Justin and one of Janice's aides took the elevators down to the basement, where the aide led Justin to a side room door he hadn't noticed when they first arrived. She let Justin in and closed it behind him after he entered.

He looked around the room. Other than the small conference table and a few chairs, he saw nothing but bare walls. He couldn't see any video cameras, microphones, wiring, or anything else used for recording video or sound. It made him wonder whether these people knew their business. He hoped they did. He also wondered how long he'd have to wait.

Within minutes, the door opened again, and John Holloway walked into the room, accompanied by the security guard from the front desk.

“Let me know if you need anything,” she said as she closed the door, leaving the two of them together to talk in the quiet room.

“Hello, John, it has been quite some time,” Justin said as he put out his hand. John took it and agreed with the sentiment before they both sat down.

“I apologize for being so melodramatic on the phone earlier,” John said. “You called about an extremely sensitive issue, one might even say a matter of national security.”

He sat back. “So what is this place, Justin? The sign on the wall out there said Agorist Underground. I never heard of it. They have pretty good security, though. They wouldn't even let me see how we got here.”

“They do a good job,” Justin agreed. “In fact, I can honestly say that they saved my life last night, but that subject would take this meeting off track.”

“Yes, of course,” John said uncomfortably. “I tried to remember the last time I met your wife. It was quite a few years ago, wasn't it? Just before 9/11 perhaps?”

“That sounds about right.” Justin couldn't remember the exact occasion, but the timing seemed reasonable.

John nodded, unsure what to say further.

Justin said, “So tell me about Osama Bin Laden and why your company seems to support him.”

“We didn't! We don't! Christ, Justin, you know I wouldn't support someone like that!”

“So why did you send him all that money?”

Holloway sighed and shook his head defensively. “I didn't, not my own anyway. I sent money given to me by...by members of our government. I think they were CIA or NSA, but I never found out for sure. They told me I had to send this for them via my company's accounts or else I'd lose all my government contracts. You know what that would do to us. It would wipe us out!”

Justin did indeed know. Holloway's success stemmed primarily from such contracts. Dating from a time when initial public offerings (IPOs) like Holloway stock tended to skyrocket like shooting stars that often crashed back to earth, Holloway Inc. remained among the few survivors.

A couple years after the crash of 1987, the nation's economy went into recession as it normally does after such events. Justin remembered that time vividly because it occurred at the end of his teenage years when he received his personal introduction to the world of banking. He started working at Hanover at the same time that Aaron Blackbridge pushed hard for monetary expansion in his role as Fed chairman. From 1989 to 1994 the Federal Reserve cut rates by over 70%, which flooded the economy with a huge pile of newly created money.

It took a few years for this new cash to work its way into the stock market. As an investment bank, Hanover made a ton of money during the dot com boom. Justin could hardly count all the stock offerings he worked on during that time. The list seemed endless: United Providers, AskIt, Kresco, FashionFinder, Ewarehouse, Ganges, Quikster, Fingrit, Secretech, Holloway, Orangetree.... He helped underwrite some of the most famous dot coms of that era. Putting the words “Internet” and “stock offering” into the same sentence caused otherwise sober investors to go on a drunken spending spree.

Justin often wondered, Why had they done that? What made such investors go hog wild? Many of his peers claimed that the crowd always acted irrationally led by naive, inexperienced investors. While undoubtedly true, it didn't explain their behavior entirely. Investors take their cues from the marketplace and the behavior of prices over time. Securities and Exchange Commission regulations require all stock, bond, and mutual fund offerings to remind buyers that past performance does not necessarily guarantee future results, but even the most salted trading pros routinely used historic price performance in their buying and selling decision-making every day. Yet, as the stock's price went up, investors went crazy.

So why did it happen?

Price inflation played a major role, and Justin knew (as all bankers know) that price inflation happens due to changes in the money supply. How much of a role did hidden, unrealized inflation play in what Blackbridge liked to call “irrational exuberance”? Justin knew it had a huge influence, although he had no clear-cut way to measure and quantify it.

The Holloway stock offering in 1996 stuck out in his mind as a prime example of investor exuberance, although perhaps not as irrational as other stocks of that era. John Holloway's unique vision to combine Internet technologies with defense contracting projects made his stock launch an inevitable success. Justin remembered John's initial resistance to the idea. Justin pushed him hard, assuring him that the stock offering would raise a ton of money. It did. Holloway quickly used its new pile of capital to place itself in position to become the largest supplier to the U.S. government. Investors couldn't buy enough of the stock. It opened at $15 a share, but within six months it reached $32. A year later it topped $75, and by January 2000 the asking price totaled $225 a share. Astonishing!

The bank made money hand over fist during the dot com boom, which ensured Justin's own rapid rise through the company's ranks. At the relatively young age of 31 his Uncle David promoted him to Vice-President of Operations in 1998.

Two years later, Justin worried as stock market prices got out of hand at the close of the millennium. His fears came to pass when reality hit in the form of the tech crash in the spring of 2000. Justin didn't get hurt in the financial bloodletting. Like all the top bankers, he'd gotten the word that the Fed planned to rein in the money supply in order to stop the spending orgy. He liquidated his own portfolio well in advance of the crash itself. Of course, his staff filed all the SEC paperwork on his behalf required of inside investors like himself, keeping it all on the up-and-up. He didn't break any laws. Still, he couldn't help but wonder about all those other investors who hadn't had the inside track on Fed policy like he did. Would they have behaved differently?

The most successful investors mostly did know. “Fed watching” emerged as a popular activity during the 1990s. As each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee approached, speculation ran rampant as to what Blackbridge would do next with the money supply. Every public statement he made, no matter how well framed in double-talk, attracted intense scrutiny for the slightest hints and indications as to what the Federal Reserve would do next.

The scrutinizers rarely guessed wrong. The professionals would buy on the rumor that the Fed planned a cut in fund and interest rates, and they sold them on the rumor of an increase.

Each time the Fed announced their decision in line with what the professionals expected (which usually happened), the professionals closed their short-term plays at a profit. Most times that ended the matter, but during the height of the dot com boom even some of the little guys started listening to the Fed. Small rallies thus became big rallies. The majority of investors who didn't follow Fed actions saw the prices going up and didn't want those who might profit to leave them out. So they bought too, thus driving the prices up even further. They poured their IRA and 401(k) monies into the pool, and Wall Street cheered the charging bull as the market kept going up and up and up.

Clearly, changes in the money supply drove the market.

Some stocks fared better than others. After reaching a high of $226, with the crash Holloway fell to $132, down over 40% but still not as badly off as others fared after the Fed finally pulled in the reins of the money supply in early 2000. A year later with the attacks of 9/11, Holloway acted as a major player in the country's defense against terrorism, and the Fed began to expand the money supply again. Holloway supplied network and communications support in Afghanistan and later played a huge role in the occupation of Iraq, while the stock recovered to $160. It grew faster than any defense contractor over the next 10 years. By 2008 its stock split twice, yet it still sold in the $80-$90 range.

Remembering all this made Justin uncomfortable because Amanda also worked on the Holloway team. He assigned her to manage the account after the IPO closed. She handled large transactions between Holloway and their customers, as well as overseeing market making functions for Holloway stock.

When the bull market finally came to an end in 2000, it wreaked havoc throughout the financial industry as crashes always do. Hanover acquired the assets of a struggling but very large competitor, G. Rush & Co., during the recession that followed, and the newly combined company changed its name to Hanover-Rush. This expanded Hanover from merely an investment bank to a regular commercial bank that attracted deposits and made loans as well.

He remembered Uncle David lobbied Blackbridge heavily to pour money as quickly as possible into the money supply to end the recession that followed the tech crash. Uncle David got his wish. Once again rates plummeted, this time creeping down to only 1%. Almost immediately investors who got rich during the dot com craze dumped their profits into real estate, and the housing boom took off as wealthy investors took advantage of all the newly created cash to buy huge amounts of housing and commercial property. Once again the bank's balance sheet overflowed with swollen rivers of profitability.

Justin recalled all this in a matter of seconds. Holloway sat morosely and silently while Justin reminisced. Finally, Justin spoke up again, trying to prod him into speaking.

“Why did the CIA want Bin Laden to have all that money?” he asked.

Holloway shook his head.

“I don't know. I heard rumors, but I just don't know. I often demanded to know whether OBL meant Bin Laden, but my contact never confirmed or denied it. He just kept insisting that I handle my part of the bargain, or else!”

“How did you meet this guy?”

Holloway met his gaze. “It's not worth my life to tell you that. I'll tell you that his connections in the government went very high up. Very high, as high as you can go. Do you understand what I mean?”

“You mean the White House?”

Holloway flinched, sighed, and shook his head. “I'm not very good at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. I thought I left it all behind in 2002.”

“2002?” Justin asked, and Holloway nodded.

“We sent our last payment in 2002. After that, I never heard from...my contact...again.”

“But that happened after 9/11!”

Troubled, Holloway replied, “I know. I know.”

“You should have said something! They murdered thousands of people!” Justin shouted.

“Say something? Like what? Can you see me calling you on the phone and saying, 'Hey, Justin, you gotta help me out. The CIA is shaking me down for all my government contracts, all $40.5 billion of them, and they might have played a role in 9/11, although I can’t be sure!' Yeah, that would have worked out really well! They would’ve killed me if I did that. They would’ve killed you, too. Even if I said something publicly today, my life wouldn't be worth a wooden nickel. You do understand that, don't you?”

Justin nodded. Holloway made a reasonable point: what would he have done? Probably nothing, because of the extraordinarily high risk involved. He would have kept his mouth shut. Who would not?

“There's one other thing,” Holloway said with a strange reluctance. After all he said so far, Justin wondered what might tie his tongue now.

“My government contact required that all of the wire transfers be placed directly through your uncle's office.”

“But my wife handled all your wire transfers.”

Holloway shook his head.

“Not these. At least not directly. Now you know why I took your call. At first I thought you called on his behalf. When you made it clear that you didn't know anything about it by demanding to know why I forwarded money to Bin Laden, I didn't know what to think. I only knew that an old nightmare had somehow resurfaced. All I could think was I had to meet with you and explain, hoping you would see reason.”

He sputtered to a stop, while Justin couldn't think of anything to say in return. The two men sat there, silently brooding.

Finally, Holloway said, “You mentioned that someone murdered your wife over all this. I didn't know about that. How did it happen?” The last words came out of his mouth extremely reluctantly.

Justin wanted to throw up.

“She...they...someone blew her brains out from another car on the highway at 60 miles an hour,” he whispered.

Holloway blanched. “Oh my God!” he whispered back in horror.

The two men refused to look at each other. Both found themselves drowning in the horror of the past. Finally, Justin spoke up.

“I never knew what really happened until yesterday,” he said very slowly and haltingly. “I always thought the crash happened by accident, as the police reported.”

This reawakened Holloway.

“What happened last night Justin?”

Justin just shook his head. “I am sorry; I cannot tell you that. Not yet. Like I said on the phone, you will know soon enough. Everyone will know.”

He stood up, his hand extended, which Holloway accepted.

“Thank you for coming, John. I will ask them to take you back to your office now.”

He opened the door and alerted the security guard, who sent someone over to fetch Holloway.

“I'm sorry about your wife, Justin,” Holloway said as he prepared to depart. Again they shook hands warmly, and Justin watched while they led him out to the parking garage.