The Warning (23 page)

“Clarke,” he stammered. “Clarke Owen.”

The redhead gave him an angry frown. “Where's the other guy?”

“The other bed's empty,” the blond said crossly.

Suddenly he understood, and the realization hurtled him to full wakefulness. “We changed rooms.” He was no longer stammering.

The redhead's expression turned savage. “
What?
”

“There goes our bonus,” the blond said glumly.

“We changed rooms,” Clarke repeated, glancing from one to the other. “He likes to have fresh air at night, and this window is stuck closed.”

“Great, just great!” The beautiful face held an amazing amount of bitterness. “Come on, let's go.”

“Sleep tight, honey,” the blond said, following her friend from the room.

Clarke stood frozen to the spot, listening to his rapid breathing, running the sequence over and over through his mind. His roving glance caught sight of the curtains. He realized with yet another startling jolt why they might have opened the drapes. As he stood there, the curtain to a darkened window across the courtyard flickered once, and was still.

Clarke closed his drapes and moved back to the door. With trembling fingers he reset the bolt. Only then did he notice the empty screw holes higher up, and realize that someone had removed the night latch. He walked over to the desk, picked up the chair, walked back to the door, and jammed it hard under the knob.

He turned off the lights and went back to bed, as awake as he had ever been in his life. He wondered if he should even mention the visitation to Buddy and decided he had no choice. They would need to make careful arrangements in the future.

Sleep was a very long time in coming.

–|
|
THIRTY–THREE
|
|–

Nineteen Days . . .

The week was one hard push. Tuesday morning they made the six-hour drive to Akron, Ohio. Wednesday morning they moved on to Zanesville. Thursday they traveled to Dayton. It was not what had been originally planned, but very little was these days. Buddy's message was spreading far faster than he could travel, and demands for him to speak grew by the hour. The press pestered Alex and Agatha continually. They called from everywhere under the sun, demanding immediate access. Agatha turned from cool to frigid, and even Alex responded to the television bullying with a stonelike hardness.

Though tired from the week's activities, Thursday found Buddy ready for another press conference. He did not particularly want to face the press and its hard-eyed skepticism again. But with less than three weeks left, he would do anything possible to make sure his message was heard. Despite his fatigue, he was able to trust in his newfound ability to remain steadfast to the central message. Which meant he entered the hotel conference room that afternoon, waited for the television lights to come on, greeted the gathered press while his microphones were tested, and then launched immediately into his message.

“The idea that our economy will always continue to expand, that our government can fine-tune the economy and make growth a constant, is nothing more than a myth. A sad one.” He saw the smirks around the table. Such intelligent people. So certain of their attitudes and their ambitions. Buddy persisted. “All of life is cyclical. We are born, we live, we die. The same will happen with every economic cycle. There has never been a straight-line economic rise. There never will be. If you were to chart out the movements of just the last twenty years, you would need a huge graph, because the peaks and troughs are so far apart. But in peak times we tend to forget there were ever troughs. We would like to pretend that they can't happen again.”

“Mr. Korda.” One of the skeptical young men leaned forward. “Are you saying that we cannot learn from our mistakes? Couldn't it be possible to ensure that the next economic downturn would not be so severe?”

“In theory, certainly. In reality, no.”

“And why is that?”

“Because of human nature. Because of greed.” He was losing them. He could see it in their faces. Mention a moral code and their minds went on autopilot. “There is a passage in the Bible that goes, ‘O foolish people, without understanding, who have eyes and see not, and who have ears and hear not.'”

He glanced around the table, saw no indication that anyone recognized the passage, and with a mental shrug returned to the central theme. “It is fairly easy to recognize that our financial system is out of kilter. Too many of the people in charge of our banks have completely lost touch with the world beyond Wall Street. They live to trade, not to serve their customers. They are after fast bucks and quick profits. Banks accept trading risks that would have been utterly unthinkable just twenty years ago.

“People look at the Great Depression as though it caught the world by surprise. Well, it did, and it didn't. I've done some reading about that time, and I've found that people were worried about the dangers five years before the crash actually arrived.

“What concerns me now, as it concerns others, is how
many
things we have in common with that period. Two of these factors have been in the press recently, the air of frantic speculation and the overly high prices of stocks. But there are other parallels that greatly concern me. I want to mention just three of them here, the three that frighten me the most.

“Back in the twenties, banks could trade nationwide. They operated in as many states as they wanted. That meant when they began going under in nineteen-thirty, their bankruptcies had a
national
effect. So in the thirties Congress passed a series of laws restricting banks to operation in just one state. Banks have been fighting to have these laws rolled back ever since.

“In the late eighties, the banks finally pulled the last remaining teeth from these laws, and now we are faced with a growing national banking network all over again.

“Second, until the depression, banks could print their own money. Supposedly this was backed up by the banks' gold reserves. But these reserves were not effectively monitored. Banks used these same reserves to back wild speculations in the markets. The result was, banks printed money backed by their good name, nothing more. When the market dropped, the banks' assets were wiped out, and their money was worth nothing.

“Banks today do not print money, but they
do
print paper credits. They print them, and they trade in them. The difference between today's paper and yesterday's money is only one of magnitude.

“Paper money is a
promissory note
. It is a freely exchangeable slip saying that when presented to the bank, the bank will produce gold or U.S. currency to cover that amount. Today's bank papers are promissory notes as well, only they're a hundred million times larger.

“Once again, these credit papers are used like currency to buy and sell businesses, support governments, cover mortgages, and run local communities. Once again, this paper is backed on nothing more than the bank's good name.

“And third, the twenties saw a huge upsurge in the amount of foreign capital flowing into the American stock and bond markets. Germany was still in ruins after the First World War, as was much of the rest of Europe. Foreign capital flowed into the only market that was booming—America. That was very nervous capital and was controlled by just a handful of huge foreign investors. When they felt the market had peaked, they pulled their money out. All at once, there was an unexpected drain with cataclysmic results. How do I know that this had such a terribly destabilizing effect? Because records show that this occurred on the Friday before Black Monday—October 26, 1929.

“Today, the Japanese market remains in severe recession. Their stock market is down
forty percent
from its level of just three years ago. Our interest rates are
nine times
higher than theirs.

“Today, Europe's economy is in turmoil. Germany and France are experiencing their highest levels of unemployment in fifty years. Their stock and bond markets are stagnant.

“Because of these and other factors, the level of foreign investment in the U.S. markets has never been higher. Once again, this is very nervous money. There is an extremely tense finger on the trigger. This gun is aimed directly at the heart of our own financial system.”

Thad was a bitter man. Thursday morning he stared out the Dayton restaurant window as the lunch crowd began to arrive. The sunlight seemed to mock him and his anger.

“Something the matter with your food, hon?”

“What?” Thad swung back around and focused first on the waitress and then on his untouched plate. “Uh, no, I'm just not hungry.”

“You're going to have to do better than that.” She showed a weary smile. “Take a plate like that back into the kitchen, we'll both have to answer to the cook.”

“Just bring me a coffee.” He turned back to the window.

The two guards remained as silent as they had been all week. He did not mind in the least. For three days they had tracked Buddy Korda, always one step behind the man's erratic course. Plans seemed to change by the hour, leaving them utterly unable to set another trap.

Not only that, but Thad's blood was brought to a boil by the morning's papers.

The day before, according to several articles, a bulletin had flashed over the financial wires. One paper said it had originated in London, another Rome. Reuters and AP both covered it, however. The report stated that the Japanese were not going to bid on the next treasury bond offering.

Just as he had suggested to Larry Fleiss.

The response had been explosive. Bond prices had dipped by 18 percent in the space of an hour. Then a second rumor had surfaced. Because of the yen's weakness the Japanese were pulling out of stocks as well. The New York exchanges went into a paroxysm of selling, shedding one hundred ten points in fifteen minutes.

The effect was so shattering that the Japanese finance minister had been raised from his bed so that he could issue a personal denial.

The finance minister's statement had resulted in just as powerful an effect, only in the opposite direction. Bond and stock prices had soared, with the Dow closing 212 points above the previous day.

Thad ground his teeth in silent fury. Larry's jovial call earlier that morning had only poured salt in his wounds. The man had congratulated him on a great idea and crowed over the profits made by going in both directions and in both markets. Thad had forced himself to sound easy and amiable, but inside he burned with wrath over having missed the action. His idea, Larry's glory. All because of Korda botching their well-laid plans and then running across the country like a fox.

Well, this time they wouldn't fail.

When the cell phone chimed, he had it up and at his ear before the first ring had ended. “Dorsett.”

It was Wesley Hadden, the kid on Korda's trail. He sounded terse, frightened. “They're giving a talk tonight at the Clarks-town community center.”

“Great.” Thad made swift notes. “Good work.”

“They don't have hotel reservations yet.” He almost bit off the words.

Either that or they were keeping it secret. No surprise, after the other night's fiasco. “If you hear something, call us back.”

“This is the last time I need to report, right?”

“Probably.” The kid's tone was unsettling. “What's the matter?”

A moment's hesitation, then, “I've been listening to Mr. Korda speak.”

“Don't let it get to you.”

“This is a lot . . .” The kid stopped, breathed hard, then demanded sharply, “Exactly how much longer do I need to hang around?”

“A day, maybe two. I'll let you know. In the meantime, stay on his case.” Thad switched off the phone to find the two guards watching him impassively. “Tonight's talk is in Clarkstown. You know people there?”

“We can find them.”

“Just a question of knowing where to look,” the second agreed.

“Okay. Hire some muscle. Just make sure they can't be traced back to us. Can you do that?”

“No problem.” Toneless, terse, not the least surprised.

“After the other night, they'll be watching for us at the hotel. So we'll make our move when he arrives for the talk. Make it look like a mugging.”

“There'll be others around,” one guard pointed out.

“So hit them too. I don't care.”

The two hulks exchanged glances. “How hard?”

“Hard as you want. I don't just want him stopped. I want him running scared. Or I don't want him running at all.”

They had learned to give Buddy a little time to rest and recuperate after a public meeting, especially the press conferences. Today, however, he scarcely had time to lie down before there was a knock on his door.

When he stood up Buddy felt like he walked into an unspoken message, as though it had been draped around his bed and he walked straight into it.

Buddy opened the door for Clarke. Beside him stood the young man who had attached himself to their group back in Pennsylvania. Wesley Hadden was employed by Valenti Bank, which explained the young man's nervous air; anyone working for the bank but associated with Buddy ran the risk of losing his job. Wesley had proved to be a great help to Clarke on several occasions, traveling ahead while Clarke himself remained at Buddy's side.

“There's a problem,” Clarke announced.

Buddy nodded. He knew.

“Tonight's meeting was supposed to be in a community hall, but an electrical fire broke out last night. I've just come from there. It smells like burned cork.” Clarke studied his friend. “You don't look the least bit surprised. Did somebody already tell you about this?”

Buddy started to deny it, began to correct himself, and then realized it didn't matter. “Take the car and get back on the interstate. Go to the next exit. Get off and stop at the first church you see. A pastor will be out front. Ask him if we can hold the meeting there.”