Union Atlantic (23 page)

For the moment, Doug had taken the only practical step: he’d kept McTeague in place and continued to funnel him enough cash to
cover the margin and hold the positions open so the losses would remain, for now at least, unrealized. But he couldn’t keep Holland out of the loop any longer. For one thing, Finden Holdings was running out of money to lend Atlantic Securities and would need more from Union Atlantic as early as tomorrow. More important, they had now reached a line over which Doug had no intention of stepping alone. Setting up a single-purpose vehicle like Finden Holdings to get around regulatory limits was one thing; it skirted rules without quite violating them. But what Atlantic Securities and its parent bank would have to do now to survive was altogether different: deception of the exchange authorities and the deliberate misstatement of the company’s exposure to the shareholders and the public. Doug knew well enough how the principals defended themselves in investigations of this sort of thing. They did what Lay had done at Enron—claim ignorance of operational detail. Cutting the occasional corner might have been an implicit part of Doug’s job in special plans, but he had no intention of letting Holland play dumb on a scheme this size.

When he saw the lights of the party through the trees, he pulled to the side of the road. He hadn’t walked twenty yards along the fence when he glanced to his left and noticed a high juniper hedge, which seemed oddly familiar to him, almost as if he’d dreamt of it. Coming closer, he recognized the gap in the bushes and the white gravel drive. It was the Gammonds’ house, where his mother used to clean, where he used to pick her up in the afternoons, its brick façade smaller than he remembered it, the shutters painted white now rather than dark green. He’d never come to the Hollands’ from this direction and hadn’t known this house was so nearby.

The sight of it brought him up short. Picturing the old lady in her jade necklace, a moment he hadn’t thought of in years came back to him, an exchange they’d had the last time he’d come here.

She had asked, as usual, how school was going, but instead of giving his standard curt reply, he’d told her what he hadn’t figured out a way to tell his mother—that he was leaving, going into the navy. No one else but the recruiter had known, not even his cousin Michael. He had wanted to shock the old lady, to show her that he was more than her cleaning lady’s son. But she hadn’t been the least surprised. “Good for you,” she’d said. “My father was an admiral, commanded the Second Fleet during the war. He always had tremendous respect for the enlisted men.”

A trowel in her gloved hand, the skin of her face a fine, tan wrinkle, those heavy stones and the little silver rings that separated them hanging around her neck.

Why hadn’t she given him away, he wondered now. When his mother approached, Mrs. Gammond had said nothing, made no congratulatory comment or aside, as if she’d known the news was a secret. She’d just smiled and waved goodbye.

She had been elderly back then; by now she would be dead and gone.

Putting the matter aside, he kept walking up the street, looking for a gap in the fence. Stepping into the field, he strode through the tall grass, making for the house.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure moving quickly toward him in the twilight.

“Hold it there,” the man called out, “you can’t come in this side.” He hustled up to block Doug’s path, all suited six-three of him, complete with an earpiece and a flag pin on his lapel.

“Get out of my way,” Doug said.

“This is a private party, sir, if you—”

“I pay your fucking wage!” he shouted, pushing past the goon.

___________

H
E FOUND
H
OLLAND
coming down the steps of the terrace, a crystal tumbler in hand.

“We’ve got a problem,” Doug said. “We need to talk.”

“Well, gosh, thanks for the news flash. I’ve been dealing with it all morning. Bernie
fucking
Ebbers. How much money did we lend that guy? And now that showboat Spitzer is after us. Like we’re the first people in the world to do our clients a favor? He’s a politician for Christ’s sake, he does favors for a living. But oh no, the party in the market is over, right? And the people want their sacrificial lambs. The script’s as old as Teddy Roosevelt, and if we’re lucky it’ll be just as toothless. But they’ll want cash and that’s the one thing we don’t have right now, thanks to you.” He emptied his glass. “So yeah, you’re right, we’ve got a problem.”

“Let’s go inside.”

His shoulders slumping, Holland turned back up the steps and led Doug down the hall and into his study. Closing the door behind them, Doug leaned his back up against it.

“We’re in trouble,” he said. “More than we thought.”

As Doug explained what McTeague had done, Holland’s head moved up and back, as if tapped on the nose by a boxer. When it sunk forward again, his mouth was half open and he looked dazed.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No.”

At which point, the door handle nudged Doug in the small of his back and he stepped aside to watch Glenda enter. She wore a red silk dress with blue pearl buttons and across her chest a spray of diamonds.

The Adderall she’d taken following her nap had mixed with the
drink to give her the novel sensation of being simultaneously drunk and highly efficient.

“Hello, Doug,” she said, unsteady on her feet. “How are you? I was
so
sorry to hear about Judge Cushman’s decision. But I’m sure you and Charlotte will work it out, won’t you? Now Jeffrey, you need to come with me. Did you notice we have three hundred guests in the yard? Come along, come with me.”

She motioned with her index finger as a parent might to a child.

“Where the fuck is Lauren?” Holland asked no one in particular, and certainly not his wife.

“She’s doing her job, dear. Now it’s time for you to do yours. Come along.”

“Jesus, Glenda,” he said. “Hold it together, would you? I’ll be there in ten minutes. Just get out there and deal with it. And for Christ’s sake stop drinking.”

Glenda turned to Doug and smiled. “So good to see you,” she said. “You really are so handsome. And my husband keeps you all to himself.” She rested her limp, sweating hand on his wrist. “Be a darling. Bring him out to the party, won’t you?”

Like a luxury car with poor turning radius, it took some effort for her to steer back through the door, which Doug closed behind her.

Across the room, Holland stood with his back to the bay window, his face drained, all his bluster gone. He could put on exasperation about WorldCom and Spitzer and all the other difficulties; he could even enjoy them, the way they lent him the air of the embattled leader, comfortable all the while in the knowledge that in the end the bank would take a few write-offs and move on. Companies with bloated stock prices could now and then go belly-up, but everyone knew the biggest banks just kept marching.

“We give McTeague to the authorities,” he said, reaching for conviction. “That’s what you do. We fire him, close out his positions, and put out a statement.”

“Are you out of your mind? We’d lose half our capital base overnight. Our customers would run for the doors. Not to mention trigger a crisis. You’re not thinking straight. We’re talking about survival. And not just for this company. You’ve got a responsibility to that.”

“Who the fuck are you to talk about responsibility?”

“Come on, Jeffrey. Is this how you’re going to play it? Throw your hands up, get some cheap ethical high, and spend the next three years in depositions?”

“Is that a threat?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The point is, you’re letting the situation get to you. That’s not how it has to be.”

“Oh really? And what do you propose?”

Doug had never seen him so frightened. Most all of what Holland had achieved in life had flowed from the bottomless well of his self-confidence, a great, social largesse that made everyone in his orbit feel as if they’d been selected for the bright and winning team. Contemplating a failure of this magnitude undid the premise of him.

“We keep feeding him money for now,” Doug said. “We keep the positions off our books, on his phony clients. And we wait. Sell what and when we can and wait for the rest to turn around. We keep our nerve. That’s what we do.”

“That’s your plan? Double the entire bank down on a single bet and hope for the best? I expected more out of your scheming mind.”

“You have another idea?”

“Fraud. That’s your answer? You’re suggesting we commit fraud?
You want me to stand up at the shareholders’ meeting and with all the other great news add that things are going fine and dandy in foreign operations?”

“It’s your call,” Doug said, wandering over to the bookcase. “We can sell. I can call Hong Kong right now. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to retire with some fraction of what you’ve got and be remembered as the guy who built a powerhouse and ran it into a ditch. And once they start digging and reporting and trying to understand what really happened—and they will—the shareholders will sue you anyway, and maybe the Feds will too. That’s one option: be the upstanding guy. But that’s not the advice you hired me to give you. I’m here because you wanted to win.”

Doug took down from the shelf a vintage leather-bound edition of de Gaulle’s memoirs only to find that the pages remained uncut.

“You know what I’ve been thinking lately?” he said.

“I shudder to think,” Holland said.

“About how things are changing. The old compact. Between government, companies, the news. The basic assumptions about how everyone behaves. Most people have some vague sense of it. They feel a kind of undertow and they’re scared by it. But they don’t see how fundamental the shift is. They don’t see it because they’re too busy surviving or lamenting whichever piece of the old assurances they happen to be losing. So they get sentimental, wishing the tide wouldn’t come in. At least that’s what the losers do. You can do that. Or you can admit what we’ve always been up to. And then you can focus on the bigger picture.”

“And what might that be?”

“Influence. Power over information. Control. Something bigger than rules or good taste. The more permanent instincts. You know
what I’m talking about. You even get off on it. It’s just the appearance of it that bothers you.”

“You’re a piece of work. You really are.”

“You think you get all this for free?” Doug said, gesturing at the paintings and the antique furniture.

“Who the fuck do you think you are? Free? I was making loans before you were born.”

“Sure. And every year the interest rate got better, didn’t it? Government caps came off, and you could charge twenty-five percent on Joe Six-Pack’s credit card, and get him to pay
you
for the privilege of keeping
his
money.”

“What are you? Some kind of Socialist now?”

“I’m nothing,” Doug said. “I’m just saying, you take the advantage you can get. That’s how you got what you have.”

“Yeah, with one difference. It was legal.”

Doug smiled, leaning back against the bookcase. “That’s right,” he said. “And the governed have consented and all is well in the hearts of the people.”

Holland sank onto the bench in the window, all his fretful motion spent. As he stared over the darkened field from where Doug had come, the two of them listened to the sound of trumpets from the tent outside, their high, shiny notes rising on the night air.

E
ARLIER, AS
C
HARLOTTE
and Henry had approached the gates, they’d been confronted by the expressionless faces of the guards.

Don’t be fooled
, Wilkie whispered.
They’re not here to protect you. And I know what you’re thinking—that it’s always a conspiracy with me. But just remember, they said I was paranoid, that I’d invented all that business of a plot
against my life, but you know now how the FBI listened in on me, how they followed everything that went on in the Brotherhood, and I’m supposed to believe your white government didn’t know there were gunmen there at the hall waiting to kill me? You’ve been uppity, Charlotte. You’ve thwarted one of their kind. Now watch
, he said.
They will take your protectors from you
.

And so they did, insisting the dogs be tied up to a tree. No animals allowed. They would be given plenty of water, they said, the more barrel-chested of the two claiming to be a lover of dogs.

You come to Sodom and leave your minister tethered at the gate?
Sam asked, despairingly, his pompous head thick with sweat.
God’s grace may be infinite, woman, but to think that He should give us help against sin without our asking and crying and weeping to Him for His help; to think that God should save us and we never set apart any time to work out our own salvation. What reason have we to believe such things? God is in Ill terms with you. He visits you not with His great consolations. Despite what you think of your victory, all things are against you; the things that appear for your Welfare, do but Ensnare you, do but Poison you, do but produce your further Distance from God
.

God is a character, Charlotte thought, as she handed the leashes over to the men. A well-rounded character in a well-rounded book.

And she and Henry continued on up the hill, the ministers’ voices fading behind them.

Just three days earlier, after her vindication had been called out from the judge’s bench for all to hear, she had taken Henry for a walk up to the nursery to pick out saplings for planting once the mansion had been leveled. But all he could summon was a barely disguised disappointment at the result, as if returning five acres to their property and nature’s way were more burden than triumph. Sam and Wilkie, however, had been the larger disappointment. All spring she had calmed herself with the thought that once the strain of arguing her case was over, the dogs would relent. After all, it was for
them, as well as herself, that she had fought so hard to beat the intrusion back.

Instead, their berating of her had grown incessant, their talk traitorous, reminding her that in siege warfare, it didn’t matter how high or thick your city walls were if the enemy’s agents were within.