"A noble gesture," Servien said, aloud. "Keep it as a souvenir, young Leon."
"As the marquis says," Leon demurred, accepting the face-saving formula to avoid having to redeem his note in cash.
Mazarin turned to Her Majesty, who was smiling broadly, her eyes glinting. "Your Majesty brought me luck tonight," he said. "Allow me to share it with the royal lady who brought me the boon." He grabbed a double handful of coins, worth a couple of thousand at a guess since most of the coins were livres tournois, and offered them. He was flushed with the win, and it simply seemed-right.
"Handsomely done, Your Eminence," she said, "But your winning hand-I see a king and a knave. You did not play a queen?" Her smile turned impish.
"The night is yet young, Your Majesty."
A Trip to Amsterdam
Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett
When the news that Haarlem had fallen and Amsterdam would be under siege inside a week reached Henry Dreeson, the first thing he did was insist that the news not be leaked for as long as possible. The second thing he did was call in Horace Bolender of the Department of Economic Resources, Treasury Secretary Tony Adducci and Coleman Walker at the Fed to ask them what they thought the effect would be.
"The guilder will go through the floor," Tony answered. "The dollar will go through the roof. Remember the bubble in February? Well, this will be worse. We could hit a dollar per guilder. If that happens, we can just kiss the boom goodbye, because no one in Germany will have enough money to buy anything we sell."
"So we put more dollars out," Horace said. "Besides, the dollar rising isn't all bad. Imports would be a lot cheaper that way."
"Until something happens to threaten the faith the down-time Germans have in the miraculous American dollar," Coleman answered, coming to his feet. "Damn it, Horace, we have to have at least something approaching enough product to support the dollar or we're just another corrupt principality minting money to pay our debts. The Germans aren't dumb, for God's sake. They give us some trust because of the Ring of Fire, but that trust won't last through even slight inflation of the dollar. You can measure the amount of silver in a German coin, but you can't measure faith. It's either there or it ain't."
"All right, Coleman," Dreeson said, trying to calm everyone. "We'll get though this. What do we need to keep the worst from happening?"
"Someone is going to have to buy guilders, a whole lot of guilders. It will have to be enough guilders to keep the price up, and it can't be the bank that does it," Coleman answered, falling back into his chair. "Under these circumstances, if the bank started buying them, people would assume that we're trying to hold the price up and the selling frenzy would just increase. People would be afraid they would still have guilders when I put on the brakes and let the guilder fall. They'd be right, too. We can't buy all the guilders in Grantville and we certainly can't buy all the guilders in Germany. It has to be someone, preferably several people, we can trust. They have to have the money, and they need to be people known for doing well. Other people need to believe that they're buying guilders because they believe that the guilder will come back."
"Fine," Henry answered. "Who do you think it should be?"
"I can think of maybe fifty people that either have enough money or have control of enough money. Unfortunately, I don't trust most of them."
Horace snorted at that. It was a well known fact that Coleman Walker didn't trust anyone.
"Get David Bartley to do it," Tony suggested. "Sarah Wendell would work too, 'cept her dad works for us. The down-timers think the Sewing Circle have some sort of a magic touch."
"He won't do it," Coleman said. "The Bartley boy refused to use OPM funds to bail out his grandma and every one knows it. There is no way he would use OPM funds for this. It's too risky. I can't fault his fiduciary responsibility, but in this case it makes him useless."
"What about having him use our money?" Henry asked.
"Maybe, but if we do that, the Fed will probably take a loss this year," Coleman answered. "Can the government afford the loss of thirty million or more dollars? For this? Especially considering that it may not work."
Henry Dreeson was silent for almost a minute. Then he said, "I'll set it up. Expect a call this evening with the details."
The guilder was falling from the opening bell. That was expected but it was falling a bit faster than it should have. David wondered if the news had leaked to certain people ahead of time. He spent the morning watching the market, doing school assignments at a table near the trading floor, and quietly drinking cocoa. He hadn't developed a taste for coffee. When the guilder hit $45, he would start buying. He had to wait to make it look like he was buying guilders because he wanted them, not because he was trying to save them. He had to sell people on the idea that guilders were still worth something.
The news hit the floor around noon. Amsterdam was either under siege now, or would be within days. The evidence was fairly good that, at least for the present, Amsterdam was unlikely to be taken. On the other hand, who would have believed a month ago that the Dutch fleet would be routed and mostly destroyed? The money on deposit in the Wisselbank was safe, for the moment, but how long would it remain safe?
The guilder started to drop faster. Just a little at first, as the news filtered onto the floor. Then, it really started to fall. $53 to the guilder was not followed by $52.90 but by $52.00. Next, the price was $50 to the guilder.
Then a surprising thing happened. Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein started buying guilders. True, he was buying them with Ferdinand's new silver-backed bank notes, but considering that Amsterdam was under siege, those notes were starting to look like a good deal to a lot of people.
The price of the guilders started to drop a little slower and, oddly enough, the Holy Roman notes started to rise a bit. There was something the notes could buy outside of the Holy Roman Empire, after all. This would have been fine with David, except that the guilder was still dropping against the dollar.
When the guilder hit $45, David stood up. Over the last couple of years David Bartley had gone from short and skinny to tall and skinny. His new height made him noticeable, but he still felt like he looked like a geek. Here in this room, though, people were judged by their bank balances more than by anything else. Here, David Bartley was imposing.
Trading continued. The guilder continued to drop, but people were watching him. He could see and feel it. As he stepped to the floor he made a "come here" gesture. The gesture meant "I'm buying at the last offer." The last offer had been $39 to the guilder. David was mobbed, but he kept making the gesture.
For almost an hour people sold guilders and he and Karl bought them. The price hit $37.50 to the guilder. Finally, slowly, people began to hesitate.
Why were they buying? What did they know? David could hear the murmurs. The price was holding.
David made a bid on some of the Wisselbank notes that Karl had bought, but he shook his head. David was buying, but Karl wasn't selling. Some of the players noticed. The price of guilders started to rise. David kept buying, so did Karl.
David Bartley spent twenty-seven million dollars in the space of about two hours. It was twenty-seven million dollars that wasn't his, but very few people knew that. Still, the guilder closed at $47.50 to the dollar. Smiling like he knew something no one else knew, David went back to his table and finished his cocoa.
Karl walked over to David and asked, "I know why I was buying, but why were you?"
"Maybe we ought to have a talk," said David, and led Karl to the room Sarah was using to watch the show. They had not wanted people to think that the government was exerting influence through Sarah's parents. From the prince's expression, keeping Sarah out of sight had been the right move.