Warren Murphy: Hostile Takeover

Smith began transmitting buy orders to the headquarters of Nostrum, Inc., where its employees-none of whom had ever heard of Folcroft Sanitarium, never mind CURE-shook their heads and began buying up blocks of stock in quavering voices. They began with the most troubled stock, the rapidly declining Global Communications Conglomerate.

South of Rye, New York, nervous stock traders watched their overhead Quotron tubes with sick, shocked eyes. Every few seconds prices dropped another point or two. It was a rout.

Then, buy orders began coming in on Global Communications.

"GLB'S going up!" someone shouted above the roar. His voice was not heard. But the Quotron's silence spoke louder than any voice in the pit.

Global stopped dropping. Then other buy orders began coming in. The price stabilized at fifty-eight and five-eighths, climbed to sixty, and dropped briefly to fifty-eight and five-eighths again.

Back in Rye, Dr. Smith watched his Quotron window and allowed himself a dryish smile. It was a long way to the closing bell, but it was a start. He ordered Nostrum to buy another block of GLB and to pick up other bargains. He hoped that by day's end they would be bargains. He had spent most of his adult life serving his country. He didn't want to go down in history as the man who single-handedly bankrupted the United States of America.

Chapter 4

P. M. Looncraft whispered old money, from the cut of his Savile Row suit to his tasteful Rolex watch. He lounged in the back of his white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud as it turned the corner of Broad Street onto Wall. As the Rolls slithered past the statue of George Washington, its brass plaque commemorating the spot where, in 1787, he was inaugurated as the fledgling nation's first chief executive, Looncraft's prim mouth curled disdainfully.

Reaching into a leather cupboard, Looncraft lifted a pocket memo recorder to his long, lantern-jawed face.

"Memo," he said in a precise adenoidal honk. "When this is over, have that infernal statue taken down and demolished. Perhaps broken into pieces and turned into something useful. Such as a fireplace."

Almost soundlessly the Rolls whispered to the curb in front of Looncraft Tower.

"Call for me at seven sharp, Mipps," Looncraft said, alighting from the car. Briskly he strode into the marble lobby, pleased to see the uniformed guards posted by the elevators.

He nodded to them as one obligingly pressed the up button and reached in to hit the button marked: "LD&B."

The elevator was empty as it whisked P. M. Looncraft to the thirty-fourth floor. Two additional guards met him at the glass-walled foyer. They tipped their caps smartly, and Looncraft allowed them a curt nod as he swept past.

"No problems, I trust," he said smoothly.

"A few upset customers, sir. That's all."

"Carry on," P. M. Looncraft returned as he walked past the gold lettered wall that said "Looncraft, Dymstar d, Investment Brokers." He stepped onto the trading floor, where short-sleeved brokers worked their phones, banks of blinking buttons flashing insistently.

"Get off my back!" one shouted at another. " I don't have to take anything off you!"

Looncraft strode up to him and laid a reassuring hand on the man's shoulder. He turned, his face angry. His features quickly softened as he recognized his employer's dour face.

"Oh, sorry, Mr. Looncraft," he muttered. "It's pure pandemonium, sir. The Dow's off three hundred points. It's a bloodbath out there. "

"Stay the course, young man," Looncraft said soothingly. "Stay the course."

"I will. Thank you, sir," the broker said, wiping his brow with a striped shirtsleeve.

Looncraft raised his long arms to call attention to himself, and called encouragement to his soldiers in finance.

"Take heart," he shouted. "By evening this will be over. Do not let fear rule you. Your jobs are secure. Looncraft, Dymstar d has a bright future, as have you all. We will survive this day."

The moment his voice fell silent, the brokers burst into heartfelt applause. Then, at a gesture from Looncraft, they returned to their phones, faces tight, fingers nervously testing the elasticity of their identical red suspenders. Not for nothing was P. M. Looncraft hailed as the King of Wall Street.

Looncraft marched to his office, his back ramrod straight, his long jaw jutting forward with determination, and glanced briefly over the pile of messages on his desk. None were important. He activated his Telerate screen and gave the current market quotes a brief glance. Global was hovering at fifty-eight and five-eighths. It jumped up, and then down, surprising Looncraft, who had expected a precipitous drop by this time. He wondered if he might have come in too early. He did not wish to subject his delicate nerves to the turmoil of a wildly gyrating stock market. It was enough to call for additional guards to be posted at opening, as a hedge against irate investors who might wish to settle their losses with handguns and other piddling weapons.

Looncraft looked away from the Telerate screen. Global had a long way to go before he needed to act. He picked up the two-star edition of The Wall Street journal, neatly folded beside his telephone, and opened it casually, one eye on the frantic activity on the trading floor, visible through the glass inner-office wall.

An hour later he looked up from the paper and to his surprise, saw that Global was now at fifty-nine and three-eighths. He blinked, grabbed the telephone.

"Ask the floor manager-his name escapes me at the moment-to give me a report on the last hour's worth of GBL activity."

"At once, Mr. Looncraft. And his name is Lawrence."

"Whatever," Looncraft said dismissively. In fact, he knew the name of every employee on the payroll of Looncraft, Dymstar d, right down to the boy who had started working in the mailroom two days before. Some of the firm's best people came up from the mailroom. Looncraft had made it his business to know their names. He subscribed to the ancient superstition-it was actually more than that-that held that the ability to call a person or thing by its right name conferred power over that person or thing.

The intercom beeped.

"Mr. Lawrence on line one, Mr. Looncraft."

"Who?"

"The floor manager."

"Oh, of course." Looncraft pressed line one. "Go ahead."

"Global issues are rebounding from a low of twenty-one and an eighth," Lawrence said crisply.

"Who's buying?"

"DeGoone Slickens, for one."

"What!" Looncraft exploded. "That scoundrel! He wouldn't dare. Who else?"

"Nostrum, Inc., was the first. But others have jumped in."

"Nostrum! Never heard of them."

"I think they're venture capitalists. Their own stock trades on NASDAQ. Do you want me to look into it?"

"Later. Is this a rally, or just a short-term run-up?"

"The entire market seems to be stabilizing. Volume is at five hundred and eighty-nine million shares across the board. I think we're going to pull out of this tailspin. Could be the start of a dead-cat bounce."

"Blast," Looncraft said under his breath.

"Sir?"

"Buy Global," Looncraft snapped. "As much as you can get your hands on. Now. Then find out whatever you can about these Nostrum interlopers."

"Yes, sir."

"Damn," P. M. Looncraft said angrily. "This is the limit." He reached for the telephone, hesitated, and then, thinking that even his vice-chairmanship of the New York Stock Exchange did not exclude him from SEC investigation, moved his caster-wheeled chair to a personal computer on a gunmetal typewriter stand.

He logged on and got an electronic bulletin board. The legend across the top read "MAYFLOWER DESCENDANTS" in ragged block letters. His fingers keyed like twitching spiders.

"Knight to Bishop Two," he keyed. Then he logged off.