Andrew Gross - Reckless

The planes are in the air.

The secretary’s office was at a corner of Treasury’s vast limestone building overlooking the Washington Mall. Naomi had never even been to this part of the building before. Timeless portraits of past secretaries and historic figures lined the mahogany-paneled halls. Hamilton. Chase. Morgenthau. Baker.

“Don’t be nervous,” Rob said as they sat outside the suite waiting. “If you happen to be wrong on this, I can always land a job as a regional bank auditor in northern Montana.”

Naomi nodded, adjusting her suit. “Hopefully, you’ll need a secretary there.”

The door opened and Keaton’s secretary came out. “The secretary will see you now.”

Whyte stood up. Let out a breath. “More like a snow blower.”

They stepped into the large, window-lined office. Keaton, in a pinstripe suit and with a shock of white hair, came around to what seemed the mother of all conference tables, and just to add to the effect, the Washington Monument was clearly visible through the window. Naomi swallowed. No pressure here. The head of the Treasury had been at Justice, not to mention his highly regarded career as a Wall Street deal maker. Naomi had met him once briefly when he set up their task force and visited them across the street.

“Ms. Blum,” he said, nodding cordially but not shaking her hand. “Rob. I asked Mitch Hastings to sit in, if that’s alright with you?”

It wasn’t meant as a question. Hastings was the no-nonsense chief counsel to the Treasury Department. She had seen him in the background at the hedge fund CEO and auto bailout congressional hearings.

“Of course.” Whyte nodded. “Mitch…” The lawyer smiled back tightly and indifferently.

Naomi bit her bottom lip and took a breath. Here goes…

“I’m afraid I have to be at the AG’s office in ten minutes.” Keaton glanced at his watch and then at Whyte. “So I’ll ask you to start right in.”

“Mr. Secretary,” Rob said, “Naomi’s come up with a few things. Things we think you ought to be aware of.”

The treasury secretary sat down directly across from her, nodding peremptorily. “Alright.”

Two of the most influential figures in the government had their gazes directly on her.

“A few months back”-Naomi cleared her throat and removed a file from out of her bag-“a phone transcript landed on my desk. From the NSA. The text of a call between a well-known Bahraini financial figure, Hassan ibn Hassani, who is suspected of passing funds to certain organizations that appeared on the Terrorist Watch List, and an investment manager in London. A Saudi named Mashhur al-Bashir-Marty al-Bashir, as he’s known in the trade. He’s currently the chief investment officer of the Royal Saudi Partnership.”

Thomas Keaton folded his hands in front of his face. “I’m familiar with his name.”

“The transcript,” Naomi said, her leg racing under the table, “referred to some kind of ‘change in direction’ for their strategy. If al-Bashir was to be involved I can only assume it meant a change in investment policy. Why a Bahraini financier would be discussing this with him, we don’t know. But the conversation concluded with a bit of a concerning statement-‘the planes are in the air.’”

The treasury secretary raised his eyes. His gaze shifted to Naomi’s boss, Whyte. “This conversation was a couple of months back?”

Whyte nodded. “Yes, in March, sir.”

“So clearly there were no ‘planes.’” The treasury secretary exhaled. “At least in the most ominous sense, thank God.”

Naomi cleared her throat. “I’m not so sure.”

Keaton looked back at her. “Go on.”

“February eighth was a Sunday,” Naomi said, drawing their attention to the next exhibit. “Beginning the following Monday, February ninth, our analysts who track this sort of thing indicate the Royal Saudi Partnership began to systematically divest itself of its positions in U.S. stocks, starting with its positions in the financial sector-which, as you can imagine, were quite sizable-and this had the effect of driving these stocks down. I won’t waste your time on it here”-Naomi flipped over a page-“but I can chart how the decline in these stocks originated from this particular point and how it weighed on the market as a whole. What it started was a worldwide sell-off in stocks.”

“Helped along, I could add,” Hastings, the secretary’s counsel, countered, “by a wide array of factors.”

“Yes, sir,” Naomi said, “no doubt. That’s precisely what I came here to discuss.”

She opened another file and got up, placing hastily made copies in front of the two Treasury figures. She explained that it was nothing she could be 100 percent firm on yet, just the most circumstantial links between Thibault, as mapped out by the person she had interviewed, Ty Hauck, and the two traders who had suspiciously died. Traders whose concealed losses were of such a size they were the death knells of Wertheimer Grant and Beeston Holloway, dragging the rest of the financial markets to the edge.

“And we all know where that has led,” Naomi finished up.

“You’re suggesting there’s a possible criminal connection between these two investment managers’ deaths?” Keaton drew in a hesitant breath, paging through Naomi’s exhibits.

“I’m saying that’s possible, sir,” Naomi said.

“And that it’s somehow tied back to this Mashhur al-Bashir. Through this figure Thibault? Why?”

“I’m just forwarding a theory, sir. One of our jobs is to put together possible unmaterialized threats and anticipate what might happen next.”

“Yes, yes.” Keaton rolled his hand, fast-forwarding. “Go on.”

“Okay.” Naomi took a breath. Here goes…“What if there were people on an organized basis, people of influence,” she suggested, “who wanted to do our country systemic harm, using a new strategy, a ‘change in direction,’ as they referred to it.” She steeled herself. “Not by flying a plane through our tallest buildings, like before, but by driving one, figuratively, sir, through the heart of our most vital national asset. The root of everything we stand for.”

Keaton narrowed his eyes at her. Naomi had no idea if he was buying it.

“The economy, sir,” she said. “The amount of economic wealth we have lost since the downturn, not to mention the unrest of our citizens, is impossible to measure. One could trace the start of the slide, I believe, to these two Wall Street investment houses going down.”

The treasury secretary’s face began to whiten, almost matching his hair. He nodded soberly, glancing at his chief counsel, and seemed to draw his words with care. “But who would possibly gain? We are in a global economy. Every stock exchange around the world is reeling from the decline. Oil is selling at less than half what it once was. It would be economic suicide.”

Naomi shrugged, anticipating the question. “I don’t know that yet.”

“And you think there’s a chance this Thibault person might be somehow at the heart of this scheme?”

“I’m saying it’s possible, sir, yes.”

Keaton leaned back in his seat. “What do we know about him?”

“His past is a bit vague, sir. He has a Dutch passport. It’s entirely possible he holds multiple passports. This ex-detective I mentioned, Hauck, he’s done some preliminary investigation through his firm and he seems to think he may, in fact, be Serbian.”

“Serbian?” The secretary’s eyes widened. He leafed through Naomi’s exhibits. “Do we have the findings of this firm?”

“No, sir, I don’t think we can go there, at least not right now. It seems someone has been trying to push Hauck off his investigation. And it’s possible, I only say possible,” Naomi added, knowing she was rolling the dice here, “his own firm may be somehow complicit in this.”