Hidden Order: A Thriller (15 page)

“As the United States was one of the last major nations without a central bank, Aldrich decided his National Monetary Commission should study the central banks of Europe—and that’s exactly what he and his entourage did, spending almost two years touring Europe, wining and dining at an expense of more than three hundred thousand dollars to the American taxpayers.”

Harvath shook his head. “The politicians were crooks even back then.”

“It gets worse,” said Wise. “After nearly two years of ‘study’ and over three hundred thousand dollars spent, Senator Aldrich hadn’t filed a single report on what he had learned, nor had he offered any solutions for ‘reforming’ America’s banking system.”

“The guy really was a crook.”

Wise held up his hand. “We haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet.”

“It gets worse?” said Harvath.

“Much. And I think it will give you an idea of why someone might be angry enough to want to target and kill people at the Federal Reserve.”

W
ise studied Harvath for a moment before speaking. “It was a cold, windy evening in November of 1910, when a group of the most powerful bankers in the United States snuck out of New York City on a top-secret mission. In Hoboken, New Jersey, posing as a duck-hunting party, they boarded an opulent private railcar bound for an even more opulent, private resort off the Georgia coast called Jekyll Island.”

“Which is where Claire Marcourt’s body was found.”

Wise nodded and continued. “Among the group was Abraham Piatt Andrew, who was assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury; Frank Vanderlip, who was president of the most powerful bank in the country, the National City Bank of New York, which represented the oil interests of the Rockefellers; as well as the aforementioned investment banker who had been publicly calling for the U.S. to adopt a central bank, Paul Warburg.

“An interesting tidbit about Warburg, in addition to drawing an eye-popping salary even by today’s standards of five hundred thousand dollars a year: back in Germany, his family represented the interests of one of the greatest European banking families, the Rothschilds.”

“Nice work and even nicer clients if you can get them,” said Harvath.

“Nothing happens by accident with these people,” said Wise. “Also on board were Benjamin Strong and Henry Davison of J. P. Morgan Company, as well as Charles Norton, the president of J. P. Morgan’s First National Bank of New York. There to greet them all as they boarded was the owner of the mahogany-lined railcar, our pal, Senator Nelson Aldrich. In total, there were six men who were conservatively rumored to represent one-fourth of the world’s wealth.

“With the shades drawn and white-gloved staff seeing to cigars and cocktails for the men of the lustrous private car, the train steamed out of Hoboken south toward Brunswick, Georgia, where they would complete the final leg of their eight-hundred-mile journey by boat to Jekyll Island.

“Lest any of the staff figure out who their passengers were or what they were up to, the powerful men had all agreed to address each other by first names only. Vanderlip and Davison were so cocky, though, they insisted on being called not Frank and Henry, but Orville and Wilbur.”

“Like the Wright brothers? Why?”

“Because,” said Wise, “according to Vanderlip, he and Davison were always ‘right’ about everything.”

Harvath shook his head.

“The last thing any of them wanted was for word to get out that they had all come together for one very sinister purpose.”

“Which was?”

“To create a banking monopoly that would tilt the playing field exclusively to their advantage and crush any competition by yoking the brute force of the U.S. government completely under their control. In short, they were headed to Jekyll Island to assemble the blueprint for the Federal Reserve.”

Harvath remembered being told by Jacobson, the Federal Reserve’s director of security, that this was the meeting so many conspiracy theorists like to point to. He wondered what it said about Bill Wise that he was drawing attention to it as well. “I hear their visit had everything but a devil worship mass and animal sacrifice.”

The man laughed heartily and caused Harvath to be even more reminded of Santa Claus. “If only that was the extent of what they were up
to,” he said. “They stayed on Jekyll Island for nine days, crafting a master plan for an American central bank. Warburg was the sharpest and most knowledgeable about banking so he was given the task of writing the bill that would go before Congress. Aldrich rode herd to make sure the bill was crafted in such a way that it would be passed. The others at the meeting were there to make sure their respective interests were seen to and to help remediate any problems that might pop up.

“Because of the money panics that had so devastated the country, the men at Jekyll Island knew Congress was anxious to be seen doing something bold. They also knew that the public saw bankers as the reason for the panics and hated them with a passion. That meant that they had to put a lot more than just lipstick on their pig of a central bank. They had to dress it up so it looked like a racehorse.

“Warburg was a very smart man and suggested they avoid the words ‘central bank’ altogether. When his cohorts asked him what it should be called, he said the ‘Federal Reserve System.’

“To disguise it even more, Warburg suggested they put branches across the country, which could be helmed by prominent, and well-known locals in each region. Anything to minimize the appearance of the Federal Reserve being an operation of eastern bankers, who were a particularly detested class of bankers at that time.”

It was still a lot for Harvath to take in. “By all accounts, these men were already financial successes; big-time, even by today’s standards. Why go to all this trouble?” he asked.

“Simple. Self-defense. By 1910, banks in general were booming. They had more than doubled over the prior ten years and most of the new ones were out west and in the South.”

“Which meant that the New York bankers were seeing an ever-shrinking market share.”

Wise nodded. “The most alarming thing for the bankers, though, was that businesses at the time were doing very well and funding their own expansions out of their profits. Only thirty percent of businesses were coming to banks for loans. It was as if businesses didn’t even need banks anymore. You want to talk about panic? The bankers thought their world was coming to an end.”

“So what?” said Harvath. “Why shouldn’t people be able to make up their own minds about how they want to finance the growth of their own businesses?”

Wise put up his hands. “I agree with you. Then again, I’m not a banker. I actually believe in free markets.”

“So what happened?”

“The banks needed to change the way people thought. In particular, they needed people to adopt a ‘buy now, pay later’ mentality and encourage them to borrow rather than save. For that to happen, they were going to have to make it as cheap as possible to borrow money. That became one of four key items on their agenda at Jekyll Island.

“How to crush competition, how to control interest rates, how to be able to make as many loans as they wanted regardless of how much money they had in their vaults, and finally the big one.

“Everyone at that meeting knew that at some point, maybe not in twenty years, maybe not even in fifty years, but at some point all of it would come crashing down and the system would eventually collapse. When that happened, they needed a safeguard so that the bankers themselves wouldn’t be held financially accountable, but rather the taxpayers would be left footing the bill.”

The more Harvath learned about these people, the more they disgusted him. “Talk about morally bankrupt.”

“They not only invented too big to fail, they invented too big to jail. They were brilliant propagandists. J. P. Morgan was famous for handing out shiny dimes to street urchins. Paul Warburg was the basis for the character of Daddy Warbucks in
Little Orphan Annie
. Very few realized what all of these men were up to. In fact, you’re familiar with the massive hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic after World War I in Germany?”

“I am. I remember the images of people going to stores with wheelbarrows full of worthless currency just to buy a loaf of bread.”

“Exactly. What most people aren’t aware of is that the massive hyperinflation that crushed the German middle class, collapsed its economy, and laid the groundwork for the rise of Hitler was created by Germany’s central bank, the Reichsbank, which was one of the central banks our Federal
Reserve was modeled after. But even better than that,” Wise added, “was that the director of the Reichsbank was Paul Warburg’s brother, Max.”

Harvath stared at him. “Are you serious?”

Wise nodded.

Although Wise had given him a crash course on the Federal Reserve, Harvath didn’t feel any closer to figuring out who was behind the kidnapping of the five chairmanship candidates. “So there are a lot of reasons not to like the Fed. I could say the same thing about Congress, yet we don’t have people out abducting and killing their members, ostensibly trying to blackmail them into dissolution.”

“Sometimes I wonder if that might not be a good thing.”

Harvath looked at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Of course I am,” Wise replied. “I’m just not a fan. Listen. If you did have people going after members of Congress, you’d handle it the same way, right? You’d ask yourself who would benefit from any of the attacks and then look for clues.”

“True, but as far as who might benefit from shutting Congress down,” Harvath said, “that’s not going to narrow it down much. The entire country could benefit.”

Wise smiled. “I see you’re not much of a fan, either.”

“Not really.”

“Well, a lot of people could benefit from the Federal Reserve being shut down.”

“Sounds like the entire country could, which means I’m left with just over three hundred million suspects.”

“Actually, there’s more if you consider the fact that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency and any inflation created by the Fed is felt around the globe. Then there’s the fact that the U.S. government also spends much more than it brings in, so we have to make up the difference by selling Treasury bonds. If the Fed increases the money supply, then the dollars bondholders are being paid back with are worth less.”

Harvath shook his head and took another sip of his drink. Wise could tell he was frustrated. “Listen,” the man said. “I know this may feel like it’s not very helpful to what you are doing, but Peaches wanted to make sure you had a grasp of what the Fed was and how it operated. Are there
a good number of pretty smart people out there who think the world would be better off without it? Absolutely. Are there a lot who’d be willing to murder to try to get it to go away? I don’t think so.”

“So how do we identify and narrow down who those people are?”

“That part’s simple.”

“It is?” said Harvath.

Wise nodded. “But you have to start with the actual crime itself.”

W
ise stepped out from behind the bar and took the stool next to Harvath’s. He offered to freshen his drink, but Harvath politely waved him off. His mind was spinning with all the information being crammed into it; he didn’t need to add to the effect with additional alcohol.

Refilling his own glass and setting the bottle down, Wise said, “We’ve got five kidnappings and a murder, which are filled with a lot of information. What do they tell you?”

Harvath had been poring over the files ever since his meeting at the Federal Reserve that afternoon. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t much there. “I have to be honest with you, there
isn’t
a lot of information. We’ve got next to no evidence.”

“Which is evidence in itself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“As far as physical clues at the crime scenes themselves, there aren’t any, right?”

“So?”

“So that tells us these guys weren’t just good, they were professional,”
stated Wise. “And to pull off five kidnappings in different cities all on the same night, there had to be—”