Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [81]
“The Europeans simply don’t trust us,” he finally began again, hunching forward in his seat “Which is precisely why they don’t talk to us anymore. They believe we have different attitudes, different priorities.”
Anton Birnbaum stared directly into Caitlin’s brown-eyes. His own eyes were watering hopelessly behind thick lenses. He reminded Caitlin of a character in Wind in the Willows, Mr. Mole.
“I sound like an alarmist, no? But I feel the intrinsic truth of what I’m saying. Almost prima facie, I feel it. There will be a crash now. I believe there will be a serious crash, possibly another Black Friday. Very, very soon.”
Anton Birnbaum spoke again. “I think we could be in the middle of a war. The money wars. The great Third World War we have so long feared—it may already be upon us.”
Chapter 59
“GODDAMN IT! Look at this!” The speaker was Walter Trentkamp, and his voice was harsh with disbelief. “Gentlemen, it’s happening everywhere!”
Philip Berger, Director of the CIA, Trentkamp, and General Frederick House were gathered around the computer terminals when Caitlin and Carroll arrived. Several display screens were working simultaneously, flashing words as well as graphics.
Berger glanced up as Caitlin Dillon and Carroll hurried across the Crisis Room floor. He frowned.
“Emergency reports have been coming in for about fifteen, twenty minutes,” he said to the others. “Since three-thirty our time. They’ve got something hopping. Something’s happening all over the world this time.”
At one o’clock,Paris time, La Compagnie des Agents was suddenly closed by official order of the President of France.
All stock trading was immediately halted on the Bourse.
Bourse officials reluctantly admitted that the Market’s CAC index had fallen over 3 percent in a single morning.
The afternoon newspapers in Paris carried the most shocking headline in four decades:
MARKET CLOSE TO PANIC!
BOURSE CRASH!
PARIS MARKET IN SHAMBLES.
FINANCIAL DISASTER!
For once, the tabloids were being written with some understatement, however.
The Frankfurt Stock Exchange was in chaos, but still managed to stay open for the entire session.
The Commerzbank Index had fallen under a thousand for the first time since back in 1982.
The largest losers for the day included Westdeutsche Landesbank, Bayer, Volkswagen, and Philip Holzmann.
As yet, none of the economists in West Germany understood why prices were dropping; or how far they might plummet in the near future.
The Toronto Stock Exchange was one of the worst hit anywhere.
The exchange’s composite index of 300 stocks fell 155 points to under 2000.
Trading volumes set new records, until the major Canadian Exchange was officially closed at 1:00 P.M.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei-Dow Jones index was shaky all day, finally closing at 9200. This was a full 2½ percent decline in a single day.
Hardest hit were all companies trading heavily with the Middle East. These included Mitsui Petrochemical, Sumitomo Chemical, Oki Electric.
Heavy European and American deposits made the Johannesburg Stock Exchange the only apparent winner anywhere around the world. Bullion was suddenly trading at $1,000 an ounce. The rand instantly appreciated to $1.50.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were made in South Africa. Suspicions rose, but still no satisfactory answers came.
London dramatically shut down at 12:00 noon, three and a half hours shy of regular closing.
The Financial Times Index of 750 companies had fallen nearly 90 points; it was down almost 200 since the initial Green Band bombings in New York.
The scene on Threadneedle, near the Bank of London, was nearly as bleak and without hope as bombed-out Wall Street in New York.
With its forty-button, telephone-computer consoles, the Crisis Room at No. 13 Wall was beginning to resemble the Starship Enterprise more than the traditional Chippendale feel and look of the Street. Nonetheless,