Storm Front

“What you’ve just seen would take place in about two hours of real time,” Click said. “So we’d be talking about the U.S. dollar losing three quarters of its value in two hours. The instability created in U.S. markets would be almost impossible to fathom. And that’s not even counting the ripple effects it would have across the globe. It more than likely would throw the world into a kind of financial Dark Ages that would last… well, who knows? Luckily we’ve never had the chance to find out. Suffice it to say, it would be bad.”

“And six traders, spread out across the globe, making large enough trades, could make this happen?” Storm asked.

“Yes,” Xi Bang said. “That’s a very basic summation of the Click Theory.”

“What would happen if it was just four traders?” Storm said.

“It would be enough to trigger the slide, but the Fed could still save it.”

“So six is the magic number.”

“That’s right.”

“Is there any way to stop it?” Storm asked.

“Yes, in theory,” Click said. “If the Fed sold everything it has — I’m talking everything, including the kitchen sink — it might have an effect. It would be an extraordinary measure on the Fed’s part. You literally have to max out the size of the Fed’s intervention, and even the model says we’d be looking at a forty-seven percent chance of a correction. Basically, it would be a coin flip as to whether it would work.”

“And without the Fed?”

“Armageddon guaranteed,” Click said. “Mind you, it’s a theoretical model. But the math, once you understand it, is really quite simple.”

“Like three plus three equals six?”

“More like any number times zero equals zero.” Storm nodded, then pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?” Xi Bang asked.

“Following my intuition,” Storm said.

Storm stepped out of the server room, climbed back up the steps, then walked outside into the mid-afternoon Iowa sunshine, the kind that made crops grow and Storm squint.

No one would go to all the trouble to engineer a catastrophe unless they had neutralized the Fed’s ability to avert it. If Storm was able to find someone who had been tinkering with the Fed — either its personnel or its policy — he would be a lot closer to finding whoever hired Volkov.

And, much as Storm dreaded doing it, he knew he was one phone call away from a man who could probably find out what was happening, a man with his fingers stuck in pies all over Washington. Storm pulled out his satellite phone and pressed each button firmly, deliberately. He had learned this was not the kind of phone call you made lightly.

“What is it, Storm?” Jedediah Jones said, his voice sounding extra gritty, like he had just gulped an additional helping of sand.

Storm inhaled, to give himself one more second to think things through. This was a game he had played with Jones many times, the one where each man decided how much he could afford to show the other — and, more to the point, how much he could get away with holding back. For a man like Jones, information was like an Allen wrench — the more he got, the harder he would turn the screws later. And yet, in this case, there was no avoiding it: Storm would have to give some to get some. Given what he had just heard, there was too much at stake not to engage Jones and his considerable resources.

“I need some of your moles on Capitol Hill to do a little fishing,” Storm said.

“Yeah? What kind of fish are they trying to catch?”

“I’m curious if anyone is tinkering with the ability of the Federal Reserve to sell government bonds.”

“Really?” Jones said, almost sounding amused, because he knew, too — knew the game had already begun. “And why do you want to know that, Agent Storm? You wondering if now is the right time to invest?”

“Like I said, just curiosity.”

“Where are you right now?”

Jones had ways of finding out if he really wanted to know, so Storm didn’t bother lying: “Ames, Iowa.”

“Ames, Iowa? What’s in Ames, Iowa?”

“Mostly corn. But also a major American university.”

“Does this have something to do with dead bankers?”

“It might, it might not,” said Storm, even if he knew Jones could see through his noncommittal answers. “But probably it does. That’s what you’ve hired me to investigate, after all.”

“Yes, I’m aware. Can you give me a little more to go on?”

“Not really. I don’t know much myself right now. But maybe you could look into the person at the Fed who does this sort of thing and see if anything has changed about him or her? Maybe it’s a different person now? Maybe there’s been some kind of procedural change in that department lately? Maybe this person has been compromised in some way?”

“Who might be doing the compromising?” Jones asked.

“Wish I knew,” Storm said as he watched some college kids flipping a Frisbee, blissfully unaware of how precarious everything about their way of life had suddenly become.

“So I’m supposed to just nose around the Fed’s bond sales department until someone admits they’ve been taking bribes?” Jones asked. “Any guidance about how I should go about that?”

“Say ‘please’ a lot,” Storm said.