Three months later, Justin Knight sat in his study holding a manuscript in one hand after Donahue, his security chief, left the room. He waved it at the woman sitting opposite him across the desk.

“Why did you write this?” he demanded with anger in his voice.

She answered carefully, “It was my doctoral thesis.”

“You cannot truly believe what you wrote,” he said with more intensity. “I expect better work from a person with your level of scholarship and achievement.”

“Why?” she asked defensively, trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice calm under the strain. “What's wrong with it?”

“You portray us as thieves, pirates, and money suckers. We are no such thing. We provide the lifeblood of the country,” he growled, as his own blood flooded into his face.

“I make no personal accusations in my thesis....” she began with more intensity, but he interrupted her.

“You claim that we engage in fraud!” he shouted.

Elizabeth Kohn, called Lizzie by Justin's daughter Michaela, sat fuming for a moment. How did this man manage to both attract her and infuriate her at the same time?

He studied her in silence. The way her smooth, brown hair flowed around her neck and over her shoulder appealed to him, but he refused to acknowledge it. The heat of his anger sustained his intention.

She finally said in a sarcastic voice, “So you don't find any ethical problems with banking practices today?”

He leaned back in his chair with a scowl on his face.

“Some things could be better, no doubt, but we live in an imperfect world with imperfect people. Those of us who work at the highest levels of banking live by a kind of code. We do our level best to do the right thing at all times. We carry the burden of keeping the lifeblood of the economy flowing as smoothly as possible. We make the economy's success our top priority every single day,” he finished with a flourish.

Lizzie stopped him with a wave of her hand.

“The debt-based monetary and banking system has left millions of families at risk of losing their homes. In the long run, we face the chickens coming home to roost. We stand on the brink of recession and probably depression, and yet the top bankers (and their lackeys in the media) place the blame on 'sub-prime borrowers' and 'foolish lending practices', when we both know that those are symptoms, not causes! Can you honestly sit there and tell me that all these problems haven't been caused by legal, yet fraudulent, activities such as banks lending money that doesn't belong to them?”

They sat on opposite sides of the desk in his beautiful study at the back of his rambling Long Island estate. The late afternoon sun glowed in his salt-and-pepper hair, giving him a silver aura about his head. The mirror-like surface of the beautiful mahogany desk reflected the huge matching bookcase on the wall. The soft, supple leather of his executive swivel chair gave more comfort than most living room recliners.

He breathed slowly and deeply, trying to calm himself while considering his reply. No employee had talked to him this way in a long, long time. He struggled to remember: had an employee ever spoken to him this way? He couldn't remember such an occasion. The fact that he didn't want to fire her only augmented his frustration.

Finally he said, “I did not say that, but we cannot simply erase hundreds of years of banking tradition just because we do not like everything about how....”

“I don't want us to erase history!” Lizzie interrupted in quick reply, warming to her subject. “I want us to learn from it and make appropriate changes! History gives us more than enough evidence to explain the causes of the problems we currently face.” She gestured dramatically, ticking off each point using the fingers of her left hand, “Such as: (1) perpetual abuse of the power to create money out of thin air; (2) the tendency to make promises to depositors without always keeping them; (3) the habit banks have of claiming control over money which they don't own; (4) the pattern of using clever monetary manipulation to draw the financial lifeblood out of what people have earned for themselves–all these lead to tremendously harmful results. To avoid such results, we need to make it illegal to harm others in these ways. That's why we have law: to protect us from those who harm us.”

Her eyes flashed as if to say, “So there!”

“But no deliberate harm exists in the system! Any harm done occurs accidentally, as a quirk of the way money works,” Justin countered defensively. “There’s no vast conspiracy, no diabolical secret cabal intentionally harming the people of the world for its own profit.”

Lizzie felt a hot glow in her face, and it went beyond anger. This man attracted her in a way she hadn't felt in years, especially when he passionately defended what he saw as right. But she must put her feelings aside. She must!

After a moment to catch her breath, she replied in a quiet, gentle voice as she carefully considered what he had said, “If that were only true! Then we would only need to agree that even accidental harm should be avoided and make appropriate legal changes. I used to think we needed nothing more. I know differently now.”

Before he could say anything she hurried to add, “Look. I don't honestly believe you behave as one of those financiers who intentionally manipulate money and finance for their own benefit to the detriment of others. I believe you when you say you always try to do the right thing. You have profited from harm done to others on many occasions, but I believe you didn't do it maliciously; it's just the way the current financial system is designed to operate. We could debate all day whether it's wrong or not, but that's only part of the issue.”

He started to reply, but she waved it away. She leaned forward intently, “You see, I do have proof of a conspiracy, a secret cabal run from the very top of the system that manipulates finance for its own benefit, knowing full well in advance the negative consequences of those actions for others. Unlike you, the cabal doesn't care one bit about ethical concerns. They have no interest in doing the right thing when it interferes with profits. They only care about building their wealth and power, no matter who suffers in the process.” Her voice rang of finality.

“Oh come on, Ms. Kohn! You cannot possibly believe that,” Justin laughed in disgust, shaking his head, his disappointment over her apparent naivety etched clearly on his handsome face.

“Like I said, I have proof,” Lizzie retorted. “Want to see it? I warn you...you won't like what you see.”

Justin hesitated. Could she actually have some real proof of some kind? He couldn't deny that this woman came with impeccable academic credentials. You don't win a doctoral degree in economics without having some ability to make a convincing case. Even so, he scoffed at the ludicrous idea that such a conspiracy could actually exist.

He considered her for a moment, and, after gathering his nerve, said, “Okay. Show me this proof of yours.”

“Good, but let me be clear. You won't like what you see. It will appall you how close to home this proof actually lies. Are you sure you want to see this?”

“Enough with the dramatics. Get on with it.”

“Fine!” She pulled out her laptop carrying case and retrieved a disk from it. She stood up and walked around to Justin's side of the desk, indicated his laptop, and queried, “With your permission?”

He granted it with an imperious wave of his hand.

She opened the CD/DVD player, slipped the disk in, and closed it tight. After a moment, the disk spun up and a splash screen announced, “A History of the United States. Click here to play.”

“We can ignore this,” Lizzie said. She reached over and typed something on the keyboard. As she did, he couldn't help but notice the curvaceous shape of her figure standing next to him. What she typed didn't appear on the screen, but the splash screen suddenly disappeared. A moment later, a video player popped up. Then a video began to play. The homemade video jumped and jostled.

“This is an excerpt from a much longer recording,” she said, “but it shows the most interesting part of the conversation that took place that day.” She walked back around to the other side of the desk to sit down while the video played. He enjoyed watching her do it.

He then saw Barry Bradford, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Harry Peterson, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and David Knight, President and CEO of Hanover-Rush and Justin's own blood uncle. The video portrayed a heated discussion among the three. Their voices echoed as if in an auditorium, although they apparently sat near each other. The camera holder moved around a lot, and the action proved difficult to follow. Even so, Justin heard what they said.

Secretary of the Treasury Harry Peterson: “We know what's going to happen. Even as we pour all this new money into the system, it continues to seize up. Most old-line financial institutions will be forced into default. Even Mr. Knight's bank now faces the danger of succumbing to the coming tidal wave. My old firm, Silverman-Cahn remains in fair shape, but if we allow this to continue unabated even it will likely falter.

“But if we take action now, we can preserve these venerable institutions and even enhance their future profitability. The most destructive events can lead to profits. Hanover-Rush, Silverman-Cahn, and the other big banks that have the least exposure to the sub-primes can emerge from this stronger and more profitable than ever before.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Barry Bradford: “But we're not talking about taking a reasonable financial risk and then collecting rewards if it succeeds. We're talking about passing the risk along to the taxpayers and leaving them holding the bag while we take the rewards.”

Hanover-Rush CEO David Knight: “Barry, let us be candid with each other. We know this progression and how it repeatedly proves itself historically. The country faces recession, so your committee lowers interest rates in order to stimulate economic activity. The newly created money from that stimulation works its way into the economy. The economy takes off, and prices increase. This leads businesses to hire more people and increase production because the greater economic activity makes them expect increased demand for their products and services.

“Once the newly created money runs out, the economy levels off and starts to slip. Businesses that expanded now have to lay employees off and cut back on production. People find their money buys less than it did before because prices went up due to all the new money. So you create even more money to stimulate the economy again. The cycle keeps repeating itself. Eventually some financing turns sour, and some banks or other companies find themselves unable to meet their obligations. The government steps in to bail out the ones determined to be essential to the economy.” He grinned.

When the others didn't react, he leaned forward and said, “Just between us, I do not care personally about those people and businesses. I concern myself instead with making sure that our profits keep coming, making bailouts a necessity, because our monetary system depends on them. This time around, the price tag rose high. It will likely rise even higher next time around. We have known for a long time this would happen, because it happens every time. You know it does. Aaron Blackbridge, your predecessor, knew it too. So did every man who has sat in that chair since 1913. It is the inevitable result of managing a fiat money supply, and it's time to close the deal. You know it, and I know it. So let us do it. Let us get the deal done.”

The video played on, and Justin stared at it in horror. The phrasing of his uncle's rhetoric sounded normal enough for a typical person, but for someone who knew Uncle David it had a very definite meaning. His uncle rarely used throwaway phrases. He carefully measured every word he said. When he referred to closing a deal, he meant an actual, real-life deal. He wouldn't use a phrase like that lightly.

Finally, Justin found his voice again once the video stopped playing.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded in a tortured whisper as his body quivered. He had a wild expression in his eyes.

“I can't tell you that specifically, but I can tell you generally,” she replied quietly and evenly. “Obviously, someone else sat in the meeting. Your uncle's stenographer took the minutes. She didn't know she had a camera in her corsage. She remained unaware of her clandestine role as she recorded the meeting. Someone planted the camera on her without her knowledge and recovered it later. However, I can't tell you who planted the camera or who arranged for this recording to be made.”

“Do you mean that you cannot tell me or that you will not tell me?”

She paused and pursed her lips. “I won't tell you. Not yet, anyway.”

Justin stared at her for a moment. “Leave me,” he instructed her in a whisper.

“I have more proof.”

“I said leave me!” he shouted. She nodded curtly and left the room.

Was this anger or guilt? It cut like a deep, ugly wound that spread through his face and chest. A little of both, he mused. He watched the video again, and by the time it reached the part where his uncle spoke, the agony overtook his whole body.

A life-long banker with two generations of Knight bankers preceding him, Justin usually relished his ancestry and the history they shared. With the famous oil baron Warren Stoneman three generations back on his mother's side and the equally famous financier J.R. Hanover on his father's side (via his grandmother), Justin prepared all his life to fulfill his destiny as Vice-President of Operations at Hanover-Rush. Formerly a source of pride, his heritage now hovered over him like a dagger ready to plunge.

He pushed a button on his desk, and a silent, hidden motor slowly opened the curtains across the wall-sized floor-to-ceiling window, displaying the estate's carefully mowed acreage with Long Island Sound gently rising and falling in the background. The last rays of the late afternoon autumn sun disappeared into the horizon. The light reflecting in his prematurely graying hair continued to cast a glow around his head, but his drawn and troubled face remained in shadow. He normally stood about six feet tall, but today he sat slouched at his desk like a much older man than his 41 years would otherwise suggest. A lone desk lamp provided the only source of light within the room, other than the sunset. The lamp shone upon papers he held loosely in his hand, which lay on the desk. Actually, the manuscript didn't really bother him all that much. He had heard that kind of economic theorizing before. The financial elite didn't generally hold the so-called Austrian school of economics with its strident criticisms of the Federal Reserve, the monetary system, and common banking practices in high esteem, but they all knew of it. Yet that video conversation galled him.

Again he watched his uncle tell Bradford in the video that they needed to close the deal. “To close the deal”–Uncle David actually said those words! Of course, in the banking industry deals closed all the time, but Justin never thought he would hear that phrase in a context like this one, uttered by someone who literally meant it.

The proposed $700 billion congressional bailout of October 2008, the obvious subject of the meeting, dominated the current news cycle. The major media reported that the crisis occurred because banks and mortgage lenders made nearly one trillion dollars worth of so-called “sub-prime” mortgage loans to people who couldn't afford them. They reported the truth as far as it went, but not the whole truth.

It reminded him of a story his senior manager for loan underwriting, Jack Reese, had told him recently about that family in Virginia. What was the name? Blackwood, that was it. A lot of families had similar stories to the Blackwoods' story, but for some reason that one stood out in his mind. He contemplated it in the sun’s dying rays.