One of them shuffled his papers, glanced at his phone, waiting for something. Then seven people walked into the room together. The executive council, Mary understood suddenly. All seven of their presidents!
The seven-headed president of Switzerland sat down across the table from her. Five women, two men. She didn’t know their names.
They spoke in English. Of course this was for her sake, but a question distracted her as she tried to attend to them; she wondered what language they would speak if they were just among themselves. She dismissed the thought and tried to concentrate on what they were saying, too exhausted to reply, almost to understand. Some were French speakers and some German, she thought, although with the Swiss it wasn’t as easy to tell which was which as it would have been with actual French and Germans. And especially not now. It felt like she was reeling in her seat.
One of the presidential women told her that they had come here to meet her because they were now confronted with a crisis that seemed to have something to do with her. The recent attack on her ministry was part of a larger attack; also under assault were the UN offices in the country, Interpol, the World Bank offices in Geneva, and Switzerland itself. The international order, in effect, was now under attack.
Attack by whom? Mary asked.
A long pause as the seven presidents looked at each other.
We don’t know, admitted one of the women. Suisse Romande— Marie Langoise, it came to Mary. A Credit Suisse veteran. She went on, There’s been an attack on our banking regulators that appears to have come from the same source as the attack on the Ministry for the Future.
I see, Mary said, though she didn’t.
Did your ministry plan the hostage taking of Davos? Langoise asked.
Don’t know, Mary said sharply. Then she added, But maybe those people had it coming, right? Did anyone really regret that?
We did, one of the others said.
Unfriendly silence. Mary let it stretch out. Their move, she felt. Although none of them seemed to agree.
What did they do to your banks? she asked at last.
They looked around at each other.
We are not bankers, Langoise said (though she was), so we can’t go into the details. But the attack apparently compromised many secret Swiss bank accounts.
Revealed them? Mary asked.
No. Private accounts are encrypted in multiple ways, they could not be revealed. But now the banks themselves are having trouble accessing files that decode owners’ ID, in order to contact them and so on. So the danger is not so much exposure of clients, as loss of fundamental information.
Mary said, Your banks can’t figure out who owns what?
Somewhat the case, one of the others admitted. Another banker, Mary thought. Out of seven Swiss presidents, how many came from a banking background? Four? Five?
Of course it would eventually get sorted out, one of the presidents said. Information all on paper and in cloud, as of course it should be. Time machine storage; it took Mary a second to understand this meant a computer back-up. But still, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, there was depositor fear. Even panic. Not good for stability.
Mary nodded. Silence as they watched her. She saw they were here to listen to her.
She began to talk to them, almost as if thinking aloud to herself. Why not? She was too tired to find and apply her usual filters.
It’s the mystery of money, she said. Numbers that people trust; unlikely from the get-go. But then, if that trust was lost, boom, it was gone. Meanwhile they were all part of a global financial system that had become so complex that even the people running it didn’t understand it. She looked around at them as she said this: yes, she meant them. An accidental megastructure, she went on, enjoying the sound of J-A’s phrase, right at the heart of society. Right in this secret Swiss mountain fortress, which ultimately protects not just your countryside and your society, but your banks. Which means also people’s trust in civilization. Their faith in a system that no one really understands.
The seven parts of the presidency regarded her.
Mary felt a fog pass through her; then she came to, it seemed, and became aware of them again. What do you want from this situation? she asked curiously.
They wanted the Ministry for the Future defended, they told her. Even strengthened. Just as part of Switzerland’s own defense. They wanted better ways to make a better future, as part of making a safer Switzerland. It wasn’t as if the country’s eight million people could live off what could be manufactured and grown in Switzerland alone. Country half the size of Ireland to start with, and 65 percent of that mountains, useless to humans. The remaining 35 percent an agglomeration, satisfying human needs as best they could. They did what they could, but were part of a larger world. Not self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency was a dream, a fantasy, sometimes of xenophobic nationalists, other times just a decent wish to be safer. Swiss people mostly realistic, which meant being honest about what is possible. Thus engagement with the world.
So they wanted her ministry to succeed, because they wanted Switzerland to succeed, which meant the world had to succeed. The future had to succeed. That would take planning, it would have to be engineered.
All this is well enough, Mary told them. It’s our project too. But you can do more than you are. Right now you’re not doing enough.
She almost laughed as she heard herself doing a version of what Frank had done to her that night. But not a good idea to laugh at them for no obvious reason, and she suppressed it, recalling suddenly that vivid night, the way she had been transfixed by Frank’s scorn. What had made his accusations so compelling? Because here
