"It's the worst of times, buddy, and the best of times. Whatever dude once said that didn't know the half of it. He oughta be around now to check out the Street."
That was Henderson's Georgia Mafia co-conspirator, an irritatingly smug young man with red hair and acne who dressed entirely in white, right down to his skinny Italian tie. We were told he went by the handle of Jim Bob. As he meditated upon Wall Street's macroeconomic incongruities, he punched a Willie Nelson tape into his boom box and popped a Coors, pregame warm-up for programming a full-scale assault on the U.S. securities markets.
Jim Bob allowed as how he'd arrived in the Big Apple four years earlier with a cardboard suitcase, a finance degree from Georgia Tech, and a larger than regulation endowment of natural cunning. After a couple of years' toil in Henderson's quasi-legal vineyards, he'd gone out on his own, whereupon he'd parlayed his winnings with Bill and the remnants of a baseball scholarship into what was now a high six-figure "haircut," the name options players use for their grubstake. The way he figured it, he was just hitting his stride.
How, I inquired at one point during that long weekend, had he managed it?
"Chum, it's idiot simple. You buy into fear, sell into greed, and fuck fundamentals. Main thing is, if something makes sense, don't do it. America's in the all-time shit, and Wall Street's oblivious. It's like everybody's bidding up standing room on the Tttanic. But who cares? You play options like I do and all you have to worry about is not getting stupider than the herd. Which ain't necessarily much of a trick."
Stock options, he went on to assert, were like having a credit card in a whorehouse-a ton of action for what amounted to tip money up front. No wonder Las Vegas was in trouble, when Wall Street was beckoning our high rollers to take odds on the direction of the market. Only widows and orphans, he observed, bought actual securities anymore. That action was reserved for the halt and lame.
While country singers twanged beer hall soliloquies on the general increase in faithless women, Jim Bob coded in the brokerage houses and offshore banks we'd be using, the catalog of stocks in the DNI portfolio, and our sequence of transactions.
As noted earlier, the financial setup had been handled by Henderson and friends. Using his connections, he'd opened accounts for hundreds of dummy corporations in about two dozen offshore banks. He stuck to the usual no-questions-asked operations like Banca della Svizzera Italiana and Bank Leu in the Bahamas-the latter a Swiss-owned Nassau laundry that had, in years past, reportedly destroyed records and lied to the Securities and Exchange Commission as a favor to certain of America's more inventive inside traders.
Since the volume of money to be moved was staggering, it would all be handled by sophisticated telecommunications networks. We would pass it through the anonymous accounts we'd established, accessed both ways by computer, and it would never be touched by human hands. DNI's cash would flash in and out with total cover. Added to that, anybody who tried to trace us would first have to break through a traditional Swiss stone wall.
To dump the stock we were planning to exploit fully the new "globalization" of the financial scene. Now that the National Association of Securities Dealers had struck a deal with the London and Tokyo stock exchanges to swap price quotes, worldwide market makers were buying and selling American securities around the clock. Plenty of active market-making was happening off the exchange floors as well, at places like Jeffries out on the coast, which had recently handled a massive Canadian takeover of an American company overnight, entirely off-exchange. With all the avenues available it was almost impossible to track the movement in a given issue. DNI's computers would be routing sell orders to brokerage firms around the globe, a block here, a block there, none of them in quantities that would raise eyebrows.
Maybe I also should add that none of the "corporations" Henderson had set up would be allowed to show a profit, which would simplify Treasury Department reporting requirements. As a matter of fact, before we were through, DNI was going to lose billions. But it would all be done legally, in accordance with SEC regs. It would also lead to a world financial flap of notable proportions. Nobody would ever take Noda's money for granted again.
While Tam went over her new program with Jim Bob, pointing out her special features, Henderson and I found ourselves at reasonably loose ends. We sat around drinking green tea (God, how I came to hate that stuff) and puzzling how we'd all managed to get into such a mess. The major plus, however, was that we finally had Matsuo Noda by the short and curlies.
Or so we hoped. The problem was, he'd been a player longer than any of us, and he'd already demonstrated plenty of stamina. How would he counterattack? The question wasn't if, it was when. For the moment, though, we seemed to be on our way with clear sailing; in fact, the communications link with Kyoto was entirely empty. Tanaka also had clammed up, refusing to talk-beyond a rather firm prediction that our wholesale divestiture of DNI's assets was an insane act doomed to failure. I might also add he didn't appear nearly as concerned as the circumstances would seem to merit. In fact, he was so complacent I started getting a little uneasy. Finally Bill and I ran his prediction past young Jim Bob. Could somebody get through to Tam's program and devise a way to shut us down?
Henderson's increasingly glassy-eyed protege took out enough time from popping "uppers" and swilling Coors to assure us to the contrary.
"Hell, no way you could stop what we're settin' up here. We got ourselves what you call a closed system. Everything's going to be handled by that green-eyed monster over there in the corner. We got these numbered brokerage accounts all over the place. Zip, in go the sell orders; zap, out go confirmations. And since none of the cash sits around, our bank accounts are all just gonna churn. We'll have billions of buckaroos rollin' at the speed of light. Ain't nobody gonna be able to get a bead on the action, take my word for it."
Our computer-generated buying and selling, he went on to declare, was conveniently similar in appearance to the "program" trading of the big institutional investors, the arbitrage players who routinely sold millions of dollars of securities in minutes using computers. Thanks to them, the market these days had been conditioned to accept huge, unaccountable trades as part of the territory. If somebody dumped massive blocks of stock unexpectedly, it could mean anything-such as, the spread between those stocks' prices and some "index future" had gotten momentarily out of sync. Shuffling securities like poker chips was the name of the game on the Street these days, so nobody would really notice or care. The turnover we'd be generating would merely suggest to the market that various investment-house arbitrage desks were unwinding positions.
What the heck, I said to Tam, maybe we could unload the better part of DNI's holdings before Noda struck back. The real key to our attack on Dai Nippon, however, depended on what happened to that cash after we turned it around. When I mentioned that, she just crossed her fingers.
By late Sunday night the DNI offices were a clutter of empty Chinese take-out containers, Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes, and computer printouts. However, Jim Bob claimed the system looked like a go. He'd completed a long sequence of test runs, and he was predicting he could probably swing at least four billion the first day, something in the nature of a warm-up for grander things to come.
Jim Bob, I should say, was fully as efficient as advertised by Henderson. Even if he was now flying higher than a moon shot, thanks to all the pills. He worked methodically, carefully analyzing the program at every step, double-checking the codes, poring over his verification printouts for obscure glitches. Mainly, though, he kept one unfocused eye on the clock, saying he always delivered on time. Point of honor.
Thus it was that, when Monday morning rolled around, we were primed to move on Wall Street. Tam's program was poised inside the mainframe like some lurking id, ready to be unleashed. We decided to start modestly, sticking to the exchanges in New York, and only later in the day expanding outward as we gained firmer footing.
At the stroke of nine-thirty A.M. Jim Bob inaugurated our maiden run with yet another beer. Henderson and I poured ourselves a bourbon. Tam even joined us, accepting a respectable shot.
"Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls." Jim Bob shakily peeled back the tab on his Coors. The screen in front of him focused our attention down to one small flashing green dot.
"Ignition."
He hit a key on the terminal, and Merrill Lynch got a computerized "sell" order for ten thousand shares of Texas Instruments. The time was exactly 9:31.
It was a textbook lift-off. Rows of green numbers began to scroll up the screen, only to blink and disappear. By God, the thing seemed to be working. We had just pulled the plug on DNI. All that was left now was to sit back and watch it sink.
As the morning wore on, Tam fielded phone calls from staffers, always claiming that Tanaka was not available just then. Of course, we weren't sure how long we could get away with that excuse, but for now none of us wanted to set the man free to start jabbering in Japanese on the phone. On the other hand, we were loosening up a bit on security. Partly, I guess, because we were all increasingly wrecked, but also because it seemed to fit the situation. By Monday, Tanaka and his two retired sumo bone-crushers appeared to have grown resigned, one might even say philosophical, and I don't mind admitting it bothered me a lot. Tanaka was watching us destroy Noda's grand design right before his very eyes, yet he just sat there as though none of it mattered. How could this be? All he did was busy around brewing tea for everybody. (Except, of course, for Jim Bob, who stuck to Coors.) However, I was too tired by then to think much about it.
Around two-thirty Henderson began complaining of a splitting headache and declared he had to go home and get some rest. I started to protest, but the man looked half dead. Tam and I weren't much better off, so we flipped a coin to see who would take the first watch. She won, which was great by me, since the long hours without sleep were really starting to unravel my concentration.
To understand what happened next, you have to try and envision the scene. It was three P.M. and things were going letter perfectly. The dollars were sailing through the accounts we'd set up and along about noon we'd even kicked in our buy program.
Yes, buy. That's not a typo. You see, we had to lose billions, not necessarily a trivial task. Think about it. If you merely want to drop a few million, all you have to do is just invest in some high-flying start-up and then sit there till the venture craters. But billions?
That's the part where Tam really showed her mettle (no pun intended). Look, she said, the Brothers Hunt managed to blow millions by trying to corner silver, bidding up the price and then seeing it collapse. But we've got to get rid of some serious money, so why don't we do the same thing, only with a commodity worth something?
Platinum.
All life's great ideas have an inevitable simplicity. That's right, we were programmed to sell DNI's stock and buy platinum. From anybody, anywhere, at any price. We were planning to just swallow the worldwide commodity markets in the stuff, starting at the NY Merc and ending at Capetown. Of course, what we were also doing was boosting its price into the stratosphere-we were even bidding against ourselves through different brokerage houses. Anything to drive it up. I mean we had a lot of money to get rid of. We figured that by the time we were finished, DNI would be the proud owner of a couple of hundred billion in platinum metal, platinum futures, platinum mining stocks, platinum storage companies, platinum dealerships, platinum reserves, platinum investment coins. All of it at a price as high as we could push. I was betting on two thousand dollars an ounce by Friday.
The nice part was, what central bank was going to step in? Platinum was strategic, sure, but it wasn't a monetary metal. And if we had to bid against governments, so much the better. We were playing a drunken speculator's dream, going all out for the most volatile of all the world's commodities. After we'd squeezed that scam for every ounce it was worth, we would deliberately puncture the bubble and let the price nosedive. We were going to destroy the cancer of Dai Nippon by gorging Noda's takeover machine with financial poison. The eventual collapse should wipe out Matsuo Noda totally.
Platinum. I asked Jim Bob to check the waning moments of Monday's spot market, the latest prices down at the NY Merc, and he reported it had scooted up about twenty dollars an ounce. A little slow maybe, but then we were just starting out. I figured it would probably double in a couple of days.
Such was my fond hope as I drifted off for a nap on my desk. Tam was in Tanaka's office, half-nodding in her chair, while Jim Bob was sitting before his monitor, still nourishing himself with beer and colored pills. I gave him the Uzi and told him to help Tam out by keeping an eye on Tanaka and the two guards, all now sleeping like a baby. My last vision was of Jim Bob sitting there, the Uzi draped over his wrinkled white lap, clicking away at the keyboard.
I slept right through Emma's four-o'clock phone call from my office downtown. When I awoke around nine P.M. Jim Bob mentioned she'd rung. No message, he said. Then don't worry about it, I mumbled to myself; get back to her in the morning.
Tam didn't seem to remember the call, which momentarily troubled me. Had we both been dozing at the helm? Well, who could blame her? In spite of my own nap I still felt like hell, so I dragged myself up, stretched, wandered around the office, drank some more green tea, and inquired of Jim Bob how things seemed to be proceeding.
"Looking good." He grinned. He was now working Hong Kong and the Asian exchanges, limbering up the satellites as he flashed our (DNI's) money around the globe. Anybody heard from Henderson? Not a word, he said in a tone that seemed disconcertingly pat.
I briefly toyed with heading down to the street and trying to locate an early "bulldog" Times to see what kind of a splash we were making in the press, but since Tam was now sound asleep, I figured I'd better stick to duty.
I vaguely recall stumbling into my office to rummage for an old box of NoDoz stashed somewhere there in the desk, and thinking how nice it would be just to lean back in the chair…
A phone was jangling in my ear. As I pulled erect, the clock on my desk was reading ten-thirty-My God, A.M.-and I felt as if I'd been run over by an eighteen-wheeler. What the hell was in that green tea Tanaka had been brewing?
Inside the receiver at my ear was Emma, and what she had to say brought me awake like an ice-cold shower. In a voice brimming with triumph, she announced she'd just resigned and I could consider this official notice thereof. In fact, she was price-shopping Florida condos this very minute-what did I think of Coral Gables?-and I was lucky she'd bothered to take out time to inform me of her intended plans. By Wednesday she expected to be able to loan money to the Rockefellers, in case they should need a little liquidity on short notice.
How'd you come by this sudden fortune? I asked. Where, she snapped back, have you been? The Dow Jones average was about to double, if it hadn't already. Funny, but the rest of the market was going nowhere. Oddest thing she'd ever seen. However, it only went to show what she'd always told me, and if I'd listened to her instead of those smarty-pants uptown brokers, I'd be rich now too. Stick with the blue chips. IBM was up thirty percent since yesterday, AT amp;T was flying, GM was selling for a price that would make you think they were back in the car business.
What the hell was she talking about! That's when I noticed a copy of Tuesday's New York Times lying there on my desk, right next to the phone. Only at first it didn't seem like the Times. Or maybe Punch Sulzberger had just been swallowed whole by Rupert Murdoch, because I hadn't seen a headline that arresting since the Posts immortal "Coed Jogger Slain in Bed." It was banner, right across the top; the Times' headline writer was practically orgasmic. But whereas the Post gets off on mere sex, the good gray Times reserves its libidinous juices for that ageless aphrodisiac, money.
New York Stock Exchange Prices Explode
NEW YORK-Volume skyrocketed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, as buyers for Big Board issues responded worldwide to a renewed confidence in American industry. Analysts are calling this the first leg of the Great Bull Market of the 1990s, saying this surge has been overdue for a decade. Leading the phenomenal rally were a number of America's foremost corporations… I came off my chair like a shot and headed for Tam's office. "Is anybody following what's going on outside?"
Her face was down on the desk, dark hair tousled across her cheeks. She looked up and rubbed her eyes, obviously knocked out too. Strange.
"What…?" Her voice was slurred.
"Something's gone crazy," I yelled. "Where's Henderson?"
Then I remembered he wasn't there. However, I did locate Jim Bob easily enough. He was in Noda's corner office, wideawake and still carrying our Uzi. Only now there were two of those long black automatics present, the other lying atop the wide teakwood desk.
One more thing. Seated behind that desk, his silver hair framed by the sunlight streaming through the wide back windows, was… Matsuo Noda.
The Shogun had arrived.
And with him came the dawn of a new, powerful reality. My drugged mind was flooded with the ramifications. Matsuo Noda, I now realized, had been on to us from the start. Once again he had used us. He had been the one who had emptied the office, the better to lure us in.
But the guards…
Noda-san, I bow to a true samurai. A swordsman's swordsman. Of course, it was as simple as it was elegant. You were testing us, allowing us a plausible opening, just difficult enough to force us to reveal our true strategy. The dictum of the masters: "If you want to strike your enemy, let him try to strike you first. The moment he strikes you, you have already succeeded in striking him." Pure bushido.
Everything up till now had only been feints. What I assumed was the battle turned out to have merely been staking out terrain, jockeying for position. At last, though, we were ready for the real engagement. Trouble was, Matsuo Noda had just secured the high ground.
"Come on in and have yourself a seat, Walton." Jim Bob beckoned toward the vacant chair as he sipped from a glass of California champagne, its plastic-looking bottle stationed on the floor beside him. Coors time was over.
"Jim Bob, what's happening with the market?" I was ignoring Noda for the moment, trying to get a firmer grasp on the new "prevailing conditions."
"'Bout what we figured," he replied, his white suit now greasy and wrinkled. "Yep, looks like we're roughly on schedule."
"It's a relief to know there's a timetable." I finally turned to Noda. "Wouldn't want this takeover to be half-cocked."
"Mr. Walton, if you would be so kind." He smiled and indicated the chair. "It would be well for you to join us."
Jim Bob waved me over with his Uzi. "Fact is, we're all about due for a little show and tell." He glanced up as Tarn entered the doorway. "Be a good idea if you got up to speed on what we're doing here, too."
"I just scrolled some prices," she said, glaring groggily at Noda, the morbid realization descending rapidly now. "You don't have to tell me anything. I know exactly what you're doing."
"What we're doing is, we're pulling this country out of the shit. That's what we're doing. We're saving this country's ass. Which is more than anybody else here's doing," Jim Bob continued, satisfaction in his voice. "How in hell did you ever think you could pull something like you were trying? Mr. Noda here could squash you all just like a june bug anytime he gets a mind, take my word for it."
Noda still hadn't amplified the new Dai Nippon scenario, but he didn't really need to bother.
"Jim Bob, don't spoil the fun and tell me. Let me try to guess." I glanced over at Noda, then back at him. "He suckered you in with his 'Rescue America' spiel. World peace at a price."
"Well, tell you the truth, the man did buy me lunch."
"I'll bet that's not all he did, you opportunistic son of a bitch."
I examined Noda. "How does it feel to have Japan about to be sole owner of IBM and AT amp;T and GM and… guess I could just check the supercomputer out there for the full list."
"Certain strategic corporations." Noda smiled benignly. "It had become the only meaningful direction to proceed, Mr. Walton. I'm afraid our other measures were clearly too little, too late."
"Why bother with the small fish, right? If you're going to buy up American technology, do it right."
"Mr. Walton, we both know it is inevitable. Neither you nor I can alter the tides of history." He sighed. "Perhaps Japan can provide the management guidance required to save America's industrial base, but it cannot be achieved merely by dabbling. Stronger measures, much stronger, were required. I finally came to see that. The problem was how to do it without a major psychological disruption of the market and more Japan bashing. Then by the greatest of good fortune, you solved my problem for me." He nodded toward Tam. "Your new trading program, Dr. Richardson, which allowed us to operate anonymously, was ideal. Why not make use of it? Particularly since Mr. Henderson had the personnel to render it operational."
While digesting that, I returned my attention to Jim Bob. "Let me guess some more. Ten to one you bought 'call' options on the Big Board issues he was planning to take over."
"Well, they were bound to go up." He flashed a reptilian grin as he adjusted the Uzi, now a bolt of black against his rumpled white suit. "If you're standing by the road and a gravy bus comes along, what are you going to do?"
"Terrific. Be a pity for this insider windfall to go to waste. Just wanted to make double sure you got a piece for yourself."
"Does a bear crap in the woods?" he inquired rhetorically, then tipped back his head and drained the champagne glass.
"Right. So naturally you bought call options on the Blue Chips, locking in a cheap price just before Noda's money boosted them into the clouds."
"Safe and simple. Of course, some traders go for index options, S amp;P 500*s and indicators like that, but that's always been too airy-fairy for me. When the market's set to head up, I just buy calls. Heavy leverage. No risk."
I concurred. "Nothing too abstruse."
"The thing of it is, I'm more comfortable dealing with reality," he went on. "I like to kick the tires, check under the hood, so that index crap's not my style. Like I always say, if you've got hold of something you can't figure out how to drink, drive, or screw, maybe you oughta ask yourself what you're doing with it."
A pragmatic criterion, I agreed. 'Though it's rather a pity you didn't cut me in on the play. I could have used the money."
"Walton," he replied, "it downright pains me to have to be the one breakin' the news to you, but you could have used the money more than you think. Whose bank balances do you figure I've been using to test out that platinum program?"
"In the spirit of intellectual curiosity, Jim Bob, does our new system for blowing capital show promise?"
"From the looks of my early churning, I'd say you got yourself a winner."
The fucker. How in hell did he get access to my money? I decided to just ask, whereupon he obligingly explained.
"Well, we're hooked into every bank computer in town." He was unblinking, a drugged-out zombie. "Account numbers aren't exactly a state secret, given the right phone call. Same goes for trust funds."
Trust funds?
"Let me be sure I've got this straight. You've also wiped out my daughter Amy's college money? She's now penniless too?"
"We're close, real close." He reached down and retrieved the bottle, then sloshed more of the cheap bubbly into his glass. "I'm figuring I can have everything down to a goose egg by sometime round about… lunch, probably."
I decided then and there I was going to kill him, and Matsuo Noda, with my own bare hands. The only question was whether to do it at that moment or later.
"Jim Bob, for the record, you two've just fucked with the wrong guy. When somebody starts messing with Amy's future, I tend to lose my sense of proportion."
"Nothing personal, Walton. You just had to be stopped, that's all." He grinned. "Figured it'd get your attention. Besides, way I see it, this man here's absolutely right. He's got the only answer that makes any sense."
"As long as sellout artists like you get rich in the process."
"It's in the grand American tradition, buddy. Enlightened self-interest, better known as looking out for number one. Everybody else here's hocking this country's assets to Japan and gettin' rich doing it. So why not? Besides, we've still got a ways to go. Time to give you-all a piece of this thing too."
"If we play ball?"
"Exactly."
"You greedy prick." I was considering just strangling him on the spot, nice and uncomplicated. "Noda's not here for anybody but himself. He's-"
"That's not the way I see it." He glanced over toward The Man, who was still silent as a sphinx.
"You wouldn't have the brains to understand even if we told you. But maybe there's something you can comprehend." I glanced at the metal grip of the Uzi on Noda's desk. One lightning move and it was in my hand. "I'm not going to let you do this."
"It's already done, pal." He lifted his own Uzi and leveled it at my forehead, grinning, his little idea of a joke. "I've got that NEC mainframe out there programmed for weeks of trading. Billions… Pow!" He jerked the barrel upward, then continued, "Way I've got it rigged, ain't nobody can turn it off now. We'd just as well all go fishing."
"Jim Bob, take care with that gun. Somebody might just decide to ram it down your scrawny throat."
"Ain't gonna be you, buddy." He reached for the champagne bottle again, no longer grinning.
"Mr. Walton." Finally Noda spoke again. "I assure you this is for the best. What you two were planning was very ill-considered. Not to mention that, if I'd actually permitted you to sink Dai Nippon's capital into some volatile commodity and then manipulate the markets, you might have given our institutional investors an enormous loss of confidence in my program. I have a responsibility to make sure that never happens." He studied Tam. "Dr. Richardson, you especially disappointed me. You betrayed my trust, something I always find unforgivable."
"You betrayed my trust." She looked ready to explode. "Lied to me, exploited me, used me. You perverted everything I had planned-"
"As I've explained, this had become necessary. There was no other way."
"How about Ken, and probably Allan Stern?" she interrupted. "Was taking their lives 'necessary' too?"
"You have no proof of that," he continued smoothly. "I would further suggest that too much speculation is not a healthy pursuit, Dr. Richardson. In the marketplace or in life."
"I'm not speculating."
"As you wish. In any case I think we both realize it is never prudent to meddle in matters beyond one's concern."
"There's a small detail you may have overlooked, Noda-san," I broke in. "That bogus sword. What are you planning to do when we blow the whistle?"
"My timetable for Nipponica is now proceeding on schedule, Mr. Walton." He glanced at the Uzi on the desk, his voice ice. "Consequently you are expendable as of this moment."