A look of understanding spread across her face.
“Simons?” Hauck asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s larger than Simons.” She took her gaze off Hassani and turned back to Hauck. “I know what’s happening, Ty.”
He nodded back. “So do I.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
Peter Simons was pleased.
The annual meeting had been a home run. He had stood up in front of two thousand concerned shareholders in the Grand Ballroom at the Pierre and mapped out-simulcast on a giant screen above him and across the globe-how Reynolds Reid was in position to emerge as one of the victors in these challenging times.
Yes, he had acknowledged, the stock price had taken a hit. The entire financial sector had.
Yes, there were billion-dollar write-downs that would have to be taken. The government had proposed a possible rescue plan for the troubled banks. It was conceivable the firm might participate in it, he told the shareholders.
Participate?
Simons had to hold himself back from laughing out loud. It was the biggest bonanza in the company’s history. And he had been sitting at the table where it was conceived, Simons reflected with glee, but, of course, he could not divulge this.
Still, the firm was solid, he declared. It was not in line to be one of the casualties, he said with commitment. It had shifted out of its subprime positions long before many of its competitors, like Wertheimer or Citi or Merrill. Its balance sheet was fundamentally strong.
In addition, he announced, the troubled times had worked in the company’s favor. The board had just approved their offer to acquire one of the largest mortgage companies that had recently failed. It had added prized pieces of Wertheimer too, which the firm had long coveted. It had just put in an offer to buy a 20 percent stake in AVO, a Dutch bank, which would strengthen its position in Europe. It had recently shored up new and substantial lines of capital in the Middle East.
Of course, he said, the firm had taken hits. But they were in a strong position to weather the storm. Not to simply weather it, he declared, but to emerge stronger and better positioned from it.
The packed ballroom responded with a standing ovation.
Now, hours later, back in his office on the forty-third floor, Simons caught the reactions on CNBC and Fox Business. The commentators were saying how Reynolds seemed uniquely positioned to take advantage of the crisis. Even if they needed government funds, it would only serve to strengthen the company’s reserves. Wertheimer and Beeston were history. Merrill and Lehman seemed ready to join them there.
The stock price had jumped almost 20 percent in an hour.
Satisfied, Simons reclined back at his desk and took out a cigar. He had done what he had to do. What he needed to do. The landscape around him had to be cleansed. Yes, there would be a year, maybe two, of turmoil. Of uncertainty. Yes, their own results would be slow to come back. Job loses. Contraction. Those were all just statistics. All simply debris, he mused, swept away by the gale forces of change.
But when the winds finally calmed, who would be there to profit on the rebound? Who, made flush with endless government funds, strengthened by their tight relationship to the Fed, would emerge the winner in this new world? The administrator of the TARP fund was an ex-Reynolds man. The head of the New York Fed had been their head of fixed income for years. It was like Skull and Bones all over again. You don’t leave things to the government to sort out, Simons thought, chuckling with pride.
We are the fucking government.
The seeds were planted well.
Harold Molinari, Simons’s CFO, called saying he wanted to share the Street’s reaction. Simons buzzed for him to come on down. Later, there was a partners’ dinner at Cipriani. Yes, it would be a long road back. A difficult climb. But Peter Simons had done what he had to do to win.
He had not let them down.
His office door opened. Simons spun expansively, expecting to greet his gloating CFO. “Hal!”
Instead he was staring into the panicked face of his secretary, who was followed by two men he did not know.
One was in a tan suit, and he came up to Simons’s desk and dropped a badge in front of his face.
A heavy weight plummeted inside Simons. Over the years, he’d become very familiar with the look of someone who was holding your balls in his mouth and was about to chew. He had that look down to a science.
He was staring at that same expression now.
“Mr. Simons,” the man in the suit said, smiling victoriously, “my name is Senior Agent Anthony Bruni, and I’m from the FBI.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN
They took the Amtrak Metroliner back to DC.
The government jet had already returned; they had assumed Naomi would be in New York for a while as part of Hassani’s interrogation.
But now Naomi realized the less anyone knew about their whereabouts, the better. Outside the hotel suite, Hauck had run the photo Steve Chrisafoulis had sent him earlier by the desk concierge on the twelfth floor. Jack “Red” O’Toole. The man immediately pointed to him as the “other guest” on the floor who had come by just after Hassani had gone in. They looked into who had made the booking: A phony name. A stolen Amex card. But now at least they knew. They knew who was doing the killing. Who had killed April. And the picture began to come clear just for whom. Hauck showed Naomi something else, something that Marcus Hird in Switzerland had sent back today. Naomi’s mood grew somber. This changed everything again. Hauck had never seen her look as nervous and unsure of what to do.
On the train, she and Hauck sat in two facing seats in the business car. They rode in silence for much of the way, stations flashing by. Newark. Metropark. Trenton. It was clear Naomi was gearing up for what she had to do. She joked fatalistically to him about some frozen lake up in northern Montana-how that might not even be an option by the end of the day. She took a call from Bruni, who now had Simons in hand. He arranged for them to be met by some of his colleagues when they arrived at Union Station in DC.
Sometimes you just step into something, Hauck knew, watching her steeling herself for the task that had to be done. Something larger than yourself. Something that just needs to be seen through. It may not be what you set out for at the beginning. It’s not exactly your plan. It’s more like your fate-or where fate guides you. Those with the part of them inside that does not look away. Back down. You look around for someone else to carry the ball. To run with it.
And it’s just you.
And it can cost you, Hauck knew, dearly. His whole career seemed to be a lesson in that. It had cost him a brother. If he had only looked away…It had cost him his friend and closest protégé on the job. It might now cost him Annie. Why can’t you love me like that? Chasing the ghost of a dead friend.
He looked away and felt the train rattling on the tracks. If only that’s what it was…
But you see it through. Certain of them were like that. You follow it all the way to the end. Regardless of who it swallows up or to what frozen lake it leads. When Naomi looked up and the two of them caught each other’s eyes, it was as if they were both thinking the same thing. Both recognized the look.
They smiled.
“I need something to eat,” he said. “Want anything?”
Naomi shook her head. “No, thanks.”
He got up. “I’ll be right back.”
The train was shuttling swiftly between Philadelphia and Wilmington. Hauck headed back up the aisle. A group of four businesspeople were crowded around a table, laptops out. In the next row, a man in a military cap appeared to be dozing, his brim pulled down.
Hauck flung open the door and crossed into the next car.