Tom Clancy - Debt of Honor

The business day started in Central Europe at ten o'clock local time, which was nine o'clock in London, and a dark four o'clock in New York. That made it six in the evening in Tokyo after what had been at first an exciting week, then a dull one, which had allowed people to contemplate their brilliance at the killing they had made.

Currency traders in the Japanese capital were surprised when things started quite normally. Markets came up on-line much as a business might open its doors for customers waiting outside for a long-awaited sale. It had been announced that it would happen that way. It was just that nobody here had really believed it. As one man they phoned their supervisors for instructions, surprising them with the news from Berlin and the other European centers.

At the New York FBI office, machines wired into the international trading network showed exactly the same display as those on every other continent. The Fed Chairman and Secretary Fiedler watched. Both men had phones to their ears, linked into an encrypted conference line with their European counterparts.

The Bundesbank made the first move, trading five hundred billion yen for the current equivalent in dollars to the Bank of Hong Kong, a very cautious transaction to test the waters. Hong Kong handled it as a matter of course, seeing a marginal advantage in the German mistake. The Bundesbank was foolish enough to expect that the reopening of the New York equities markets would bolster the dollar. The transaction was executed, Fiedler saw. He turned to the Fed Chairman and winked. The next move was by the Swiss, and this one was a trillion yen for Hong Kong's remaining holding in U.S. Treasuries. That transaction, too, went through the wires in less than a minute. The next one was more direct. The Bern Commercial Bank took Swiss francs back from a Japanese bank, trading yen holdings for them, another dubious move occasioned by a phone call from the Swiss government. The opening of European stock markets saw other moves. Banks and other institutions that had made a strategic move to buy up Japanese equities as a counterbalance to Japanese acquisitions in European markets now started selling them off, immediately converting the yen holdings to other currencies. That was when the first alarm light went on in Tokyo. The Europeans' actions might have appeared to be mere profit-taking, but the currency conversions bespoke a belief that the yen was going to fall and fall hard, and it was a Friday night in Tokyo, and their trading floors were closed except for the currency traders and others working the European markets.

"They should be getting nervous now," Fiedler observed.

"I would," Jean-Jacques said in Paris. What nobody quite wanted to say was that the First World Economic War had just begun in earnest. There was an excitement to it, even though it ran contrary to all their instincts and experience.

"You know, I don't have a model to predict this," Gant said, twenty feet away from the two government officials. The European action, helpful as it was, confounded all computer models and preconceptions.

"Well, pilgrim, that's why we've got brains and guts," George Winston responded deadpan.

"But what are our markets going to do?"

Winston grinned. "Sure as hell we're going to find out in, oh, about seven and a half hours. And you don't even have to shell out for the E-Ticket. Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I'm glad somebody's happy about this."

There were worldwide rules for currency trading. Trading stopped once a currency had fallen a certain amount, but not this time. The floor under the yen was yanked out by every European government, trading didn't stop, and the yen resumed its fall.

"They can't do that!" someone said in Tokyo. But they were doing it, and he reached for a phone, knowing even then what his instructions would be. The yen was being attacked. They had to defend it, and the only way was to trade the foreign-currency holdings they already owned in order to firm the yen holdings back home and out of the playing field of international speculation. Worst of all, there was no reason for this action. The yen was strong, especially against the American dollar. Soon it would replace it as the world's benchmark currency, especially if the American financial markets were foolish enough to reopen later in the day. The Europeans were making a sucker bet of such magnitude as to defy qualification, and since it didn't make sense, all the Japanese traders could do was to apply their own experience to the situation and act accordingly. The irony of the moment would have been delicious, had they been able to appreciate it. Their actions were virtually automatic. Francs, French and Swiss, British pounds, German D-marks, Dutch guilders, and Danish kroner were disbursed in vast quantities to purchase yen, whose relative value, everyone in Tokyo was sure, could only appreciate, especially if the Europeans pegged their currencies to the dollar.

There was an element of nervousness to it, but they did it, acting on the orders of their superiors, who were even now leaving their homes and catching cars or trains to the various commercial office buildings in which world trading was conducted. Equities were traded off in Europe as well, with the local currencies converted to yen. The expectation again was that when the American collapse resumed, the European currencies would fall, and with them the values of stock issues. Then Japan could reacquire even larger quantities of European stocks. The European moves were a sad case of misplaced loyalty, or confidence, or something, the people in Tokyo thought, but sad or not, it worked in their favor. And that was just fine. By noon London time a massive movement had taken place. Individual investors and smaller institutions, seeing what everyone else had done, had moved in—foolishly, the Japanese knew. Noon London time was seven in the morning on America's East Coast.

"My fellow Americans," President Durling said at exactly 7:05 A.M. on every TV network. "On Wednesday night I told you that today American financial markets are going to reopen…"

"Here it goes," Kozo Matsuda said, just back in his office and watching CNN. "He's going to say that they can't, and Europe is going to panic. Splendid," he told his aides, turning back to the TV. The American president was smiling and confident. Well, a politician had to know how to act, the better to lie to his citizens.

"The problems which the market experienced last week came from a deliberate assault on the American economy. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and I am going to walk you through what happened, how it was done, and why it was done. We've spent an entire week accumulating this information, and even now Treasury Secretary Fiedler and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board are in New York, working with the heads of the great American financial institutions to set things aright.

"I am also pleased to report that we have had the time to consult with our friends in Europe, and that our historic allies have chosen to stand with us as faithfully in this time of difficulty as they have in other times.

"So what really happened last Friday?" Roger Durling asked. Matsuda sat his drink down on his desk when he saw the first chart appear on the screen.

Jack watched him go through it. The trick as always was to make a complex story simple, and that task had involved two professors of economics, half of Fiedler's personal staff, and a governor of the Securities and Exchange Commission, all working in coordination with the President's best speech-writer. Even so, it took twenty-five minutes, six flip charts, and would require a number of government spokesmen talking who were even now on background to reporters whose briefings had started at 6:30.

"I told you Wednesday night that nothing—nothing of consequence had happened to us. Not one piece of property has been affected. Not one farm has lost anything. Each of you is the same person you were a week ago, with the same abilities, the same home, the same job, the same family and friends. What happened last Friday was an attack not on our country itself, but on our national confidence.