The Takeover (1995), page 7
There it was-the first time Malley had referred to him simply as Falcon, not Andrew. It was the classic evolution all business associates underwent, and it still bothered him after so many years.
They called him Andrew for a short time, to be polite, and then instinctively began calling him Falcon. Friends called him Andrew.
Business associates called him Falcon. But wasn't that what he wanted?
A name people would remember. Wasn't that why he had given himself the new name after high school?
Falcon answered the question. "A headhunter called me out of the blue.
Some guy I had never heard of before. He wouldn't tell me how he got my name, but that's typical for those guys." "It's amazing how fast your headhunter became aware of this position. We fired the woman who headed the team we want you to take over only two weeks ago."
Malley glanced at the open calendar on his desk. "Wednesday, the week of the twenty-first." "Really? That guy did work pretty fast."
Strange, Falcon thought. The headhunter had called him on Monday of that week, two days before NASO had actually fired the woman. And the headhunter had specifically mentioned the position the woman had held and that they had let her go, though of course he did not mention her by name.
"When did the headhunter call you?" "That Friday. The twenty-fifth, I guess." For some reason Falcon did not want to be forthcoming.
"Uh-huh." Malley continued to stare at Falcon. "Well, the bottom line is that we want to hire you. We're willing to pay you a salary of one hundred twenty thousand a year and a bonus that could reach fifty percent of your annual salary."
One hundred eighty thousand dollars. That was it. The maximum he could expect to earn. It beat the crap out of food stamps, but it didn't come close to the $1.1 million he had earned at Winthrop, Hawkins. And it paled in comparison to what MD Link should have been worth by now.
"We want you to head up Team Two, which is responsible for marketing NASO's credit and noncredit products throughout Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Your title will be vice president, and you will have five professionals reporting to you, another four administrative assistants, and three secretariesone of whom will be your personal secretary." just a vice president. There were probably two thousand Vps in the NASO organization. "I would report to you?"
"Yes."
Well, there was an opportunity. Not to wish any harm to him, but he'd probably be dead of that heart attack in a year. Maybe the bank would move him into Malley's position. "I'd like to be able to hire my own secretary." Falcon thought of Jenny. She still hadn't found a job yet either. "I don't think there would be a problem with that. Can I take that to mean you're going to accept the offer?" "It means I would like to take a couple of days to think about it."
Malley nodded uneasily.
The woman danced effortlessly to the heavy beat of the bass booming from huge speakers positioned throughout the trendy Upper East Side nightclub. Several men danced around her, though none had been invited to do so. They moved wildly, attempting to catch her attention, but she remained impassive to their gyrations. She was lost in the music.
Falcon watched her move behind and between the arms and legs of her uninvited suitors. She was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, and he was impressed. She was tall, perhaps five-eight, and the bun atop her head, formed by her long, silky, ebony hair, made her appear even taller. Her beautiful face was accented by huge, dark eyes, high cheekbones, and full, red lips. Her long black dress plunged deeply between small but well-formed breasts. Her skin was dark, but it was difficult to determine in the low light of the club just how dark she was. Greek? Perhaps even Spanish. He didn't care.
out of all the beautiful women at the club, this was the one the men watched most carefully. They watched her every move. The insecure men pointed and poked each other, fantasizing because they knew they stood no chance with her. The confident men hung back by themselves, calculating. And the stupid ones tried to dance with her.
It was not simply her physical beauty that attracted Falcon and the rest of the men to her. It was the way this creature carried herself.
She danced beautifully, never too quickly, never too slowly, always in time with the music. As though she were making love to it. She completely ignored the men about her even as new suitors approached with each song, and the ones who had tried to gain her attention for a few minutes faded into the mass of dancing flesh in search of easier prey. Her head and arms swayed rhythmically. Falcon gazed, mesmerized.
He had positioned himself against a column, close to where she moved.
He found that he could not take his eyes from her. It was as if a lightning bolt had struck him, and he was too intoxicated to worry about his pride at this point. Every few moments he swore that she glanced at him through innocent eyes. But he knew it was simply the alcohol and his imagination.
Suddenly a large, dark man moved through the crowd with greater purpose than any of the other suitors. He did not dance or circle around her until finally coming close, as the other men did. He walked directly to her, cutting through the gyrating male bodies, who were at first irritated at the new competitor but quickly melted away as they became aware of his huge size.
Falcon's pulse quickened as the man took the woman by the wrist and began to pull her toward a door at the back of the club.
He watched them go, standing straighter as they moved away. She did not complain, but neither did she readily accept her fate, tugging slightly against the man. As they reached the door, the woman turned to take one more glance at the dance floor. And then she was gone, pulled into a private room by the dark man.
Falcon watched the door close.
For several minutes he stood staring at the door. When it became obvious the woman was not coming back, he turned again toward the dance floor. There was nothing else to compare to the dark-haired vision.
Was that all it had been? A vision?
Falcon politely declined a buxom blond woman who asked him to dance.
She was pretty, but his mind remained full of the beautiful girl with the dark eyes. He watched the blonde return to the dance floor as he brought the scotch to his lips. It was his sixth drink in the last three hours.
A hundred and twenty thousand dollars in salary. A fifty percent bonus. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year in total compensation. Most would be ecstatic. Not Falcon. It had been the wrong decision to leave Winthrop, Hawkins. There could be no denying that any longer. He had attempted to contact Granville twice after their confrontation at the Harvard Club, hoping that the older man would soften on his promise to never again allow Falcon to work at Winthrop, Hawkins. But Falcon's calls were not returned. He had tried one last time after leaving NASO this afternoon. But nothing. By now he would have been earning several million dollars a year instead of the paltry compensation NASO was offering. He had thumbed his nose at Granville, and now Granville was thumbing his right back.
The music seemed to grow louder. Falcon glanced at his watch. Two forty-five in the morning. Whenever he awoke later today in the one-bedroom Queens hovel he had rented to facilitate his job search, he would call Malley and accept the offer at NASO. What choice did he have? He was eating hot dogs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In another month he wouldn't be able to afford rent.
The day after tomorrow, when the terrible hangover had subsided, he would take the ten-thousand-dollar signing bonus NASO was offering and rent himself a real apartment in Manhattan.
Falcon turned to go, to find a taxi that would take him all the way back to Queens. But as he turned, she was there, blocking his path.
To his surprise, he found himself staring into the same dark eyes that had fascinated him so from the dance floor. She was even more beautiful than he had first thought.
Falcon was vaguely aware of the circle of suitors-her constant entourage-but they were irrelevant now, and the dark man was nowhere to be seen. Falcon was the focus of her attention. She smiled slightly, tilted her head back and to the side, and took his hand. And suddenly Winthrop, Hawkins, NASO, the bankrupt MD Link, and his financial problems evaporated.
Phoenix Grey lifted the soft drink to his mouth as he stood in a dark corner of the club. He had been watching Falcon for two weeks and felt as if he knew the man intimately. Suddenly he sensed the change in Falcon's demeanor. The girl, with one look, had lifted him out of his depression. She could become a problem. He would have to report this development to Rutherford.
T he chairman of the Federal Reserve System of the United States of America. His power was absolute and irrevocable. Once appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, he was beholden to no one, just as Supreme Court justices, once confirmed, were insulated from the electorate. His term lasted only four years, and he could be replaced at the end of it by another Presidential appointee, but that didn't happen often. Any President who dared consider the idea of replacing a sitting Fed chairman against his will risked the wrath of the 'T' bankers, who would crater the stock and bond markets. The Street placed grave importance on an independent Fed chairman, and every President was painfully aware of this.
Carter Filipelli sat alone at the head of the huge mahogany table in the middle of the Federal Reserve's formal boardroom. He was awaiting the arrival of the other nineteen people who would sit at this meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, or, as the Street called it, simply the F.O.M.C. They should have been a powerful group, but Filipelli did not allow them to exert their authority to any great degree.
The boardroom was cold and imposing, hardly conducive to back-and-forth exchanges between the participants, and Filipelli used this sterility of setting to his advantage. Frowning brass eagles, polished so that they shone even in the dim light of the large room, perched on the upper edge of the chandelier that dominated the space above the long table. The walls were covered by maps of the twelve Federal Reserve districts that sliced the country into strange and asymmetric shapes.
Behind Filipelli was a huge fireplace in which lay several large logs that had been on the hearth for at least a decade.
Over the fireplace was another brass eagle, this bird much larger than those on the chandelier. One talon clutched arrows, the other an olive branch. The air in the great room smelled like that of an ancient library, musty and bookish.
Filipelli laughed aloud, and the sound echoed in the huge room. He was the Fed chairman, arguably one of the most powerful people in the world. With only sporadic resistance from one or two of the other members of the F.O.M.C, he set monetary policy for the United States by controlling interest rates and bringing to bear the Fed's vast cash reverses. He could raise rates to head off inflation, thereby inducing a recession, causing pain and suffering; or he could lower rates, spurring economic growth and putting billions into the collective pockets of the country.
Many Americans did not understand the absolute power of the Fed chairman: his ability to act independently and without constraint, his ability to singlehandedly create prosperity or poverty. It flew in the face of every tenet of democracy. And this blatant disregard for the American system of government was not advertised by either political party or by Wall Street. It was perhaps the only thing in the world these three constituencies could unanimously agree upon. And with good reason. If the general populace came to understand the Fed's unchecked structure, they might demand change, which would spell disaster for the country. No Fed chairman could be shackled by a democratic process and be expected to react to the split-second machinations of modern financial markets.
Because of his tremendous clout, financial analysts and investors worldwide attempted to interpret Filipelli's every move. An utterance, an offfiand remark, a sneeze, for Christ's sake, could set off panic buying or selling in markets around the globe. He laughed again. It was an incredible country where a poor Italian family, only two generations removed from the heart of Brooklyn, now hailing from a backwoods Alabama town, could produce a son able to rise to such a position of influence without the use of military force. Perhaps it really did matter who you went to kindergarten with.
Typically, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the President worked at arm's length. But President Buford J. Warren, former Democratic Senator from Alabama and a self-proclaimed Washington outsider, had proven to be an atypical President, a man unwilling to abide by tradition simply for tradition's sake. He had deemed that the country, mired in an economic malaise brought on by the huge federal budget deficit, needed action when he took over the executive branch.
So when the existing Fed chairman's term expired three months after Warren's election, he bucked the system and kicked the man out, calling on his old friend, Carter Filipelli, who, at the time, was chief executive of Alabama's largest savings and loan, Great Southeastern Savings, to run the Federal Reserve. The President needed Filipelli to take firm control of the country's central bank and assist him in implementing his domestic and foreign policies. Now, after three years at the helm, after all the financial pundits had initially predicted doom for the country as a result of the President selecting such an inexperienced man for such a terribly important job, and after Wall Street had initially crushed the New York Stock Exchange and the government bond market upon the announcement of Filipelli as chairman, he was one of the most respected men in Washington. Not liked, but respected. And he had the President to thank. Filipelli would be loyal to the man until the day he died.
In twos and threes the other members of the F.O.M.C began to trickle into the boardroom, their conversations ending immediately at the large oak door. They moved silently toward their assigned seats. The room was intimidating even to these people of importance, so they did not converse once they entered it. Finally, all but one representative had taken his or her seat in the stiff, straight-backed chairs.
The F.O.M.C met eight times a year on a regularly scheduled basis in the Washington boardroom, and on an ad hoc basis if market conditions warranted. The primary job of the committee members was to decide what action, if any, was needed to stimulate or retard the growth of the United States economy. They were also responsible for the health of the member banks of the national banking system and for calming jittery financial markets in times of turmoil. The committee was composed of Filipelli and the six Federal Reserve governors, the twelve bank presidents of the United States Federal Reserve districts, and the assistant secretary to the board. Only eight of the members-Filipelli, the six governors, and the New York Fed president, Wendell Smith-had permanent votes on the committee. And only twelve members voted at any meeting-the other four votes were filled on a rotating basis by the eleven non-New York bank presidents.
Filipelli looked around the room, making eye contact with each person individually, and the man or woman formally nodded back at the chairman before he would relieve them of his fierce glare. Each member's vote theoretically carried the same weight, but Filipelli so dominated the proceedings that any vote had become little more than a formality.
Filipelli ruled the twenty-member committee with an iron fist, leaving little room for negotiation. His manner was gruff, and he wasn't afraid of ruffling a few feathers. Though not overtly advertised, Filipelli had a promise from the President to undermine the authority of any F.O.M.C member who was not loyal to the chairman, and each member knew it.
When an F.O.M.C member made a statement he did not care for, Filipelli's reaction was immediate and forceful. He would bang the table with his huge black gavel and then sneer or simply interrupt the speaker and inform him that his time had elapsed. Filipelli did not care if he was perceived as a rube. He was in Washington to do a job, and so far it was going pretty damn well.
The large grandfather clock next to the door chimed nine times. As the ninth chime faded, Filipelli rose quickly, removed his plain suit coat, hung it over the back of his chair, and rolled up the sleeves of his blue dress shirt as he sat down again. The other members watched carefully. No one else would even consider removing his suit coat, much less rolling up his sleeves.
Filipelli would not have been a physically imposing man-he was just five feet nine inches tall and of medium build-except that his features were sharp and well defined. This definition intimidated people. The raven-colored hair lay perfectly flat on the top of his head, slicked straight backward with styling gel to reveal a wide and sloping forehead. But in the back it stuck out, like porcupine quills. Brown eyes darted beneath thin, razorstraight eyebrows. His nose was long and pointed, and his mouth was set in a permanent scowl matching that of the huge eagle over the fireplace behind where he now sat. He rarely smiled in this room.
The black gavel, trimmed with gold paint, smashed onto the table.
"The meeting will come to order." Despite his southern upbringing, Filipelli's nasal accent still reflected his Brooklyn roots.
The eighteen other members in attendance straightened in their chairs and attempted to match Filipelli's scowl. None was able to do so. "It is nine o'clock and the meeting will begin as scheduled." Filipelli spoke with purpose. "President Smith of the New York Federal Reserve district has chosen not to join us today." Filipelli pointed at the empty chair at the end of one side of the table. "He did not bother to inform me of his absence. However, we will continue with our agenda anyway. I thank the rest of you for being punctual. President Obrecht of the Minneapolis Fed. You will vote for President Smi-" CI'm here, Chairman Filipelli." Wendell Smith sarcastically emphasized the word "Chairman." He moved smoothly into the room, smiling suavely at the other F.O.M.C members. He stopped to shake hands with Obrecht, whispering an apology to the man, who was obviously relieved at Smith's last-minute appearance. Finally, he sauntered to his seat.
