian central bank effecting a move, all was lost. The senior trader hesitated, then ordered, “Hit the bid.”

The junior trader’s hair was a rat’s nest. Her glasses slid along her sweat-slicked nose like a ski slope. “They’re offering another fifty! And I’ve got sixty more coming from nowhere!”

His voice belonging to an adrenaline junkie, Alex ordered, “Hit them all.”

There was a moment’s breathless wait, a hush made stronger by all the noise that had come before. All the traders sat and watched the screens. The young female trader stared at Alex, searching frantically for the assurance that Monday she’d still have a desk. Then Eric stabbed a finger at his central screen and shouted along with two others, “Canada’s falling!”

“How far?”

“Fifty, no, seventy-five.”

“Down ninety!”

“I’ve got a buyer at a hundred off!”

Alex collapsed into his seat. “Sell it back. Clear the decks.”

Colin glanced at his watch and reluctantly headed for the front door. If only he’d had the chance to share this scene with Lisa. He’d have explained how traders had no vested interest in the big picture. Traders could show no remorse for how their actions affected lives beyond this tightly enclosed world. Trading rooms didn’t have windows so the outside universe had no way of disturbing the flow. So far as this world was concerned, if outside events were positive, traders made their bucks. If people got offed and dreams were crushed along with national economies, traders made different bucks. So long as the money rolled and markets moved, up was down and down was up.

Only Lisa was gone and there was only himself to entertain. But since everyone else was chattering, why not join in, in his own quiet way.

C
OLIN WAS BACK DOWNSTAIRS inside five minutes. The duration of his stay at the top of Everest was not the surprise factor here. Meetings with Hayek never lasted very long. But today Hayek’s secretary had immediately ushered him inside, without the customary wait to remind him of his lowly grub status. Hayek had then grilled him about the Havilland woman. For a man controlling multiple billions to spend this much time on a lowly peon was beyond bizarre.

The downstairs front lobby was Friday-evening calm. Across from the elevators, the receptionist sat behind her desk buffing her nails. The pair of sofa sets flanking the front windows were empty, as was the carpeted stairway leading up to the trading room balconies. That was another strange thing about recent developments—how every day spawned more gray-suited goons unable to speak decent English.

Beyond the security doors, the trading floor was in cleanup mode. As soon as Colin appeared, Eric and his boss emerged from a cluster of spot traders and walked over. “The man goes upstairs just another electro-nerd,” Eric taunted. “He comes down a stud muffin.”

Colin stared at the one trader he might class as a pal. Eric’s words made no more sense than Hayek’s. Discordant random acts were becoming one solid mass, tearing through everything in its path. “What are you on about now?”

“Power, my man. Access. Fresh data. The keys to our world. They’ve been slipped into your mangy paw and you don’t know enough to know you’ve been remade in the master’s image.”

“And you,” Colin replied, “are seriously twisted.”

“Absolutely. But it’s still true.” Eric leaned closer still. “The hoodoo beauty in Records was breathing hot over you, my man. Tell me you know who I mean.”

“Mandy,” Colin said. She was the talk of the entire Hayek team. A redheaded Popsicle with a polar glower. “That is nothing but myth and dangerous fabrication.”

Alex broke in, pointing toward the empty balcony. “Your confabs with the King wouldn’t have anything to do with the new realm up there, would it?”

“Not a hope.” Colin turned his gaze upward. The parapet was empty for a change, the workers gone for the weekend.

“Come on, you can tell your old pal,” Eric goaded him. “Word is, Hayek’s bringing in a load of fresh meat. Fitting them out with data he’s not sharing with the rest of us. You know what that means?”

“Yes.” Colin understood the looks now. They saw him as part of a new threat.

“It means we’re finished,” Alex said. From this range the senior trader had the pungent odor of an electric fire. “The first in the know takes home the bacon. The rest get the street.”

“I don’t have any idea what’s intended,” Colin replied. Both traders responded with tight-eyed distrust. “Look, I don’t know any more than you do.”

Alex said, “So what is it exactly that you discuss with the King?”

“Fire walls. Security. The same as always. Only right now they’re extremely amped about something. They’re giving a ridiculous amount of attention to what anyone else would call smoke in the wind.”

“They think somebody is breaking into our system?”

“I’d stake my life the shields are intact. My guess is they’re planning something new. Something extremely large.” Colin looked up at the mysterious parapet. “We’re talking galactic war here.”

Alex scratched his chin. “Could be this new fund Hayek mentioned a few days back. But why put them in a separate cage?”

Eric mused, “Wonder if this has anything to do with the gray goons we’ve got wandering around outside.”

“I have no idea.” Colin smarted over suddenly being classed as a foe. “But I’m fed up with the present state of affairs, I can tell you that.”

Colin exited the trading floor by the front doors. The receptionist had packed it in for the week, and the foyer was empty. Checking out the upstairs balcony was a random act of madness, but he did not care. Actions like this used to drive Lisa crazy. But he had always enjoyed the odd moment of reckless abandon. He liked to call them the nerd’s alternative to extreme sports. They were usually done on-line, but not always. Like now. Lisa had loathed these exploits, calling them acts of a forfeited life, indications of all the wrong turns he took inside himself. Colin had hated it when she began talking like that. But now she was gone, and the imaginary argument was all he had left.

The carpeted stairwell curved around the elevator shaft, rising to a newly formed antechamber. The air conditioner sighed softly. There was no other sound.

“In for a penny,” Colin whispered, and pushed through the glass doors.

The balcony offices and the partitions were gone. The open space was now fitted with three rows of state-of-the-art trading desks and ergonomic chairs. Colin did a slow sweep of the room, stunned by the realization that they must have rewired the company’s system so that all these new operations would be routed outside existing channels. Otherwise he would have noticed the traffic. He announced to the empty chamber, “This makes no sense whatsoever.”

He walked over to the outer wall. The glass was so thick he could not hear a sound from the scene below. Heads popped up, gawking at him. But Colin had no answers for them. The mystery had only heightened.

With no notice or warning, Colin was abruptly hefted by the back of his shirt. He would have protested, but his throat was being sliced by his collar riding up and cutting off his wind. He was pulled back a fraction, then slammed cheek first into the glass wall.

A deep-chested grizzly voice roared in his ear, but the words were so mangled by a strange accent Colin heard only the anger and the force. Colin used one hand to try and pull his collar far enough from his throat to take a decent breath, and the other to pry his face from the wall. He might as well have attempted to lift the Hayek building.

The assailant pulled him back once more, far enough for Colin to see the imprint of his face in the glass. As the gray-jacketed goon started swinging him forward again, Colin tried to protest but could only manage a strangled “Aack.” Then he was mashed flat once more. A bug on the windshield of life.