Dammerman came barreling into Treadwell’s office at the same moment Ashley buzzed to say the COO was on his way.
Treadwell motioned for him to close the door.
“The Russians are set to rock and roll—” Dammerman said, but then he stopped short. “What’s wrong?”
“I just got off the phone with Seymour. He said he heard Julia bring up Abacus on the floor this morning, and he wondered what it was.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I said I had no idea what he was talking about, but I’d talk to Julia later today and maybe she could jog my memory.”
“She’s got a fucking big mouth.”
“No problem, trust me. But Betty Ladd could be a problem, at least in the short term. She and Seymour had a chat about us going to cash, and she warned him that if we were protecting our own positions without doing the same for our clients, we could go down.”
“She’s got a hard-on for you.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Treadwell said. He buzzed his secretary.”Give Betty Ladd a call, tell her I’d like to have a little talk in her office sometime this morning.”
“Will do,” she said, and Treadwell hung up.
“She’s not going to want to meet you face-to-face, given your history. Just give her a call. Unless you think she still has the hots for you.”
“I said I’ll take care of it, Clyde. Now, what about the Russians? Are they one hundred percent?”
“Butch dug them up, and he knows the score. They’re good. Anyway, they remind me of the wiseguys I grew up with in Queens.”
Butch Hardy had been a tough cop, about as corrupt as they came, and Treadwell had hired him on Dammerman’s advice.
“Will they handle the problem with Cassy Levin as well?”
“They’re outsourcing it to some Russian mob hard cases out in Brighton Beach.”
“The Spetsnaz guys will be out of the country before noon tomorrow, but the locals might be traced, and it could come back to us.”
“These guys are good, and we’re paying them two mil to make sure her mouth stays shut.”
“It should have been part of the original deal.”
“We didn’t know enough about what the woman was up to when Butch hired the demolition crew.”
“The extra two mil comes out of your pocket,” Treadwell said.
Dammerman chuckled. “After tomorrow I’ll be able to afford it. Bykov vouches for the shooters, and so does Butch. So let’s just play it as it lays.”
“Are we sure we even need to go that far?” Treadwell asked. “Are we sure that Cassy can stop us?”
“Julia has her doubts. She thinks that no one can crack her program, especially after the Amsterdam nerds spiced it up. But just in case she can, I say let’s eliminate the problem permanently. Cassy Levin disappears. Has an accident, ends up in the East River with all the other trash.”
“What about family, maybe friends who might miss her?”
“She’s got her young pal working with her downstairs, but she’s the real brains.”
“Do we need to make him disappear as well?”
Dammerman spread his hands. “I don’t think it’s necessary. One of our people ending up in the East River we can get away with, but two who’ve worked side by side would be too much of a stretch.”
“I don’t want any of this coming back at us,” Treadwell said. He was more concerned about this issue than Schneider’s bringing up Abacus, or Betty Ladd taking a shot across their bow.
“Cassy Levin might have the chops to stop the virus, but her pal Donni Imani sure the hell doesn’t,” Dammerman said. “Abacus goes into the system before opening bell tomorrow, and the shit will hit the fan globally, making us the heroes. The rich heroes. BP corners the market. Reid Treadwell—Robin Hood and Sir Galahad rolled into one.”
“I suggest that you make some side bets. I will.”
“You mean short the market? Already done,” Dammerman said.
“I put ten mil to short a bunch of S&P 500 EFTs through one of my banks in the islands.”
“I did the same with twenty mil.”
“You son of a bitch,” Treadwell said with a sort of backhanded admiration. His COO was rough around the edges but cunning.
Treasury had cracked down several years ago on offshore accounts because wealthy Americans used them to avoid paying taxes. Major banks in important nations like Switzerland, which had sheltered these secret money stashes, had gone along with the new rules. But banks in places like Hong Kong and Panama had given Treasury nothing more than lip service.
Treadwell and Dammerman were using money from those island accounts to wager that the entire market would plummet. The banks furnished phantom investors to do the trades. Basically they were borrowing shares of investment pools, called exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, that held the stocks of the S&P 500, which covered 70 percent of the U.S. market.
They would sell the borrowed ETF shares, wait for the S&P 500 to tumble, then buy back the shares at the much lower level. Their profit would be the difference between the higher price they sold for and the lower price they paid to reclaim the shares.
“O’Connell doesn’t know how to do short, and she’s too worried about her nerds downstairs. And Nast is under the microscope in D.C., and doesn’t dare,” Dammerman said. “More for us.”
Treadwell’s secretary buzzed. “Ms. Ladd will meet with you at 1792 right now,” she said. “And…”
“And what, Ash?”
“She wanted me to tell you something else.”
“Yes?”
“She said that she was going to cut off your balls and shove them down your throat.”