Nathaniel Rich - Odds Against Tomorrow

The car glided to a rest in front of a black tower, the headquarters of a major international law firm called Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene. Charnoble explained that Nybuster represented several small sovereign nations, as well as corporations in more than forty countries. The firm’s representative was a very young man wearing a mohair three-piece, no doubt bespoke, and a checkered tie the color of a faded dollar bill. A fatuous smirk was slapped across his face like a price tag. He had trim golden-brown hair, a manicured five o’clock shadow (though it was ten in the morning — did he shave in the middle of the night, was that what you were supposed to do?), a robotic chin, and bright, malicious eyes. The eyes had the cocky look of inherited fortune and disinherited ambition. Mitchell was not surprised to learn that the fellow’s name was Nybuster: Ned Nybuster. The three of them sat at a conference table covered by white glass. A tray of cheese, cut fruit, soy wafers, and deli sandwiches had been laid out alongside miniature water bottles, each of which contained no more than a mouthful of liquid. The young Caesar grabbed an entire bunch of grapes, lifted it above his head, and pulled off the lowest-hanging orb with his lips.

“So-o-o-o,” said Charnoble, with a thin smile. He was already in full ingratiation mode.

“How does this work?” Nybuster had an effortlessly loud voice, a well-fed voice. “You guys are like economic soothsayers?”

“In a certain sense—”

“I once went to a fortune-teller. She said the path to success would be long and difficult.” He frowned playfully.

“We are future-based consultants,” said Charnoble, trying again. He removed a digital recorder from his suitcase and pressed the record button. “We help you to build a risk-aware culture. We create scenarios to prepare your company for whatever the future might hold.”

“I’m thinking the future holds money. Lots of it. Kind of like the past and the present.”

Charnoble explained that he would record each session to comply with federal insurance briefing regulations. The recordings, along with reports that FutureWorld would issue after each meeting, would indemnify the firm should it ever be tried for castastrophe negligence in a court of law.

“What kind of catastrophe? New York doesn’t have earthquakes.”

“Perhaps not,” said Charnoble, and Mitchell had to bite his cheek to restrain himself from correcting his new boss. “Plenty of catastrophes are possible, however.”

Nybuster flung a pin-striped leg on the seat of a swivel chair. “So what are we talking about here? Is it total bullshit or just credible bullshit? Entertaining bullshit, actually — that would be ideal.”

“Right.” Charnoble took a deep breath. He had a pained expression that Mitchell had not seen on his face before. Was it anxiety? Could this be Charnoble’s first consulting session too? “Scenario one,” said Charnoble. “China declares war.”

“The yellow claw,” said Nybuster, winking at Mitchell. He leaned back in his chair as if expecting to be fanned by palm fronds.

Charnoble began by listing the number of ways in which the American markets were dependent on Chinese monetary policy. Then he reviewed Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene’s specific Chinese accounts, explaining how each would be affected by an outbreak of war. Charnoble’s script wasn’t bad, but the delivery was tedious. He might have been reading his tax statements. Mitchell’s eyes watered. His hair was still damp and frizzled, his skin dry. He had shaved poorly and had barely seen the sun in weeks, except through tinted glare-resistant office windows. His eyes didn’t open all the way. And after a single restful night, the cockroaches had returned. But they weren’t alone. They had brought with them a new friend: a kindly bald Spanish gentleman named Pedro Brugada.

Pedro and his brother Josep, Spaniards who practiced in Belgium, were the first Westerners to identify a condition they first described as tristeza del corazón , “heart sadness.” In 1987 they observed a three-year-old Polish boy, Lech, who experienced fainting spells with a terrifying frequency. The boy’s sister had already died from the same mysterious disorder. The Brugadas found additional examples of this condition and, in 1992, the Brugada syndrome entered the diagnostic lexicon. But Easterners had known about it for centuries. In Japan it was called Pokkuri (“unexpected death at night”), and in the Phillipines it was known as bangungut (“scream followed by sudden death”). In the northeast of Thailand, where it struck young men disproportionately, it was known as lai tai , or “death during sleep.” Lai tai was believed to be caused by the ghosts of dead women who kidnapped young men to serve as their husbands in the underworld. The Thai men of this region, in a desperate effort to trick the succubi — or at least to turn them off — went to bed every night dressed in drag.

In his second letter to Elsa, Mitchell had asked whether she was certain that she had this condition. The first indication, she wrote, came when her father dropped dead on a public bus when she was seven years old. His last checkup had revealed an unusual ditch in his electrocardiogram reading, but he was a healthy, fit man and no one suspected heart problems. Elsa had several fainting spells in high school, however, and her doctor noticed the same peculiarity in her EKG. After excluding everything else, a cardiologist tested for Brugada. It wasn’t an easy test. To test a patient for Brugada, you have to kill her.

At the hospital they inserted a catheter into her groin, feeding the tube through the femoral vein into the heart. A pacemaker was attached to the end of the catheter. It sent an electronic signal, forcing the heart to skip a beat. The heart of a patient with Brugada syndrome cannot handle this stress. If the heart stops beating, it means Brugada is present. Elsa’s heart stopped. Less than two seconds later they defibrillated her.

“What was it like to be dead?”

“It was the most excruciating sensation I’ve ever experienced,” she wrote. “Defibrillation contracts every muscle, so your body leaps from the operating table. The constriction is so painful that it momentarily jars you from sedation and you awake, with a shock, in the middle of the air.”

The memory of this image made Mitchell’s fingers shake, beating erratic rhythms into Nybuster’s conference table like a frustrated drummer. He squeezed the rim of his chair.

But Nybuster hadn’t noticed. His face was a portrait of abject boredom, a child forced to sit with a tutor while his friends play at recess. He had finished the grapes and was now using the branches to pick the fruit out of his teeth. In the last ten minutes, as Charnoble had gone on about the state of China’s ballistic technology, Nybuster hadn’t once glanced in their direction. Finally he swung around in his seat, put his feet back on the ground, and turned to Charnoble.

“Would you please arrive at your point?” he said. “I don’t understand how any of this is useful to Nybuster, Nybuster, and Greene. We’re comfortable with our client base, our risk exposure. Our firm has been in this business for more than four decades. Our formula has not let us down yet.”

Charnoble glanced between Nybuster and Mitchell, his finger twisting in his palm. For all his reptilian maneuvering, his conniving ratiocination, he was obviously not adept at selling fear. The problem was that he didn’t truly believe it. Charnoble was right. He needed someone like Mitchell.

Nybuster stood.

“Sorry, chums. I’m going to have to ask you to tell the rest of your report to the tape recorder. I have business.” He started for the door. Charnoble’s widening eyes and whitish blond hair made him look like a scared little boy. Mitchell rose from his chair.