57

The US markets opened and held steady. Esther could feel the tension mount throughout the station as Wall Street trended only slightly downward. Trading remained very light through the first two hours.

Esther waited for someone among the team to express doubts over her announcement. They had every reason to suspect that her news about Brazil’s default was off, or that her analysis remained skewed by an inbred pessimism. Which was what the pundits on other networks were saying. Most simply dismissed her announcement out of hand. They called it the ramblings of a regional wannabe analyst, who was using her ninety seconds of on-air fame as a lever to spout total nonsense.

But Esther was not wrong.

Perhaps her own calm certainty in itself was enough. Or perhaps no one wanted to be the first to question their direction. Esther had no idea. She had never been in a position of leadership before. All she could tell is that whatever doubts they might have felt were kept well hidden. To her careful eye, it appeared that everyone remained with her. The feeling of being trusted to get it right was . . .

Exquisite.

All morning, the global markets remained trapped in the amber of indecision. Brazil’s own news sources remained utterly silent. The world held its breath.

One o’clock came and went. Europe started shutting down for the night. England’s post-market reports carried a mention of Esther’s claim, delivered with a proper amount of derision.

By two o’clock on Friday afternoon, the financial pundits were calling for Esther Larsen’s head.

At two forty-one that afternoon, she and Suzie took another break. The monitor showed a woman happily applying a stain remover to her children’s clothes. Chuck stepped onto the dais, his shirt rumpled, a pair of headphones slung around his neck, his glasses askew, his hair a mess. He smiled at Esther and handed Suzie a note.

Suzie read it, paled, and passed the page to Esther.

Its impact slowed time. Esther felt the crystalline quality to every frantic heartbeat.

Suzie’s voice shook slightly as she asked, “How do you want to play this?”

“You make the announcement, I’ll comment.”

“Got it.”

“Hang on, there’s more.” Chuck then handed Suzie a second note.

She read it, and offered them both the day’s first smile. She asked the station director, “For real?”

“It’s nice to know this day holds some good news,” Chuck said. “They start the feed at the end of this break.”

Suzie’s first on-air words were, “This is Suzie McManning, coming to you from the newsrooms of WFPX in Charlotte, North Carolina. We are now being carried live nationwide by ABC. So, hello, America. We have just learned that the White House has called a press conference for three o’clock local time, which puts us nineteen minutes out. With me is Esther Larsen, who this morning broke the news of a pending default by the Brazilian government on its national debt. Esther, I think it’s safe to say . . .”

Suzie’s voice trailed off. She had no choice. Jasmine stepped into the camera’s view, her face stricken. She planted her phone on the desk beside Esther’s coffee mug. And stood there. Too broken to realize she was on air.

The phone’s screen carried a message of one word. The single word was all that was required.

Dollars. H.

Esther looked up, said to the camera, “Yes, the White House will confirm the Brazilian event. Yes, this has seismic potential to rock the global markets. But no, this is not the worst that we can expect.”

“Explain to us what that term ‘cascade’ means,” Suzie said.

It was the fourth time Suzie had repeated the word. Esther had used it in the run-up to the announcement by the White House press attaché. The press conference was still under way, and the central wall monitor showed the attaché speaking on C-SPAN. But all attention was now centered on the market’s reaction, which was massive.

Jasmine and their new chief trader were bouncing back and forth now, shifting from the trading stations to Esther’s desk. Esther had never wanted to be a trader, never even imagined that one day she might hold a position similar to Jason’s. But here she was, not just doing so but handling the new duties on air. Live. Nationwide.

She checked Jasmine’s latest note, jotted a swift response, handed it back, then said to the cameras, “Think of an earthquake. Anybody who has been through one knows the first thing that hits is not panic, but questions. First comes the worry of what it is. Then you want to know, are you at the epicenter? Is this the worst or is it stronger somewhere else? And then there are the aftershocks. Will there be a string of quakes, each worse than the last? All the unknowns triggered by the shaking of your world.”

“Cascade,” Suzie repeated for the fifth time.

“Right now, everyone is focused on Brazil. The pundits will talk about how the Dow has dropped another twenty-six hundred points, and the press conference is still ongoing. European aftermarkets trading is further off than the Dow, because their banks are far more deeply invested in instruments of South American national debt. And all the while we are missing the real event. Because what we don’t see is that this is not the epicenter.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Because this is my job. As an analyst I’m paid to see what’s coming next.”

Suzie gave that a beat, then almost whispered the word for the sixth and final time. “Cascade.”

Esther turned and faced the camera directly. “A collective of international banks has gathered together a war chest of eleven billion dollars. They have been lying in wait, secretly preparing for just such a moment. They are not intent upon profiting from events. They are not satisfied to benefit from the resulting downturn. They intend to use this moment while the global markets are teetering on the brink. They are going to blast away the cliff and send our economies tumbling into the abyss.”