them anticipated.”
“Will the country survive it?”
“I honestly don’t know, Em. I hope so,” Wilson said, opening the screen door to the marina store for Emily.
“Good morning. Checking out?” Jaclyn said, still behind the counter and looking as if she’d never left.
“I think we’ll be staying another night,” Emily said, looking at Wilson questioningly.
He nodded.
“Fine. I’ll have someone bring you a change of linens and fresh towels,” Jaclyn said.
Wilson looked around the store. Everything seemed normal. The world hadn’t come to an end or stopped dead in its tracks. “What newspapers do you carry?” Wilson asked.
She pointed to the stacks on the floor behind him as she turned to another customer. “Take what you want, you can pay me later.”
Surprisingly, the stacks included several major newspapers. He quickly unpacked the bundles and brought one from each stack back to the loft. The front-page headlines told the story:
FBI UNCOVERS MASSIVE STOCK MARKET MANIPULATIONS
CONSULTING FIRM FRONTS FOR WEB OF DECEPTION
CORPORATE CONSPIRACY SHOCKS NATION
SCHEME THREATENS FUTURE OF CAPITAL MARKETS
SECRET SOCIETY CORRUPTS AMERICAN INDUSTRY
For the next three hours they read and reread the detailed newspaper accounts while watching updates on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, and Fox Headline News. They were so engrossed in the media frenzy that they didn’t notice, and wouldn’t learn until later, about the cleanup that was underway on the mossy rocks across the cove.
Carter was frequently quoted in the newspaper accounts and so was Wilson. David Quinn received occasional mention as the first whistleblower, but it was the independent analyses from Ernst amp; Young and Booz Allen and the ongoing SEC and FBI investigations that captured the harrowing reality. The patterns of corporate manipulation, the sleazy enticement schemes, the murders and attempted murders-it was all there in black and white. And it was a hundred times uglier than Wilson and Emily ever imagined it would be. The
By half past ten in the morning, all four networks and CNN were providing live coverage from FBI Headquarters. The usual reporters, political commentators, and financial experts were predicting everything from a constitutional meltdown to global calamity, as they waited for the FBI Director’s news conference. CNN’s red, white, and blue banner for the story read, “American Capitalism on Trial,” NBC’s was, “Capitalism in Crisis,” ABC called it, “The Corruption of Corporate America,” CBS simply dubbed it, “The American Illusion,” and Fox christened it, “Wall Street Exposed.”
When the press conference began at eleven o’clock, Director Bainbridge read a ten-minute statement and distributed excerpts from Carter’s eight-volume history with the promise that all eight volumes in their entirety would be available on the Internet by Monday morning, and in book form by Friday. Then he opened it up for questions.
Wilson was actually shocked by how clearly they presented the facts and discussed the implications. Nothing was being whitewashed, sugar-coated, or covered up. Carter’s demand to include the five reporters from the Times, the Journal, the Post, the Globe, and the Associated Press in his debriefing of the FBI and other government agencies had worked. The nation’s attention was being galvanized on the largest-scale corruption of its financial market system in history, just as his father had planned.
The press conference went on for about two hours, followed by mostly doomsday commentaries and expert interviews throughout the rest of the day. The most intellectually definitive interview was with Eli Dennison, distinguished professor of economics and former dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He summarized the situation this way: “The long simmering conflict between the equality promised by democracy and the inequality produced by capitalism has finally boiled over. An era has ended. We now enter a period of profound metamorphosis in which a new form of capitalism must be invented.”
Dennison articulated the problem, just as his father and Carter would have. Maybe lasting change was possible.
64
Wilson — Bailey Island, ME
At six o’clock that evening, as Wilson and Emily ate lobster rolls from the marina restaurant, the national and local evening news focused almost exclusively on the nation’s reaction to the crisis. The lead story was the reaction on Wall Street. Panic selling had caused stock prices to plummet until the major stock exchanges hit their circuit breakers, the government’s safety net to prevent the markets from crashing the way they did in 1929. Trading on all U. S. stock, futures, currency, and commodity exchanges was halted. In London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Sidney, exchanges experienced similar panic selling before market declines triggered a halt to trading. Exchanges in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina reached new lows before trading was halted.
Even though the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. exchanges were expected to continue trading in the days and weeks ahead, until market circuit breakers went off, the term ‘virtual crash’ was already on the lips of every news reporter from New York to Beijing. Stock analysts and economists from every major country in the world were predicting that the worst was yet to come. During the rest of the evening, all the network stations and many of the cable channels canceled their regular programming in order to air one special news report after another.
If press coverage was any indication of America’s sentiments, Wilson thought, his father’s coveted transformation of the way capitalism works in this country seemed guaranteed. By all accounts, the entire nation was suffering from shock and disbelief. And the outrage was growing. Just as Carter had hoped, the disclosure was concentrating everyone’s attention on the same issue at the same time. The nation’s silent majority finally seemed to be demanding action.
After the evening news, Wilson and Emily used the pay phone to call Kohl. “Agent Kohl, it’s Wilson.”
“Your family is safe. Darrin is recovering nicely,” she said immediately. “All of them, including your father and Emily’s family, are under the highest level of security we can provide.”
“Thank you,” Wilson said with a sigh of relief and a whisper to Emily that everyone including her family was safe and sound. “What about Hap?”
“He’s back.”
“Where was he?”
“I think you better talk to him about that. Have you been watching the news?” Kohl asked.
“Since early this morning.”
“Looks like your father got what he wanted,” Kohl said. “Every government office in the country has been overwhelmed by a growing public outcry.”
“How do you plan to deal with it?” Wilson asked.
“Our immediate concern is preventing a virtual crash of the financial markets around the world. The President plans to address the nation on Sunday.”
Wilson said nothing as he contemplated the difficulty of the President’s task.
“Are you and Emily okay?”
“We’re fine. What about Tate and Swatling?”
“They’re in Venice.”
“You have them under surveillance?”
“Based on the tape from Detective Zemke, we convinced the CIA to maintain surveillance, until Carter’s whereabouts have been determined.”
“Tell them not to lose Tate and Swatling,” Wilson said, somewhat disdainfully.
