The Last Trade Read Online Free PDF

doesn’t have is the type of mind that can pull it all together.
    His value at the fund and in life has always been his intuition and his tenacity. He has always made up for his limited natural gifts with passion and curiosity. At the fund they call him a digger. In high school football and baseball they called him a scrapper, someone who made up for his lack of natural ability with preparation and intensity. But on the field and at work that will only get you so far. Some people are naturals, and in sports and in the financial world, he’s never seen a person as naturally gifted as Drew Havens.
    At this point, Weiss feels he’s done enough digging and uncovered enough data to validate the hypotheses that something terrible is already happening in Hong Kong and Dubai and that something much worse is going to happen at the end of this week, to the Rising Fund and the U.S. economy. Now all he can do is assemble it all as best he can and give it to the only person he knows who can take it to the next level: Havens.
    While he’s watching files transfer from his desktop to his flash drive, the Spyware warning flashes again. He’s already reaching to pull out the flash drive when the entire desktop flashes black and then white and then off. After two attempts to reboot the computer, he gives up. Someone sent a digital bullet his way and killed everything on his hard drive and perhaps the flash as well. He’s still holding the flash when he hears the buzzer and the familiar clunk of the downstairs lobby door opening. Curious, he strides over to his front door. For a moment he considers bolting and locking it, but instead he opens it and listens. Instead of the clicking of a key through the tumblers he hears the second lobby door gently shaking in its jamb. Someone is picking the lock. As the second door creaks open, he eases out into the hall and quietly closes his door.
    He takes soft steps in his stockinged feet, heading upstairs toward the steel door that leads onto the roof, while the heavier footsteps start echoing upward from below. He pauses at the roof door and listens as the steps come closer. The footsteps cease, he’s sure, outside his apartment door.
    He hears his door open and close. Should’ve locked it. Should’ve done a lot of things, Weiss thinks, twisting the roof doorknob and slipping into the October night. He scans the roof, most recently the scene of a barbeque with friends from college, then walks toward the shelter of an air-conditioning unit and squats. After a moment he turns and looks over the edge at the alley seven floors down. A necklace of car lights winds up the FDR. A siren bleats heading uptown. Peeking back over the edge of the unit, eyes fixed on the closed steel door, he takes out his phone, calls up Havens’s name, and begins to text. He’s still texting as the door to the roof begins to swing open.

6
    New York City
    T hey’re still applauding for him, but Havens has had enough.
    Enough of Salvado and enough of his supporting role in the creation myth that has been spread countless times to the financial press. He looks up as the bottle girl approaches. She sidles up alongside him and places her palm on his thigh. “So I was right,” she whispers, giving his quad a squeeze. “You are famous.”
    Havens removes the woman’s hand from his thigh and answers, “Not for long.”
    He’s still looking into her medicated eyes when his phone buzzes. Danny Weiss again. This time rather than simply reading and ignoring Weiss’s texts, he shuts the phone off. Havens and the bottle girl watch one of the Texans pass with a girl on each arm. She asks, “How come you don’t have a girl?”
    He watches a chaperone open a door for the Texan and the girls. The room beyond is empty and filled with red velvet couches, flat screens, and flowers. “Is that what you call that?” he tells the bottle girl. “No