"The time estimate came in last night," the Fed Chairman was saying now. "They need a week. But we don't really have a week. This afternoon we're meeting with all the heads of the big houses. We're going to try and…"

The problem is that there are no records, Jack thought. Everything's frozen in place because there are no records to tell people what they own, how much money they…

"Europe is paralyzed, too…" Fiedler was talking now, while Ryan stared down at the carpet. Then he looked up:

"If you don't write it down, it never happened."

Conversation in the room stopped, and Jack saw that he might as well have said, The crayon is purple.

"What?" the Fed Chairman asked.

"My wife—that's what she says. 'If you don't write it down, then it never happened.' " He looked around. They still didn't understand. Which wasn't overly surprising, as he was still developing the thought himself. "She's a doc, too, George, at Hopkins, and she always has this damned little notebook with her, and she's always stopping dead in her tracks to take it out and make a note because she doesn't trust her memory."

"My brother's the same way. He uses one of those electronic things," Winston said. Then his eyeballs went out of focus. "Keep going."

"There are no records, no really official records of any of the transactions, are there?" Jack went on. Fiedler handled the answer.

"No. Depository Trust Company crashed for fair. And as I just said, it'll take—"

"Forget that. We don't have the time, do we?"

That depressed SecTreas again. "No, we can't stop it."

"Sure we can." Ryan looked at Winston. "Can't we?"

President Durling had been covering the snippets of conversation like a spectator at a tennis match, and the stress of the situation had placed a short fuse on his temper. "What the hell are you people talking about?"

Ryan almost had it now. He turned to his President. "Sir, it's simple. We say it never happened. We say that after noon on Friday, the exchanges simply stopped functioning. Now, can we get away with that?" Jack asked. He didn't give anyone a chance to answer, however. "Why not? Why can't we get away with it? There are no records to prove that we're wrong. Nobody can prove a single transaction from twelve noon on, can they?"

"With all the money that everyone lost," Winston said, his mind catching up rapidly, "it won't look all that unattractive. You're saying we restart …Friday, maybe, Friday at noon…just wipe out the intervening week, right?"

"But nobody will buy it," the Fed Chairman observed.