Ryan turned for a second to look at his TV. CNN Headline News had just started its thirty-minute cycle with a live shot from the floor of the NYSE. The sound was all the way down, but the commentator was speaking rapidly and her face was not smiling. When he turned back, Gant had his laptop flipped open and was calling up some files.

"How much time do we have for this?" Winston asked.

"Let me worry about that," Jack replied.

31—The How and the What

Treasury Secretary Bosley Fiedler had not allowed himself three consecutive hours of sleep since the return from Moscow, and his stride through the tunnel connecting the Treasury Building with the White House meandered sufficiently to make his bodyguards wonder if he might need a wheelchair soon. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve was hardly in better shape. The two had been conferring, again, in the Secretary's office when the call arrived—Drop everything and come here—peremptory even for somebody like Ryan, who frequently short-circuited the workings of the government. Fiedler started talking even before he walked through the open door. "Jack, in twenty minutes we have a conference call with the central banks of five Euro—who's this?" SecTreas asked, stopping three paces into the room.

"Mr. Secretary, I'm George Winston. I'm president and managing director of—"

"Not anymore. You sold out," Fiedler objected.

"I'm back as of the last rump-board meeting. This is Mark Gant, another of my directors."

"I think we need to listen to what they have to say," Ryan told his two new arrivals. "Mr. Gant, please restart your rain dance."

"Damn it, Jack, I have twenty minutes. Less now," the Secretary of the Treasury said, looking at his watch.

Winston almost snarled, but instead spoke as he would have to another senior trader: "Fiedler, the short version is this: the markets were deliberately taken down by a systematic and highly skillful attack, and I think I can prove that to your satisfaction. Interested?"

The SecTreas blinked very hard. "Why. yes."

"But how…?" the Fed Chairman asked.

"Sit down and we'll show you," Gant said. Ryan made way and the two senior officials took their places on either side of him and his computer, "It started in Hong Kong…"

Ryan walked to his desk, dialed the Secretary's office, and told his secretary to route the conference call to his room in the West Wing. A typical executive secretary, she handled the irregularity better than her boss could ever have done. Gant, Jack saw, was a superb technician, and his second stint at explaining matters was even more efficient than his first. The Secretary and the Chairman were also good listeners who knew the jargon. Questions were not necessary.

"I didn't think something like this was possible," the Chairman said eight minutes into the exposition. Winston handled the response.

"All the safeguards built into the system are designed to prevent accidents and catch crooks. It never occurred to anybody that somebody would pull something like this. Who would deliberately lose so much money?"