Read Online The King of Fear: Part Two: A Garrett Reilly Thriller by Drew Chapman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Drew Chapman
Tags: Suspense, Thrillers, Crime, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Technothrillers
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asleep at his side, his mind flashed back, over and over, not to finance or Phillip Steinkamp or conspiracies and the money supply, but to that pretty blonde at the food-truck parking lot.
He decided he would go back to the food trucks the very next day. Not for anything special. Just to look at her face. That’s all. Not a sin. Just to have a friend.
With that thought, one of the most powerful politicians in the US Congress—the man who almost single-handedly regulated the financial industry—fell asleep, peaceful and happy.
M IDTOWN M ANHATTAN , J UNE 18, 4:31 P.M.
“S ir, Charlotte offices calling again.”
Robert Andrew Wells Jr., CEO of Vanderbilt Frink Trust and Guaranty—known to most people around the country as Vanderbilt, and everyone on Wall Street as Vandy—grunted his displeasure as he marched down the hallway of the thirtieth floor of the bank’s headquarters, heading to the stairway. His assistant, Thomason, held a cell phone in the air, trailing after Wells. “They want to know—”
“I know what they fucking want.” Wells banged the stairway door open and sprinted upstairs, two steps at a time. “They want permission. Everybody always wants permission.”
Wells believed in entrepreneurship: you went out and did things. You didn’t ask for handouts. He believed in bootstrapping: no matter where you started in this life, in a backwoods shack or a rat-infested tenement, if you worked hard—dedicated yourself to whatever your heart’s deepest desire was—you would eventually get it. Call it force of will, the cult of personality, or just plain old American self-help, Wells bought the concept of the self-made man, hook, line, and sinker.
He had no time or patience for people who sat around waiting for someone else to help them up the ladder—welfare recipients or bureaucrats addicted to the mother’s milk of the state or sniveling branch directors who wanted to cover their asses before trying something new. They would never achieve greatness, those people, because they didn’t understand that greatness came from within. It was never given to you. You had to fight for it. You had to earn it.
Striding down the hall of the thirty-first floor, Wells basked in that notion. He had risen from the bottom floor up, fought his way through the company, and was now top dog, leader of the nation’s biggest bank. He was a master of the universe, a man with fabulous wealth and almost unlimited power—he was the 1 percent of the 1 percent, and all the world knew it.
That Wells’s father—Robert Andrew Wells Sr.—had also been a banker did not put a dent in Wells’s philosophical bearings. Wells Sr. had not run an institution like Vandy. He had been a midlevel player at a small Midwestern savings and loan, hardly a stepping-stone to running an international conglomerate. To Wells’s mind, the distance between his father’s position and his own was equivalent to the distance a homeless person needed to travel to make something of his or her life; to get a job, for instance, as a teller in one of their fifteen hundred branches across the country.
Yes, the government had helped bail Vandy out in 2008, backstopping their capital requirements with a massive loan from the Treasury Department, but Wells had seen to it that that loan was paid back swiftly, and with full interest. Vandy owed the US government nothing. At least, not right now. And never again.
Anyway, those arguments were quibbles, and Wells had heard them all before. The press did not like Wells, nor did the political left. They were envious, to his mind, and had no conception of what Wells and his bank did for America—the lengths to which they went to make sure the wheels of capitalism kept grinding along. That was no small task. The press and the left hated capitalism, hated banks, and they hated Vandy. The last three days had proven that point beyond any doubt. All that Wells had read for the last seventy-two hours was how
He decided he would go back to the food trucks the very next day. Not for anything special. Just to look at her face. That’s all. Not a sin. Just to have a friend.
With that thought, one of the most powerful politicians in the US Congress—the man who almost single-handedly regulated the financial industry—fell asleep, peaceful and happy.
M IDTOWN M ANHATTAN , J UNE 18, 4:31 P.M.
“S ir, Charlotte offices calling again.”
Robert Andrew Wells Jr., CEO of Vanderbilt Frink Trust and Guaranty—known to most people around the country as Vanderbilt, and everyone on Wall Street as Vandy—grunted his displeasure as he marched down the hallway of the thirtieth floor of the bank’s headquarters, heading to the stairway. His assistant, Thomason, held a cell phone in the air, trailing after Wells. “They want to know—”
“I know what they fucking want.” Wells banged the stairway door open and sprinted upstairs, two steps at a time. “They want permission. Everybody always wants permission.”
Wells believed in entrepreneurship: you went out and did things. You didn’t ask for handouts. He believed in bootstrapping: no matter where you started in this life, in a backwoods shack or a rat-infested tenement, if you worked hard—dedicated yourself to whatever your heart’s deepest desire was—you would eventually get it. Call it force of will, the cult of personality, or just plain old American self-help, Wells bought the concept of the self-made man, hook, line, and sinker.
He had no time or patience for people who sat around waiting for someone else to help them up the ladder—welfare recipients or bureaucrats addicted to the mother’s milk of the state or sniveling branch directors who wanted to cover their asses before trying something new. They would never achieve greatness, those people, because they didn’t understand that greatness came from within. It was never given to you. You had to fight for it. You had to earn it.
Striding down the hall of the thirty-first floor, Wells basked in that notion. He had risen from the bottom floor up, fought his way through the company, and was now top dog, leader of the nation’s biggest bank. He was a master of the universe, a man with fabulous wealth and almost unlimited power—he was the 1 percent of the 1 percent, and all the world knew it.
That Wells’s father—Robert Andrew Wells Sr.—had also been a banker did not put a dent in Wells’s philosophical bearings. Wells Sr. had not run an institution like Vandy. He had been a midlevel player at a small Midwestern savings and loan, hardly a stepping-stone to running an international conglomerate. To Wells’s mind, the distance between his father’s position and his own was equivalent to the distance a homeless person needed to travel to make something of his or her life; to get a job, for instance, as a teller in one of their fifteen hundred branches across the country.
Yes, the government had helped bail Vandy out in 2008, backstopping their capital requirements with a massive loan from the Treasury Department, but Wells had seen to it that that loan was paid back swiftly, and with full interest. Vandy owed the US government nothing. At least, not right now. And never again.
Anyway, those arguments were quibbles, and Wells had heard them all before. The press did not like Wells, nor did the political left. They were envious, to his mind, and had no conception of what Wells and his bank did for America—the lengths to which they went to make sure the wheels of capitalism kept grinding along. That was no small task. The press and the left hated capitalism, hated banks, and they hated Vandy. The last three days had proven that point beyond any doubt. All that Wells had read for the last seventy-two hours was how
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