grass and mountain lake beneath the peaks struck by columns of sun descending from a gap in the clouds. Half Dome was capped with snow melting into falls that ran off the lower cliffs, the fine mist emanating from the cascades of water giving the painter away for the Romantic he was, that mystical, German idealism struck here in a grander key on the subject of the American West.
Thirty-eight million, Henry thought. That’s what Holland had earned last year. And if the board forced him out, he’d collect twice that.
Through the doorway into the private dining room, a waiter in a black suit and tie approached, a plate in each hand.
“Cracked native lobster tails, gentlemen, served with poached organic eggs, papaya salsa, and Old Bay hollandaise sauce. Fresh ground pepper with your breakfast, sir?”
“No, thank you,” Henry replied, unfurling his napkin.
“I appreciate you coming here this morning,” Holland said. “I don’t know if I ever told you, but I voted for you back when I was at Chase, when I was on your board. We were glad to have you for the job.”
Henry had known as much. Holland would have preferred the appointment of a colleague from the private sector, someone more instinctively friendly to the industry’s interests. But once others had coalesced around Henry, he’d taken a friendly approach.
“You worry in the right way,” he said. “Which is important.”
If the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office had had their druthers, they would have staked out Union Atlantic for months in order to build their case all the way up to Holland. But given the size of the problem, Henry hadn’t been able to wait. He had come through the front door, as it were, only forty-eight hours ago, and straightaway Holland had offered Fanning and his trader up on a platter. The bank had been running its own internal investigation, he claimed, which showed Fanning involved in rogue activity and attempts to cover his tracks. Given that Holland’s lawyers were themselves former federal prosecutors, former banking regulators, and former IRS commissioners, he knew the drill well enough: hide nothing, or at least appear to hide nothing.
In the months and years ahead, at a cost of millions, the matter of Holland’s own culpability would be the subject of multiple lawsuits, civil and criminal, with teams of his attorneys vetting every discovery request of every party, the lives of associates in some corporate firm devoted to nothing else, billing thousands of hours as they went, as the perfectly straightforward question of what he had known and when was fed into the numbing machinery of modern litigation, there to be digested at a sloth’s pace. Young lawyers would buy condominiums or town houses with their bonus checks, employing architects and builders and decorators who would, in turn, spend a little more themselves on cars or vacations or flat-screen TVs, though that particular trickle from the economy of distress would barely register against the job losses bound to come with the restructuring of Union Atlantic Group.
But all that was for later. Personally, Henry suspected Holland had approved of the Finden Holdings arrangement and the proprietary trading scheme it had facilitated as a way to save his share price. But it would serve no practical end to indulge in an airing of his views. What Henry needed was a functioning institution capable of playing its role as the situation unfolded. If Holland was the man who could deliver that, then so be it. Others would decide his fate.
“It’s a sad case, really,” Holland observed. “Doug was a bright guy. If anything, I probably promoted him too quickly. I blame myself for that. Obviously the pressure got to him. He lost his judgment. I don’t know if you heard about the other stuff … I hesitate to mention it. But it seems he might have gotten into some trouble with this kid, a boy actually, might even have been underage, I’m not sure. Surprised the hell out of me. I’d never seen any indication of that. But I guess it fits the pattern. You deceive people in one part of your life, and if you get away with it, it just takes over.”
He paused here, trying to gauge his progress with Henry. Apparently doubtful of his headway, he pressed on.
“Off the record,” he said, “there’s a good chance this’ll make your sister’s life easier. I don’t think Doug will be out there in Finden much longer. He’ll have to pay his lawyers with something.”