Debt Of Honor by Clancy, Tom

another thirty minutes to catch up, offering the illusion of Further activity

while the people on the floor looked at one another, mostly in silence, stand-

ing on a wood floor so covered with paper slips as to give the appearance of

snow. It was a Friday, they all told themselves. Tomorrow was Saturday.

Everyone would be at home. Everyone would have a chance to take a few

deep breaths and think. That’s all that had to happen, really, just a little

thought. None of it made sense. A whole lot of people had been badly hurt,

but the market would bounce back, and over time those with the wit and the

courage to stand fast would get it all back. //, they told themselves, if every-

one used the time intelligently, and if nothing else crazy happened.

They were almost right.

At the Depository Trust Company, people sat about with ties loose in their

collars, and made frequent trips to the restrooms because of all the coffee

and soda they’d drunk on this most frantic of afternoons, but there was some

blessing to be had. The market had closed early, and so they could start their

work early. With the inputs from the major trading centers concluded, the

computers switched from one mode of operation to another. The taped re-

cordings of the day’s transactions were run through the machines for colla-

tion and transmission. It was close to six in the evening when a bell sounded

on one of the workstations.

“Rick, I’ve got a problem here!”

Rick Bernard, the senior system controller, came over and looked at the

screen to see the reason for the alert bell.

The last trade they could identify, at exactly noon of that day, was for

Atlas Milacron, a machine-tool company flying high with orders from the

auto companies, six thousand shares at 48^. Since Atlas was listed on the

New York Stock Exchange, its stock was identified by a three-letter

acronym, AMN in this case. NASDAQ issues used four-letter groups.

The next notation, immediately after AMN 6000 481A, was AAA 4000

67 Vfc, and the one under that AAA 9000 51V4. In fact, by scrolling down, all

entries made after 12:00:01 showed the same three-letter, meaningless iden-

tifier.

“Switch over to Beta,” Bernard said. The storage tape on the first backup

computer system was opened. “Scroll down.”

“Shit!”

In five minutes all six systems had been checked. In every case, every

single trade had been recorded as gibberish. There was no readily accessible

record for any of the trades made after twelve noon. No trading house, insti-

tution, or private investor could know what it had bought or sold, to or from

whom, or for how much, and none could therefore know how much money

was available for other trades, or for that matter, to purchase groceries over

the weekend.

20

Strike Three

The party broke up after midnight. The official entertainment was a sort of

ballet-in-the-round. The Bolshoy hadn’t lost its magic, and the configuration

of the room allowed the guests to see the dancers at much closer hand than

had ever been possible, but finally the last hand had been clapped red and

hurt from the encores, and it was time for security personnel to help their

charges to the door. Nearly everyone had a roll to his or her walk, and sure

enough, Ryan saw, he was the most sober person in the room, including his

wife.

“What do you think, Daga?” Ryan asked Special Agent Helen D’Agus-

tino. His own bodyguard was getting coats.

“I think, just once, I’d like to be able to party with the principals.” Then

she shook her head like a parent disappointed with her children.

“Oh, Jack, tomorrow I’m going to feel awful,” Cathy reported. The

vodka here was just too smooth.

“I told you, honey. Besides,” her husband added nastily, “it’s already

tomorrow.”

“Excuse me, I have to help with JUMPER.” Which was the Secret Service

code name for the President, a tribute to his paratrooper days.

Ryan was surprised to see an American in ordinary business attire-the

formal dinner had been black-tie, another recent change in the Russian social

scene-waiting outside the doors. He led his wife over that way.

“What is it?”

“Dr. Ryan, I need to see the President right away.”

“Cathy, could you stay here for a second.” To the embassy official:

“Follow me.”

“Oh, Jack …” his wife griped.

“You have it on paper?” Ryan asked, holding his hand out.

“Here, sir.” Ryan took the fax sheets and read them while walking across

the room.

“Holy shit. Come on.” President Durling was still chatting with President

Grushavoy when Ryan appeared with the junior man in his wake.

“Some party, Jack,” Roger Durling observed pleasantly. Then his face

changed. “Trouble?”

Ryan nodded, adopting his Advisor’s face. “We need Brett and Buzz,

Mr. President, right now.”

“There they are.” The SPY-iD radar on Mutsu painted the forward edge of

the American formation on the raster screen. Rear Admiral-Shoho-Sato

looked at his operations officer with an impassive expression that meant

nothing to the rest of the bridge crew but quite a bit to the Captain-Issa-

who knew what Exercise DATELINE PARTNERS was really all about. Now it

was time to discuss the matter with the destroyer’s commanding officer. The

two formations were 140 nautical miles apart and would rendezvous in the

late afternoon, the two officers thought, wondering how Mutsu’s CO would

react to the news. Not that he had much choice in the matter.

Ten minutes later, a Socho, or chief petty officer, went out on deck to

check out the Mark 68 torpedo launcher on the port side. First opening the

inspection hatch on the base of the mount, he ran an electronic diagnostic

test on all three “fish” in the three-tube launcher. Satisfied, he secured the

hatch, and one by one opened the aft hatches on each individual tube, remov-

ing the propeller locks from each Mark 50 torpedo. The Socho was a twenty-

year veteran of the sea, and completed the task in under ten minutes. Then he

lifted his tools and walked over to the starboard side to repeat it for the iden-

tical launcher on the other side of his destroyer. He had no idea why he had

been ordered to perform the tasks, and hadn’t asked.

Another ten minutes and Mutsu went to flight quarters. Modified from her

original plans, the destroyer now sported a telescoping hangar that allowed

her to embark a single SH-6oJ antisubmarine helicopter that was also useful

for surveillance work. The crew had to be roused from sleep and their air-

craft preflighted, which required almost forty minutes, but then it lifted off,

first sweeping around the formation, then moving forward, its surface-scan-

ning radar examining the American formation that was still heading west at

eighteen knots. The radar picture was downlinked to flagship Mutsu.

“These will be the two carriers, three thousand meters apart,” the CO

said, tapping the display screen.

“You have your orders, Captain,” Sato said.

“Hai,” Mutsu’s commander replied, keeping his feelings to himself.

“What the hell happened?” Durling asked. They had assembled in a corner,

with Russian and American security personnel to keep others away.

“It looks like there was a major conniption on the Street,” Ryan replied,

having had the most time to consider the event. It wasn’t exactly a penetrat-

ing analysis.

“Cause?” Fiedler asked.

“No reason for it that I know about,” Jack said, looking around for the

coffee he’d ordered. He needed some, and the other three men needed it even

more.

“Jack, you have the most recent trading experience,” Secretary of the

Treasury Fiedler observed.

“Start-ups, IPOs, not really working the Street, Buzz.” The National Se-

curity Advisor paused, gesturing to the fax sheets. “It’s not as though we

have a lot to go on. Somebody got nervous on T-Bills, most likely guess

right now is that somebody was cashing in on relative changes between the

dollar and the yen, and things got a little out of hand.”

”A little?” Brett Hanson interjected, just to let people know he was here.

“Look, the Dow took a big fall, down to a hard floor, and there are two

days for people to regroup. It’s happened before. We’re flying back tomor-

row night, right?”

“We need to do something now,” Fiedler said. “Some sort of state-

ment.”

“Something neutral and reassuring,” Ryan suggested. “The market’s

like an airplane. It’ll pretty much fly itself if you leave it alone. This has

happened before, remember?”

Secretary Bosley Fiedler–“Buzz” went back to Little League base-

ball-was an academic. He’d written books on the American financial sys-

tem without ever having actually played in it. The good news was that he

knew how to take a broad, historical view on economics. His professional

reputation was that of an expert on monetary policy. The bad news, Ryan

saw now, was that Fiedler had never been a trader, or even thought that