“I’m sorry, sir,” Naomi said to him. “I was hoping we might spare you that and have that conversation here.”
The ruddy-complexioned, dark-suited Treasury man looked perplexed. “Spare me?” He glanced at Hastings.
“I’m afraid the secretary has an important meeting scheduled. There are House members who have carved out time from their schedules waiting for him there-”
“Which is why,” Naomi said, cutting him off, “it might be better if you heard what we had to say down here.”
An intransigence dug its way into Keaton’s jaw. Clearly, he wasn’t keen on being dictated to by an investigator. And one from his own staff. “Alright…” He stepped over to an isolated spot in the corner as people rushed by. “I’m listening, Agent Blum. Go on.”
Naomi cleared her throat. “You said you heard that Mr. Hassani was killed? Before we were able to pick him up.”
“I did. As I said, tragic. I also heard there was a lead on his killer.”
“There is a lead,” Naomi said. “But I don’t know if it would trouble you or not to know he’s dead too.”
“Trouble me…” The treasury secretary narrowed his eyes sharply, the steely gaze of rank bearing down on her.
“It always bothered me,” Naomi said, “how Hassani always seemed to have a step on us. When it came to apprehending Thibault in Serbia. What we had learned about his past, things no one else could know. What happened in London…I shared my feeling that there was no one I felt I could trust. I came to you directly with what I knew.” She stared solidly into her boss’s eyes. “You must’ve thought I was one helluva fool, Mr. Secretary. And maybe I was.”
“Agent Blum…” Keaton was growing impatient. “I’m not sure where you’re going with all this, but I remind you, despite all your good efforts, the arc of where your career is headed is still very much in play here.”
“My career…” Naomi nodded thoughtfully. “My career isn’t where I would be thinking right now, sir. I was thinking more of yours. Al-Bashir told us it was so much larger than terrorism-larger than anything I could imagine. And it took me a while to put it all together. To even have the will to think it…”
“I’m very interested to hear where your mind is going,” Keaton said with a glance at Hastings, his dismissive tone beating down on her.
She said, “The past two presidential administrations have stripped most regulatory control out of the system. Am I right? Banks acting as investment houses, dealing in complex financial products even an MBA wouldn’t understand. Leveraged with debt at forty to one. The rating agencies all looking the other way…We had the whole teetering house of cards, the worldwide economy, all holding together just as long as the system continued to grow. As long as one last house could be sold, one last mortgage approved, right?”
The secretary looked at her.
“And then it didn’t,” Naomi said.
“I’m not sure I need the lesson in current events, Agent Blum.” Keaton glanced at his watch. “Mitch, maybe you could-”
“Stay,” Naomi said, looking at Hastings. “I think you’ll find this interesting too. Suddenly China stopped rushing in to buy up our debt. Russia issued half a trillion dollars of notes built on future petro-rubles and the price of oil halved. The housing market dropped off a cliff. All you had to do was take a step back and see it-a train wreck about to take place. The real question wasn’t whether you could prevent it. It was who, in the end, would be saved? Separating the winners from the losers. Sort of a Darwinian thing, no? Except it wasn’t. You just rigged the deck.
“You put together the largest trove of stopgap funding the world had ever seen-almost a trillion dollars-and sold it as a bailout. A giant injection of liquidity to keep the economy in gear. When all it did was prop up the banks. Some were rescued; some were left to be swallowed up by the tsunami. Who decided? The ones that made the wrong bet-Wertheimer, Beeston, Lehman-they’re gone. While others got the brass ring. All you had to do was tip the balance just a little bit, if you could see it from high enough. To be one of the winners. Am I making any sense, sir?”
“And who exactly would those winners be, Agent Blum,” the treasury secretary huffed at her, “as seen from your lofty heights?”
Naomi realized the next years of her life would be dictated by what she was about to say. “Why don’t we start with the Gstaad Gang? Or, even better, sir, Reynolds Reid.”
The space around them in the vast lobby became suddenly quiet. Her voice echoed off the marble walls.
“I saw the names.” Naomi stared into his eyes. “Stephen Cain. Vladimir Tursanov. Al-Bashir. Hassani. Simons. The head of the largest investment bank in the world. All of them who were there. I suddenly realized they all had one thing in common. How could I have missed it? One thing: they were all Reynolds Reid.”
Thomas Keaton blinked.
“Isn’t that right, sir? All trained, grew rich, cut their teeth, at Reynolds Reid. And then it hit me.” She shook her head. “How could I have been so blind? It hit me that you should know that better than anyone, sir.
“Because you were Reynolds Reid too. You were a managing director there. You knew all these people. Not to mention Kessler of the New York Fed, and Carl McKnight, in charge of dispersing the bank relief fund…All of you were Reynolds Reid.”
Keaton’s jaw went slack and his eyes reflected the worry of someone about to take a great fall.
“We are the government, isn’t that right, sir? We are the Fed. That old bromide about GM…Now it’s ‘What’s good for Wall Street is good for government.’ Because you’re all embedded. You’re everywhere. We are the reason some banks are saved and others are left to fail. Maybe you weren’t all involved, but it’s clear: a nod from you, and no one was standing in the way.”
“It’s no crime, Agent Blum”-the treasury secretary’s gaze became granite-“that the firm has a long-standing tradition of service.”
“Service? It’s not service, Mr. Secretary. It’s the gradual takeover of the government by a bunch of insiders whose power and money are used to buy elections, weaken regulations, so their firms can one day profit at the expense of all these blind, unwitting shareholders, who we used to call simply taxpayers. It’s an oligarchy. Same as any little banana republic. Except just an extra couple of zeros at the end.
“The Gstaad Gang…” Naomi smiled. “We checked the hotel records. We found the names. Every one of them. Al-Bashir. Tursanov. Hassani. Simons. All but one, sir…Maybe that’s because he didn’t stay at any of the hotels. Maybe because he didn’t even remain in town overnight…”
“And who was that?” Thomas Keaton glared, his gaze that of a cat about to spring.
“Why, you, Mr. Secretary.” Naomi looked back at him. “You were the last one who was there.”
She glanced toward Hauck, and he finally opened the envelope he’d been holding under his arm.
In it were the security photos Marcus Hird had e-mailed to him yesterday. Photos taken at the base of the Gstaad main ski lift. Showing all the members of the group. Arriving separately. Shipman. Cain. Tursanov. Simons. Al-Bashir and Hassani. All heading up the lift to the restaurant, where no one would ever spot them. The time and date clearly displayed at the bottom. June 26. Last year. Almost eight months before the call from Hassani to al-Bashir that had started it all. Before Marc and April Glassman were killed. Before the world began to fall apart.
Hauck laid a final photo on the top of the pile.
The treasury secretary’s head flinched.
“You, Secretary Keaton.” The fissure in Keaton’s forty-year career cracked open in his gaze, the practiced solidity of his impenetrable veneer breaking. “You were the one who set it all in motion. The bank rescue plan. That’s exactly what it was meant to do. Insure the survivors, so they could pick over the spoils. You had the power-”