“Sure thing.”
Bill turned back to his files. There was suddenly a lot more to do before the Cabinet meeting.
“Bill?”
He looked up at Janice. She seemed a little confused. He knew instinctively it wasn’t about what Tate just told him. “Yeah?”
Janice seemed transfixed for a moment. Then she said, “Never mind. I’ll go get that video.”
“Her or his only request is that you send ten dollars to a charity of your choice. Brian Hopkins has more.”
The picture froze. Hiccock put down the remote on the mirrorlike finish of a Louisiana oak table that once served a tour of duty at Fort McHenry in the officer’s mess. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the painstakingly varnished veneer and proceeded to address the president, Reynolds, and the members of the cabinet in the Situation Room of the White House. “That piece ran two days ago. Since then, over 700,000 people have downloaded this software from the net.”
“This is that day-trading program? The one that watches your portfolio and guards it against any sudden changes?” the president asked.
“Yes, Sir. It reacts like a fighter plane being chased by a missile, making counter moves. It makes minor or major buy and sell orders instantaneously and protects the investor by keeping the value of the portfolio growing.”
“It’s like having a full-time broker/trader instantly reacting to every market, everywhere in the world,” the Secretary of the Treasury said.
“So I should get this?” the press secretary said, half-jokingly.
Hiccock supplied more background. “Leading brokerage houses have spent millions trying to develop a program like this.”
“And some yahoo is giving it away free?” Reynolds could not believe it.
“And now, Mr. President, the markets are virtually frozen. No one can make a move without some hundred thousand computers instantly countering it,” the Secretary of the Treasury grimly reported.
“They plug in their computer warriors and the whole damn thing works so fast and so accurately that to the outside world it appears frozen,” the president said.
“The panic has started, and I fear we are on the verge of something that will make the Crash of ’29 look like a mere glitch,” the Secretary of Commerce said.
The president turned to Bill. “Is this now part of your Operation Quarterback investigation?”
“I think it is, Sir. There is more than one way to attack a country. I’d like to ask Vincent DeMayo, my leading computer expert, to explain.” Hiccock gestured for Kronos to come to the head of the table.
“It’s a friggin’ beautiful idea! Give away the hack code! Make every greedy day-trading son-of-a-bitch out there a hacker. Make them unwitting accomplices. Imagine locking up the entire friggin’ stock market. I wish I’d a thought of that shit!”
Hiccock snapped to the side of Kronos. “That’ll be all, Mr. DeMayo.”
“My time is your time, Hick,” Kronos said with a grin.
“Your time is federal time, Vincent.”
The president broke in. “How is it that the FBI and NSA, hell, the SEC haven’t come to this conclusion?”
“They don’t think the same way as Mr. Hiccock, Sir,” Reynolds said.
“Or as fast,” the president added. “So why don’t we just unplug the computers?”
“There’s about five trillion in wealth directly controlled by the computers and now frozen,” the Secretary of the Treasury said. “Most or all of it would be lost instantly. Some of that might come back in a few weeks or months but the impact to the economy would be disastrous. I am afraid, Mr. President, that in this instance, a frozen market is better than complete financial chaos.”
“The genius of the attack, from a purely scientific angle,” Hiccock said, “is that the lock on the system is the individual investor. Once he or she uses the program to protect their assets, they can’t stop using it, because the instant they do, the other investors’ programs will snap up the slack and they’ll lose everything.”
“So I get to deliver the bad news?”
“You go on the air in twenty minutes, Mr. President.” Reynolds tapped his watch and continued. “Your speech will ask for calm … explain how this is an adjustment, the market catching up to technology, that sort of thing. You’ll announce a plan that will give major institutional investors two weeks to suspend computer trading at their own safe rate. At the end, you’ll urge the public to stop trading online.”
President Mitchell glanced down at the report. “How could this have happened?”
“Greed, Sir,” Hiccock said. “Enough to go around.”
Marvin Weitterman could not believe his luck; the Secretary of the Treasury had called him personally, actually pressured him, to appear on the show today. Since Marvin’s mother didn’t raise no dummy, it took him all of one second to accede to the secretary’s request. He knew he was being used by the White House to get out their spin but, at the same time, he was sure to squeeze in a few good questions. “So it’s your opinion then, Mr. Secretary, that the nation should not be alarmed.”
“Marvin, I think if we all pull together and back away slowly from computer trading, we’ll go back to a normal healthy market in very short order.”
“Yes, but people are throwing themselves out of windows because their money is in some sort of machine-to-machine tug of war, frozen — locked up!” That should make the sound bites on the nightly news.
“Last night the president asked for calm and full voluntary cooperation from the day-trading public.” The secretary addressed the camera to talk directly to John Q. “I am confident the people of the United States will put their country ahead of any profit that might conceivably be gained at this time.”
The next day’s Wall Street Journal headline read “INVESTORS NOT LETTING GO OF COMPUTER TRADING.” Every other paper across the nation chimed in with variations on the theme: “PEOPLE ARE NOT LETTING GO OF COMPUTER TRADING”—“BILLIONS BEING LOST AS NO ONE LETS GO”— “NO ONE WANTS TO BE THE FIRST TO LOSE.” There was the classic New York Post’s “DAY-TRAITORS TO FEDS: SCREW YOU.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“If he wants to see my bare chest in his film, then I want to see sixteen million in my account, Myron. Hell, I didn’t do a nude scene for ‘art’s’ sake back when I was doing Indies. I am certainly not going to do it for less than eight million a boob today!” Shari Saks picked up and considered biting into one of the organically grown carrot crudités that automatically appeared in her Beverly Hills mansion every day.
On the other end of the phone, Myron Weisberg, agent to the stars, sat peering through his door to the outer office at International Creative Agency and caught the eye of his assistant, who, as always, was listening in on his conversations via headset and taking notes. He adjusted his posture forward as the leather on the seat of his chair responded with an ungracious sound. He zeroed in on his thoughts and drilled them through the receiver to the “star” at the other end. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, baby. These days everybody is showing everything … right on television! But this director, Graham Houser, he’s a hot ticket, darling. He waltzed from Sundance to Cannes to the goddamned best-picture Oscar! This guy is on a roll and you, my dear girl, could see an Oscar as well.”
Myron set his chin. He waited for her to comment, and when she came up for air he jumped in, not allowing her to speak, “Shari, Shari, Shari, boobalah, we’re talking Best Picture here. I can smell Best Actress, I can smell it!” He tapped his nose even though Shari couldn’t see him. It kept him in the moment.