Andrew Gross: Reckless

“Four innocent people are dead,” Hauck said, staring into his eyes. “Four others are missing. Kids. Not to mention millions who have seen their savings collapse or lost their jobs.”

“We saved the world,” the treasury secretary said, offering no apology. “We kept it from collapsing. I had nothing to do with those murders. This O’Toole person, or whoever did those terrible things, I’ve never even met him or spoken with him.”

“You’re right, you haven’t.” Hauck nodded, agreeing. His gaze shifted to Hastings. “But your chief counsel has.”

Mitch Hastings’s eyes grew wide.

“When you worked at the Council of the Economic Forum, before Treasury. Jack O’Toole was assigned to your security detail while in Iraq. Not once but twice. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hastings?”

The chief counsel loudly cleared his throat, adjusting his wire-rim frames. “I can’t recall…”

“Do you think when we requisition your cell phone records, and they show you have made calls into the same areas where we know O’Toole to have been, you’ll be able to recall?” Hauck removed something from his pocket. O’Toole’s phone. “Maybe to this cell phone. Is there any chance the record of calls at the Waldorf, where Hassani was killed today, will show one from a location that you can be traced back to?

“Don’t be so surprised,” Hauck said to Keaton. “You may have only tipped your pal Hassani off about whatever Agent Blum here brought to you, but your loyal counsel here, Mr. Hastings, he’s got real blood on his hands.”

Keaton took his arm. “Don’t say a word, Mitch. I have forty years in public and private service, Agent Blum. Whether I was in Gstaad or not, whether Mitch may have been overzealous on some matters in protecting some of our interests, we’ll see where all that goes. But for you, I assure you, this investigation is through.”

“That may be true, sir,” Naomi said. “But I’m afraid there’s another one just beginning.”

Three men in tan and brown suits came up from behind them in the lobby. Part of Anthony Bruni’s financial terrorism team.

“Sir, my name is Ralph Wells. I’m a senior regional director of the FBI, and I have here, pending notification of the president of the United States, a court order to search your personal records, computers, and cell phone for information related to a criminal conspiracy of investment bankers to defraud the United States government.”

“What?” The treasury secretary became apoplectic. He grabbed the document, his jaw going slack. He took a step back and sank against the marble wall.

“And in terms of this investigation, sir,” Naomi said, staring at him, “it’s also possible Peter Simons might have some interesting things to add about you too.”

Hauck’s eyes met hers. There was no longer determination on Naomi’s face but a sheen of triumph in her eyes. The face of al-Bashir’s son reflected there. The triumph that comes after a bloody battle. Where it’s hard to tell who has won and who has lost.

Except this time they both knew.

The resignations of Thomas Keaton and his chief counsel sent shock waves around the world. It was reported they were being held under house arrest, pending a Justice Department investigation into their actions in a conspiracy to defraud the financial markets in which eleven people, including some important figures in the world of finance, had died or were missing.

In New York, the related arrest of Peter Simons, Stephen Cain, and Marshall Shipman on charges of fraud and conspiracy to defraud only made the rumors wilder. The markets plunged 20 percent the next day and were held back from a total free fall only when the Fed announced at midday that it was pumping half a trillion dollars of new liquidity into the ailing economy.

Still, parts of the story were leaking out. Murdered Wall Street traders. An enigmatic Serbian playboy whose past was tied to a bloody massacre in the Bosnian War. A shadowy Middle Eastern financier murdered in his suite at the Waldorf. A wild shoot-out on an Amtrak train. The involvement of the CEO of one of the largest firms on Wall Street, leading all the way to the treasury secretary of the United States.

The president promised a swift and thorough investigation. “The financial markets must be above suspicion,” he declared from the White House lawn. “Its lifeblood is confidence, and confidence will be restored.”

In the meantime, the Department of the Treasury was to be run by Allen Schaper, currently head of the SEC-a corporate lawyer, an economist, a friend of the president.

And himself a former banker at Reynolds Reid.

Eleven people were either dead or presumed dead. Three Wall Street investment banks had gone under, their assets absorbed. Across the globe, millions of people had lost jobs, countless pensions destroyed, life savings halved. Millions of homes foreclosed on, industries set in crisis, bailed out; the deficit soared. On CNBC, Tim Schegel, the noted financial reporter, remarked, “Whatever their crimes, those participants in what is now known as the Gstaad Gang only hastened, in their activities, what was sure to come.” The estimated loss in investor capital related to the economic meltdown was said to be over four trillion dollars.

Across the pond, in London, a related investigation into the unsolved disappearance of Saudi national Mashhur al-Bashir and his family was under way.

Their bodies would never be discovered.

Back in DC, Hauck and Naomi gave two days of testimony to officials at the Justice Department.

By Friday, Hauck was back at his desk.

Tom Foley was the first one there to congratulate him. Hauck thought it the better part of valor not to divulge how sure he was, until right up to the end, that his boss was the intermediary to Red O’Toole. Since word had come out, the phones at Talon were ringing off the hook. A new era of compliance and security and regulation was being promised and the business was coming to them. Foley promised that the firm would indeed be showing its appreciation, reflected in his bonus at year end. He came by later to take Hauck out for drinks.

But by that time Hauck had already gone.

He took the drive out to Dublin Hill Road. To Merrill Simons’s house. At this point it no longer mattered whether Foley gave the okay.

She deserved to hear it firsthand. Dani’s fate. Who he was. What he had been involved in. How her instincts had been right. And how Peter had been involved.

She was in the garden in a pair of white capris and a wide hat, planting begonias. She sat with Hauck on a chaise under an awning and stayed silent for a while after he told her, brooding on the story that might never fully be revealed.

“Two real bastards,” she finally said, shaking her head with a bit of a derisive laugh. “I surely can pick ’em, can’t I?”

Then it seemed to overwhelm her and she took her sunglasses off and wiped away a tear.

“Next time,” Hauck said, shrugging, “maybe you should give Match.com a try.” Merrill laughed. He squeezed her arm.

“Thank you for what you did. I think I may owe your firm some money.”

“Why don’t we just call it a wash?” He winked and got up. “Let’s just see if we can get Uncle Sam to cover the bill.”

A few days later

He sat in the BMW looking out at the pleasant white ranch on the quiet cul-de-sac in Darien.

It was the kind of tree-lined residential street any kid would be happy to grow up on. SUVs, on their way to baseball practice and dance rehearsals, backed out of the driveways. A yellow school bus pulled up at the corner and several kids jumped off with one or two friendly shoves and high fives, then scattered on their way. A UPS truck parked at the curb and the driver waved to the homeowner as he delivered his package.