T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

“Someone suggested I should pay my respects to Graham.”

“Who told you that?”

“A lobbyist I met last night at the British embassy reception. She said the visit is a necessary protocol up here.”

“It’s good advice, Wynnie. Take it.”

“You know what Esther thinks of me.”

“Nobody said this would be a cakewalk. Just get it over with. In and out in fifteen minutes. Quicker than a visit to the dentist.”

“Your friend was there last night. Father Libretto. Who is he?”

“You just said it. A friend.” Noncommittal. Giving nothing away. “You can’t have enough friends up there, Wynnie. Believe me.”

“How did he get into the reception?”

“Every active priest is considered an emissary of the Vatican. The Vatican has an embassy in Washington. I imagine he requested their assistance.”

“Is he working on this Jubilee thing?”

A sigh. Nothing more. But a signal just the same. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“What I know,” Wynn replied, “is I keep asking simple questions and receive nothing but a runaround.”

“All right. I’ll spell out a few things for you. Father Libretto is one of the leaders of a group called Sant’Egidio.”

“You work with them.”

“So do a lot of other people. They have two objectives, neither of which interests you in the slightest. They seek to feed the poor, and they promote world peace.”

“And this ties into Jubilee?”

“Wynnie, listen to what I’m saying. If you’re going to follow the cocktail circuit, if you’re going to do as Grant told you, then none of this matters. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

“What’s the big secret here, Sybel?”

“There is no secret. It’s just. .” His big sister seemed at a loss, which seldom happened. “The Jubilee Amendment was Graham’s passion. But it did not begin with him. It’s a world movement to write off all the third world’s outstanding debt.”

He waited. “That’s it?”

“I told you, Wynnie. It doesn’t concern you. Not unless you first make a choice. A hard one.” A note of pleading entered her voice. “You’ve spent the past two years tightening down the clamps on your life. Drawing the walls ever closer. Caring for less and less. I’ve tried everything I know how to get you to open up again. I pray for you, Wynnie. Every night. That something will come along and make you wake up before it’s too late. That you’ll open your eyes and recognize there’s a purpose and a calling that needs you as much as you need it. I know you better than anybody else on earth, and I know how much you have to offer.”

It was Wynn’s turn to pause. His sister had been religious all her life, a product of being eleven years older and knowing their parents that much longer. He knew their parents had been very religious. It was one of the first things that ever came up when anyone spoke of them. Their faith. Their caring. Their passion. Their calling. Sybel had spent a lifetime living up to their memory in her own special way, caring first for him, then for Grant, and always making time for her causes. Building homes for the destitute, feeding the poor, funding free medical clinics, promoting daycare centers in marginal neighborhoods, speaking up for people with no voice of their own.

Wynn had responded differently to the challenge of parents who were no longer there. They had left him at five, a tender age to be burdened with the loss not just of his family but his entire world. Wynn had rebelled. He took refuge in fury, until the relatives who took in the orphaned siblings threw up their hands and threatened them with foster care. Sybel was by this time in her first year of college. Grant was seven years her senior, completing his final year of law school-law review, number one in his class, most likely to succeed, good family, the works. And totally in love with Sybel. She agreed to marry him on the one condition that he make room in their new home for Wynn. She had been equally up front, equally tough, with her baby brother. Behave or leave, one chance, that’s final. Wynn had behaved. As had Grant. They had never become true friends, but peace had reigned. And Sybel had never let go of her faith.

“That’s what this is all about?” Wynn demanded. “A religion thing?”

“You don’t just wake up one day and start caring for people you’ve never met,” Sybel replied. A hint of defensiveness to her words. Or perhaps it was desperation. “First you learn to recognize your Maker, call him by name. Let him redirect your vision and your direction. He must be the one to show you how to care, how to open up, how to live for something more than just yourself.”

Old words, concepts he had heard from her a hundred times before. Given new force by the current situation, swimming against tides that threatened to drown him. “So this is the big choice.”

She caught the tone. Sybel shut down in one harsh breath, becoming as tired and drained as he had ever heard. “Just go to bed, Wynnie. Wake up tomorrow, the sun will be shining, the people will be calling, everyone bowing and scraping and happy for whatever you want to give. Just forget we ever talked. Tomorrow will be full of all the good things you’ve always dreamed about.”

“Sybel, wait, I didn’t-”

But she was already gone.

Friday

Colin Ready checked his monitor clock. Again. Fifteen minutes to his scheduled meeting with the King. Though there was no move on the Havilland front and everything else seemed in good shape, he was apprehensive. Merely entering Hayek’s presence left him exploring the edge of chaos. And today there was something more. Colin detected a difference to the techie chamber’s machine-processed air. There was nervousness beyond his own, a current strange even for this place. He rose and poked his head outside the cubicle’s padded walls. The techies’ central corridor was empty save for the normal wind-down noises of people preparing for Friday departures. Then he caught a hint of something behind him, a tempest brewing beyond the locked trading room doors. He returned to his desk, logged off, and headed out.

There were two ways to Hayek’s penthouse. Since the compound’s side entrance was used mainly by backroom peons, their elevator rose only as high as the fourth floor. It was then necessary to navigate through the twisted passages of accounting and take the stairs up the final flight. But Colin’s work had earned him a trader’s passkey, which meant he could slip through the unmarked security-coded door, cross the trading room, and take the front elevators directly to the realm of clouds and rain.

He slipped his key into the magnetic slot and entered bedlam. He counted five different battles raging at various points around the trading floor. Edging along the back wall, Colin was pleased to see that his hypersensitive radar had been giving accurate readings. Friday afternoons were usually fairly soporific, the only action coming from traders desperate to balance impossible positions. Today was ground zero.

Normally Colin considered such energy to be a serious kick. Today, the mothlike existence so close to Hayek’s flame left him shaken and separate. He found himself forming dialogue for Lisa Wrede, the young lady who had never agreed to visit this world, and who in fact had wanted nothing more than to draw him away. He had often tried to describe the manic power of such unbridled avarice, wanting her to see how laboring in this secret realm was for him a major league rush. Lisa had responded with either loathing or pity, two great potions for inciting quarrels.

To Colin’s right, the spot desks took up by far the largest section of the floor, as Hayek was a huge player on the international forex markets. Forex was the standard way to denote all foreign exchange dealings. Each desk was assigned one or two specific tasks-dollar-mark, yen-mark, franc-pound, and so on. Each trader answered to a senior trader, who was assigned a certain amount of daily bread. Usually a senior trader handled between a half and three-quarters of a billion dollars in outstanding debt at any given time. Each junior trader under him or her was assigned a lesser amount, depending on seniority and track record. A junior trader was also licensed to trade up to a certain amount without looking for the senior trader’s approval. This amount was usually granted in ten-million-dollar increments. A trader’s limit was raised or lowered depending on his record of profitability and was reassessed every other week. Limits were reviewed more frequently only if the trader moved close to the ax. When a trader carried a loss situation for too long-say, forty-eight hours-or went over his loss budget at evening closedown, that trader was history.