The Last Trade (25 page)

3

Newark

H
is dream is a memory embedded in a dream.

He's with Miranda and Erin on a bright fall day, peak foliage season, roaming the grounds of Storm King, the vast outdoor sculpture park on the Hudson Highlands north of West Point. They are walking through a land sculpture called
Wavefield
by the artist Maya Lin. Acres and acres of grass-covered earth sculpted into the shape of the sea, of sets of waves up to fifteen feet high. Erin, who has recently begun to walk, trudges up one side of a wave and then rolls down the other. Over and over, giggling the entire time. For a while he stands atop the crest of a wave, shoulder to shoulder with Miranda, and watches Erin go two, three, four waves away. It's in the trough between the fourth and fifth wave that the girl turns to look for her parents but cannot find them. She calls his name—“Da?” then “Da!”—and he is overwhelmed with fear and panic, the sense that he's losing her, and he begins to sprint toward her. He bounds over one wave top and barrels down the next, calling her name, yelling that it's going to be all right. Even then, he knew it wasn't going to be all right. He and Miranda were having problems; in fact they were fighting that day, at the moment the girl walked away. It took less than a minute for him to catch up to her and pick her up in his arms, but in his dreams, in this dream, he never reaches her. She's always one wave away.

He awakens sweat-soaked and facedown on a large sheet of paper covered with mathematical scribbling, more questions than answers. He stares at the walls, hoping that thirty-five minutes of nightmare sleep will help him notice a clue that he missed. It doesn't. Five minutes later he's in the shower. He wants to be washed, dressed, and ready to run when he goes online with Danny Weiss's software.

He figures he has thirty to forty-five minutes before Salvado's tracking software picks up on him and alerts someone that he's poking around the universe of the Rising Fund. After that, probably another half hour before one of his guys makes his way out to the Newark Hilton.

He searches the news and financial sites and is relieved that nothing horrible seems to have happened in the financial world while he was jamming overnight.

He checks the Rising Fund stocks and sees that they are down again, but nothing out of the ordinary.

He searches his own name and finds a dozen articles on Danny Weiss's death and sees that he's been upgraded from person of interest to murder suspect. The photo of him that accompanies many of the articles was taken at a company party at Cipriani in 2010. He has a flute of champagne in his right hand, and his left arm is around Danny Weiss, who, as usual, is smiling. The picture reminds him that he hired Weiss because he thought he was qualified, but also because he was different. He knew that Weiss was something of an outlier on both an intellectual and ethical level, and that his idealistic qualities might ultimately conflict with the goals of the firm. But he hired him anyway, because he was selfish. He hired Weiss because he was everything that he himself no longer was yet should have been. He also hired him, he realizes now, because he knew on some level that Weiss might be the one who could blow up his career and convince him to abandon it once and for all. That, he concludes, is the narrative behind that business decision.

He's all but given up on hearing from Sawa Luhabe, so much so that he almost deletes her forwarded message, which has a South African URL, in part because he assumes it's some sort of identity-stealing spam from a fictional Nigerian prince. Only a second glance at the sender's name makes him reconsider. He reads her words.
What I Know Now
, which was what, eight hours ago? Besides confirming that she was still alive, her note validates much of his findings about the trades in play.

He reads her recap of what happened in Dublin, the death of the trader Dempsey, and then about the death of Heinrich Shultz in Berlin, employee of Ithaka Investments. Ithaka, with a K, Luhabe notes, was the firm that placed the order with Dempsey in Dublin. Ithaka with a K also shares the same IP address as Siren, the firm that placed the previous four orders.

Siren is now Ithaka
.

Havens searches Siren and Ithaka.

The first response is the Wikipedia entry for Odysseus.
Odysseus
, Wiki tells him,
is the ugly King of Ithaka, and the hero of Homer's epic poem
The Odyssey.

And of course the sirens of
The Odyssey
were famous for luring passing sailors to their island of Faiakes with their seductive song, only to be condemned to stay on the island forever. Knowing that the bones of sailors were scattered about the island, Odysseus had his shipmates put wax in his ears and bind him to the ship's mast until they had safely passed.

Havens thinks of Salvado the other night at the club: “
We're on an epic journey, an epic tale that is still being written, and when it's all over, it will be remembered as one of the great ones.
”

He clicks back to read the last lines of Luhabe's note:

 

I am safe for the time being. But I will never be safe unless this is resolved. In the limited time I've had to model this I have seen evidence that points to another forthcoming trade similar to mine at a yet TBD firm in Toronto, for the security NYCRE. With this in mind I would like to introduce you to each other. Each has contacted me separately and each seems to have skills and knowledge that complements the other's. Drew Havens of the Rising Fund, meet Cara Sobieski of the U.S. government task force on terrorism and financial intelligence.

He immediately calls up Weiss's chart and checks the numbers for Friday with the corresponding pages of
The Odyssey
.

“there form'd his empire; there his palace rose.”

There formed his empire—New York. NYCRE (New York City Real Estate) is the largest holding company of premier landmark New York properties, totaling nearly fifty billion dollars in assets. He starts to do a search on Sobieski, then decides it will take too much time; he should reach out and contact her right away. When he goes to his mailbox, he sees that she's beaten him to the punch. Her message is brief:

 

Sobieski here.

Boarding LUFT #125 Berlin-Newark.

Meet?

He replies,
Yes
, then leaves his number. Flight tracker reveals that Sobieski's plane lands at 11
A.M.
, and he makes a note of the terminal and gate. He takes another look at Weiss's notes and sees further references to New York or Toronto, NYCRE, or what it all might be leading to
.
He imagines this is where Weiss's research suddenly ended, and he wonders how Luhabe, a woman on the run half a world away, found him.

Once again he looks at the sheets on the wall. All of Weiss's notes up to this point make sense. The stocks, the cities, and the dates align. What does not make sense is what they all mean, where they're heading. He hopes that agent Cara Sobieski, and perhaps Sawa Luhabe, wherever she is, can help him figure out what they mean, and fast.

Because there is no city or stock symbol listed in the box for tomorrow. Other than the brief foreign number sequence, the only writing on Weiss's whiteboard square for tomorrow's date, Friday, October 21, and on the tiny Mets schedule from Weiss's desk is a set of red exclamation points.

4

New York City

L
aslow calls at 8:30
A.M.
As planned.

“Tell me something that doesn't make me want to puke.” Salvado, staring at the celeb handshake photos on his office wall, is disgusted by his presence in each of them.

“Okay. You're still a multibillionaire.”

“Funny.”

“And we're still alive.”

“Fine. What about the others? Any luck?”

“We have a bead on him in Jersey. The wife bailed on the Katonah apartment. We were waiting last night, but the police found her first.”

Salvado asks, “Where in Jersey?”

“Newark. The Hilton. Someone's en route.”

“And I should be confident this will be taken care of because . . . ?”

“Because, to quote you, he's a social misfit not capable of functioning in a world beyond numbers. There's one more thing . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Your wife . . .”

“Right . . .”

“Well, she's heading into the city.”

“Okay.”

“And the trace . . . I'm waiting for playback, but they think she's been talking to the social misfit's ex-wife.”

Salvado turns his back to the wall of photos and stares up at the monitors, a collage of talking heads and numbers, grim faces on trading floors staring at the large screens that control the future. “Well, I imagine that someone will have to . . .”

“So you agree . . . It has to be done?”

“Absolutely.”

He puts the phone in his pocket, turns back to face the wall, and smashes his right fist into a photo of him, Alan Greenspan, and Alicia Keys.

“Everything all right, Rick?”

He turns. Roxanne, his executive assistant, stands at the threshold between her desk and the beginning of his suite. “Could be better, Rox. Do me a favor . . . get Ryan Connerly at Goldman on the phone, will ya?”

* * *

“Connerly.”

“Yo. It's Rick Salvado.”

“Captain America himself. What can I do for you?”

“I want to go long on NYCRE.”

“More? What makes you so keen on the future of commercial real estate?”

“
New York
real estate. Manhattan real estate. Landmark real estate, you dumb mick.”

“So you love New York and the USA is what you're saying.”

“Almost as much as I love Brazilian ass and French wine.”

Connerly laughs. Salvado's recent plays for The Rising make little sense to him, but since the fund is partially bankrolled by Goldman and somehow Salvado's plays helped save face for them in 2008 when the Bear Stearns and Lehmans of the world sank, he knows not to ask too many questions of Rick Salvado.

“What's the problem?” Salvado asks.

“I'm just trying to figure out, you know, how exactly you're gonna fuck me over on this.”

“Hah! Goldman should be thrilled to come along for the ride with the legendary Rising Fund.”

“Right. It's an honor and a privilege, sir. Now, how long, how much, et cetera?”

“Thatta boy,” Salvado says. “Nothing major. But enough to make a statement.”

“You speak and the market follows, right?”

“Used to,” Salvado says, “but it will again. Can't you feel the momentum shifting beneath your poorly shod little feet, Connerly?”

5

Toronto

“T
his is a lot of short,” says Michel Loewen, of Smith Gable Limited, a small brokerage house on Yonge Street.

“You can't handle this? I'd think a house like yours could take on—”

“I can,” Loewen replies. “We can . . . It's just . . .”

“I can make some other calls. I just thought you'd want in on the deal.”

“No . . . No. I don't see why we can't make this work. How's the weather in Berlin?”

“Who knows? They keep me locked in a cubicle here, twenty-four seven.”

Loewen calls up the profile of the security. “NYCRE, huh?”

“I don't even know what that stands for. I get the call, make a list of their quirky goddamn terms of execution, and, you know, try to find a market for it. It's a living, right?”

Loewen smiles as he clicks through screens, verifying the trading account that initiated the request, out of Philadelphia. “So,” he says, satisfied with the on-paper authenticity of the account, “How exactly do you want me to execute this again, Mr. . . .”

“Homer.”

6

Newark

B
roadband at thirty-seven thousand feet, flying over the Atlantic.

It has allowed her to keep in touch with Michaud, whose angry notes she has chosen to ignore. And now, as the Airbus taxis to the gate a mere two hours and twenty minutes later than expected, at 1:45
P.M
. EST, she hears from Sawa Luhabe's American connection, the semi-famous hedge fund quant Drew Havens.

 

-@ carousel 7.

-With limo guys: holding sign w/yr name.

She responds:

Me: Brown hoodie. Dark jeans.

Tan sneaks.

The last to buy a ticket, stuck in the back row of a full flight, she's among the last to get off.

The immigration agent scans her passport and asks Sobieski if she has anything to declare.

“No.”

“Well,” the agent responds, slipping the stamped passport and declaration card through the half-moon hole in the glass, “welcome back.”

Hopefully she'll soon be able to make a strong enough case that she'll have the courage to call Michaud and explain why she defied his orders and flew halfway around the world. Something major is about to go down, but she can't bring herself to call the man she respects and fears the most.

The woman in front of her has a cart overflowing with luggage, and the agents at the exit want to take a look. While Sobieski waits, she stretches her neck to see if she can spot Drew Havens on the other side. In a sea of limo drivers in black suits holding placards she sees him. Light blue T-shirt, a Mets cap, and jeans, holding the sign that bears her name. When they make eye contact, he waves.

“Next.”

She steps up to the agents and smiles. Her right arm is halfway extended when a hand catches her elbow from behind. When she turns, another hand grabs her other elbow.

“Cara Sobieski?”

“Yes.”

“We need you to come with us.”

* * *

As soon as he sees the first agent reach for Sobieski's arm, Havens lowers the paper upon which her first name is written in Magic Marker. As they steer her one way, back into the secure part of the terminal, Havens turns toward the exit.