A Calculated Risk, Katherine Neville [english novels for students txt] 📗

“And I have improved upon it,” he said, still smiling his catlike smile. “There are many problems with this plan of yours. So I’ve developed one of my own—a superior model, if I may say so. I’ve always believed, you see, that it’s easier to steal really large sums of money without using a computer at all!”

“Oh no—you’re not suckering me into this one,” I told him, gathering my charts together. “If you think I’m crazy enough to steal a billion dollars without using a computer, you’re out of your mind.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Tor, putting one hand over mine on the table, to temper my haste. “Of course I don’t think so; I wasn’t suggesting you do anything of the sort! Naturally, I was speaking of myself.”

I froze, and looked at him—his eyes dark fires, his nostrils flared, like a pawing Thoroughbred before the starting gun. I should have been warned—I should have known that look—it had cost me plenty in the past. But I couldn’t resist my curiosity.

“What do you mean, yourself?” I said cautiously.

“I’d like to propose a little wager,” he said. “We each steal the same amount of money—you, with a computer, and I, without. In effect, I’ll be like John Henry with his little hammer, and you’ll be the great steel-driving engine—a timeless test of man against machine, soul against steel!”

“Very poetic,” I admitted. “But not too bloody practical.”

“John Henry won his bet, as I recall,” Tor said smugly.

“But he died doing it,” I pointed out.

“We all die sooner or later; it’s simply a question of timing,” Tor explained. “Better to have one big death than many little ones—wouldn’t you agree?”

“Just because I’m mortal doesn’t mean I want to choose my burial plot this afternoon,” I told him. “This started as a little caper to prove the bank’s security doesn’t work. You said you’d help me, but it seems you want to turn it all into an international financial scam. A billion dollars? I think you’ve flipped your lid.”

“Do you imagine that those bankers you work with are the only ones who aren’t nice people?” he said seriously. “I deal almost daily with the SEC, with the commodities, mercantile, and securities exchanges. I know things about their behavior that would make your blood run cold. The best help I can give you, my lovely soubrette, is to expand your horizons—as I intend to do right now.”

He stood up unexpectedly, and held out his hand to me.

“Where are we going?” I asked as we put on our coats and headed toward the door.

“To have a look at my etchings,” he said mysteriously. “It seems you’re a girl who needs to be seduced into action.”

Within the warmth of the taxi, heading downtown, Tor turned to me.

“I want to show you my part of the wager,” he said, “so you’ll see just how serious I am.”

“I’m giving the money back, you know,” I told him. “Not even taking it—just moving it around where it can’t be found for a while. All I want is to see their faces when they can’t find it. So, even if I agreed to this ridiculous bet of yours, what would be in it for you?”

“What’s in it for me, as you so charmingly put it, is quite the same as for you—and something more. Not only do I want to see their faces, I want them to clean up their act.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked, with sarcasm. “You haven’t mentioned where this billion of yours would be coming from.”

“Haven’t I?” said Tor with a smile. “Why, let me correct that, then, my dear: I thought I’d hit the Big Board—the New York Stock Exchange and the American as well.”

They always say there’s a thin line between genius and insanity—and I thought Tor had crossed it. But then, taken in perspective, my own little scheme was hardly the product of a mind spilling over with sober judgment. It seemed I was getting in deeper by the hour.

We were dropped off in lower Manhattan, in the maze of the financial district, where shimmering mist from the nearby river hung suspended in the narrow canyons, between buildings that seemed to touch the sky. Before us was a glass and concrete edifice that loomed forty stories above Water Street, with the number “55” in bold letters on the front.

“Inside this building are my etchings,” Tor said with a smile as he rubbed his hands together against the cold. “Or perhaps I should say ‘engravings’—this structure houses the majority of stocks and bonds traded on all the major exchanges over the last thirty years.

“The concept dates back to the 1960s, when the brokerage houses around the world were becoming overloaded with paper. There was so much work required to transfer stocks and bonds from one hand to another, they decided to put it all to a stop. Securities are kept in ‘street name’—the name of the brokerage firm that last traded them. Ownership is monitored by the same firm, and the physical instruments themselves are now put here. This is the most important financial building in New York; it’s called the Depository Trust.”

“All the securities traded in the United States are in this one building?” I said.

“No one knows exactly what percent is stored here—as compared with those stocks and bonds still in the hands of brokers, banks, or private individuals—but the effort has been to move them all here, for the sake of efficiency.”

“I can see why it’s a big risk; what if someone dropped a bomb here, for instance?”

“It’s a bit more complex than that,” he assured me as we walked around the side of the gigantic structure to have a better look. He brushed the first snowflake from my face, tossed his arm casually over my shoulder, and went on.

“I attended a meeting only last week, at the SEC. They’d gathered executives from large brokerage firms and money-center banks. The purpose of the meeting was to get