Page 50 of The Atlas Maneuver

Her château was no antique. She’d built it a decade and a half ago, among twenty acres of trees, with the first millions made from her employment with the bank. Then she was a senior administrator, before graduating to the board as European consul. From there she was elevated to first chair, now serving at the pleasure of the other consuls. Her reputation was one of a consummate professional. Financial leaders across the globe called on her for advice. She’d served on the board for the World Bank, and the duchy of Luxembourg depended on her, and the bank, to manage its long-held wealth.

But no one really knew her.

How could they?

She never revealed much about herself to anyone.

Before all this started the complex question of who she was contained too many variables to answer. Now, at least, she’d identified, solidified, and quantified most of those. She knew exactly who and what she was.

With no apologies.

She decided that pearls would be the proper accent for the evening and found the strand of Majorcas she’d bought in Spain a few years ago. Kyra Lhota was on her way back from Siberia via private jet. At least they now knew where Kelly was located. In Japanese custody. So she’d reported all that to Kyra, who assured her that she had eyes and ears on the ground in Switzerland, waiting for her to arrive. Good. They would be needed as the Japanese would be making contact again. They wanted something and, to get it, they’d use Kelly to make a deal. Of course Catherine had no intention of surrendering a thing to them. Instead, Kyra would strike, with the when and where of that all being part of the bargaining process.

She clipped the pearls around her neck, smoothed the wrinkles from her dress, and left the bedroom, descending to the ground floor. She passed through a large archway that separated theentrance foyer from the main parlor. The intricate parquet floor beneath her Christian Louboutins was dotted with expensive Turkish rugs she’d bought herself in Istanbul. The room beyond was filled with light. A crystal chandelier hung over Louis XIV furnishings. Pale blues and eggshell white predominated. The furniture was all custom-designed, another luxury that obscene amounts of money afforded. High ceilings with hewn exposed beams added spaciousness, all done on the advice of her Parisian interior designer. A fire crackled inside one of the many stone hearths.

Her guest waited inside her study.

Medium height. Swarthy skin. Mid- to late forties. Dressed in a well-cut suit of European design. The flared waist of the jacket accentuated his trim build, and his stylishly groomed short brown hair and pencil-thin mustache spoke of a man in charge.

Which he was.

“Minister, it is good to see you,” she said, adding one of her smiles and accepting a hug.

Benito Gómez Farías headed the Secretariat of the Treasury and Public Credit, Mexico’s equivalent of the United States Treasury. He was a member of the federal executive cabinet, appointed by the president of the republic, with the approval of the Chamber of Deputies. Farías directed all of Mexico’s economic policies, including taxes, spending, and public debt.

“I have been looking forward to this day,” he said. “Much work is about to bear fruit.”

She exhibited the composure that was needed and stepped over to the serving cart, lifting a gold-sealed bottle chilling in an ice bucket. She deftly worked the top and the mushroom-shaped cork made a popping exit. She then poured the bubbling froth into two stemmed glasses and brought one over to Farías.

Her pulse began to quicken.

Anticipation always caused her to be anxious. Occupational hazard. But she was good at appearing indifferent. Tonight it was important that she control the dialogue, spot any inconsistencies,alleviate fears, and, most important, bring the result home. But she’d mastered the jargon of power that converted polite conversation into political capital.

She sat opposite her guest, hoping her smile, pleasant personality, and cultivated manner had a salutary effect.

“You sound encouraging,” she said to him. “Are we celebrating?”

They both sipped their champagne.

Through the bank’s private lobbying, which had included massive amounts of bribery, nine nations in Central and South America had already adopted bitcoin as their legal currency, placing it on the same international status as the dollar or euro. There, citizens now had the legal option to use bitcoin, instead of other currencies. And they were doing just that. Every day. Millions of transactions. Six of those nations had gone one step further and certified bitcoin as their reserve currency.

Which was revolutionary.

A reserve was a large quantity of wealth maintained by a nation’s central bank for investments, spending, international debt obligations, and meeting exchange rates. Since 1944 the U.S. dollar had been the primary reserve currency for most countries.

And for good reason.

At one time the American gross domestic product, a measure of the total national economic activity, represented fifty percent of the world’s entire economic output. Following the famed Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, delegates from forty-four nations formally adopted the U.S. dollar as their official reserve currency. After that, other countries also pegged their exchange rates to the dollar. Which, at the time, was a good move. Dollars were backed by gold, which meant their own reserves were backed by gold.

But in the 1960s America needed money for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and to fight the Vietnam War. So it started printing dollars by the billions. With all that new money in circulation the amount of gold backing those dollars diminished, which reduced the value of the dollars held in reserve by foreign countries. As the United States flooded markets with new paper dollars,understandably the world grew cautious and began to convert their dollar reserves back into gold. The run on gold was so extensive that in 1971 Richard Nixon decoupled the dollar from the gold standard, which gave way to the floating exchange rates still around to this day. It also led to a huge escalation in the price of gold and a steady decline in the value of a dollar. Decades later, the almighty dollar remained the world’s primary currency reserve, but only because countries simply could not get rid of it. The euro was a distant second. Now the Bank of St. George was introducing a third option.

Bitcoin.

If someone had told her in 2009 that fifteen years later nations would fully recognize ones and zeros from a computer program as legal currency, she would have laughed. No way. Impossible. But the concept had developed far quicker than anyone had ever thought. Like a religious movement in many ways, as Kelly had told her on more than one occasion. Now Mexico was poised to be the next to do just that.

Farías smiled. “A vote will be taken in the Congreso de la Unión early next week. We have polled the 628 members, and nearly three-fourths support the measure. Which was no small feat. Currently, the government is composed of eight varying political parties, along with the independents. Consensus is—challenging, if nothing else.”

“They’ll be pleased with that decision,” she said. “Nothing else allows so much value to be transferred with no interference from the United States.”

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