Tom Clancy - Debt of Honor

"All the safeguards built into the system are designed to prevent accidents and catch crooks. It never occurred to anybody that somebody would pull something like this. Who would deliberately lose so much money?"

"Somebody with bigger fish to fry," Ryan told him.

"What's bigger than—"

Jack cut him off. "Lots of things, Mr. Winston. We'll get to that later."

Ryan turned his head. "Buzz?"

"I'll want to confirm this with my own data, but it looks pretty solid."

SecTreas looked over at the Chairman.

"You know, I'm not even sure it's a criminal violation."

"Forget that," Winston announced. "The real problem is still here. Crunch time is today. If Europe keeps going down, then we have a global panic. The dollar's in free-fall, the American markets can't operate, most of the world's liquidity is paralyzed, and all the little guys out there are going to catch on as soon as the media figure out what the hell is going down. The only thing that's prevented that to this point is that financial reporters don't know crap about what they cover."

"Otherwise they'd be working for us," Gant said, rejoining the conversation. "Thank God their sources are keeping it zipped for the time being, but I'm surprised it hasn't broken out all the way yet." Just maybe , he thought, the media didn't want to start a panic either.

Ryan's phone rang and he went to answer it. "Buzz, it's your conference call." The Secretary's physical state was apparent when he rose. The man wavered and grabbed the back of a chair to steady himself. The Chairman was only a touch more agile, and if anything both men were yet more shaken by what they had just learned. Fixing something that had broken was a sufficiently difficult task. Fixing something deliberately and maliciously destroyed could hardly be easier. And it had to be fixed, and soon, lest every nation in Europe and North America join the plunge into a deep, dark canyon. The climb out of it would require both years and pain, and that was under the best of political circumstances—the long-term political ramifications of such a vast economic dislocation could not possibly be grasped at this stage, though Ryan was already recoiling from that particular horror.

Winston looked at the National Security Advisor's face, and it wasn't hard to read his thoughts. His own elation at the discovery was gone now that he'd given the information over to others. There ought to have been something else for him to say: how to fix matters. But all of his intellectual energy had been expended in building his case for the prosecution, as it were. He hadn't had the chance yet to take his analysis any further.

Ryan saw that and nodded with a grim smile of respect. "Good job."

"It's my fault," Winston said, quietly so as not to disturb the conference call proceeding a few feet away. "I should have stayed in."

"I've bailed out once myself, remember?" Ryan got back into a chair.

"Hey, we all need a change from time to time. You didn't see this coming. It happens all the time. Especially here."

Winston gestured angrily. "I suppose. Now we can identify the rapist, but how the hell do you get unraped? Once it's happened, it's happened. But those were my investors he fucked. Those people came to me. Those people trusted me." Ryan admired the summation. That was how people in the business were supposed to think.

"In other words, now what?"

Gant and Winston traded a look. "We haven't figured that one out."

"Well, so far you've outperformed the FBI and SEC. You know, I haven't even bothered checking how my portfolio did."

"Your ten percent of Silicon Alchemy won't hurt you. Long term," Winston said, "new communications gadgets always make out, and they have a couple of honeys."

"Okay, that's settled for now." Fiedler rejoined the group. "All the European markets are shut down, just like we are, until we can get things sorted out."

Winston looked up. "All that means is, there's a hell of a flood, and you're building the levee higher and higher. And if you. run out of sandbags before the river runs out of water, then the damage will only be worse when you lose control."

"We're all open to suggestions, Mr. Winston," Fiedler said gently.

George's reply matched it in kind. "Sir, for what it's worth, I think you've done everything right to this point. I just don't see a way out."

"Neither do we," the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board observed.

Ryan stood. "For the moment, gentlemen, I think we need to brief the President."

"What an interesting idea," Yamata said. He knew he'd had too much to drink. He knew that he was basking in the sheer satisfaction of carrying out what had to be the most ambitious financial gambit in history. He know that his ego was expanding to its fullest size since—when? Even reaching the chairmanship of his conglomerate hadn't been this satisfactory. He'd crushed a whole nation and had altered the course of his own, and yet he had never even considered public office of any kind. And why not? he asked himself. Because that had always been a place for lesser men.

"For the moment, Yamata-san, Saipan will have a local governor. We will hold internationally supervised elections. We need a candidate," the Foreign Ministry official went on. "It must be someone of stature. It would be helpful if it were a man known and friendly to Goto-san, and a man with local interests. I merely ask that you consider it."

"I will do that." Yamata stood and headed for the door.

Well. He wondered what his father would have thought of that. It would mean stepping down from chairmanship of his corporation…but—but what? What corporate worlds had he failed to conquer? Was it not time to move on? To retire honorably, to enter the formal service of his nation. After the local government situation was cleared up…then? Then to enter the Diet with great prestige, because the insiders would know, wouldn't they? Hai, they would know who had truly served the interests of the nation, who more than the Emperor Meiji himself had brought Japan to the first rank of nations. When had Japan ever had a political leader worthy of her place and her people? Why should he not take the honor due him? It would all require a few years, but he had those years. More than that, he had vision and the courage to make it real. Only his peers in business knew of his greatness now, but that could change, and his family name would be remembered for more than building ships and televisions and all the other things. Not a trademark. A name. A heritage. Would that not make his father proud?

"Yamata?" Roger Durling asked. "Tycoon, right, runs a huge company? I may have bumped into him at some reception or other when I was Vice President."

"Well, that's the guy," Winston said.

"So what are you saying he did?" the President asked.

Mark Gant set up his computer on the President's desk, this time with a Secret Service agent immediately behind him and watching every move, and this time he took it slow because Roger Durling, unlike Ryan, Fiedler, and the Fed Chairman, didn't really understand all the ins and outs. He did prove to be an attentive audience, however, stopping the presentation to ask questions, making a few notes, and three times asking for a repeat of a segment of the presentation. Finally he looked over to the Secretary of the Treasury.

"Buzz?"

"I want our people to verify the information independently—"

"That won't be hard," Winston told them. "Any one of the big houses will have records almost identical to this. My people can help organize it for you."

"If it's true, Buzz?"

"Then, Mr. President, this situation comes more under Dr. Ryan's purview than mine," SecTreas replied evenly. His relief was tempered with anger at the magnitude of what had been done. The two outsiders in the Oval Office didn't yet understand that.