The Last Trade (27 page)

9

New York City

“M
oney doesn't wait. Money doesn't have a pause button that will wait for you to come back to it after you've gotten your shit together. You told me to be here at three. It is now three and you are telling me you aren't ready?”

Salvado sits in his limo outside the Transmediant! Theater in midtown, barking through an open rear window at the head AV engineer for DAVOS WEST 2011. “You said three o'clock and now it is what—three-ten, three-fifteen—and you're telling me ten more minutes?”

“I'm incredibly sorry, Mr. Salvado. We've been having some issues with the sound system.”

“Beautiful. We're gonna have the most powerful and influential people in the world of finance, security, and tech here in fifteen hours—heads of state, finance ministers, founders of the world's largest tech companies—to talk about the glittering new interconnected, seamlessly converged world of the future and you can't hook up the fucking speakers?”

“Minutes away, sir. If you'd like to come inside and wait . . .”

“No.” He presses the window control, and a black shade rises up between him and the engineer. He calls Laslow. Laslow was to meet him here, but when Salvado heard about his wife and Havens's wife, he redirected him. “Anything?”

“No. But we think we've got an address.”

Salvado snorts. “Find them.”

He clicks off the call. On his BlackBerry he looks up the latest activity involving the fund and then goes to a program tracking each of the first six trades. “Shit,” he says to himself. There is increasing short activity taking place, beyond the plays his people made, around the world. This means one thing: leaks. Word is spreading that something is up with these securities, something is in the air, and others not involved in the plan are aligning themselves to cash in. He wonders what he can do about it, if there's any way to divert attention from the copycat activity, or to stop the leaks, because leaks will eventually point back to him, but he decides the answer is no.

There is no way to stop the momentum of a marketplace that smells the scent of blood. However, he thinks, maybe this isn't the worst thing. Maybe the more players piling on, the deeper these companies, markets, and economies will plummet, and it will be that much more difficult for authorities to unravel the aftermath and connect him to any of it. He just wishes it hadn't happened so soon. With the sub-prime shorts in 2008 it seemed for a while that The Rising was one of the only firms to get it. At first they grabbed up as much action as the risk managers at the banks would allow. But at a certain point the short opportunities were few and far between. People saw what was coming and cut him off from the action, which is too bad because he would have taken as much as they would have allowed. But it didn't matter. By then, he was positioned to make a killing of mythological proportions. Without Havens's quant wizardry and the people who entered into an agreement to bail him out and put him back on his feet after his disgrace in the wake the crash of 2001, the killing of 2008 would never have happened. Havens. The irony isn't lost on him that the man who made him obscenely rich is trying to take him down. That a man who couldn't save his own wife and kid suddenly thinks he can save the world. Someone taps on his window and mouths the words “We're ready.”

The Transmediant! Theater is on the ground floor of the fifty-eight-story Transmediant! Tower on West 42nd Street, a stone's throw from the
New York Times
building. This afternoon the security check is cursory. Salvado's escort flashes his ID badge, and the guards at the lobby turnstile wave them through. Tomorrow, with Fortune 500 leaders, almost half of the G20 members, politicians, media moguls, and almost every A-list luminary in tech, media, and entertainment, it will be altogether different. “Tomorrow will be like a mashup of the G20, TED, and the Oscars,” his escort boasts as he leads Salvado across the lobby and through the swinging doors at the rear of the theater.

Kinks in the sound system aside, Salvado is impressed by the theater, which is rumored to have cost more than a hundred million dollars at the time of its opening two years ago. It's both a technological showcase for all of the beta-level gadgets and platforms that represent the Transmediant! brand, and a living, breathing example of how money, politics, technology, and commerce can come together to form a cultural experience far greater than the sum of its parts.

This is also why, less than a year after Salvado proposed the event at a 9/11 anniversary, as a way to put New York back in the center of the financial and cultural universe, DAVOS WEST has supplanted the Allen & Company Conference in Sun Valley, the original DAVOS, and TED as
the
place to make the deals that will shape the future of global finance and commerce. It's also why, at 10
A.M.
tomorrow, Rick Salvado, the most colorful pro-American financial figure in the world, will be delivering the keynote kickoff address on the main stage.

Salvado is led through more than a hundred rows of state-of-the-art seats, each a small media center unto itself. They stop at the foot of the stage, a massive modular platform that sits beneath the world's largest HD 3-D screen.

“The mayor will introduce you at ten sharp. He has something prepared, but if there's anything you'd like him to add or mention, let us know and we'll get word to him.”

“No. I trust the mayor. Maybe not with the schools' budget, but . . .”

“Great. You'll have thirty-five minutes, but it's okay if you're over or under by a few. You'll come out of stage left, rigged with a wireless mic, plus there will be several backup mics available. Will you be using a podium?”

Salvado shakes his head. “I like to roam. Can I get out into the crowd for some interaction if I want?”

“Sure. Do you have any other AV needs? Any visuals, music, slides, short films, because—”

“Besides my song, ‘The Rising,' just me, unplugged.”

“And then the giveaway.”

Salvado raises an eyebrow.

“The book, right after you're done, which is what Mr. . . . Laslow told us?”

“Oh,” Salvado says. “Right. Yeah. The book. Whatever Laslow says.”

The conference escort says, “Great. Your people are offloading now. I told them we can slip one under each seat, or put it in the swag bag, but they want it to be a surprise.”

Salvado shrugs. “Whatever they think is best.”

“Laslow's having them stacked in the back, unmarked, unopened. He says your hospitality people will be on hand tomorrow to open the boxes and hand them out, right after the keynote.”

“Sounds good to me,” says Salvado.

“Want to take a look?”

“Sure.” They walk away from the stage to the back of the theater. Four of Laslow's guys, each with his own hand truck, are wheeling in and unloading six boxes at a time. They start in the right rear corner, stacking them in a row four boxes deep and five feet high. Already they're more than a third of the way across the room.

“How does that look, Mr. Salvado? Is that sort of the way you'd pictured it?”

Salvado stares at the boxes for a moment and smiles appreciatively. “Yes,” he says. “It's exactly as I'd pictured it.”

10

Newark

She blows past the women's restroom and the Starbucks and into the center of the terminal. Then she begins to jog through the mid-afternoon swarm of travelers, looking for the exit. As she weaves through the crowd, she takes off her sweatshirt, in case they've already put out word to look for a specific color. Then she reaches back and lets her hair down.

Rather than race along the front wall of the terminal from door number six to two she decides to get out on the sidewalk in case there's a sudden lockdown.

She tries to remember what he looks like, but it's a blur. She steps off the curb and hustles across the street, then the median, and then the second street. She wants to come up on Havens and the taxi stand from behind, to see what he's about. To see if someone's found him. Even without a physical description he's easy to spot. Tall, reasonably handsome in an uptight-white-money-guy kind of way. Definitely not a cop. He's also the only person outside the airport looking away from the taxi stands and rental car and hotel shuttles and toward the terminal. He's on his toes, craning and swiveling his neck, then pacing the length of the departure area. She'd like to wait longer. To make sure no one else is watching him, but a few seconds is all she's willing to give it. Every move from here on out will be a risk. Every second critical. How she manages and chooses to execute it all will determine everything.

He jumps when she taps him from behind. “Hey! Whoa. I—”

She interrupts by placing her arm on his elbow and turning him toward a waiting taxi. “We've got to get out of here, now.”

They slide inside a cab and he shuts the door. He's about to speak again when the driver asks, “Where to?”

This throws them. Each looks at the other, each hoping the other has a better plan. When each sees that there is no better plan, that they're equally unprepared, they both say, “Manhattan.”

“Do you have a computer?” she asks. “I had to leave mine behind back in the terminal.”

“Yup,” he says, tapping his travel bag. “They know that you've left?”

She half smiles. “Now they do.”

“So where to?”

“Someplace where we can tell each other everything that Sawa Luhabe says we ought to know. Any thoughts?”

Havens looks out the window. They're almost out of the airport, within striking distance of the turnpike. “I'll think of something,” he says. “But first,” he says, lowering his voice to ensure that the driver doesn't hear, “you should know: I'm sort of wanted for murder.”

“Well,” Sobieski answers, not missing a beat, “at least we have that in common.”

11

New York City

T
he rooftop get-together ends more abruptly than the last time they met at the Gansevoort.

Neither feels like eating, or talking, or staying in the same place for long. There's hardly anything to celebrate today, plus it is too cold on the roof. Deborah Salvado pays. Even under these surreal circumstances, there's a protocol, a pecking order. They stand and smooth their clothes, brush back their hair, neither sure of the next step.

Miranda picks up the envelope and they begin to walk to the elevator.

“Where to now?” asks Deborah.

Miranda lifts her jaw to the north. “I'm gonna take a walk. Then I'm going up. Back to the Chelsea.”

“That was your place. You and Drew. I remember.”

“It was.”

“Drew's there, isn't he?”

The elevator door opens and they get on. “No. I wish. But not now.”

“Someday, right? You should.”

“We should.”

“You know,” Deborah says as they descend to street level, alone in the car, “when he first started, when I first met you, I used to say terrible things about you to the other wives.”

“You don't have to tell me this, Deb.”

“It's because I was threatened. My queen bee status meant a lot to me, because it had an ugly power over the others. But not you. You . . . you and your husband were so comfortable with yourselves, and in love with each other. And I knew I would never have that.”

The elevator door opens and they get off. The hotel lobby is quiet, and for a moment they stand, considering each other. Miranda has no answer for her.

“When your daughter died,” Deborah continues, “and then you lost each other, I was ashamed of myself. But even then, when you came the other day, and I knew that you were trying to do the right thing, to prevent something awful from happening, I still resented you for being so good, and I hated myself for being willing to abide anything, to close my eyes to the worst, as long as I'd get my money.”

“No one knows what anyone else really has or doesn't have, Deb.”

They walk to the exit to the street and stop again. Dark so soon, Miranda thinks. Where'd the day go?

“Want me to walk with you a bit?”

Miranda thinks about it. She slides her fingers back and forth along the metal clasp of the envelope and thinks she should find some place to read it now. “No, Deb. I'm gonna sit here for a second and take a look at this. I want to make every minute count until he's out of trouble.”

Deborah Salvado considers her again, and Miranda can see the conflict in the other woman's eyes, between resentment and respect, hate and affection. It's a frightening and sickening thing to see in someone. They hug for a moment and then Deborah Salvado pulls away.

“Good luck.”

“Yeah. You, too,” Miranda replies. Then she turns, takes a few steps into the middle of the lobby, and looks around, wondering if it's safe to remain here, to camp out on a couch and go through the details of Rick Salvado's ghost life. Or if the smart thing is to keep moving in case someone is tracking her, or Deb Salvado.

Move on, she decides. Eliminate risk and assume the worst. Find a coffee shop or a park and read and call Drew and save him.

She walks back across the lobby and is halfway through the hotel door, already in the process of thanking the doorman, when she sees the man, the bald man, come up behind Deborah Salvado and grab her by the clavicle. The small-framed woman barely flinches under the much larger man's grasp. She turns to face him as if she's been expecting this, expecting someone to seize her on a late afternoon downtown street and shove her into the back of a black Escalade idling at the curb.

After the bald man closes the back door on Deborah Salvado, he turns and sees Miranda framed in the doorway of the hotel. The two people who have never met recognize each other instantly.

She doesn't wait to see what his next move is before pivoting in the doorway and running back across the lobby.