Spencer Nast glanced out the right window of the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter as they passed over the Delaware Memorial Bridge just south of Wilmington. Traffic below was heavy and once again he told himself just how glad he was that he wasn’t in that mess with all the nonentities.
For just a brief moment his mind was off the crap CNBC was broadcasting, but then he turned his attention back to the twelve-inch TV monitor in front of him, the sound fed to his headphones.
And nothing was good, starting with the T-bond auction that was in the middle of a gigantic meltdown. “A cataclysm,” one talking head said.
“This is like learning that your solid brick mansion has suddenly started to crumble,” another pundit said.
Gina Sutton, the current White House press secretary, was at the podium in the press room, holding an impromptu news conference in front of two dozen reporters. “The Treasury auction is nothing more than a temporary glitch,” she said with a straight face, and Nast had to admire her composure while telling such a major lie.
“This is the result of China’s debt problem, and very unlikely to recur any time soon,” she said, then turned on her heel and retreated inside the West Wing.
But she was nothing more than a shill, an imbecile, in Nast’s mind, and just about everyone in the press corps knew it.
Of course Sam Kolberg was worse, because he didn’t have the guts to ask the president’s chief economic adviser what not to say before he allowed Gina to open her mouth.
Nast turned back to the small screen. Markets worldwide were tumbling. The Standard & Poor’s 500—which was the prime benchmark index for the U.S. stock market—was down 10 percent. And even bond prices, in addition to Treasury notes, were in a steep nosedive.
The timing couldn’t be better, in Nast’s estimation. Abacus, which would be set loose by the opening bell tomorrow, would kick in about the time that the China mess was likely to surface.
As a plus point, the Treasury auction wipeout couldn’t have come at a better time. He hadn’t thought that something like that would happen this soon, and once again he had to admire Reid Treadwell’s foresight. The man was a genius.
The pilot radioed him: “Sir, your wife has been patched through. Would you take the call?”
Nast’s first reaction was to say Hell no. He didn’t give a damn about her, but the helicopter crew would probably think it was odd, and word would get back to the media—as such things usually did. CNBC and especially ABC hated him, for some reason, and right now he wanted to stay as far below the radar as possible.
“Of course,” he said into his mic.
Mildred came on. “Where are you, Spencer? What is all that noise?”
“I’m in a helicopter on my way back to Washington. What do you want?”
“I’m calling to remind you—again—that Billy’s back, and he’s coming over for dinner. Will you be home in time for cocktails?”
Their son, William, had never been anything more than a lazy, indifferent fool. He was back now from an Outward Bound adventure in some ungodly place like the Rockies, and there was no doubt he would spend the entire evening complaining about the food, the bugs, the rain, and just about everything else. He was the son of the economics adviser to the president of the United States, and he never let anyone forget it.
“I don’t know when I’ll be home,” Nast said.
“Well, we haven’t seen him for the entire summer,” his wife whined. “At least you could make the effort.”
Not seeing his son was a blessing. His SAT scores were subpar, and Nast had pulled a lot of strings just to get the kid into Penn State, let alone Harvard or Yale. His intelligence was on Mildred’s level, which said a lot for the idiot gene being passed along.
“If you’d stop watching the soaps and pay attention to the real world, you’d know that we’re in the middle of a major financial crisis. And I am the chief economics adviser to President Farmer. On top of that I really don’t give a damn about choking down another of your wretched dinners.”
“I’m sorry, Spence, but Bill is our son.”
“For the thousandth time, my fucking name is Spencer, not Spence!”
“I’m sorry—” Mildred began, but Nast broke the connection.
For a long moment or two, he simply sat there, his mind seething. Life was damned unfair, and the problem was that Mildred had never realized that she was a part of the problem, not part of the solution.