Black Market

At noon an elderly man made his way toward the hub of action at the front of the World Trade Center crisis room. Many of the young brokers and bankers didn't recognize Anton Birnbaum. Those who did regarded him with sharp, uneasy glances. It wasn't every day that one encountered a Wall Street legend.

Birnbaum actually looked more like an ancient New York City pawnbroker than one of the world's acknowledged financial geniuses, a man with an unblemished reputation during all of his years in business.

President Justin Kearney had arrived by helicopter from Washington less than thirty minutes before. He was conferring with Philip Berger from the CIA. Both recognized Anton Birnbaum as the old man approached. The president greeted the financier warmly, speaking with great deference and sincere respect.

“It's awfully good to see you again, Anton. Especially right now.” The president spoke formally, as he would to a visiting foreign dignitary. Lately his ma

Kearney and Anton Birnbaum eventually disappeared into a small private office, the door of which was guarded by beefy protectors from the Secret Service.

“It's good to be seen out in the world, Mr. President. I don't get out so much anymore. Mr. President, if I might be allowed to speak first, I have an idea, a plan you might wish to consider…

“I have just gotten off the phone with two gentlemen you've possibly never heard of. It's worth repeating both conversations. One man is from Milwaukee, a Mr. Clyde Miller. The other man resides in Nashville, Te

Anton Birnbaum said this in a slow, very deliberate style that made each word seem vitally important.

“Mr. Miller is the chief executive officer of a large Milwaukee brewing company. Mr. Lavine is currently treasurer for the state of Te

“I've asked Mr. Lavine to buy NCR stock, which is now at nineteen, and continue to buy it until the price moves up to thirty. He's prepared to commit up to seventy-five million dollars for the purchase.” Birnbaum then went on to explain to the president why the plan he'd conceived could actually work.

“I only hope that the courage of these two gentlemen will actually turn the direction of this catastrophe. I pray it will restore some necessary optimism. Mr. President, I have a belief that it will… Once the market sniffs a demand for these two bellwether issues, smart money will undoubtedly start moving. The risks arbitrageurs, who can spot an uptrend in an avalanche and who command billions in ready cash, will begin testing the waters.

“I have advised a select few of my associates, who have responsibility for mutual and pension funds around the country, that a dramatic break in the crisis situation is now imminent. I have strongly suggested that they look for opportunities to begin bargain hunting before they lose out on a very fast and favorable profit spiral. A spiral back close to where the market began this morning.”

The news of Anton Birnbaum's recovery plan traveled with appropriate dispatch through the main conference room. Emotional arguments over whether the daring strategy was right, or disastrous, raged immediately.

“Clyde Miller has just bankrupted his own corporation.” One of the harsher detractors laughed with derision at the news.

Two other middle-aged bankers argued their way into a fistfight. Creaking haymakers were thrown and somehow managed to co

As the winter morning passed into steely-gray afternoon, however, it was obvious that the dramatic Birnbaum plan was either too late or too little. There was no significant change in attitude, and therefore the plan was unable to stop the momentum of the declining market.

The largest single-day losses ever had already been recorded on the world's stock markets:

On October 29, 1929, losses had been fourteen billion dollars.

On December 15, the single day's recorded losses around the world exceeded two hundred billion dollars.

29

At seven that night, Carroll and Caitlin Dillon watched a chilling news report with more than a hundred of the principals who were actually making the headlines inside the World Trade Center. TV camera teams, top free-lance national magazine and newspaper photographers, and network radio reporters carrying lightweight tape recorders on their shoulders were swarming all over the man on the street in New York City.

A TV news interviewer stopped a man entering St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. “How do you personally react to today's financial tragedy?” he asked. “What they're now calling a Black Market?”

“It makes me very frightened. Very sad. Nothing in this society of ours seems secure anymore. I had a few dollars. Safe. In IBM, in A T and T, the blue-chips only. Now I have virtually nothing. I'm seventy-three years old. What am I going to do?”

A TV interview crew from “Eyewitness News” was set up to intercept pedestrians near Lincoln Center on Columbus Avenue.

“Excuse me, sir,” called the reporter to one man. “What's your response to the latest reports, the critical situations on Wall Street?”

“My response! I'll tell you what. There's nothing you can believe anymore. After Watergate, you couldn't believe in the president of the United States. After Vietnam, you couldn't believe in our military's moral stance. You can't believe in church leaders anymore. Now? Now you can't even believe in the almighty dollar…”

TV news teams roamed Forty-second Street near Grand Central Station. One interviewer even thrust his mike at a cop.

“You're a police officer. You've undoubtedly seen this city in other times of great stress… blackouts, racial riots… How do you compare this situation right now?”

“This is about the hairiest I've seen it in New York. Not violent. Not yet, anyways. It's just, people are like, they're like walking zombies. Everybody I talk to, totally blitzed. It's like somebody changed all the rules.”

TV camera crews were a constant fixture all over Wall Street and the World Trade Center area. TV newsman Curt Jackson had actually been living in a construction-company trailer on Wall Street since the Friday-night bombing. He promised his audience he wouldn't leave until the crime, the Green Band mystery, was solved.

“You're a native New Yorker, sir?” Curt Jackson asked a gentleman in his familiar, authoritative voice.

“That's right. I'm a New Yorker, thirty-eight years.”

“What comment do you want to make about the terrible panic, the tragedy in the market today?”

“A comment for you? Well… you see this gold chain I wear? You see this beautiful gold watch I wear? That's where I keep my emergency money… always ready to travel. Always right here with me at all times… Any more trouble like this, it's adios, New York City. You oughta buy a gold watch for yourself. Just in case we don't do so good tomorrow.”

Around ten-thirty, Caitlin and Carroll ran into Walter Trentkamp. They had been walking the long, broad hallways inside the World Trade Center, still waiting for definitive news from around the world. They were holding hands when they came upon the avuncular FBI head.