THREE
We are informed from a respectable source that the old road to the post of Arkansas, by Spring river, is entirely destroyed by the last violent shocks of earthquake. Chasms of great depth and considerable length cross the country in various directions, some swamps have become dry, others deep lakes, and in some places hills have disappeared.
Charlestown, March 21,1812
Jason craned his neck up at the water tower and pushed his helmet back to give himself a better view. It looked much bigger now that he stood at its base, a metal mushroom that bulged out over Jason’s head, blocking out a sky filled with low dark clouds. Its surface was painted a glossy shade of vegetable green that Jason had never seen on any object not owned by the government. It was as if Cabells Mound had tried to disguise their water tower as something natural, as a peculiarly shaped tree, and failed miserably.
The tower stood in a soggy little park planted with overgrown hibiscus. Pumps whined from the cinderblock wellhouse next to the tower. There didn’t seem to be any human beings in the vicinity.
Jason hopped off his bike and examined the metal stair that spiraled to the top of the tower. A tall metal pipe gateway stood at the bottom of the stair, with a gate made of chain link secured by a padlock. There was a halfhearted coil of barbed wire on the top, and more chain link on the side, obviously to keep someone from climbing over the lower part of the stair.
Nothing that would stop a determined, reasonably agile young person. Jason had always thought of chain link as a ladder. The barbed wire had not been extended along the side of the stair, in itself almost an invitation. And from the state of the chain link, it was obvious that he was not the first person to think of climbing the tower.
That gate and the barbed wire, though, would complicate the dismount at the end of his ride. He couldn’t do a fakie or anything fancy at the bottom, he’d just have to jump off the rail. And he’d have to jump off onto the stair, because if he jumped off onto the soft turf under the tower, he might get hung up on the fence that was draped over the side of the stair.
Jumping off onto the stair might be a good thing, he finally decided. He could use the mesh of the gate to brake his remaining momentum. It would be like running into a net.
Jason parked his bike under the stair, hooked his skates around his neck by the laces, and then swarmed up the chain link and dropped onto the metal stair. He ran a hand along the pipe of the guard rail: smooth, round, painted metal, a little scarred by rust. Nothing he hadn’t coped with before. He hiked up the first fifty feet or so, took the rail in his hands, and shook it, tried to find out if it was loose. It was solid. It would make good skating.
Jason’s heart was racing as if he’d run five miles instead of climbed fifty feet. A delicate sensation of vertigo shimmered through his inner ear.
He took a breath and looked out over the town, laid out in perfect, regular rectangles that marched down to the levee. On this dark, cloudy morning, Cabells Mound looked drab. The older buildings were frame and often set on little brick piers, and the newer homes tended to be brick and set on slabs or conventional foundations. There was a little trace of the South in the white porticoes with their little pillars that were grafted onto the front of otherwise unremarkable buildings. Elms and oaks stood in yards. The river ran right up to the levee here because there was a landing, and because a little to the north there was a lumber mill that loaded its product onto barges. The river was an uneasy wide gray mass, very full, at least halfway up the side of the levee. Jason realized with a touch of unease that Cabells Mound, were it not protected by the levee, would be under water.
Because the river was so high it was carrying a lot of junk with it, and Jason could see an entire cypress tree floating past, a splayed clump of roots at one end and still-living foliage at the other. Three crows sat in the green branches and watched the world with curiosity as it moved by. Black against the opalescent surface of the water, a tow of sixteen barges made its way in the opposite direction, heading for St. Louis.
There were very few people to be seen. It was Saturday morning, and many, perhaps most, of the residents were off at the shopping malls of Memphis or Sikeston.
He turned south, saw the green of the old Indian mound beneath its tangle of timber, the peak of his house above the line of trees that marked the end of the cotton field.
Jason was above it all. His heart was racing in his chest like a turbine. He looked down at the ground below, and though he wasn’t even halfway up the tower, the green turf seemed a long distance away.
Maybe, he thought, the very first time he went down the rail he shouldn’t start at the very top. He could start partway down, just to get his reflexes back and make sure he could handle the curve that would tend to throw him off the rail as he gathered speed.
He went down a few stairs, until the distance to the ground did not look quite so intimidating, and then sat on one of the metal steps and took off his sneaks. He leaned around the metal center post of the tower and threw his shoes to the bottom of the stairway. They hit the mesh door at the bottom in a ringing splash of metal. Jason checked his skates, make sure the wheels spun freely and the brakes worked, then laced them on. Stood, adjusted his knee, elbow, and wrist armor, put a hand on the rail so that he’d know where it was.
Usually, when he was going to ride a rail, Jason would start on the flat, get some speed and momentum, and then jump onto the rail for his grind to the bottom. But now, on the tower, he was going to have to jump straight up onto the rail from a standing start, which meant that his balance was going to have to be perfect right from the beginning.
His pulse crashed in his ears. His vision had narrowed to the length of that metal rail that spiraled down out of sight to the bottom.
A gull sailed overhead, cawing.
Jason bent, jumped up, kicked. Landed on the rail— yes!— clicked in!— back foot athwart the rail in the royale position, front foot bang on the center of the rail, arms out for balance.
And began to move. Down— yes!— arms flailing at first, then steadying. Rear skate grinding down the rail, checking his speed. He leaned opposite to the direction of the curve, enough to counter for centrifugal force that threatened to throw him off— yes!— he needed only a slight lean, he wasn’t going very fast.
The ride was over in mere seconds. Yes! He threw himself off the rail, spun neatly in air, landed fakie— a cool landing after all, even if it was only a few feet— he spread his arms and let himself fall backward into the chain link. It received him with a metallic bang.
“Yes!” he yelled as he bounced off the mesh. He readied himself to spring back to the top.
“Reckon not,” said a very grownup voice.
He told himself afterward that he should have just sprinted for the top, skates and all, hopped on the rail, and wheel-barrowed to the bottom. That would have been Edge Living. That would have been the way to go. Then the experience that followed would have been worth it.
But instead he turned around and caught sight of the policeman, and then he froze.
“Get your ass off public property,” said the cop.
His name was Eubanks, a skinny little bald guy with a big voice, and he seemed to specialize in following Jason around and telling him not to do things. It was Eubanks who told him he couldn’t skate in the courthouse parking lot, or on the streets— old and potholed though they were— or on the sidewalks, which were even more beat up. Eubanks had even chased him off the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly, and the city didn’t even own the Piggly Wiggly.
“Get your ass over here!” Eubanks yelled.
Jason turned, trudged up a few steps to get clear of the chain mesh, and prepared to hop over the rail to the ground below.
“Get your damn shoes,” said Eubanks.
Jason turned, trudged down the stairs, picked up his sneaks, and headed up the stairs again. He vaulted over the chain link to the ground, and stood waiting for instructions.
“Get into my car.”
Jason walked as directed, went behind some hibiscus, and saw Eubanks’s prowl car just sitting there, in a position to spring out at any speeders racing down Samuel Clemens Street. The car had probably been there all along.
Bastard was probably taking a nap, Jason thought.
“Into the back,” Eubanks said.
“I’ve got my bike over there,” Jason said.
“It can stay there.”
“It’s not locked or anything.”
“Not my problem,” said Eubanks.
Jason got in the back of the prowl car, behind the mesh partition where the real criminals rode. Eubanks got in the front and started the car.
“You’d of broke your neck if you’d fallen off,” Eubanks said. “And your mama would have sued the town.”
“She would’ve said it was karma,” Jason said.
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Eubanks said, and gave a little disparaging laugh. “Your mama’s the New Age Lady.”
My mom’s the New Age Lady, Jason thought in despair. That’s probably what the whole town calls her.
Eubanks pulled out onto Samuel Clemens, then followed it to the highway. Jason recognized some kids from the school at the corner, in the gravel parking lot of the Epps Feed Store. Among them was the boy who, the other day, had taken such pleasure in announcing that Jason’s mom was going to Hell. He spotted Jason in the back of the prowl car, nudged his friends, and pointed.
The kids silently watched as Eubanks waited to make his left turn onto the highway. Jason stared back.
Then he raised a gloved hand and waved. Gave a little smile.
Might as well get whatever mileage he could out of the situation.
He wasn’t arrested or anything. Eubanks took him home, past where Mr. Regan was buffing his bass boat, then pulled to a stop in front of Jason’s house. Mr. Regan watched while Jason, still in his helmet, skates, and pads, marched across the lawn to the front porch with Eubanks as his escort. Batman the boxer barked loud enough to call the attention of the entire Huntley family to the spectacle.
Jason’s mom met Jason and Eubanks at the door.
Eubanks explained the situation. Violation of public property, he said. Town ordinance against skating in the town, he said. Upsets the elderly residents, he said.
Could of broke his neck, Eubanks said. You’d of sued the town.
After the police officer left, Catherine Adams confiscated Jason’s skates and armor, and locked them in the trunk of her car. On Monday, she said, she would take them to work and leave them there, at the greenhouse, until Jason “demonstrated a more responsible behavioral system.”
Then she went up to his room, took down all his skating posters, and threw them in the trash.
After which she paused for a moment, trying to think of another privilege she could revoke. It was difficult, because Jason didn’t drive, had no friends here, and never went out.
“No Internet till the end of the month,” she decided. A satisfied smile touched her lips when she saw his stricken look.
“I need to get my bike,” he said.
“Walk,” she said, and left his room in triumph, closing the door behind her, so that he couldn’t even have the satisfaction of slamming it.
*
Major General J.C. Frazetta rose at dawn to the sound of mockingbirds chattering outside the window, and had a hard time resisting the impulse to head for work early. It was the general’s first day on the job, not counting the ceremony the day before, in which command was officially transferred by the outgoing commander. Frazetta was too full of nervous energy to go back to sleep.
So Frazetta prepared herbal tea, fried some boudin that had been purchased while driving through Louisiana to Vicksburg a couple days earlier, and prepared a soufflé cockaigne, with Parmesan and Gruyere cheese. It was too aggravating to merely wait for the soufflé to rise, so the general sautéed some Italian squash, fried some leftover boiled potatoes with onions and green pepper, and threw some popovers in the oven along with the soufflé. Made coffee for Pat, the spouse, and sniffed at it longingly as it bubbled from the Braun coffeemaker. And thought about making coffee bread, because excess energy could be usefully employed in punching down the dough as it rose.
The general looked at the clock. No, not enough time.
Pat, who was not a morning person and who generally ate nothing before 11:00 A.M., was nevertheless sensitive to Frazetta’s moods and ate a full share of the preposterous meal.
The only comment offered by Pat on all this activity was to retire to the workshop and pluck out “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” on his fiddle.
Which was all, General Jessica Costanza Frazetta had to conclude, that she deserved.
Exactly on time, to the minute, 0900 hours exactly, General Frazetta greeted her secretary. Her driver, the experienced Sergeant Zook, seemed to know to the second how long it would take to deliver her to her new headquarters.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, General Frazetta.” The secretary smiled. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“Not exactly.” The general opened her briefcase, produced a box of tea bags, Celestial Seasonings Caribbean Kiwi Peach. She handed the box to her secretary. “Would you mind bringing me a cup of this?”
“Not at all, General.”
Major General Jessica C. Frazetta, U.S. Army, closed her briefcase, thanked her secretary, and walked into her office. Closed the door behind her.
And grinned like a chipmunk. She walked to the map of the Mississippi Valley that hung on one wall.
Her domain. She had just been appointed to command of the Mississippi Valley Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The President had appointed her to the presidency of the Mississippi River Commission, the outfit that with the MVD ran all federal projects on the river, but that would wait on the approval of Congress.
It was a great job. She was, for all intents and purposes, in charge of the entire Mississippi River and its 250 tributaries. The drainage basin included all or part of thirty-one of the lower forty-eight states— and also a part of Canada, which was a bit outside of her jurisdiction. All of the federal works on the river— the cutoffs, levees, dikes, revetments, spillways, and reservoirs were in her charge. All the dredges, the dams, the floodwalls, and locks.
All the responsibility. Which didn’t bother her at all— she liked being in charge.
Where she told the water to go, it would go, or she would know the reason why.
She turned to the photograph of the President on the wall behind her desk and gave it a wave.
“Thanks, boss,” she said. And tossed her hat across her desk and onto the brass hat stand behind.
By the time her secretary came with the tea, Jessica was seated behind the desk and was halfway through the stack of congratulatory messages and faxes that had arrived from all over the world: from Bob in Sarajevo, from Janice in Korea, from Fred in some place called Corrales, New Mexico.
“Thanks, Nelda,” she said, and sipped at the tea.
“Does it taste okay?”
“Tastes fine. It’s only weeds and water, after all.”
Nelda smiled. “We’re mostly Java drinkers around here.”
“Never cared for it myself.” Jessica preferred not to explain that she avoided caffeine on the theory that it might exaggerate her hyperkinetic manner, which she had been told, occasionally at length, was not her most attractive characteristic.
“Anything else I can do?”
“Can you get me Colonel Davidovich?”
“He’s out at the Riprap Test Facility at the moment, but I can page him if you like.”
Jessica considered. She wanted private meetings with all her senior staff, as well as the officers who commanded the six districts that made up the division. Davidovich was her second-in-command, and she wanted a meeting with him first.
“No— don’t bother. You wouldn’t happen to know when he’ll be in his office?”
“By eleven-thirty, General.”
“I’ll call him then.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
She returned to the congratulatory notes. Then, because it was hard to sit still, she opened her briefcase, took out the photograph of her husband Pat Webster, and put it on her desk. In the photo Pat was leaning back in an old armchair, sleeves rolled up, boots up on a table, playing a banjo.
Next to Pat, she placed the photo of her parents, taken on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and the photo of her sister with her husband and children.
There were empty picture hangers on the wall where her predecessor had hung various photos and certificates, and she was able to fill the blank spaces with her own. Jessica had an impressive number of credentials to display, even considering her rank and number of years in the service.
One reason for the large number of degrees was the Army’s uncertainty, when she graduated from Engineer Officer Candidate School, as to exactly what to do with a female military engineer. There weren’t very many precedents. Her arrival at her first assignment— in Bangkok, of all places, scarcely then or now a bastion of progressive feminist thought— had been greeted by jeers and catcalls from the enlisted men. But her fellow officers, who appreciated the presence of a round-eyed woman, were supportive enough, though perhaps a little uncertain as to the social niceties.
That uncertainty— what was her place, assuming she had one at all?— resulted in the Army’s apparent decision to keep Jessica in school as much as possible. Which resulted in her getting a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Virginia and another master’s degree in contract management and procurement from the Florida Institute of Technology. She had graduated from the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army Engineer Basic, Construction, and Advanced Courses, Army Command and General Staff College, the Medical Service Corps Advanced course, and even the Naval War College. She belonged to the National Society of Professional Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Army Engineer Association, and the Society of American Military Engineers.
The end result of all this education, the overwhelming weight of her credentials, was that it had become very difficult to refuse her any job that she really wanted.
She really wanted the Mississippi Valley Division. And now she had it.
And she was only forty-one years old.
She paused, a framed certificate still in her hand. She had run out of picture hooks. Apparently she had a few more credentials than her predecessor.
She laughed. This was probably a good sign.
*
Cellphone plastered to her ear, Jessica nodded good-bye to her driver, Sergeant Zook, and walked past Pat’s red Jeep Cherokee to the new house, the one with the rustic wooden sign marking it as the dwelling of the Commander, MVD. She could hear Pat playing “Hail to the Chief” on his fiddle. She opened the door, and the fiddle fell silent when Pat saw she was on the phone. “If you’re sure,” she said, “that water at the levee toe is from the rain, and not—” she said as she marched across the polished wood floor of their new house, dropped her heavy briefcase onto the couch, then spun and tossed her hat at the wooden rack by the front door.
Missed. Damn.
Pat already had the place smelling like home, which meant wood shavings and glue. She finished her conversation and snapped the phone shut. A mental image of Captain Kirk folding his subspace communicator came to her, and she grinned. Then she bounded across the room and let Pat fold her in his arms.
“I take it that things went well,” he said.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Careful of the fiddle.”
Pat Webster was a tall, bearlike Virginian, and Jessica’s second husband. Her first marriage, in her early twenties, had been a catastrophe— a pair of obsessive, overachieving bipolar maniacs joined in a relationship was not a recipe for success— and by the time she’d met Pat, she’d pretty much given up on anything but transitory romance with colleagues temporarily stationed at the same base.
It was her friend Janice, when they were both stationed at Army Material Command in Alexandria, who talked her into going to a contra and square dance, overcoming her expectation that she would be encountering women in Big Hair and crinolines. Instead Jessica found herself quickly defeated by the fast-moving patterns, the allemandes and honors and courtesy turns and chains, and she ended up at the head of the dance hall, talking to the members of the band in between numbers.
And there, with his fiddle and mandolin, in his jeans and boots and checked shirt, was Pat Webster, laconic and smiling. She watched his hands as he played, the long expert hands that made light of the intricate music that he coaxed so effortlessly from his instruments.
She fantasized about those hands all the way home. And, a week or so later, when they finally touched her, she was not disappointed.
She found that Pat had a career, but to her utter relief, it was one that could stand uprooting every couple years as one assignment followed another. He was a maker of fiddles, guitars, dulcimers, and mandolins— in fact, a genuine handmade Webster guitar sold for up to a couple thousand dollars, depending on the model, and until Jessica got her general’s star he brought more money into their marriage than she. He brought with him the pleasant scent of seasoned wood, of varnish, of glue. He brought her his calm, measured presence, a balance to her own unbridled energy.
He brought her the eternal gift of music.
Inspired, she had even learned to dance squares and contras.
“So how are the levees up in Iowa?” Pat asked.
“Holding. It was the private levees that broke.”
It had been all Jessica could do to keep from flying north to check the situation personally. But her deputy at Rock Island assured her that there was no significant danger to Corps structures, and she concluded that she would be better employed in Vicksburg, getting her teams up to speed for when the flood waters headed south.
“Private levees,” Pat mused. “Funny we’ve still got so many of ’em.”
“The Corps budget will only do so much,” Jessica said. Corps levees were built to a standard height and width, faced with durable Bermuda grass, and protected by revetments from the river’s tendency to undermine them. But much of the Mississippi’s flood plain was still guarded by levees privately built by local cities, towns, and corporations, and they built what they could afford— to Corps standards when it was possible, but often not.
In the catastrophic floods of 1993, when ten million acres had gone under water, it had been the private levees that had broken, and the Corps levees that stood. When the city of Grand Forks had been submerged by the Red River in the spring of ’97, it had been because the city’s politicians had been reluctant to raise tax rates in order to provide proper flood protection. Upstream, Fargo, with its more realistic government and higher rate of taxation, stayed dry.
Jessica loosened her collar and jacket, headed for her room to change. “What’s for dinner?” she asked.
“There seem to be a lot of breakfast leftovers,” Pat said, following.
Jessica felt her cheeks grow hot. “Sorry,” she said. “I was nervous.”
“I could tell.”
“What else is for dinner?”
“I could make some tuna fish sandwiches. You used up practically everything else in the refrigerator.”
“Tuna is fine.”
Pat was actually a perfectly adequate cook whose capabilities extended well past tuna sandwiches. But he didn’t care about cooking, he didn’t throw his whole being into it, the way Jessica did, to leave the palate delirious and the kitchen a litter of dirty pots and pans.
Pat saved all that for music.
And, strangely enough, for Jessica.
“We could go out, maybe,” Pat said. “And celebrate your ascension.”
Jessica shook her head. “Too much homework,” she said, and looked at the heavy briefcase she’d brought home.
“Okay. Tuna fish it is.”
Jessica followed him into the kitchen. “Why do people say tuna, fish?” she asked.
He looked at her over his shoulder as he opened the pantry door. “Maybe because a tuna is a fish?” he suggested.
“But people don’t call a salmon a salmon fish, or a grouper a grouper fish, or a bass a bass fish.”
“You’ve got a point there.” He took the can of tuna from the shelf, glanced over the unfamiliar kitchen for an opener. He cocked an eye at her. “Didn’t you say you’ve got some homework?”
He hated it when she hovered over him in the kitchen. “You bet,” she said, and headed for her briefcase.
*
We have the following description of the Earthquake from gentlemen who were on board a large barge, and lay at anchor in the Mississippi a few leagues below New Madrid, on the night of the 15th of December. About 2 o’clock all hands were awakened by the first shock; the impression was, that the barge had dragged her anchor and was grounding on gravel; such were the feelings for 60 or 80 seconds, when the shock subsided. The crew were so fully persuaded of the fact of their being aground, that they put out their sounding poles, but found water enough. At seven next morning a second and very severe shock took place. The barge was under way— the river rose several feet; the trees on the shore shook; the banks in large columns tumbled in; hundreds of old trees that had lain perhaps half a century at the bottom of the river, appeared on the surface of the water; the feathered race took to the wing; the canopy was covered with geese and ducks and various other kinds of wild fowl; very little wind; the air was tainted with a nitrous and sulphureous smell; and every thing was truly alarming for several minutes. The shocks continued to the 21st Dec. during that time perhaps one hundred were distinctly felt. From the river St. Francis to the Chickasaw bluffs visible marks of the earthquake were discovered; from that place down, the banks did not appear to have been disturbed. There is one part of this description which we cannot reconcile with philosophic principles, (although we believe the narrative to be true,) that is, the trees which were settled at the bottom of the river appearing on the surface. It must be obvious to every person that those trees must have become specifically heavier than the water before they sunk, and of course after being immersed in the mud must have increased in weight. —We therefore submit the question to the Philosophical Society.
Natchez Weekly Chronicle, January 20,1812
Cover your six o’clock, as the chopper pilots said. Or, in the language of the marketplace, cover your ass.
Jessica Frazetta knew that there were two natural forces that could sneak up on her and wreck the Mississippi Valley, and her career along with it.
The first was flood. The second was earthquake.
Flood and the Corps of Engineers were old acquaintances. The Corps had been fighting the river since well before Colonel of Engineers Robert E. Lee, in the 1850s, had been sent to Missouri to prevent the Mississippi from crabbing sideways into Illinois and stranding St. Louis inland, a mission he had performed with his usual efficiency.
Practically all of the Corps’ efforts in the Mississippi went into controlling the water and keeping river navigation safe. It was to secure these goals that all the levees had been built, the dams, the locks, the revetments, the spillways. For these reasons the Corps had planted lights and buoys, dredged the harbors, charted the depths, pulled snags by the thousands from the bed of the river.
But the second, far more dangerous threat was that of earthquake. Jessica knew that an earthquake of sufficient force could undo hundreds of years of the Corps’ efforts in an instant. The levees, the revetments, the dams, the spillways ... all gone at once.
The Mississippi Valley’s last big earthquakes had occurred from 1811-12, when there were less than three thousand people of European descent living west of the Mississippi.
The world of those three thousand, and the thousands more Indians who lived in the area, was torn asunder by three major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks. The first of the quakes had been estimated as 8.7 on the Richter scale, the second-largest quake in all human history. Fifty thousand square miles were devastated, and millions more suffered damage. Fissures tore open every single acre of farmland. The Mississippi ran backward for a day. Islands vanished, while other islands were formed. Dry land submerged, and the bottoms of lakes and rivers rose dry into the sunlight. The Missouri town of New Madrid, where the quakes had been centered, had been destroyed, and the Mississippi rolled over the remains. The quakes were so powerful that they smashed crockery in Boston, caused panicked people to run into the streets in Charleston, rang church bells in Baltimore, and woke Thomas Jefferson from sleep at Monticello.
The New Madrid fault had remained active through much of the nineteenth century, providing the country an occasional jolt, but it had fallen quiet during the twentieth. And it was during the twentieth century, when memories of the quake had faded, that the Corps built most of its structures in the Mississippi Valley.
In the years since the New Madrid quakes of 1811-12, millions of people moved into the danger zone. Major cities, like St. Louis and Memphis, were built close to the fault, supported by a complex infrastructure of bridges, dams, reservoirs, power stations, highways, and airstrips, few of which had been built with earthquake in mind. Industries flourished: factories, chemical plants, and refineries had been built on the yielding soil of the Mississippi Delta. Billions of dollars in commerce moved up and down the river every year. Millions of acres of farmland, fertile as any in the world, stretched from the rivers, protected by man-made levees.
It had only been in recent decades, when geologists began to study the mid-continental faults, that the true scope of the danger was known. The New Madrid fault, and other faults beneath the Mississippi, were still seismically active, although the vast majority of its quakes were so small as to be undetectable by humans. To judge by historical precedent, a much larger and more destructive earthquake was inevitable.
If the faults should snap again, Jessica knew, millions of lives, and billions of dollars in property, were in jeopardy. The Corps had been striving to reengineer its public works so as to make them resistant to earthquake damage, but the procedure was far from complete.
In her briefcase, Jessica had the Corps’ earthquake plan, released in February 1998, as well as reports concerning the regular inspections of Corps facilities and reports relating to the floods in Iowa. The floodwaters would inevitably channel into the Mississippi from Iowa, and would inevitably test Corps structures farther south as they progressed to the Gulf.
Jessica looked at the stack of papers, at the heavy report.
The earthquake, she thought, was in the indefinite future. The floods were now.
She put the earthquake plan back in her case.
She would deal with it when she had the time.
*
“I’ve got a proposition for you, Vince,” Charlie said, “and— I warn you—I am talking risk here.”
Vincent Dearborne steepled his fingertips and looked at him with a little frown. His eyes, however, were not frowning, not frowning at all ... Charlie could see a glimmer of interest, and the little lines around the eyes were smiling. Vincent Dearborne, Charlie knew, had been hoping that this moment would come.
“Tennessee Planters and Trust,” Dearborne said in his cultured Southern voice, “is, generally speaking, risk-averse.”
“I know, Vince,” said Charlie, and smiled with his white, dazzling, even, capped teeth. “But you’re not averse to taking a little flyer now and again. When I told you about those straddles two years ago, you backed my play.”
“Yes. And I wondered if doubling the bet was sound. But...” The glimmer in Dearborne’s eyes increased in candlepower. “You made us twenty-four million dollars.”
“Twenty-four million dollars in three days,” Charlie reminded.
“And almost gave me an ulcer.”
Charlie laughed. “You can’t fool me, guvnor. You can’t get an ulcer in three days.”
Dearborne grinned and tilted his noble graying head quizzically, the way he always did when Charlie let his East London origins show. It was as if he were amused and puzzled both at the same time. Here was this strange Englishman who talked like a movie character, and who could make tens of millions in a matter of days, and who amounted to ... what?
It was as if Dearborne couldn’t figure Charlie Johns out. Charlie came from ... some other place.
Whereas Dearborne’s place in the world was not only clear, it was on display. His office was a monument to mahogany and soft brown leather, subdued lighting and brass accents. Golf trophies stood on display in the corner— golf was a safe sport. Certificates and awards were ranked elsewhere on the walls. Chamber of Commerce, Lions, United Way— safe organizations. There were pictures of ancestors on the walls: judges, legislators, bankers. Safe ancestors. His pretty wife, displayed in photographs, wasn’t too pretty, and his well-scrubbed children, pink-cheeked in school uniforms, looked— well— risk-averse.
Tennessee Planters & Trust was a safe place to put your money, and Dearborne was a safe director for a bank to employ. That was the message sent by the office decor, by the Memphis skyline visible through the office windows, by the ten-story Planters Trust building of white Tennessee fieldstone, even by a bright turquoise pattern in Dearborne’s tie, which was laid to rest next to another, more tranquil shade of blue, like a moment’s bright, shining thought being smothered beneath a reflex of conformity.
But Charlie, who prided himself on his discernment, knew that Vincent Dearborne was not quite as sound as his calculated environs made him out to be. A little over three years ago, when Charlie was working in New York for Citicorp and Tennessee Planters Securities flew him out for a secret weekend meeting with the directors, Dearborne had taken Charlie not to the office but to the country club, and made him part of a foursome with two of the other directors.
It had been Dearborne who suggested the wager, “to make it interesting.”
Charlie was hopeless at golf. He’d always thought it a sport for wankers, and he’d never really learned to play; but he knew this was a test, so he flailed his clubs with a will until at last the horrible afternoon was over and he could relax in the clubhouse with Boodles and tonic.
And he could whip out his pen and write Dearborne a check for four hundred and thirty-two dollars, and hand it over with a smile.
Dearborne’s eyes had gleamed, then. Just as they were gleaming now.
The conclusion that Charlie had drawn was that Dearborne liked a fling, but was only happy with a sure thing. Before Charlie’s arrival on the scene, Dearborne’s idea of a fling had been to spread some money on the Cotton Exchange.
Charlie played golf with Dearborne on a regular basis now. And regularly wrote him checks afterward. He considered it a form of investment.
An investment that he hoped was about to pay off.
“Since those straddles,” Charlie said, “you know I’ve played it safe, no flyers. Too many conflicting signals, mate. Too much vega in the market, right?”
“Vega.” Dearborne repeated, the gleam in his eyes fading, going a little abstract. “You mean volatility.”
“Almost. Vega is the impact of changes in volatility,” Charlie said. Too much jargon only confused the man. “I’ve made a nice profit for you, but it was nickel-and-diming, a little bit here, a little bit there. I wasn’t taking any flyers— I was, as you say, risk-averse.”
Dearborne nodded.
“I was waiting for a clear signal.” Charlie grinned, twisted the diamond ring on his finger. “This morning, just as the markets opened, Carpe Diem gave me the signal.”
“Ah.” The gleam returned to Dearborne’s eyes. “Your new program,” he said.
The convoluted business of trading options required a lot of calculations, and traders depended on sophisticated computer programs to mash the numbers and spew out the complex answers they needed to make their trades. The programs had names like Iron Butterfly and Jellyroll, and they could assemble raw data at lightning speed and configure awesomely complex combinations of options.
Carpe Diem was of the next generation of trading programs. A trading whiz Charlie knew from his days at Citi had slipped Charlie a beta test version of the program. His program was ahead of the market. And he planned for his purchasing to be ahead as well.
“What’s Carpe Diem telling us?” Dearborne asked.
“The economy’s going to tilt into recession,” Charlie said.
“People have predicted that for years.”
“Everyone knew it would happen sooner or later,” Charlie said. “The question is when. Carpe Diem says it’s going to happen now. And because this last boom has lasted so long, I think the recession’s going to be a big one.”
He raised a stub-fingered hand and ticked off the points on his fingers. “Unemployment is down and wages are up, which means a season of inflation unless the Fed acts to cool the economy. Consumer price rises were only point-one percent in April, but that comes off a big rise over the holidays. The visible trade deficit went up over the holiday season, like always, but it hasn’t dropped much in the months since.”
“The Dow is up,” Dearborne offered.
Charlie flashed his grin again. “Those blokes are always the last to know,” he said. “Here’s the two factors that Carpe Diem thought were significant.”
He ticked off numbers on his fingers again. “There’s a debt bomb about to go off in Europe. Public debt is out of control in the old East Bloc— well, that’s normal— and it’s normal for Belgium and Italy, too. But in Germany? Public debt is over sixty-five percent of GDP. Britain’s at over fifty percent. And even the Dutch, for God’s sake, have been on a spending spree.” Charlie dropped his hands, leaned forward, gave Dearborne a look from his baby blues. “It can’t last, and when the European economy slows, the effects are going to be worldwide.”
“Secondly,” Charlie said, “Carpe Diem noticed a lot of action on certain commodities—copper and other strategic minerals, because China is sucking up titanic amounts of raw materials as they modernize. And there’s a lot of volatility on foodstuffs, because those floods in Iowa are making people nervous. But what Carpe Diem is really interested in is this weird speculative trend on certain fringy areas of the commodities market. Coffee— why speculate in coffee when there’s stable supply and demand? Also natural gas, foodstuffs, certain petroleum products. Which means the money is moving out of the market’s center, as it were, possibly because people are getting uneasy about it.”
Dearborne looked worried. “You’re not suggesting that we speculate in these commodities ourselves, are you?”
“No way, guv,” Charlie said.
He knew Dearborne liked it when he called him “guv.”
“If I studied the way those commodities were moving,” Charlie said, “I reckon I could make you some money, but it wouldn’t be worth the aggravation. Those trades are powered by insecurity and ignorance, which means that you can’t predict them, and if you can’t predict what’s going to happen, that’s not investment, that’s gambling.” Charlie flashed his brilliant capped teeth again. “That’s why we’ve got tools like Carpe Diem— to help reduce the risk.”
Dearborne was reassured. “Does Carpe Diem have any other points to make?”
“The Chinese have the world’s largest supply of foreign currency reserves, but they’re going to have to sell in order to pay for their economic expansion. So will the Taiwanese, because their economies are linked to the Chinese. I expect that the Japanese will begin to sell as well, to finance the amount of debt they’ve acquired as a result of the bailouts they’ve indulged in.”
“Dollar down.” Dearborne nodded, absorbing this lesson.
“Which would normally be good for exports, except that due to the other problems I’ve mentioned, the world won’t be able to afford so very many of our exports in the next few years.”
Leather creaked as Dearborne leaned back in his chair. The gleam in his eyes burned with a new intensity. “So what are you planning to do?”
“I’m positioned nicely in T-bonds, which I expect to rise soon and make us a packet. But that’s the short run.”
“Long-term?”
“Well.” Charlie grinned. “There’s that risk I was telling you about.”
“Ahh,” Dearborne said.
“Once the rest of the world catches up to Carpe Diem— and that won’t be long, perhaps even hours— I expect the markets are going to take a tumble. Which is fine as far as we’re concerned— we can make some nice profits right then. But the best course, the way interest rates are running right now, is to sell the market short, and not lose our nerve.”
Dearborne looked thoughtful. If he was sure the market was going to fall, it would be cheaper to let Charlie, right now, sell a fistful of short positions that reflected that belief.
Dearborne’s face turned sulky as a new factor entered his thoughts. “Vega,” he said, remembering the jargon for once.
“Vega’s the fly in the ointment, all right,” Charlie said. “When the market starts to slide, volatility’s going to go up. Which will mean an increased chance for profit, but it also means the administrators at the various exchanges are going to get nervous and start calling on us to meet our margins.”
Margin calls were the bane of the trader’s life, particularly if he traded on the Mercantile Exchange in Chicago, which had a system called SPAN that continually calculated margins and could call for margins right in the middle of the trading day, meaning that the trader would have to find money for the margin call right then, instead of having overnight to make the arrangements.
“How many short futures are we talking about?”
“Well, guv ...” Charlie took a deep, theatrical breath. “For the plan that Carpe Diem and I suspect will maximize our profit, we’ll need a fund of between forty and fifty million.”
Involuntarily, and without Charlie’s theatricality, Dearborne echoed Charlie’s intake of breath. “Jesus God,” he said.
Charlie threw up his hands. “Understand that there are ways of making this less risky,” he said. “Every time the market moves, I’m going to be hedging our position. Every minute, practically. And in a volatile market, I’m going to be able to make a lot of short trades that should keep our cash flow positive.”
“Jesus God,” Dearborne said again. He gave a glance at his bowling trophies, as if for reassurance. “What if the Fed acts?” he said. “What if the Federal Reserve decides to lower interest rates?”
“I don’t think it’ll happen,” Charlie said. “The chairman’s too bloody conservative. But just in case, I’ll hedge by shorting Eurodollar puts. If the Fed cuts interest rates, then Eurodollars will rise and I’ll make a packet when the puts fall in price.”
“Mmm,” Dearborne said as he steepled his fingertips and sought communion with his trophies.
“Vince,” Charlie said as he leaned forward and sought Dearborne’s uneasy eyes with his own eyes of brilliant blue. “I’ve been a good lad these two years— I’ve been risk-averse— haven’t yet steered you wrong.”
“True,” Dearborne admitted. But the acquisitive glimmer in his eyes was dull, uncertain.
“You know what Carpe Diem means in Latin, Vince?” Charlie asked. “Seize the Day. This day must be seized, and soon. Because if we seize it now, I can give you profits that would make those twenty-four millions look like your kids’ milk money.”
Dearborne bit his lip, fiddled with something on his desk. Looked anywhere but at Charlie. Move, you bastard! Charlie thought. You think I spent all those hours playing golf just for the fun of it?
Slowly, a calculating gleam returned to Dearborne’s gaze.
“Well,” he said, “I’ll make some calls.”
*
Before Charlie even left Dearborne’s floor at the Tennessee Planters & Trust, he used his cellphone to call Deborah, his assistant at Tennessee Planters Securities, and had her begin to place his trades. Then, from the old Otis elevator as it creaked its way to the ground floor, he called Megan Clifton, who ran the “back room”— the settlements office— at TPS.
“Megan Clifton.” Her low, cool Southern voice sent a little tremor up Charlie’s spine.
“It’s on, love,” Charlie said.
The low, cool voice dissolved at once into high-pitched excitement. “Oh, yeah! Whoa, Charlie, you’re a genius!.”
“Better get ready for a long, busy day,” Charlie said. “But for later, I suggest that we call the caterers now and have them deliver dinner for two to my place. There’s some Bollinger in the fridge, and I can warm up the spa.”
“I will make the call as you suggest, sir.” Megan’s cool professional voice was back.
The elevator moved uneasily back and forth as it adjusted itself to the ground floor, overshooting a little bit each time. The doors opened and revealed that the elevator was at least a half-inch too high.
“I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Charlie said, and snapped the phone shut as he stepped into the lobby.
He didn’t work in the same building as the bank. His own office, and that of TPS, was in a different building, a modern steel-and-glass office building two blocks away. Tennessee Planters Securities— originally Bendrell Traders— was a separate firm which the bank just happened to control, having picked it up for the cost of its office furniture after Bendrell went smash in the wake of Black Friday in 1987. The bank also just happened to provide TPS with most of its operating capital, including that which TPS used for proprietary trading and for meeting its margins.
The separation between the bank and TPS was more than just physical. There was a difference in culture as well, between the cautious, conservative bankers in their mahogany offices, and the traders with their glass-walled cubicles and blinking computer monitors. The bankers were wedded to prudence, to circumspect accumulation of capital, to safety. The traders were after the money, and knew that big profits occasionally required big risks. The bankers dealt with long-term loans, with gilt-edged stocks, with thirty- or twenty-year mortgages. The traders’ deals sometimes were constructed so as to last for mere hours. Successful bankers drove Lincoln Towne Cars and belonged to the country club. Successful traders drove Ferraris and spent every night at the disco.
Successful traders also made a lot more money than successful bankers.
Charlie Johns had done his best to bridge the gap between the two cultures. He knew that traders could offend their conservative bosses with their flash and their style— not to mention their profits— and so he took care to present a facade that was more in harmony with Tennessee Planters & Trust than with TPS. He bought his suits from the same tailor that Dearborne used, though his natural style ran more toward Armani. His Mercedes E320 was a calculated degree less ostentatious than Dearborne’s S500. Ferraris and Lamborghinis were too flash, even if he didn’t drive them to work. He joined Dearborne’s country club, and he lost regularly to Dearborne at golf. He had lunch with Dearborne once a week, and consulted Dearborne on trades that he had the authority to make on his own, just to make Dearborne feel his opinion mattered.
And he made Dearborne money. Which was probably better than anything at cementing their relationship.
And, if Carpe Diem and Charlie’s own instincts were anything to go by, he was about to make Tennessee Planters enough money to gold-plate their office building.
By the time Charlie swept into the TPS offices, he had called his three largest clients and convinced them it was time to commit to some major action.
He grinned as he boomed through the big glass doors and gave a jaunty wave to the salesmen and traders sitting behind their desks. Once he was at his desk, he shorted nearly forty million dollars of S&P contracts. As a hedge, he shorted ten million dollars’ worth of Eurodollar puts, just as he’d promised Dearborne he would.
It was a great way to make a living.