The Warning (17 page)
“I believe you. And the name's Larry.”
“Right. Thanks.” Suddenly his hands were wet with relief. “You don't sound surprised.”
“I'm not. Guys like that don't scare easily.”
“Guys like what?”
“On a mission. You get them on the Street now and then. Fund managers and analysts who decide they've got the answer to all the world's worries. Usually it's a theory they've spent their lives perfecting. Every one I've ever heard of has had more holes than cheese from the land of snowcapped peaks. But this one beats them all.” There came the sound of a noisy sip. “So what do you suggest we do?”
Thad liked the sound of that. What do
we
do. “I've already started nosing around.”
“That's what I like to hear. Find anything we can use?”
“A lot.” He felt like a bird riding high currents and catching the first sight of his prey. He was barely able to reign in his excitement. “His organization consists of an alcoholic brother working from a semibankrupt used-car lot.”
“You've got to be kidding.”
“Nope. Alex Korda, that's the guy. Oh, and a rich local widow as his part-timer. I drove by the place yesterday. He's got maybe ten derelict heaps sitting out front; he couldn't get fifty bucks for the lot.”
“If this wasn't so worrisome, it'd be a hoot.”
“Wait, it gets better.” He took a breath. “Buddy was complaining of chest pains for a couple of weeks before all this started. So I managed to get inside the doctor's office last night. Took a look at his medical records.”
“You don't say.”
“Got them right here in front of me.” Thad found breath hard to come by. As hoped, Larry said nothing about a doctor's records being strictly confidential or that it was illegal to read them. He struggled to keep his tone easy as he said, “You're not gonna believe what it says.”
Thirty-Three Days . . .
Buddy was halfway through his Bible reading and a second cup of coffee when he heard a little chiming. “Do you hear that?”
“It's your phone,” Molly called from the bathroom. “Top of my purse.”
He fumbled about, flicked it open, and said, “I'm not sure I like this thing one bit.”
“You will.” Alex sounded far too awake for this time of morning. “It'll grow on you like a third ear.”
“Are you already at the office?”
“Been here for hours. Got so much going on I could start my own whirlwind.” A chuckle. “Agatha beat me by an hour. Made the mistake of giving that woman her own key.”
Buddy heard his brother's hoarse breathing and had to ask, “How are you feeling?”
“I'm fine.”
“You've got to take care of yourself. Don't work so muchâ”
“Now look here.” The voice turned flat. “You're not going to be pestering me about my health, Buddy.”
“I'm worried about you.”
“Well, you shouldn't be. You've got enough in your head already.”
“Promise me you'll take care, Alex.”
“I promise you I'll do everything the doctors tell me. There, how's that?”
“All right, I suppose.”
“You're worse than Agatha for fussing.” The tone lightened perceptibly. “That's some woman. She's been a big help, let me tell you. But my, she sure can talk. Got me agreeing to go to church with her some Sunday.”
That brightened Buddy's day considerably. “This is good news.”
“Can't hardly believe it myself. After you and Molly asking me year in and year out, here she just up and invites me, and I up and say, fine.” There was the sound of pages rustling. “And now to business. I'm about ready to fax your itinerary to the front desk. You're gonna be one busy fellow.”
“Are you leaving me time to breathe?”
“Wait, I think I've got that down here somewhere. Yeah, here it is. Thirty seconds for drawing breath, one week from next Tuesday.”
“I can't thank you enough for all your help.”
“And Agatha.”
“Agatha too.” He could still not get over that particular pairing. Agatha and Alex. It was like mixing oil and water and ending up with perfume.
“Take care, now. Agatha says to tell you she'll be praying for you through this interview.”
Buddy cut off the phone and sat staring at nothing until Molly opened the bathroom door. She stood there in her robe, saw his expression, and asked, “What's the matter?”
“Nothing.” A long sigh. “I was just missing my brother.”
“He's not gone anywhere yet.”
“That's pretty much what he told me. He said I shouldn't worry.”
“Alex is right.” She walked over and sat beside him. “I want to thank you for praying over me last night.”
“I didn't do a thing.”
“Well, you did and you didn't.” She leaned over and kissed him. “You are a good man, Buddy Korda. I knew it the first moment I set eyes on you. I know it now.”
They sat there sharing the moment until Buddy caught sight of the time. “I'm going to be late for the interview.”
“You go ahead, I'm not coming. You can handle those press people without me. I need some quiet time with my Lord.” She reached to the bedside table and peeled the first page from the hotel pad. “Here. I found this one for you.”
Buddy accepted the page and read it aloud: “âTherefore gird up the loins of your mind.' 1 Peter 1:13.” He looked up. “Just what I needed to hear. As always.”
She reached around and gave him a squeeze. “Now go and serve Him well, my husband.”
Buddy hesitated halfway across the hotel lobby. From where he stood he could see that the hotel's conference room was already full of lights set on metal stalks, cameras on tripods, cables, and people. He forced his legs to carry him forward.
Just inside the double doors, Clarke Owen was talking to a nervous man in a bright red hotel blazer. When Clarke spotted Buddy and waved hello, the man turned and stared, showing confusion when he did not recognize Buddy.
The room held a circular table with maybe two dozen chairs around it. Every seat was taken. At his appearance, the buzz of conversation continued. A couple of people watched Buddy's progress toward the front of the room. The others ignored him entirely as he squeezed past. He decided it was best not to hesitate or his nerves might freeze him solid.
“Good morning,” he said loudly when he reached the podium, and there was a sudden flurry of activity.
“Wait a sec,” called a voice from the back. Klieg lights flashed on, momentarily blinding him. “Okay, could we check your sound level?”
“My name is Buddy Korda,” he said, speaking into microphones taped together like a bunch of metal asparagus. “Are we ready to go?”
“Okay on sound,” the voice from the back said.
“Rolling,” confirmed another.
“Go ahead, Mr. Korda.”
Buddy touched the knot on his tie and wondered why he had agreed to this at all. It was far more intimidating than his talks. At least there he had felt a sense of shared conviction. Here he felt nothing except apprehension.
And yet he knew what he needed to say. There was no question. All of the worries he had felt over the past several years suddenly solidified into a cohesive pattern.
He began without preamble, “Between nineteen twenty-five and twenty-nine, share prices roared up over four hundred percent. It was rank speculation. Yet newspapers around the nation proclaimed that an era of national growth and wealth had arrived. There was going to be a chicken in every pot. Everybody was going to own two automobiles. As long as a person had personal drive and ambition, the sky was the limit.
“Then, on the morning of October 29, 1929, the impossible happened. In a flash, the orders pouring into Wall Street made a one hundred eighty degree turn. Everywhere the only order was to sell, sell. It was the greatest market crash in history. Investors who had once counted rising paper profits were abruptly sent spiraling into very real debt.”
Buddy caught several journalists exchanging weary glances. He noticed that no one was writing anything down. A couple of people standing by the back wall crossed their arms and leaned back, their faces falling into the shadows cast by the television lights.
Buddy plowed on, “For those who had money, the twenties was a time to get rich quick. Over a million Americans had money in the stock exchange, more than ever before. But most people didn't recognize it as such a good time. I'm not talking about the people who hit it big, the people living in uptown Manhattan with money to burn. I'm talking about the people living in small-town America. They had no idea this was such a grand time.
“I can remember one old-timer telling me he could hardly believe the news that America was on a roll, because his own family almost starved during the recession of nineteen twenty-three. But all the records show there was enormous growth in industrial production and personal wealth. But these are records, mind. After the fact.”
He paused and then added, “Just like after this current period has ended, people may look back and say, oh yes, the nineties, they were
the good years
.
“Let me remind you of a few statistics about these current good years. While the number of millionaires has tripled in the nineties, the number of households without a job for more than a year has increased sevenfold. The annual rate of personal bankruptcies is
eleven times
higher than during the late eighties. The disparity between the nation's richest ten percent and the poorest twenty percent has more than doubled in the past decade. And most important of all, the income of middle America, the sixty percent just trying to make ends meet, has actually declined.”
A laconic hand was raised. “Excuse me, Mr. . . .”
“Korda.”
“Right. Are you telling me we're in for another Great Depression?”
“I know you've all heard the depression stories before,” Buddy replied. “And that's become the problem. People aren't listening anymore. I'm simply telling you that it
could
happen.”
A bored voice from the table's other side demanded, “But aren't you supposedly here to proclaim some prophecy of gloom and doom?”
“I'm simply telling you that a serious downturn could very well occur. One that might even be worse than the crash of twenty-nine.” He was not getting through. Every notebook around the table remained as closed as their faces. “There are dozens of points I could make. But since we're talking about the stock market, I'll stay with that. Just as happened in the twenties, through the nineties we have seen an unprecedented number of small investors enter the stock market, either directly or through mutual funds. This has pushed the market higher than it has ever been before. Even higher than in the twenties, in terms of profit-to-price ratios.
“The market senses this imbalance. These days, share prices react hysterically to the smallest bit of newsâa quarter percent rise in inflation, the smallest change in unemployment figures, the tiniest drop in quarterly profits. Factors that have no real effect on the economy are blasting the market like well-placed grenades.”
A bored voice pressed, “Could we talk about your prophecy, Mr. Korda?”
“Let me just finish this point,” he said, feeling sorrowful panic that he could not get them to sense the warning. “This nervousness is most dangerous because it could herald an extreme response to bad news. At that point, other factors may well begin an uncontrollable downward spiral.
“For example, most stock transactions are now controlled by computer. Price levels are electronically set to trigger a sell order. This is fine, so long as we are talking about a million small shareholders setting their own orders. But that is not the situation. We have enormous mutual funds now controlling sums that even ten years ago would have been unthinkable. In the early eighties, a hundred-million-dollar fund was enormous. Nowadays, that is less than what the top twenty funds buy and sell
each
day.
“So now we have these huge funds with gigantic share holdings. Their computers are flagged to issue a sell order
instantaneously
. They have to do this. Shares are traded twenty-four hours a day now, with the market in Tokyo opening just as Wall Street is closing. Markets in London and Hong Kong and Sao Paulo all trade in American stocks. All of them. There are limits now in place, which supposedly hold the amount of decline possible in these sell-offs. But they are limits placed
by each individual market
.
“So let us build a scenario, one which could all too readily occur. Bad news arrives. A sell order is launched, one so big it tilts other shares. This we know happens; it is well documented. One share price falling affects all others in that industry, which in turn drives down the Dow average. Other computer flags are raised at the Dow's overall drop. More sell orders are initiated. Other industries are affected, one after the other. The Dow drops like a stone, hitting the artificial limit set for that day. Then a mutual-fund manager, with four or five billion dollars at his disposal, decides now is the time to get out of the market entirely. He dumps their holdings. This is still possible. How? By transferring their sell orders to Tokyo, and then London, and then Frankfurt. Because all of these markets also trade in American shares. And each of these markets' daily floor levels are independent. So the funds continue to chase around the globe, with the panic growing each time their sell orders are halted by another artificial floor.”
They were watching him now. Not taking notes, but at least listening carefully. And the cameras continued to roll. Perhaps some word of this might get out. Buddy looked at one face after another, willing them to listen, understand, and write of a need for caution. “The result, I fear, is that our market structure would collapse like a house built on sand and caught in a hurricane.
