4

 

THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, MANHATTAN

Special Agent Ange Wilkie sat demurely in the gray skirt suit she wore in a doomed attempt to blend in and enjoyed the floorshow. Her new boss strode the conference room declaiming to his team, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows as if ready for a fight. With his musical, rich tenor voice and obvious passion he sounded like an old-style, hellfire preacher.

“To those of you who might be tempted to think that we have the insider traders running scared after our successful prosecution of Raj Rajaratnam and his merry band of tipsters, remember this: no amount of money is ever enough. Human greed has not gone away. Many of those in the corrupt networks of tipsters and traders are already supremely wealthy and privileged, with, you might think, little to gain and everything to lose by breaking the law.

“Raj the Rat was a billionaire. Still not enough for him,” thundered Commissioner Troy Bergers. He paused, leaned his muscled arms on the table, dropped his voice, eyed each of the ten people in the room in turn, made them all feel special. And meant it.

With his extravagantly broken nose and pugnacious manner, Bergers had a gladiatorial air and would not have looked out of place in the Coliseum in a leather skirt. Agent Wilkie pondered her boss. Preacher, fighter, Holy Warrior? She narrowly suppressed a giggle, glanced round to check—no one had noticed. They hadn’t. They only had eyes for Bergers.

It was obvious his team adored him. He was one of those rare people who, via some indefinable quality, made you feel safe. You felt damn lucky to have him on your side. There was integrity and honesty in his eyes, but also a determination to do the right thing, come what may.

But Ange had heard he could play the political game too, that he was wily and sly when he needed to be. Ange was thrilled to have been seconded onto his team. What Bergers didn’t fully realize yet was that he had acquired himself a fellow zealot. Ange tuned back in.

“To bring these people down,” Bergers declaimed, “we need to understand their mentality. We need to get under their skin. They combine greed with a sense of invulnerability. They are the elite. They are the privileged. No one can touch them. Or else they think they are the small, invisible cog who just happens to have access to price–sensitive information. Too small for anyone to bother with. And they want a taste of what the big guys have.”

Bergers was on a crusade, and looking round. Ange saw that everyone in the room joined him in it. A company of zealots, she mused. This was gonna be fun.

“But for all of them,” Bergers continued, “it’s not just about the money. It’s about winning the game, it’s about being the player left standing with the biggest pile of chips on the table. And make no mistake, insider trading is not an isolated aberration. We pick up unusual trading patterns preceding thirty percent of mergers and acquisition activity. It’s rife, people. It contaminates the financial system. It is my intention to eradicate it. Zero tolerance. It starts here. I have brought in two extra FBI agents from the New York and New Jersey field offices: Special Agent Wilkie and Special Agent Rodgers.”

Ange and her colleague, Pete Rodgers, smiled and raised hands in greeting.

The table smiled back at the tall, handsome woman whose crisp red bob and mischievous grin made her look much younger than her forty-four years, and her younger, wearier and barrel-like male colleague with pallid skin and deep dark rings under his eyes. His thick, dark hair with the premature streaks of gray at the temples earned him the nickname of Rac, short for raccoon, care of Agent Wilkie. Rodgers was thirty-three, but the birth six weeks ago of his and his wife’s first child and the sleepless nights that followed made him feel ninety.

“They are targeting Ronald Glass,” continued Bergers. “You might remember him from the Raja file. His name cropped up again and again, but we had no hard evidence on him. Special Agents Wilkie and Rodgers are here to change that. Judge Bustillo has approved a workplace wiretap—”

“Yay!” called out one listener. Handclaps rang out.

Bergers smiled, revealing predatory-white teeth. “And Special Agents Wilkie and Rodgers will have the enviable task of listening to his calls all day long.”

“Why’re we so keen on this one guy?” asked another of the team.

“Because I think the very well-connected and exceedingly ambitious Mr. Glass is part of a much bigger network. He’s a corrupt modern-day Samson. We bring him down, offer him twenty years inside or the opportunity to cooperate, we bring down the whole corrupt temple.”

Amen to that, thought Ange.