The morning sun rose between the towering skyscrapers, and the streets of New York, which had been sunk in darkness all night, slowly began to wake.
Before the rush hour, while 42nd Street beneath Central Park was still quiet, an old white van came driving down the road.
With a squeal of brakes, it stopped in front of a small roadside newsstand.
A white man in jeans and a New York Yankees cap stepped out of the driver's seat, opened the side door, and unloaded bundles of weekly magazines and newspapers that he had just picked up from the print shop, still reeking of fresh ink.
While he was in the middle of that, an elderly Black man with hair gone completely white poked his head out through the side door of the stand.
"Here already?"
"Good morning, Mr. Vance. It's magazine day today, so there's a bit more than usual."
"I see."
The old man nodded as he looked at the stacks of newspapers set down by the roadside.
"Then I'll be on my way."
"Drive safe."
As the van drove off with the sound of its engine, Vance took out a box cutter and, with practiced hands, cut the twine binding the bundles.
The first thing he picked up was the famous current affairs weekly, Time.
On the stiff, bright red cover was a large photo of a young Asian man smiling brightly. It was Seok-won, the head of the Eldorado Fund.
Wall Street's New Emperor.
Beneath the photo of Seok-won, dressed in a formal suit and silk tie with a look of brimming confidence, the phrase describing him was printed in bold letters.
"He's got a face fit to be a movie star."
Vance placed the Time issue featuring Seok-won right in the center of the stand where it was most visible, then neatly arranged the other newspapers and magazines to either side and below it.
Before long, as rush hour began, cars filled the road, bumper to bumper.
Trapped in place while spewing exhaust fumes, the drivers leaned out of their windows, hurling curses and laying on their horns for no real reason.
Honk! Honk!
"Damn Manhattan. It's like this every single morning on the way to work!"
"Hell, the road's a parking lot, isn't it?"
"It'd be faster to just walk!"
It was the same old Manhattan morning scene as always.
A little later, when the traffic light turned green, countless office workers on their way to work flooded the crosswalk like a massive wave and crossed the street.
A few of them, hurrying along, stopped in front of the small newsstand, handed over a bill, and bought a newspaper or magazine from the rack. Today, more than anything else, the issue of Time with Seok-won's face on the cover is selling the most.
On the road facing Vance's stand, a black Cadillac Escalade with heavily tinted windows was parked.
In the back seat, Seok-won, dressed in a custom-made Italian suit, sat sunk deep into the seat.
Outside was noisy with all kinds of sounds, but inside the Escalade, with its perfect soundproofing, it was quiet as if it were a completely separate world.
"All three major indices surged, and as of yesterday, our return has exceeded thirty percent."
At Landon's words beside him, Seok-won replied in a calm voice.
"If the Fed announces another rate cut at the FOMC in November, the market will keep rising, so let's hold our positions as they are."
"Understood."
Landon fell silent for a moment, then spoke again with a look of genuine admiration.
"At first, I was worried the timing might be too early, but I never imagined you'd go and change the entire flow of the market itself, boss."
The biggest topic on Wall Street lately was how Seok-won had grabbed the stock market, which had been sinking like it was trapped in a swamp under fears of recession and anthrax attacks, and hauled it back up.
Since everyone had thought it was impossible, when he pulled it off so spectacularly, no one could hide their shock and amazement.
But Seok-won himself, the man at the center of it all, looked perfectly calm, as if it were only natural.
"I didn't pull the market up. I just cleared the blocked channels so the index, which had already priced in all the bad news, could hit bottom and rebound."
"Isn't that exactly the same as moving the market?"
When Landon praised him to the skies, Seok-won just gave a small chuckle.
"More importantly, I hear the credit rating agencies all downgraded Enron's credit rating to junk."
As he smoothly changed the subject, Landon's eyes lit up, and he replied.
"That's right. The sale negotiations Enron's management had been working so hard on fell through, and then they took a massive long position in crude oil futures. When the 9/11 attacks sent international oil prices soaring, they ended up taking enormous losses. That was the killing blow."
"They couldn't meet the maintenance margin, so all their futures contracts were forcibly liquidated, right?"
"Yes. I heard the amount they lost that way was over two hundred million dollars."
"If their cash reserves were already drying up, taking a loss of that size would be nothing short of fatal."
Landon chimed in with an excited look on his face.
"To make matters worse, with their cash nearly exhausted, rumors have spread all over Wall Street that they're carrying debts totaling twenty-three billion dollars when you add together their unpaid liabilities and guaranteed loans. Because of that, even if they try to borrow emergency operating funds elsewhere, no one is willing to lend Enron a cent."
"If it were me, I wouldn't be eager to loan money to a company that might go bankrupt at any moment, either."
At that moment, Landon shifted slightly in his seat and looked at him with a meaningful gaze.
"There's talk in the market that Enron will go bankrupt within a week. At this rate, there's a good chance the stock will fall below one dollar today and be reduced to penny-stock status."
"I see."
The corner of Seok-won's mouth curled upward.
Since he had expected this outcome from the very beginning, he did not look surprised at all.
Seeing that, Landon couldn't help thinking that his boss truly had nerves of steel, and he let out a gasp of admiration.
"To think that the seventh-largest company in the United States, once valued at tens of billions of dollars, would plunge into a so-called penny stock in less than a year. If someone had said this at the start of the year, no one would have believed it."
In fact, even Landon and Andrew, who had heard it directly from Seok-won, had doubted their own ears at first and thought there was no way it could be true.
In an excited voice, Landon went on.
"As of now, our short-selling return is already over ninety-eight percent."
Seok-won nodded with a satisfied expression.
"I think we've made more than enough profit, so let's start unwinding the position."
"Understood. The short interest is quite large, but since the stock is already crowded right up against bankruptcy, even if we start buying, the price won't rise much."
"Most people will be trying to sell no matter what, so that makes sense."
"And if Enron does end up declaring bankruptcy, Citigroup and JPMorgan are expected to take a significant hit."
Seok-won tilted his head slightly and said,
"Come to think of it, those two did lend Enron a pretty large sum, didn't they?"
"Yes. On Wall Street, it's estimated that the loans amount to over six billion dollars."
"That explains why their stocks rose along with the market during the rebound, then recently stalled and started falling again."
"No matter how much they're considered a mega bank and a major investment bank even in the U.S., having to write off a loss of that size would still be a heavy burden."
"I suppose so."
Seok-won rubbed his chin with one hand and thought for a moment before speaking again.
"If Enron goes bankrupt, their assets will go into a fire sale, right?"
"From the creditors' point of view, they'll want to recover even a single dollar of principal, so yes."
"Then let's pick up one of their subsidiaries, Enron Broadband, on the cheap."
At the unexpected instruction, Landon's eyes widened, and he asked again,
"Enron Broadband, you say?"
"Yes."
"That's the company at the center of this accounting fraud scandal. Why would we want a place like that…?"
Landon tilted his head, his face full of questions.
"It was used to deceive investors by turning a loss-making company into one that looked like it was generating tens of billions of dollars in profit. But their direction was actually right. The idea was to link major U.S. cities, and even the whole world, with a high-speed broadband network and take control of the infrastructure for the coming internet age."
"But it's running massive deficits and is basically bankrupt, isn't it?"
Seok-won leaned back in his seat and let out a bitter smile.
"The timing was just terrible."
"What do you mean by that?"
"They poured in hundreds of millions of dollars and spent years laying nearly thirty thousand kilometers of fiber-optic cable, but just as they were about to begin full-scale commercialization, the dot-com bubble burst."
"…!"
"With countless dot-com companies, which were supposed to make money using that broadband network, collapsing one after another, isn't it only natural that Enron Broadband couldn't turn a profit?"
"Now that you explain it that way, I see."
Landon nodded as if he understood.
"Right now, because of the dot-com bubble collapse, nobody is paying any attention to it. But once the economy recovers and dot-com companies start making money on the internet again, the fiber-optic network Enron Broadband has built will become golden infrastructure that generates enormous wealth, like the transcontinental railroad heading west during the Gold Rush."
In fact, starting from Portland, where Enron Broadband's headquarters was located, Enron had built a fiber-optic network that connected Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego along the West Coast, and New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Philadelphia along the East Coast as its two main axes. From there, it extended like a spider's web to thirteen major cities, including Chicago and Denver, across the central and southern parts of the country.
'On top of that, they weren't planning to stop at the U.S. They were drawing up a grand vision to build a global broadband network by forming partnerships with telecom companies in Europe and Asia.'
If that global project had been completed as planned, it might have grown into a giant telecom company that dominated the world's high-speed internet networks.
"If the dot-com bubble hadn't burst, or if it had lasted just two or three more years, Enron might not have gone bankrupt and could have become a company earning tens of billions of dollars every year, just like they told their investors."
"I can't say I fully understood all of it, but in any case, you're saying the assets that Broadband owns are that valuable."
"That's right."
When he said it so decisively, Landon nodded as if he understood.
"Since Enron will be selling everything for next to nothing once it goes bankrupt anyway, I'll make sure we get it as cheaply as possible."
"Even if it costs a bit more, make sure we secure Enron Broadband no matter what."
"Yes. You can count on me."
Just then, the traffic jam that had been completely gridlocked finally started to loosen, and the car began to inch forward.
"If we took a helicopter, we'd be at the office in no time, but riding in a car like this is really frustrating. Things had finally gotten a bit easier when the flight ban was lifted, but now the skies over Manhattan are closed again because of that damn anthrax terror. I don't know why I have to go through this."
"Once things stabilize, they'll open it up again."
Manhattan was full of people like them, for whom time was money.
With everyone like that complaining in unison, the flight ban was unlikely to last very long.
Seok-won relaxed and sank back into the plush leather seat.
Then he turned his head to look out the window, casting his gaze over the people hurrying along the street.
Right now, no one was paying it any attention, but at the thought of taking hold of the golden egg Enron was hiding, a deep smile spread across his lips..