Page 97 of The Atlas Maneuver

She’d already read the news reports about how Samvel Yerevan had been found floating in Lake Baikal, the victim of an apparent drowning. Access to Yerevan’s bitcoin had required that the Armenian be dead. It was the only way. The same was true for Lana.

Conscience had no role in her line of work.

The plane began to lose altitude.

Hopefully, Kyra had sufficiently prepared Kelly. Sadly, she too would have to be dealt with. But only after the keys were returned to the bank’s control. Never would she see her daughter. But that realization would not become clear until it was far too late.

“I made a mistake, Katie,” Lana said.

“To say the least. You sold me out for money.”

She’d known from the start that what she and her mother had devised came with risks. The covert manipulation of varying national economies was something many had tried through the centuries. None had ever succeeded for long. But here they had devised something innovative, something utterly new that no one, outside of their inner circle, would know even existed. Something so clever that its use could not be anticipated.

Her mother had been right.

Brainwash your subject well enough and control is easy. Say the right words, paint the right picture, make their minds believe what they so desperately want to believe, and the response is guaranteed.

Thankfully all cryptocurrency carried an aura of mystique.

It was what made it special.

But in reality it was nothing more than another financial bubble.

And there were many in the world.

Real estate bubbles. Stock market bubbles. Dot-com bubbles.

In every one people paid exorbitant amounts for things that shouldn’t have been worth anything near the going price.

An anomaly.

That traced its way back to tulips.

Something else her mother had taught.

People associated tulips with Holland, but the plants were not native there. They were introduced to the Dutch in 1593, brought in from Constantinople and planted to research their medicinal purposes. But people broke into that test garden and stole the beautiful plants, selling them for quick money and, in the process, starting the Dutch bulb trade.

Over the next several decades tulips became a fad among the rich of Holland, and prices rose to astronomical levels. At the height of the mania, in what seemed a complete loss of sanity, the bulbs were deemed too valuable to even risk planting. Wealthy purchasers began to display the ungrown bulbs on mantelpieces and sideboards. The height of the bubble came in March 1637. Tulip traders were making, and losing, fortunes regularly. A good trader could earn a year’s salary in one month. Local governments could do nothing to stop the frenzy. Then, one day, a buyer failed to show up and pay for his bulb purchases. The ensuing panic spread across Holland and, within days, tulip bulbs were worth a hundredth of their former prices.

The bubble burst.

There were lessons to be learned there.

Buyers of bitcoin thrived on the hope that the blockchain network would continue to accrue in value and that they would find someone to pay more for their coins than they had. But people loved to gamble. They even sought out risk. And, she’d found, the less someone knew about a subject, the more they were excited. She likened it to Oscar Wilde’s definition of fox hunting.The pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeakable.

It was truly all about the mystique.

She heard the landing gear deploy. They were on their final approach to the Marrakesh Menara Airport.

That mystique must continue.

Despite the two betrayals.

And the next few hours would be telling.

CHAPTER 54

6:20P.M