Union Atlantic Page 0,88

games and the Boston Pops and now finalizing the stock-only purchase of Taconic, the bank that had fallen on hard times back in the spring.

Union Atlantic's customers still drew on lines of credit and made payments on existing loans. The insurance subsidiary still wrote policies and, after initially projecting large, 9/11-related losses, looked as if it might actually show a modest profit. People all over the country still opened checking accounts and paid bills and withdrew tens of millions in cash. On the Asian exchanges, there were rumors of a huge bet on the Nikkei but people figured it was a hedge fund in Connecticut or London, because, after all, banks wouldn't expose that much of their own capital.

Indeed, the larger the problem grew the more routine the management of it had become. What had started as a crisis had turned into a condition. And then, just as the condition surpassed any previously imaginable level of acceptable seriousness, it seemed to vanish altogether, as if too big to see.

"You there?" Sabrina asked.

"Tell Holland I'm on my way."

"What about the rest?"

"Tell that computer geek to work his shit out. I want those e-mails gone."

"So dramatic. Can I shred something?"

"Piss off."

"Maybe I'll become one of those cooperating witnesses. I could write a memoir. I'm so sick of Franco. I had this whole idea about how to generate a subtle, almost perverse sympathy for him, but it all seems ridiculous now. I slept with this schlep in Watertown the other day. I tried taking his grandmother seriously, but in the end she was just an old Fascist. Who knows? My therapist says - "

Doug pressed End. He hadn't moved his gaze from the courthouse façade. He had been in the building only once, with the general counsel for a hearing in a shareholder suit. Washington had spared no expense for the judges. From the marble floors to the courtrooms rimmed in arabesques of pink-and-blue pastel, you could be forgiven for expecting exhibitions of modern art rather than juries and sentencings.

To check the markets, he switched on the television in the corner, searching for the business channel. But before he reached it, he came upon those images that were constant now on cable news: the satellite photos of the Iraqi desert, still after still of warehouses and outbuildings surrounded by nothing but sand. Like all of them, this report was being narrated by some retired member of the brass paid to opine on the nature of the weapons hidden beneath all those roofs and tarps. Soon the screen cut to B roll of aircraft carriers and naval destroyers, as the old soldier described the slow but steady buildup of hardware in the theater. The segment ended with a shot of a tanker moving low in the water, as the news anchor, in a voice that somehow managed to blend excitement and resignation, reminded the audience of America's vital interests in the region.

Lately, Doug couldn't sleep for watching this stuff. And he knew Vrieger would be watching it too. Watching the endless repetition of facts and speculation and probable lies, the consumption of which at least partially numbed the helplessness of seeing it unfold at such distance and so inexorably. The two of them had spoken the previous week and Vrieger had told him that he was all set, headed to Virginia soon for training, the invasion apparently scheduled for March but plenty of contractors needed already for logistics and security, hundreds of them flowing into Kuwait each week.

In the small hours of the morning, Doug would lie awake staring at the maps with the fancy graphics of arrows sliding toward Baghdad from north, south, and west, as the commentators prattled on: neo-cons smugly suffering lesser minds, while their opponents expressed incredulity at the ignorance of the American people for supporting the idea of such a war; and then there were Doug's favorites, the young, pro-war liberals, so fresh-faced and eager to prove they weren't weak or queer. But whoever the commentators were, the reports seemed always to return to the endless stock footage of tanks kicking dust and missiles blasting hot off the decks of cruisers. Which carried Doug back, over and over, to standing on the deck of the Vincennes, that furnace wind blowing off the fouled waters of the Gulf, clogging the ship's every pore with sand, and to the cursing of the Iranian thugs in the speedboats spit over the radio waves, and to watching the coordinates of the jetliner's altitude