Authors: Davis Bunn
E
lena arrived in the president’s office at eight the next morning. She had woken in the middle of the night with a desperate need to speak with someone she trusted. The problem was, she knew almost no one in the entire state of Florida.
The Atlantic Christian University campus was divided into two distinct components. The original low-slung buildings dated from the early seventies, when the university had been founded. Florida tended to age buildings with a harsh hand. Years could pass with little more than summer thunderstorms and lightning strikes. Then a hurricane could roar through. Locals said a hurricane aged a building ten years in one week. The past six years had been kind to the Space Coast, as this region was known. But in 2003 the coast had been hit by two category-three storms in the space of seventeen days. The following year, a storm landed on the opposite coast as a category one, then somehow managed to gather force as it crossed the state. It tore into Melbourne from the west, from the landward side, and then sat over the region for nineteen hours, spawning twenty-seven tornados and dumping
two feet
of rain in one day.
This particular month, September, was the most active period for Atlantic hurricanes. Elena heard about storms everywhere she went.
Four years earlier, the founder of a major Florida corporation bequeathed ACU a sum of fifty million dollars. Since then the university had gone on a building spree. The campus now boasted a new science complex, business school, gym, pool, and dorms. But the president’s office remained where it had been, on the ground floor of one of the original structures. The suite of offices was nice enough, though rather faded. Elena decided the place suited the man.
Reed Thompson, president of Atlantic Christian, strode into the room. “Dr. Burroughs! Do we have an appointment?”
“I phoned, your secretary said this was the only chance I’d have to see you today.”
“This is excellent. I was hoping to stop by for a chat, but with the trustees meeting next week, I’ve been running flat out.” He accepted the secretary’s clutch of messages without breaking stride. “Come on in.”
“I can come back later.”
“There is no later.” He reached the door to his inner office, then asked his secretary, “How much time do I have?”
“Fifteen minutes if you want to arrive five minutes late.”
“Make it twenty. Coffee for me. Elena?”
“No thank you.”
“Have a seat. Give me two minutes.” He hung his jacket on the back of his chair, flipped through the notes, set them by his phone, and seated himself. “How are you settling in?”
“Too early to tell.” She found herself slipping into the president’s terse mode of speech. “I think okay.”
“Any problems?”
“Not with my classes.”
“Home working out okay? You’re renting, is that right?”
“Bayside Condominiums. Yes, and it’s fine. Actually, it’s better than that.”
“Great.” He smiled his thanks as his secretary set down his mug. “You’ve met Francine?”
“Just now, yes.”
His secretary said, “Gary is outside.”
“I’ll see him in the conference.”
“He says there’s a problem with the architect’s bid.”
Reed Thompson sipped from his mug, then said to Elena, “If I take five minutes now, I can give you ten minutes more later. Gary will be able to start the conference without me.”
“I feel silly taking your time at all.”
“You strike me as someone who does nothing on a whim.” He started from the office.
Francine lingered long enough to ask Elena, “Are you sure you won’t take anything?”
“A coffee would be great, thank you. Milk, no sugar.”
“Just a moment.”
Elena looked around the office. She had never had reason to enter the president’s office before. Few teachers at a university ever did, with three exceptions: when they were up for a national award, when they were the head of a department undergoing budget battles, and when they were in serious trouble. Elena thanked the secretary for the coffee and wished she had not come. The trouble was, she had nowhere else to turn. She had tried to phone both Lawrence and Antonio, her two friends from the last time events had risen up to strike at her. But both men were unreachable. Ditto for Lawrence’s wife. Then the idea had come to her: speak with Reed.
The idea had merit. Reed Thompson had made his name in political economics. Other ACU faculty had told her how Reed had been short-listed for a Nobel Prize. He had served on the Council of Economic Advisers to the first President Bush. Afterward
he had turned down several lucrative offers in order to become ACU’s president.
The president’s office was frigid. She had heard about this, of course. It was a joke among the faculty that anyone visiting the president needed a fur coat. Elena was not surprised. Reed Thompson operated at one speed: full burn. She sipped her coffee and recalled the first time they had met. She had been speaking at Emory University. The event had come at the end of a grueling twelve-week American tour. Elena had arrived drained in body and mind, only to discover that the university had changed the format. Instead of delivering the speech that had become tattooed to her brain, she was to take part in a debate.
Elena wished she could take back that night entirely. She knew now that she should have refused point-blank. But her opponent was Jacob Rawlings, her most ardent critic. The temptation to take him on publicly had been too great.
Jacob Rawlings was extremely handsome and very magnetic. He was every female grad student’s dream professor. Which only made it easier to hate him.
Jacob had trained as a behaviorist, which meant he tried to break down the human psyche into rigidly defined components that could be studied and measured and quantified. He loved statistics. He hated what he called the messes of his academic discipline, by which he meant everything that did not fit into a laboratory box. He ridiculed Freud and Jung. Just as, that night, he had mocked Elena.
Jacob had addressed her as
professor.
His tone was polite enough. But his comments had been devastating. He had not merely won the evening’s debate; he had obliterated her.
Elena had emerged from the auditorium’s stage doors gasping for breath. There she had collided with Reed Thompson, who proceeded to thank her for an astonishing performance.
Elena had been too wounded to give anything other than what was foremost on her mind: “He ate me for lunch.”
Reed shrugged easily. “You engaged with him. On his terms. Too many of my colleagues fear the world’s ridicule and avoid all such contacts.”
“Lucky for them.”
“On the contrary. Too often the community of believers engages only with itself, Dr. Burroughs.” He offered her a card. “I’m up visiting an old friend who teaches here. He’s read your book. I haven’t yet, but I will now, I assure you. In the meanwhile, I want you to consider becoming a member of my faculty.”
Elena had not been certain she had heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”
“Pray on it. That’s all I ask. All anyone can ask.” He had offered a brilliant smile, swift as a camera flash. “You would be very good for us, Dr. Burroughs. The question is, would we be good for you?”
• • •
“Are you here to tell me you’re leaving?”
Elena jerked from her reverie. “What? No. It’s nothing like that.”
“Because if you are, I won’t hold you to your contract.” Reed Thompson slipped into the chair. “We were both taking a risk, having you join us. If you don’t feel it’s working—”
“I’m not here to resign.”
He sighed noisily. “Great. Splendid.”
She had to smile. “You want me that badly?”
“Well, of course. You think I’d tackle a strange lady in the dead of a Georgia night because I thought she might be interesting?”
“You hardly tackled me.”
“In the figurative sense.” Reed Thompson was a narrow man in all but his smile and his attitudes. His features were not so
much slender as craven, as though he burned through every calorie before it actually hit bottom. “What can I do for you?”
“I need to ask you a question. About economics. It may sound completely silly, but . . .” Elena stopped for a difficult breath. She had it all worked out in her head before she came in, only now the words sounded counterfeit. “Is there a risk of America experiencing a genuine crisis? I’m not talking about another recession. I mean, something truly cataclysmic.”
“Absolutely.”
The response was so instantaneous, Elena was caught off guard. “Really?”
“The fear of precisely that keeps me up at night.”
“Could you explain?”
“May I ask why?”
She had dreaded this question. “I have been approached by a scientist based in Orlando,” Elena replied carefully. “She has offered me evidence that has left me extremely disturbed.”
“If this evidence has to do with the state of our economy, you have every reason to be disturbed. Terrified, more like. How much do you know about economics?”
“Very little.”
“I thought, well, with your previous work with the Oxford council, you would have some training in finance.”
She cocked her head. “How did you know about that?”
“I still have my contacts, and I made it my business to learn about your background. Does this have to do with your council work?”
“Not exactly.”
“I heard the council had been disbanded.”
“It has.”
“And that . . . book, the one from your friend.”
“
The Book of Dreams
.”
“Is that real?”
“Very much so.”
The university president became very still. “Do you have it?”
“When the council disbanded I put it in a safety deposit box. It is still there.” She recalled how her friend Miriam had always kept it close at hand, ready to be called upon at any time. Elena had been glad to place it under lock and key. Now, she wondered if she had done the wrong thing.
Elena realized Reed had asked her something, and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep. Could you repeat that, please?”
“I said, do you want to tell me the nature of this evidence?”
“Much of it I don’t yet understand,” Elena said slowly. “But it seemed to suggest a real likelihood of a financial meltdown.”
The words catapulted Reed Thompson from his seat. The man’s bio said he had been the star of Purdue University’s basketball team. He was not tall for a collegiate player, an inch or so over six feet. But his energy was astonishing. “The American economy is always facing risks. There are constant problems. When the housing crisis struck, the people asked, why didn’t the government stop this from happening? There are two reasons. First, because the people who were making money from the subprime loan mess were very powerful, and they pressured Washington to look the other way. And second, because the subprime issue was only one of many potential threats to our economy.”
Reed began pacing. He moved with catlike grace. His cropped blond hair turned almost transparent as he passed before the window. Elena guessed his age at somewhere around fifty-five. He was handsome in an extremely intense way, but his looks were overshadowed by his energy. He went on, “So in one sense, the situation facing the nation’s economy is part of a repetitive pattern. The names have changed, one issue has replaced another. Normally, no one crisis situation is enough to bring down our economy. But today is different.”
“We’re vulnerable,” Elena said.
“Precisely. The nation is barely recovering from the financial debacle brought on us by the subprime crisis. We are in an extremely fragile state. What’s more, so are our overseas allies. And together we face a whole string of potentially devastating risks.” He stopped and began pointing at items listed on an invisible board. “The European Union is under threat from the economies of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal. One or two such problem states they could handle. But if all five default on their loans, the result would be catastrophic for the global economy. And this could well happen. Furthermore, America’s housing market is wallowing in unresolved foreclosures. The construction industry has been the driving force of our national growth for decades. It pretty much drew us out of the previous two recessions. Now, builders are hamstrung. Then there is China, which continues to sap our jobs and unbalance our trade revenues by keeping their currency artificially low. And so on. The list of potential dangers, I’m sorry to say, is as long as it has ever been.”
Reed dropped his hand to his side, but continued to stare at the invisible board. Finally he turned around and said, “You and your friend have every reason to worry.”
“She’s not a friend, actually.” Elena instantly regretted the comment. It seemed so inane in the face of Reed’s seriousness. “I wish I knew what to do.”
He walked back behind his desk, but did not resume his seat. “Have you prayed about it?”
“To be honest, my prayer time has seemed pretty hollow recently.”
He nodded slowly, as though expecting no other response. “We all go through dry times in our spiritual walk.”
His response ignited a gnawing fear in the core of her being. “I’m so worried. Not about the economy. I know that sounds selfish. But it’s true. I’m afraid of being dragged back into the public eye.”
“Watching you onstage the night we met, I could not recall anyone who looked less pleased to be where she was.”
“I positively loathe the spotlight. I always have.”
“And yet you entered into a highly public position, one which cost you your job in Oxford as a clinical psychologist. A job which apparently you loved.”
“Very much.”
“Why did you take on such a task, might I ask?”
She fought against the burning behind her eyes. “Because I felt God was calling me.”
He turned toward the window. “While I was in Washington, I joined a prayer group run by Chuck Colson. We met in the White House basement once a week. The group had a transformative effect on my life. When I left public office, I was offered a board position with a Wall Street firm. It would have set me up for life. Instead, I accepted this position. Why? Because God called me to do so.” He nodded to the unseen beyond the window. “It has not been easy. And there have certainly been times when the position did not suit me as I might have liked. But in the middle of the night, when I stare at the ceiling and wonder about all the might-have-beens, I know that I did the right thing.”