Page 58 of The Atlas Maneuver

She sat in the other rocker atop a crocheted cushion depicting the Cross of St. George. “We have Mexico.”

The old woman rocked, the chair squeaking from each pitch like a clock in perfect rhythm. They’d just celebrated her ninety-fourth birthday with a Belgian chocolate cake, the layers thin, like she liked it, sweet crystallized icing in between, a single candle on top. Her mother had lived a long life, surviving her father byover thirty years. And though by the time of his death alcohol had dulled his senses to the point of uselessness, her mother’s had always remained laser-focused. The old sayingBehind every great man is a womanseemed the precise definition of cliché, but in this case the idiom was correct. Her father had a laughing, unfocused, doubting approach to life. Her mother had been the mirror opposite. An intelligent listener who absorbed details, cataloged them in proper order of importance, then made swift, smart decisions unaffected by emotion. Thankfully, though blessed with a noble and prepossessing countenance, her father had allowed her mother to develop most of the ideas he ultimately proposed.

“But, Maddy,” she said, “there is a problem.”

Though in her mind she thought of her as Mother, she rarely called her anything other than Maddy. She’d started the moniker as a child, maintained it all her life, and never once had her mother asked her to stop.

The older woman continued to rock as Catherine explained all that had happened during the day, leaving out no detail. Never had she misled, held back from, or lied to her mother. All three would be counter-productive. Good decisions were always made with good information. Her mother sat in the chair with perfect posture, taught to her long ago at a British finishing school. Catherine mimicked the same pose, learned at the same school decades later.

For the first time her mother’s head turned from the fire and stared at her. The once striking face had aged and the features now held a vague hint of melancholy. But the eyes remained undimmed, hard points of crystal buried in sockets sunken and masked in shadow.

“This cannot be allowed to fester,” the older woman said.

“I have Kyra on the way to Switzerland, as we speak. She has people there looking for Kelly.”

“And the Japanese? Any previous indication they were nearby and attentive to the bank?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

The rocking stopped.

The room went silent, except for the crackling embers.

She knew better than to interrupt those thoughts.

Her mother’s maiden name was Flanagan, born in County Clare on Ireland’s west coast. She obtained a degree from Trinity College in Dublin, then another from the London School of Economics, on her way to a career in high finance until she met a young apprentice at the Bank of St. George, Rowan Gledhill. They married and birthed a daughter. Then her mother did what many women of that time chose, devoting herself to her family, abandoning her personal ambitions.

But that did not mean she went silent.

Instead, she worked through her husband, providing him with courage and self-respect, both of which he lacked. It helped that he desperately wanted to prove himself to his own father, who’d risen to be first consul. Eventually, longevity and nepotism earned him a seat at the consul table, but it had been her mother who’d helped her father keep it. She possessed a brilliant mind and was well read. Together, they’d been quite formidable. Behind his cultivated wit and charm had been an insecure and weak-willed man, seemingly content in living secretly within his wife’s shadow. And when her father’s liver finally succumbed, it was the only time Catherine ever saw her mother cry.

But she’d often wondered.

Were the tears for him, or for Maddy herself?

Catherine’s rise within the bank had been thanks to a combination of her own innate abilities, along with her mother’s natural cunning. Maddy was a devoted Presbyterian, and religion had always been important. But economics was her passion. Catherine had sat here many a night listening and learning. Her mother had played a major role in formulating the Atlas Maneuver, her genius all over it. She’d always seemed larger than life, carved rather than molded, her face that of a woman who’d suffered but had not been defeated.

Her real gift?

An ability to place things in their proper perspective.

As she’d done, right here, one late night many years ago.

Money was invented twenty-five hundred years ago.

All sorts of things, at one time or another, acted as legal tender in a variety of cultures. Salt, tobacco, dried fish, rice, cloth, almonds, corn, barley, coconuts, tea, butter, reindeer, sheep, oxen, cacao seeds, animal skins, even whale’s teeth. Eventually, metals became popular. Copper rings, strips of flattened iron, brass rods. Why? They lasted longer, could be easily divided, and had the enviable trait of retaining their intrinsic value. Perishable goods could be swapped for hard metal, which could then be used to buy other goods.

The Roman Empire brought coins to the forefront. But after the empire split in the 4th century into East and West, Rome’s mint closed. When Rome was sacked for the second time in 426 its economy, then a little over a thousand years old, collapsed. From that point, until the Renaissance began in 1350, money played only a minor role in society. People retreated into a rural economy, based on feudalism. Coins existed, but they were of little value. Trade was governed by the barter system.

In the 14th century something new emerged.

Prosperous men would travel to the many markets and fairs where they traded goods, made loans, and accepted payments. They acquired a name from the benches they used.Banco.Which eventually morphed intobank. This practice started in northern Italy and, over the next hundred years, spread rapidly. These men did not deal in coins, though, which were heavy, hard to transport, and easily stolen or counterfeited. Instead, they traded in bills of exchange, a written promise that ordered the payment of a certain amount of designated coin to a certain person at a certain time and location. Similar to a modern-day check. These bills were easily transported and, if stolen, useless, as they could only be redeemed by the individual specified in the bill.

Then something new appeared.

Huge amounts of gold and silver from the New World, thanks to Columbus’ discovery, flooded into Europe. The quantity ofgoods could not keep pace with all the new wealth, so prices rose, which ate away at the value of all that gold and silver. Western civilization for the first time experienced inflation, where the value of wealth depreciated. By then gold and silver coins had totally replaced bills of exchange.

Everything changed again, though, in the 18th century.

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