Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

“I’ve already been contacted by the presidents of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase,” Hodges said. “Eighteen of the world’s largest banks are Chinese, including the top four. The U.S. has twelve of the largest banks; Japan eight; France, South Korea, and the UK each have six; Canada, Germany, and Spain five.”

“My counterparts at the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan reached out to me within minutes of the letter,” the Federal Reserve chairman said. “England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well. These are all sober and imperturbable men and women, and I’m telling you, they are scared witless.”

“What about the Chinese?” Ryan asked.

“When I didn’t hear from them, I took it upon myself to reach out to the governor of the People’s Bank of China. I hope I didn’t overstep my authority, but time is not our friend.”

“You did exactly the right thing,” Ryan said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“What did the Chinese say?”

“The governor hasn’t responded to my repeated calls. They’re clearly stonewalling. Not surprising, really, given the way they work. The PBOC is an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, like almost everything else over there. In a crisis like this, the governor isn’t going to communicate with any outsiders without official instructions from the higher-ups.”

“Unless they’re the ones behind all of this,” Arnie offered.

Ryan thought of that, too. “And what about the Russians?”

“They only have one bank in the top hundred, Sberbank,” Hodges said. “We have, shall we say, third-party access to their organization. Apparently, they have not been hit.”

Interesting, Ryan thought. Fits perfectly with the improved Kilo-class scenario.

He couldn’t share that with the finance men, though he would need to read Hodges in to that crisis soon, before word got out about it and that crisis started a global economic panic.

“Five trillion?” Arnie asked again. “It’s mind-boggling. How is that even possible?”

“Digitally, of course,” Hodges said.

“Only eight percent of global money is actual physical currency these days,” Ryan said. “The other ninety-two percent is just ones and zeros on a hard drive somewhere.”

Hodges pointed at the piece of paper in Arnie’s hand. “Read the letter, Mr. van Damm. It appears the thieves have acquired the technical means to break into each of these banks and rob the till, so to speak. Whoever it is used a computer they call TRIBULATION.”

Ryan pulled on his reading glasses and scanned the letter. His eyes fell upon one particular passage. His blood ran cold.

. . . Your best interest is to make arrangements to cover my theft. Do not pursue me or I will RETALIATE. You are dealing with the person who created the first true quantum computer. Everything is open to me: all of your secret files, all of your official lies, all of your weapons systems and energy grids . . . every savings account, every retirement account, every investment account. Corporations and governments are equally exposed. Everything is open to me.

But I’m not greedy. Five trillion dollars is enough for what I have planned. Within the next several months, I’m confident that the world will have developed quantum cyberdefenses against me so my window of opportunity will close—which is your only hope.

And now, gentlemen, please convey this special message to President Ryan: Do not pursue me. You will fail.

If you attempt to pursue me, I will burn your world to the ground, starting with a press release detailing my theft. My silence is your only protection.

As proof of your commitment not to pursue me, you will personally instruct Chairman Moorcroft to deposit one hundred billion dollars into the account described below by nine a.m. EST. We both know the chairman has the power to do that. After all, didn’t he print sixteen trillion dollars out of thin air to bail out your “too big to fail” bankster buddies?

If you fail to make the deposit by nine a.m. EST, I will unleash unimaginable chaos.

“I don’t understand,” Arnie said. “Is he saying that if we pay the one hundred billion he’ll return the five trillion?”

Ryan shook his head. “No. He—or she—is keeping the five trillion. That’s an all-out assault on the world. But the additional one hundred billion dollars is directed at me, jerking my chain. Somehow this is personal.”

—

Hodges said, “If he really has constructed the world’s first true quantum computer, he’s perfectly capable of overwhelming the encryption security protecting the world’s largest financial institutions, just as he claims.”

“What does the theft of five trillion dollars do to these banks? To the global monetary supply?” Ryan asked. The questions were rhetorical. His background in Wall Street investing gave him a firm grasp of markets and money.

“For the banks, it’s absolutely devastating,” Hodges said. “Their primary function is lending money. Without money, their function ceases. If families and businesses can’t borrow money to buy homes or make products, the global economy collapses.

“The only good news I’ve heard from the banks so far is that they have each been left with enough operating capital to last them the rest of the week,” Hodges said.

Moorcroft added, “For the global money supply, it’s a somewhat different story. Global money supply is approximately ninety trillion dollars. The choice of the five-trillion-dollar figure is an interesting one. The theft has removed only about five and a half percent of that total.”

“You make it sound like it’s no big deal,” Arnie said. “A nickel out of a dollar.”

“Oh, no, Mr. van Damm. It’s a really big deal. Maybe the biggest of all time. If people discover their life savings and college funds and checking accounts have all been emptied out, they’ll lose complete confidence in the monetary system as we know it. It will be the end of capitalism.”

Hodges leaned forward for emphasis. “We’re not talking about a temporary banking or stock market or real estate crisis like we’ve experienced over the last few decades. Those were bad, sure, but they were part of the business cycle, and we bounced back from all of those. But this? There won’t be any bouncing back. If there’s a global economic collapse, and trust in the currency is destroyed, capitalism will be irretrievably discredited. And I think we all know what comes next.”

“Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Mussolini. They were all products of economic collapse,” Ryan said. “And the result was war: civil, regional, global.”

“We’re talking an economic apocalypse,” Moorcroft said. “ And a political one.”

62

SecTreas Hodges and Chairman Moorcroft stared ashen-faced at the President. Ryan shared their concern. But now was not the time to quail.

Ryan tried to hide his rage along with his growing sense of panic. Every major government in the world was chasing quantum computing. A quantum computing arms race was raging across the globe.

He had convinced Congress to take the threat seriously and help speed along the research rather than simply wait for the private sector to figure it out. The stakes were too high to let a bad actor acquire quantum computing first—as today was proving out. Quantum computing would be the technological equivalent of nuclear weapons for the twenty-first century, and suddenly, the United States was completely disarmed.

“He’s put a countdown clock on us, Mr. President. Two, actually. First, as you’ve just read, he demands we deposit a sum of one hundred billion dollars into an account he’s specified within the next”—Hodges checked his Patek Philippe Geneve watch—“forty-seven minutes as proof you’ll not pursue him.”