Armageddon Conspiracy (2 page)

He staggered to the chair and sat, willing himself to perfect stillness. He began to pray, knowing he had to embrace his pain, show God his absolute faith. This was a test, he knew, a demand for him to prove his fortitude. Only the strongest and most devout would be allowed to light the fires of Armageddon.

THE OLD GRANITE MANSION JUST
off Fifth Avenue in the high Sixties lorded austerely over its more mundane neighbors. Brent Lucas gazed at the brass plaque beside the polished front doors, thinking it was no accident that the name “Genesis Advisors” was barely visible from the sidewalk. GA, as it was known in the financial community, understood that its very wealthy clients appreciated understatement.

Brent took a deep breath and started up the steps. At the top he re-centered his tie and rang the white buzzer. Almost as an afterthought, he pushed the record button on the tape recorder hidden in his pocket.

After several moments the door swung back, and a plump woman with a helmet of dyed black hair held out her hand. “Brent! Let me welcome you to Genesis Advisors,” she said.

He recognized Betty Dowager, Executive Assistant to the firm’s
chairman, Prescott Biddle. “Mr. Biddle is traveling,” she said. “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Wofford is going to handle your orientation.”

He followed her thick calves up the carpeted staircase. It was still early, the building hushed, the air smelling of oiled wood and leather. The firm was only a dozen years old, but the historic mansion provided an aura of prestige and stability. An atmosphere of blue blood and old money oozed from its mahogany paneled walls and from the impressive paintings and antiques.

They went down a hallway to a pair of tall doors. After several years in a Boston skyscraper, Brent thought it felt more like some exclusive private club than an office, as if any second he might stumble upon a game of high-stakes backgammon.

Betty opened the doors to an anteroom where a secretary worked at an antique desk with an inlaid leather surface, then led him through another door into an ornately furnished office with heavy brocade drapes over tall windows. The firm’s number two partner rose from his chair and stepped around the desk to greet his visitor.

“Welcome, Brent,” Fred Wofford rumbled in his slightly nasal twang. He was a bear of a man in his early sixties, with stooped shoulders, a heavy gut, and a halo of perspiration atop his mostly bald scalp, an utter contrast to the athletic chairman, Prescott Biddle. “Come on in and sit down,” he said, offering a damp handshake.

He waddled around the desk and crashed in his swivel chair, looked at Brent, and then let out a chuckle. “Yale, Stanford MBA, All-American football player,” he said. “You’re smart and competitive and analytical. Just the kind of man we’re looking for.”

Wofford went on in a similar vein for several more minutes then
folded his meaty hands on the desktop. “We covered most of it in the interviews,” he said, his smile fading. “But there are a few details we didn’t get to—mainly about communications. Knowledge is power, Brent. All we’ve got to sell here is our performance.”

Brent nodded, knowing what was coming next. Everyone on the street, and for that matter most investors in America, knew about Prescott Biddle’s legendary track record. Biddle had been among the first public investors in Microsoft, Cisco, and AOL. He’d ridden WorldCom up then shorted it within ten percent of the top, even shorted the whole market the summer before 9/11. More recently he’d been early in Research In Motion, Google, and Intuitive Surgical. He’d been in and out of real estate, commodities, and highflying stocks like a man with a crystal ball.

Prescott Biddle’s results had been nothing short of extraordinary. In the eyes of the Justice Department they’d been too amazing, and that was the real reason Brent was here. He pretended to scratch himself as he dropped a hand to his jacket and felt the slight vibration of the recorder, making sure it was turned on.

“People follow us on the street,” Wofford continued. “They hang on our conversations in restaurants, they search our trash to find out what we’re doing. My point is—we are very careful, and we don’t allow leaks—ever. I can’t overstate the importance of confidentiality.”

Brent nodded.

Wofford glanced down at his interlaced his fingers then gave Brent an embarrassed smile. “I assure you I’m not bringing this up because of that little . . . incident in Boston.”

Brent’s gaze faltered momentarily. “I disclosed all that in the interviews,” he said.

Wofford held up a hand to stop him. “We know why you blew the whistle,” he said quickly.

He was referring to how some of Brent’s fellow portfolio managers had been making millions in their personal accounts by trading fund shares after the close of the market, at times when major news announcements would make stocks open sharply up or down the next day. It was done quietly and privately, but it happened to be highly illegal.

“In fact, your commitment to doing the right thing is one of the reasons we picked you,” Wofford said.

Brent nodded, feeling a twinge of guilt at the tape recorder running in his pocket.

Wofford waved a hand. “I only mention this because we are a Christian firm. We wouldn’t turn a blind eye. If you see anything improper here, you bring it to Prescott or myself. Have faith that we will correct our mistakes.”

Brent was about to reply when Wofford’s gaze left his face and drifted to something over his shoulder. He glanced back, thinking someone had come into the office, but saw only a large portrait on the wall he had missed when he walked in. It was savage and violent, a depiction of Jesus on the cross, hands pierced with heavy spikes, cheeks concave and inked with shadow, eyes haunted with unspeakable pain.

Brent turned back and waited. Wofford slowly tore his eyes from the painting.

“Welcome to the firm,” he said at last.

“HERE’S TO PROGRESS,” UNCLE FRED
said, raising his wine glass in a toast. “It was a long slog, but you got there.”

Brent smiled and raised his own glass. “Thanks.”

“But you’re in the same shitty industry,” Fred said, shaking his head. “After all that crap in Boston you should’ve wised up.”

Brent would have resented the comment coming from anyone else, but since Fred had raised him from the time his mother died, he shoveled a forkful of pasta bolognaise into his mouth and took it. They were at a restaurant in Little Italy, Brent’s treat on his uncle’s first foray into Manhattan in probably ten years.

Fred hacked off a hunk of veal chop, shoved it into his mouth, and kept talking as he chewed. “I mean, you got a degree from that fancy-ass college in New Haven and a MBA from Stanford, and these Wall Street scumbags won’t hire you for six months cause you turned in a
couple crooks at your old firm.” Fred waved his fork in disgust. “Guy as smart as you can’t get a job cause he’s too honest. Jesus H. Christ!”

“Can we talk about something else?” Brent suggested, seeing the way heads were starting to turn in their direction as Fred warmed to his topic.

“Why? Cause you don’t want me to remind you that you always said you were going to teach?”

Brent leaned forward, lowering his voice, hoping Fred would take the hint. “How could I? After growing up in your house, they wouldn’t allow me around children.”

“Lemme tell you, buddy, you were raised in the lap of normal,” Fred growled. “When people stop paying you ten times what you’re worth, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.” Fred took a gulp of red wine and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Boil this Wall Street stuff down, and it’s all about giving the big shot assholes blowjobs in the washroom.”

A well-dressed couple at the next table turned and stared with outraged expressions. Fred fluttered his eyes at them. “What?” he asked. “I can’t say washroom?”

“Forgive my uncle,” Brent said. “He’s suffering from Tourette Syndrome.”

The man threw a careful glance at Fred, whose pugnacious blue eyes held neither the compulsive tic of Tourette’s nor of the confused vacancy of an Alzheimer’s victim. A second later he looked away.

“Nice job,” Brent said quietly.

Fred raised his eyebrows. “I raised you to be something better than a money vulture.”

“Like maybe a dirt-mouth who can clear out a restaurant.”

Fred jerked his head at the couple and scowled. “Pussies! This whole city’s full of ‘em.”

“But you have to admit the food is good,” Brent said, forking up the last of his pasta and trying again to change the subject.

“Not good enough to make a person live here,” Fred replied sourly. “Nothing is.”

When they left the restaurant the evening was pleasantly warm, and they decided to walk rather than take a cab. Neither of them spoke as they wandered up Mott Street then over to Lafayette, continuing to Great Jones. Brent went slowly to allow for Fred’s bum knee. At Great Jones they turned east, and as if by some unspoken agreement, came to a stop opposite the fire station that held Engine 33 and Ladder 9. They stared at the building.

“First time here?” Fred finally asked.

“Yeah,” Brent replied. He studied the dark brick façade and the Maltese Cross on the glass of the garage doors as if the structure contained some indecipherable secret message.

“You gone down to the site?”

“Nope,” Brent said, thinking he never would because the emptiness was too painful. That day was branded in his memory. He remembered sitting helpless in front of his office television as the Trade Towers burned, knowing his older brother had to be inside because nothing ever kept Harry back. He’d pictured Harry charging up the fire stairs, floor after floor, past the streams of fleeing office workers, Harry always in the best shape, the one who’d get to the top first. Get out of there, you stupid sonofabitch! he’d shouted over and over at the TV.

When the collapse came he knew Harry had been all the way up, right where spilled jet fuel would have been melting girders, the roar of flames drowning the cries of trapped victims. Even if Harry had sensed the building coming apart, he wouldn’t have budged.

Harry and his father were both firemen, both killed in the line of duty. His mother, too, was killed in her own fire. Brent still awakened sometimes at night from his old familiar nightmare, the one where he and Harry were trapped in the flames.

“God, I wish he’d been somewhere else that day,” he said.

“Harry made his own choices.”

“Shitty choices,” Brent said, and resumed walking. He heard Fred limping behind him.

“He did what he wanted to do,” Fred said. “So did your dad. So did I. Let’s talk about your choices. You work with slime bags and then you go back for more?”

Brent spun around. “Harry made what . . . maybe sixty grand, and he went in and rescued guys making a hundred times that much. You and Dad did the same thing, and you’re the only one who’s still around, with a bum knee and hardly enough money to hang onto to your house! And you tell me I’m the idiot!”

“We did what we wanted,” Fred said, his tone remarkably calm given his usual quick temper. “I just hope you’re doing the same thing.”

“I am,” Brent said, the words tripping out too quickly. He felt a white-hot anger but at the same time the sharp point of a knife in his heart.

Twenty minutes later they reached Penn Station, where Fred would board a PATH train to Hoboken and then catch the Morristown Line
to his home. Brent was feeling calmer, having walked off the helpless rage that seized him when he thought about Harry’s death, but that was only until he saw the plywood barricades where reconstruction work was still going on from February’s bombing.

Over a hundred people killed, he thought as the familiar mix of anger and terrible loss seized him all over again.

Fred stopped at the bottom of the escalator and clasped Brent’s arm. “Harry did good,” he said in a somber voice. “All of us have to die sometime. We just want to make sure it counts for something when it happens.”

Brent nodded. He was trying to count for something, too. He just wished he could explain.

Two blocks from his newly rented apartment, he turned into a nondescript bar that looked like a hangout for the over-fifty crowd. It was dimly lit, mostly empty, and he took a table near the front window. A moment later, a woman with gray hair, her plump thighs filling out a navy blue pantsuit, walked through the front door, glanced around, and then sat at Brent’s table.

“Well?” Ruth Simmons demanded.

“It’s only been two days. I hardly know where the men’s room is.”

Simmons’s lips turned down. “I thought you were a quick study.”

She was a lawyer at the Department of Justice, running a special task force that focused on the financial industry. She was also a first class bitch, Brent thought, but she was the reason he had his job at Genesis Advisors.

She had first contacted him several months earlier, claiming they’d met sometime after he’d blown the whistle about illegal
trading practices at his old firm. Brent had taken her at her word because there had been so many lawyers that names and faces were a blur. She’d taken him to dinner and asked if he’d be willing to do something else to help the government. She’d told him the new situation involved illegal use of inside information and was much bigger than the Boston case. His country needed his help, she’d said.

At that point, frustrated from months of fruitless job searches and behind on his bank loans and maxed-out credit cards, Brent signed a heavy-handed confidentiality agreement, and agreed to help go after Genesis Advisors.

Now, groping for something to report, he repeated what a young partner named Owen Smythe had revealed that day at lunch—that the firm managed over a billion dollars of Prescott Biddle’s personal money and that while the firm was a partnership in name, Biddle often ruled over his fellow partners like a dictator.

Simmons shrugged. “That’s not evidence.”

“No, but it’s unusual.” Brent tried to recall Owen Smythe’s exact words. “Smythe said that Biddle takes control when he gets ‘messages.’ I tried to ask more questions, but he clammed up and wouldn’t say any more.”