Zero Alternative (37 page)

Layla stood and approached him, taking a sip from his water-bottle. ‘It went the way it should have.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it was always part of the plan. Didn’t the Old Man tell you that Frankel would only be the first step?’

‘Yes.’ Walker remembered Soffet’s eyes, shining with the rightful zeal of a prophet.
I was right
. Maybe it wasn’t over yet.

‘You just believed what you chose to,’ Layla said. ‘Hackernym has always been about bringing down the entire system, not just one bank. We knew the central bankers and Treasury bureaucrats would cover up anything to save an investment bank of that size: Frankel Schwartz is too-big-to-fail.’

‘And?’

‘And now we can prove it. We are ready to show the world how they will stop at nothing, will protect killers, break every law – just to keep the status quo. As you know, Hackernym has been spying on those criminals for years, and with Frankel they’ve gone over the edge once too many. The Fed, the European Central Bank, the market regulators – we’ll bring them all down.’

She fiddled with her shoe and pulled out a tiny USB key, handing it to him. ‘Have a look at this, it’s only a small sample of what we’ll hit them with.’

Walker took the driver and plugged it into his laptop. The screen came alive, flashing a quick summary of the contents; there were dozens of hyperlinks to actual recordings, audio and video, documents, memos, mails. It was structured like the Frankel files he had seen, but on a much larger scale.

Banks and hedge funds, central banks and ministries… all the way to the top, to the names and faces that had decided the fates of the financial world for the last decade. He scanned some of the information, shocked at the depth of illegality and corruption in the data. It was dynamite. If they published it, so many heads would roll everywhere…

Layla interrupted his train of thought. ‘I’ve been learning, Scott. The entire Western world runs on credit, you said it yourself. Money, banks,
everything
is credit. I guess you know the root of the word?’

‘Of course. It’s from the Latin
credere
. To believe, to trust.’

‘And when trust is broken…’

Walker sat back in his chair, his head spinning with possibilities. Then he smiled sadly, understanding everything at last. ‘All the King’s horses and all the King’s men…’

‘Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’

‘Maybe.’ Walker stared at her, his voice cutting. ‘But maybe Hackernym is just a bunch of dangerous cranks.’

‘How… why?’

‘It’s going to be a mess, no doubt – but the markets are way too resilient. You’ll cause a disaster for nothing. Governments are going to intervene, great promises will be made and as the scandals subside…’

Layla sat down, resting her head on her palms and nodding slowly. ‘Things will go back to what they were. One crisis after another, getting bigger all the time.’

‘Yes. This stuff is big but…’ He pointed at the screen. ‘It’s not quite enough.’

‘That’s what we’re afraid of.’

‘And that’s why the Old Man wanted DeepShare,’ Walker said. It all made sense, in its own insane way. ‘He needed to simulate the events, figure out the right conditions and exact timing for releasing the files. Every structure has pressure points, but if you really want to shatter it, you need to find the perfect spot. Deep is ideal for that.’

‘Yes. But you’ve made a lot of it public,’ Layla bit her lip and poured herself another drink. ‘Everyone that’s important now has some of its foresight. I’ve seen what DeepOmega can do, and we all know they’ll use it to their own ends, even the baby one. No more jokers in the pack, if you keep the full one secret.’

Walker smiled sadly, his eyes still fixed on her gorgeous face. ‘You should trust Old Man Soffet more.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He understood Deep’s role, and its limits. He
wanted
it to be public, in whatever version.’

‘Why?’ She paused and looked at him askance. ‘It’s still another massive weapon, once more in the wrong hands.’

Walker closed the laptop and the night crept closer, kept at bay only by his candlelight. A small animal croaked from the mangroves and the shadow of a bat flickered across the sand. He looked at her, sighing. ‘What the Old Man understood is that DeepShare is great, but it’s not God.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean it’s very good at predicting the future, based on the facts it can gather. But the Deep version everyone is running now doesn’t know about Hackernym, and the stuff you’ll make public. It’s drawing a mistaken conclusion. Ever heard of GIGO?’

‘Garbage In, Garbage Out?’

‘Indeed.’ Walker half-smiled.

Layla went silent, considering his words. ‘So… the big banks and the hedgies have been building the wrong positions over the last few weeks?’

He hesitated for a heartbeat, still uncertain. But it was far too late anyway. Nothing could stop the avalanche, not anymore. He could only hope to give it a push in the right direction. ‘If you hit them with the Hackernym files at the perfect time, yes.’

‘And that’s why you made the baby Omega public.’

‘Not only that,’ he grunted. ‘It will be needed to rebuild, after you guys are finished. The more people know and understand of it, the better it will be.’

‘So you agree we’re doing the right thing?’

Walker lit a cigarette, his eyes drifting to the liquid darkness of the sea. What did he really think? Was he just letting anger overcome his senses?

No. Deep is right
.

As a part of him had suspected all along. There was only an abyss ahead – the system needed a reboot.

‘I don’t know, it’s an impossible question,’ he said. ‘But I can’t stop you, anyway, not alone. This… it’s the best I can do, I guess. And it’s what DM would have wanted – use Omega to shape unavoidable events, to steer them towards a better outcome.’

Layla nodded and finished his water, then poured herself a large rum. Her voice was subdued when she finally asked him, ‘How long have you been planning this?’

‘Ever since I met the Old Man. Maybe even earlier than that. It’s sort of always been there, at the back of my mind. But planning is too strong a word. Hoping, I guess.’

‘And you’ve run it on the full DeepOmega.’

Walker stood again and took a couple of steps towards the surf. The waves crashed noisily yards away, but the blackness was almost impenetrable, no matter how hard he stared. Heavy clouds covered the moon, and crickets chirped away to his right. Loud, annoying, almost drowning the thumping of his heart. He forced himself to breathe, deeply.

Exhale.

Inhale. ‘I think you should go, now.’

Silence.

He heard her chair scrape the porch, the creaking of old boards as she shifted her weight and stepped aside. Or forward. Or backwards, it didn’t really matter.

‘I understand.’ Layla’s voice was so low he almost couldn’t hear her as waves broke in the distance.
Better that way
.

He waited, guessed she had turned around. He cleared his throat and heard her stop. ‘You can tell them I’ve run it a billion times, of course. It’s like watching a computer play chess against weaker copies of itself. The strongest one always wins.’

Chapter Twenty

Into the Light

December had dragged along, crawling on its belly as events matured, but now it was almost time. Walker readjusted his chair and waited for the fireworks to start, the old tingling of anticipation alive in his body and mind. It was 5.12 p.m. in New York, just over one hour after the market closed. On a Friday evening, obviously. Having a weekend for the powers-that-be to panic could only work in Hackernym’s favour. The newspapers and TV channels would have plenty of time to dig, and speculate, and sharpen their knives.

The media had been forewarned an hour earlier of a huge, anonymous data dump – confidential documents, phone intercepts, the full works would be published online on dozens of websites around the world, in countries where controls were weak. Walker ignored the links in the email; he had already seen the files, and was only interested in the immediate reactions.

DM’s tablet was switched on, with the expected events of the following few days charted by DeepOmega in tiny scribbles and graphs, probability trees breaking in terrifying directions. It looked too much – Deep couldn’t be right. But Walker’s trading instincts had gone to sleep. He had no real idea of what might happen.

He stood up and was tempted to walk away along the beach, abandoning everything. The price he had paid for this was too high, and he didn’t really know if he had anything more to give. Unplugging the laptop was a temptation he had fought many times in the past few weeks, and he wondered how DM’s tablet, strong as it was, would fare in a close-up meeting with the salty seawater.

Suddenly his computer beeped an alert – the data was out. Walker sat back, knowing he had to stay. The world would need Omega after this, and he was the one who knew it best, now that DM was gone. He went back into his kitchen and poured a large rum. Good vodka was hard to come by in this remote part of Mexico, and he’d had to change his habits. Marlboros were everywhere though, and he lit one before returning to his table under the tilted porch.

It took exactly thirteen minutes before the enormity of the revelations in the files hit the global
consciousness. Another seventeen, and the world went into crisis mode.

Walker rubbed at his tired eyes, rereading the Reuters headline a couple of times before it disappeared along the fast-scrolling ticker. Several hours had passed since the Hackernym download, and reactions were starting to hit.

‘(ECB) – THE PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK,’ the screen read, all in bold capitals, ‘HAS RESIGNED ALONG WITH THE ENTIRE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. PRESS CONFERENCE TO FOLLOW – FRANKFURT, 05:34:17.’

It was a good start: strike one for Deep. Waiting for the rest, he went to the ancient percolator and filled his cup to the brim. He missed Italian coffee, its sharp flavour and pungent smell, the little layer of creamy foam that you could only see on top of a proper espresso. Maybe one day – but even if he had been cleared by UK police he was in no hurry to return to the Old Continent. Too many memories, too much pain.

Still… Out of curiosity, he switched to a BBC channel to check what was going on in London. And he chuckled.

No riots, perhaps not yet. But a massive crowd had gathered in Exchange Square in the City, and cameras on Threadneedle Street showed a bunch of black-hooded youths trying to storm the Bank of England, only getting beaten back by water cannons. The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and a couple of Royals were due to speak soon. He guessed the only thing missing was Oliver Cromwell.

A lot of Europe was almost quiet. Stunned, waiting. Trying to understand what was going on. Africa, South-East Asia and most of South America had hardly budged, while Australia and Hong Kong crumbled. He guessed Finance was mainly a worry for rich countries. Or the world’s poor knew better than to get upset over something that wasn’t a sustenance issue.
Good on them
. He picked up a tired novel and settled down to pass the time; the headlines would continue to hit as the Western world woke up.

The book was almost finished when CNBC, the live-feed sitting in the top-corner of his laptop screen, broke more news. The overweight announcer was breathless, tension and excitement sharpening her German accent in an almost painful way:
Following an emergency conference call
of Eurozone Heads of State, several Finance Ministers have resigned, in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands. No news from Paris, but apparently the Chief of the Bank of England and the Chancellor are about to go as well. This is the biggest day…
’

Walker killed the volume, and returned to the last few pages of his book. Europe was already old news; he expected Asia to come in soon. He bet with himself that Omega would get something wrong – the Chinese were not going to wait for Sunday, he was almost certain.

This time it was Bloomberg that got there first. On the classic black background the new top headline suddenly flashed in bright orange: ‘CHINA IMPOSES CAPITAL CONTROLS. NO TRANSACTIONS ABOVE 5,000 USD ALLOWED WITH FOREIGN INSTITUTIONS.’ Walker grinned, picked up DM’s tablet and whispered, ‘One-all. Humans strike back.’

DeepOmega did not reply, continuing to crunch its calculations somewhere in cyberspace. When Japan announced its Premier was gone, together with the emergency closure of all its financial markets within seven minutes of the machine’s predicted timeline, Walker shrugged and turned the screen off. As expected, he had lost his bet. It was time for another bad coffee. He slipped into his tiny kitchen and froze. Layla was standing next to the sink, preparing a tea.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

‘I’ve quit my job.’

Walker paused for a beat. ‘Why?’

She studied him, biting at her lower lip. ‘It was getting in the way of my life.’

‘I guess that’s never good.’

‘Where’s the sugar?’

Walker sighed, gave up. ‘It’s in the lower cabinet. I’ll be on the beach.’ He walked outside in a slight daze. A small smile broke through on his lips, though he had tried to kill it. She didn’t quit easily.

Maybe it was time to forget his pride and give life another chance.

Last Rites

It was 6.17 on Sunday morning when Ted Harris, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States of America, walked into his office. His hair was slightly dishevelled and his eyes sunken from lack of sleep
.

The Treasury Secretary nodded to him and poured a coffee before sitting down across the breakfast table. Harris sighed and ignored the food, handing over a white envelope
. ‘
Mr Ginter, here’s my resignation letter
.’

The Secretary took it and placed it in his jacket without raising his eyes
. ‘
I’ll give it to the President this afternoon, together with mine
.’

‘
Has he decided what to do?
’

‘
Yes. The markets will open as usual on Monday
.’