7:12 A.M.
767 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY
Kara Winikoff stepped into the kitchen. She went to the toaster oven and opened it, took out a toasted bagel, put it on a plate, buttered it, put apricot jam on it, and handed it to her daughter, Chloe.
Winikoff was dressed in a tight-fitting dark green wool and cashmere Chanel suit, with subtle pinstripes in yellow, red, and blue. Winikoff had bought the stylish suit at Bergdorf Goodman with part of her bonus her first year at Goldman Sachs. There were classmates of hers from HBS who made more, but not many. Her expertise was sought-after. In addition to understanding the basic financial underpinnings of the world economy, Winikoff, when she made managing director at Goldman at age twenty-seven, also understood the complex electronic grid that connected the global economy, the digital checks and balances of the world’s wealth. Winikoff’s knowledge plumbed the depths of the basic system underpinning the world economy; understood the electro-digital plumbing that connected banks and governments with the Federal Reserve, as well as the languages that connected it all into a securitized central framework with other countries, all of it undergirded by credit, represented digitally.
“I have to go, sweetie,” said Winikoff, leaning down and kissing Chloe on the forehead. “I love you. Good luck with your piano today. Daddy will be there.”
“Why can’t you come to my recital, Mom?”
“You know why,” said Winikoff. “I’ll see you tonight.”
At thirty-one, Winikoff had been approached by the chairman of Goldman Sachs, John Hunt. She had met Hunt only twice before, even though he was technically her boss. Hunt asked her to come to his office suite on the penthouse floor of the Goldman skyscraper.
Hunt pointed to a pair of long white leather sofas facing each other in the corner.
“Thanks for coming, Kara.”
“Am I in trouble?” she said. “Are you firing me?”
Hunt grinned, shaking his head no.
“In a way, yes,” said Hunt.
“What do you mean, in a way, yes?”
“You’re leaving Goldman Sachs,” said Hunt.
“I love it here.”
“I received a call today from Matt Labretton, the secretary of the Treasury. They would like you to be one of the four governors of the Federal Reserve.”
Winikoff sat back with a blank, slightly shocked expression on her face.
The governors were the individuals who managed Fedwire, the electronic financial grid of the United States. She didn’t know how they did it, but she’d built a career on spotting their moves just after the moves were made. Now, she was being asked—in a way, ordered—to take on a job she knew was more important than most jobs, even in the upper echelons of government, perhaps second only to the president if importance was measured in power.
“You’ve made more than a hundred million dollars in the last six years,” said Hunt. “I don’t have to do this but you deserve it: you’ll receive severance of another hundred million. I’m very proud of you, Kara. We all are. You’re the first governor I’ve ever met. There are things more important than Goldman Sachs.”
After saying good-bye to Chloe, Kara walked outside to a waiting sedan. When she climbed in, a figure in a black ski mask was seated in the back seat. A handgun, in hands covered by black gloves, was trained at her arrival and before she could react she heard the low thwap of the bullet. She knew it hit her chest, her heart, but didn’t feel any pain. She just knew she was being killed.
The man yanked her into the sedan and pushed her corpse to the floor. He removed his ski mask and gloves. He climbed out of the other door in the back seat and then climbed into the driver’s seat. He drove down Park Avenue until he was at Fifty-sixth Street, then took a right and drove until he saw a parking garage within a few blocks of his destination.
He descended a floor then parked in the first space he could find. He climbed over the seat and removed a plastic bag. He took a pair of wire cutters from his pocket and cut off her left thumb at the knuckle and put it in the plastic bag. He reached for her head and carefully inserted the tip of the blade into the side of her right eye and popped the eyeball out. He cut the tendrils, nerves, muscles, and veins connecting the eyeball to her head and dropped it into the bag.
The back seat, his hands, her face, all of it was covered in blood.
He took a roll of paper towels and wiped his face of any blood spatters, checked his weapons, pulled off the gloves, and opened the door.
He took the stairs to the ground floor of the parking garage and went right, falling into a human mass of people on their way to work. As he walked with the swarms of people through Midtown Manhattan, he looked for the building itself, anonymous-looking but tall, looming in steel and glass:
The United States Federal Reserve.