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story as to who had actually shot the bullet that cut through his brother’s neck, made his stomach churn. Why hadn’t they done an analysis of the slug? Couldn’t it have been friendly fire? There had been Army Rangers in the vicinity at the time of the shooting.
    He could feel the acid pooling in his gut. He hated them. All of them, even the cute, young ones like Truffant.
    And yet, he was also secretly proud. Proud that they—whoever they might actually be—had thought enough of his analysis to investigate him. The big bad federal government had come after him, Garrett Reilly, a junior bond trader working out of a cubicle in lower Manhattan. He liked that. He liked that he could throw stones that caused ripples in the giant lake that was the nation’s intelligence-gathering bureaucracy.
    Garrett walked the twenty blocks south and west to Jenkins & Altshuler and still got there by 6:30, half an hour earlier than anyone else in the office. He checked the overnight London Interbank Offered Rate (the LIBOR, the rate used by banks when they loaned each other money) and the values of the euro, yen, and yuan. He scanned the prices on intermediate-grade corporate bonds that had been issued overnight. Mostly he eyed the price of the dollar, keeping a tracking window open on his Bloomberg terminal, looking for even the slightest hint of a move. But none came. The dollar held steady across the board, against all other currencies. Garrett swilled more coffee. At 7:30 he jogged up one flight of stairs to the twenty-third floor and sat in the chair outside of Avery Bernstein’s office. Liz, his redheaded, middle-aged secretary, was already there, answering the phone. Garrett smiled at her, but she ignored him; then he checked the time on his cell phone, and waited. Avery Bernstein, tweed jacket draped over his shoulder and a Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm, walked in two minutes later. Garrett popped out of his seat.
    “I don’t understand why you called the Treasury Department . . .”
    “Garrett—”
    “You destroyed any chance we had of riding a down trend. If the dollar—”
    “Garrett!”
    “—crashes now we’ll have no advance warning and we’ll be—”
    “Shut up!”
    Garrett fell silent. Normally, when people told him to shut up, Garrett hit them. But he couldn’t hit his boss. And, anyway, he liked Avery. A lot. Thought of him—sometimes—as the father he’d never had.
    “Come into my office.” Avery disappeared into his office. Garrett followed and Avery shut the door behind him, then sat at his desk. Garrett could see lower Manhattan out the window behind Avery, a writhing landscape of miniatures: people, cars, and helicopters, all specks in the distance.
    “Sit down. Say nothing.”
    They sat in silence for what felt, to Garrett, like five minutes, but in reality was more like thirty seconds. Avery booted up his computer and tucked away his briefcase.
    “You have stumbled upon something very serious . . .”
    “I didn’t stumble on it. I did the resear—”
    “Shut. The fuck. Up.” The tension in Avery’s voice made the words crackle. Garrett pressed his teeth together. Avery’s eyes scanned the walls and desktops of the office, as if searching for uninvited guests. Or, Garrett suddenly realized, listening devices. A chill ran down Garrett’s neck.
    Finally, Avery looked at him. “This is what I will say to you. And it is all I can say to you.” Avery fixed Garrett with a long, unhappy stare. “Are you listening?”
    “Yes.”
    “This is not you buying a Texas muni bond on the cheap. Or me trying to talk you out of quitting Yale. This is big. This is scary. Bigger and scarier than you can imagine .”
    There was silence in the room. Then Avery said, “What did I just say to you?”
    “That this is big. And scary. Bigger and scarier than I can imagine.”
    “You have learned how to listen. Good. So. I have been contacted by people. People I cannot name. And they have