The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (6 page)

“I wonder if that was a good idea.”

“Why?”

“If the market turns to crap, we might have been able to negotiate paying a lower amount.”

“Honey, BFD, even with our two cars it was less than seventy thousand. We’re free and clear. It came out of what Marshal gave me. We haven’t touched our winnings yet.”

We both looked at each other and laughed. Lacy logged onto the bank’s website and started to transfer our funds to our other accounts.

We drove West on Interstate 64 until we reached Interstate 81 South, which we took into Tennessee, where we picked up Interstate 40. Lacy wanted to stop in Asheville, she’d heard it was nice, so we picked up Interstate 240 to State Route 74. By the time we arrived in Asheville, we were dead tired. We pulled into the Hilton Biltmore Park. We checked into a king suite, something we wouldn’t have done before Wednesday. The Hotel General Manager told us they were booked for a convention starting on Monday. We figured a couple of days would give us the flavor of the area. After a nice dinner, we crashed for the night. We’d been driving eleven hours and were emotionally and physically drained.

I woke to a knock on our suite door, Lacy told me to stay in bed, she’d ordered room service for breakfast. I asked, “Why, it’s free downstairs.”

Lacy laughed, saying, “I think we can afford the $50.00.”

“Too expensive.” We both laughed. During breakfast, we called a real estate agent the Hilton’s General Manager suggested. She met us in the lobby at 10:30 AM, we spent two days looking at the nicest homes in the city. At dinner Sunday night Lacy looked at me saying, it's very pretty, but I want to see Nashville. How far away are the kids?”

“Ten to eleven hours from here.”

“And from Nashville?”

“Six hours, maybe less if we live on the North side of the city, which is where I think we should look.”

“I like that. Close enough to see them when we want and not so close that we’ll end up being a babysitter every weekend.”

“Fine with me, we’ll leave in the morning. Nashville isn’t far.”

As we’re getting ready for bed, we watch the evening news. The reporter said, “The new Prime Minister of Greece announced today he wasn’t able to reach agreement on renegotiating revised terms for Greece’s $270 billion in German loans. Prime Minister Tsipras announced he was pulling Greece out of the EU and returning to the Greek Drachma. Tsipras said he expects to have new Drachma’s in the banks within a few days. Most experts think this is the end of the European unity dream and the end of the Euro.”

“Lace, I think the other shoe is going to drop very soon. I expect to see Gold soar.”

“Why don’t you buy some online right now?”

“Okay.” It took me thirty minutes to purchase $100,000 in gold since we didn’t have an open account with any of the brokerage companies. When the European markets opened gold jumped $100 an ounce as soon as trading started, the price of gold continuing to increase all night while we slept. In the morning, Lacy asked me. “Jay, if you knew gold was going to jump, why didn’t you buy more last night?”

“I couldn’t. The agent said the max they would sell me is $100,000. Even that took two discussions with his manager. I can buy more when the bank opens.”

“Why not call BoA’s special number they gave us, maybe they can help us.”

“Crap, I forgot all about the special number, I told you I’m getting old.”

I called the special high net worth customer service number the BoA General Manager gave us. They helped me purchase another $100,000 worth of gold. Our average price was $1,290 an ounce. By the time the Chicago gold market opened, gold was selling for $1,660 an ounce. We made over $28,000 by doing nothing. Gold closed the day over $1,920 an ounce, our paper profits were increasing by the hour.

Right after breakfast we left for Nashville.

Lacy kept checking the price of gold and silver on her phone, she was amazed how quickly the cost jumped. We kept buying as we drove to Nashville. We pulled into Nashville at midday. We checked into a suite at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. We had dinner while watching a live concert. We called the local real estate agent, one the agent in Asheville introduced us to. We agreed to meet her after breakfast the next morning.

Before retiring, the late night news reported that Italy and Spain were preparing to leave the EU and drop using the Euro, returning to their old currencies.

Lacy looks at me, “Think you should buy some more gold?”

“Why not, what do we have to lose?” Logging on to our account with the gold dealer, I purchased another $500,000 before shutting down for the night. I’d been able to buy it at $2,044 an ounce. In the morning, gold passed $2,400 an ounce when Spain, Italy, and Portugal confirmed they were writing off their debt and leaving the EU. Major banks were already warning they were going to lose billions on the collapse of the Euro. A few of the international banks said they might even fail. I’m happy we were very careful where we parked our money.
What happened to, ‘too big to fail’?

Lacy looked worried, “It’s going to get much worse isn’t it?”

“Yup, The EU is finished. It’s going to fall apart within a couple of months. The US dollar is going to jump in value before it crashes. I think we ought to see what kind of deal we can cut while the market is going crazy, cash in hand is worth a lot more than any mortgage.”

The New York stock market opened the next morning down 1,000 points and continued to fall even though the NYSE stopped trading three times during the day trying to cool the traders off.

Chapter 3

FBI Senior Special Agent in Charge Gray frowns as he reviews his notes from his last interview with Evgeny Buryakov. They reached an agreement that in exchange for political asylum and entrance into the witness protection program, Buryakov agreed to spill his guts. SAC Gray shakes his head thinking,
it's worse than what we thought, he was sent here to use
automated trading algorithms
to disrupt
the stock market and our futures markets
.
He said the FSB’s economic department sent him here to sow the seeds of our market destruction. He told us that when Putin devalued the Russian ruble, the ruble lost 50% of its value in only two weeks. The FSB thinks the USA dollar can be collapsed in a similar manner. Russia will be able to come back while we won’t. Who in D.C. is going to believe this story? All of them have their heads stuck up their asses. None of them can see the real world. We’re getting screwed while they play around sucking up to Obama. I think it’s time to retire and prepare for the end. Buryakov told me he was able to upload his programs which are being remotely controlled from Moscow. The FSB has us by the short hairs. We’re playing right into their hands. He said there’s very little we can do now to avoid the collapse.

@@@@@

A squad of Russian Spetsnaz arrives in Poltava to investigate the destruction of the Russian tanks, they investigate the burned out hulks that used to be new T-90 main battle tanks. Captain Second Rank Sarnoff looks at the ruins thinking,
it had to be the Yankees. No one else has the weapons to defeat our new T-90s. There has to be some proof let behind they were responsible.
While the Captain is looking at the destroyed tanks his sergeant yells, “Captain, I found something.”

Captain Sarnoff jogs to the fourth destroyed tank in the row. “What did you find?”

“Missile pieces.” Holding out his hand, he drops small pieces of burned circuit boards into the captain’s outstretched hands. Looking at the small circuit board fragments, the captain sees the small “Made in the USA.” Silk screened on the edge of one of the green boards. He smiles, “Sergeant, very good work. Let’s go home.”

Arriving in Moscow, the captain shows what he found to the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergey Shoigu. “Sir, you can clearly see the parts came from an American weapon.”

Smiling an evil grin, Shoigu says, “Captain, very good work. Take your team to the Black Sea for a couple of week’s vacation. You’ve earned it this time.”

Captain Sarnoff smiles, nodding his thanks, he snaps to attention, saluting the Minister, who nods his head. When the captain leaves the Minister’s office, he calls President Putin. “Sir, we have proof the American’s were behind the destruction of our tanks in Poltava.”

“Bring me the proof.”

“Yes, sir.”

Twenty minutes later the two men look at the small piece of a circuit board lying on Putin’s desk. “Yes, that is the proof I need. Thank you, Minister. I’ll get back to you on our next steps.”

The Minister leaves Putin’s office thinking to himself he should place the motherland’s military on alert. Putin calls the Director of the FSB, “It’s time to start the destruction of the American financial markets, is the embedded code ready to go?”

“Yes, sir. Buryakov was able to finish loading it before he got caught. The FBI thinks they’ll be able to unravel the code since they have him. We never told Buryakov the program he loaded was really five different programs that once entered into the American financial network released hundreds of different worms. These worms found the data we wanted. Once we had that data, we can now control their markets. We can screw them up their asses any time you order us to.”

“I think we should give the American’s a special gift. One they aren’t expecting. Spring comes on March 21, a Saturday this year. Launch the program on the first day of spring. When the brokers report to their offices Monday morning full of hope with the spring, we’ll bring their markets down around their necks. Start short selling all of our shares. When we’ve crashed their stock market, we’ll put our boot on their neck, crushing the life from them.”

“Yes, sir, with pleasure. We’ll be ready for March 21.”

@@@@@

While the real estate agent takes us to see many different homes, the news from Europe continues to be bad. The agent is taking us to see a new housing development about fifty miles on the Northeast side of Nashville. We drive past a beautiful home set way back from the road with a for sale sign on the road. “Wait, what’s that?”

The agent pulls over to turn around so we can pull into the house’s driveway, “Let me check.” She puts the address into her tablet, she says, “It’s a custom built 7,000 square foot home with 6 bedrooms, seven baths on five acres. It’s been on the market for six months. It’s been reduced in price four times.”

“Why isn’t it selling?”

“It borders that farm. You can see the farmhouse is run down, not many people want to spend $690,000 to look at a rundown farmhouse.”

“I’d like to see it.”

Lacy asks, “Honey, what are you thinking?”

“Hon, give me a couple of minutes, OK?” I ask the agent, “How large is the farm?”

“Two hundred fifty plus acres. It’s listed for sale, it’s in foreclosure.”

“Interesting.”

The house is unbelievably beautiful, the home’s detail takes our breath away. The agent tells us, “It cost the original owners a million dollars. They never moved in, one of them got ill just before the house was finished, they moved to Florida where they’re children live. They’re very open to offers.”

Lacy says, “Honey, can I talk to you?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Are you crazy? This house could hold all of our extended family plus some, it’s crazy for the two of us.”

“It is, isn’t it? Honey, what happens if the economy fails? Wouldn’t it be nice if the kids were safe and living with us? This house has three levels, plus the pool and pool house. If things really get bad, we could buy the farm next door and we’d have a built-in supply of food.”

“What the hell do we know about farming?”

“Not a damn thing. Which is why I’m thinking of buying the farm and renting it back to the family living on the farm. They work it and give us a portion of the food.”