Dammerman showed up at Treadwell’s office, his fleshy face downcast. “We’ve got a problem, Mr. T,” he said, closing the glass door behind him.
“Christ, is Whalen back?”
“No, and this is ten times as bad. It’s going to hit the news any minute now, and I thought you’d want to be prepared. The media’s bound to come calling for you to make a statement.”
Treadwell slumped back in his seat. He’d spent the last hour or so appeasing several board members and a number of important clients who were worried about the way the market had taken a dump just before the closing bell.
“What’s it mean?” had been the common refrain.
“Hold on, we’re on top of it,” had been his reply.
But now Dammerman’s warning that something even worse was coming at them—at him personally—wasn’t something he wanted to hear. “What is it this time, Clyde?”
“Farmer just fired Spencer Nast.”
Treadwell sat bolt upright, as if he’d just received a high-voltage shock. “What the hell for?”
“The official version is that Spence resigned because he wants to spend more time with his family.”
“He hates his wife and kid,” Treadwell said. “Have you talked to him?”
“He texted me about it, and said he wants to talk to you as soon as possible.”
“This is a goddamn disaster, or it will be if the idiot opens his mouth to the wrong people to save his own ass,” Treadwell said. He called his secretary. “Ash, get me Spence.”
Spencer Nast sat on a park bench in Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, unable to grasp what had just happened to him. Tourists were peering through the fence, hoping to get a glimpse of the president or someone else important, but it seemed like they were from another planet, another galaxy.
White-shirted security people had escorted him out of the building and down the driveway to the Northwest Appointments Gate. His office in the Eisenhower Building would be inventoried, and anything belonging to him, and not the government, would be returned as soon as practicable.
Farmer had told him to get the hell out of his sight in front of Miller and Nichols. “You no longer work for me because I don’t trust you.”
Kolberg had hustled him out of the Roosevelt Room, where a pair of security officers were waiting to escort him past West Wing staffers who looked up as he passed and then either averted their gaze or openly grinned. The walk had been more than humiliating.
Sitting now, trying to work out his options, he was mostly at a loss. The only things that really mattered were the Abacus deal and his position at BP. But he wasn’t sure of anything.
His cell phone chimed, and he picked up. It was Treadwell, who didn’t sound happy.
“What the hell happened, for Christ’s sake? I counted on you to shield us from anything that might come our way from your end down there.”
“Nothing I could do about it, Reid,” Nast said. “Apparently Betty called Farmer and warned him that you were up to no good. He believed her, and he’s convinced that I’m still more loyal to you and BP than I am to him. I tried to tell him that wasn’t the case, but he didn’t believe me.”
“Jesus, is that all?”
“It’s Don Pennington. I talked to him about the Treasury secretary’s job, and he evidently called Farmer to find out if I had been telling the truth. I never thought the moron would be so stupid as that, but Farmer threw it in my face as well.”
“You told me that you had him in the bag,” Treadwell said. “What else have you screwed up?”
“I can still be useful, Reid. I know all the players down here, and we still need to cover our asses after opening bell in the morning. I know which buttons to push, and I’m capable of pushing them.”
“You fucked up, Spence.”
“Things that can’t be predicted sometimes go wrong,” Nast said. He wasn’t going to bring up Betty telling the president that she’d overheard them at the Kittredge this morning talking about Abacus.
The only thing he could do now was wait until the virus did its job, and he’d be home free.
“That’s what you were supposed to cover for us.”
“You’re still going to need me as your chief economist, and I have my portion of Abacus.”
“I’ll get back to you on both of those possibilities,” Treadwell said. “But now get the fuck off the phone, I’ve got some fires to put out up here. Shit that you were supposed to take care of, genius.”
The phone went dead, and Nast hunched over in despair, letting it slip out of his hand and fall to the ground. He began to cry, something he hadn’t done since he was a child. Everything he had worked for, everything that meant anything to him, was gone, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
A man, obviously homeless, with a small cardboard sign that read GOD BLESS YOU, walked past. “Hey, brother,” he said to Nast. “It could be worse. You could be me.”
Nast looked up, took a five-dollar bill out of his pocket, and gave it to the man.
“God bless.”
Treadwell had put the call on speakerphone so that Dammerman could hear. They looked at each other. “The goddamn fool.”
“Look on the bright side, Mr. T. The market is down twenty percent today, trading suspended. The shorts you and I made through the Caribbean banks are paying off big-time. And when Abacus kicks in at opening bell tomorrow, we’ll hit the jackpot.”
Treadwell nodded, but his stomach was in a knot. “With Betty on our ass, and now Farmer—who never had any qualms about taking my money—on board the witch hunt, we have to watch our step.”
“They didn’t even give the bank a second look after we made that great short in ’08. The pols huffed and puffed, but no charges were ever filed.”
“It might be different if this creates another Great Depression.”
“Nobody can trace Abacus back to us. The Whalen boyfriend can’t prove a thing. And his girlfriend has disappeared along with the flash drive antidote. Problem solved.”
“No unauthorized personnel will be allowed inside this building until after opening bell. I want Butch to be perfectly clear. It’s all hands on deck starting right now.”
Dammerman nodded.
“I want your men armed.”
“Done. But in the meantime, what about Spence? I don’t think we should give him a dime.”
“We wouldn’t want him to turn state’s evidence.”
Dammerman shrugged. “Accidents happen.”
Treadwell turned away. He had a bitch of a headache coming on, something a couple of aspirin wasn’t going to make go away.
“By this time tomorrow we’ll have the world by the balls,” Dammerman said. “If Washington wants the economy to keep going, it will need Burnham Pike to help finance the recovery. The only investment bank that didn’t go up in flames.”
Treadwell was lost in his thoughts and didn’t reply. Too much could still go wrong.
“The funny thing is, Nast thinks I’m his friend. But I was never able to stand the sanctimonious son of a bitch.”
The flat-screen television on the wall across from Treadwell’s desk was tuned to CNBC. He glanced at it as the talking heads were in the middle of a discussion of how the widespread market carnage was due in a large part to the failure of the Treasury bond auction plus the bank turmoil brewing in China.
The television program switched to Gina Sutton, the White House press secretary, who was announcing that the president’s economic adviser, Spencer Nast, had resigned to spend more time with his family. But she turned and left, taking no questions.
“Everyone knows that was a crock of shit,” Dammerman said. “No one resigns from anything to spend more time with their family. And the typical visual would have been for the president to appear with Spence, telling everyone about how much the guy contributed and how much he would be missed.”
Treadwell looked away from the television. “What if they arrest Nast, and he turns on us in exchange for leniency?”
“Then we’re cooked.”
“Nast has to vanish. Clear?”
“Consider it done, Mr. T,” Dammerman said.