The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning Page 4

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’m going to open accounts and you’re going to open some. I don’t intend to follow so many other lottery winners into the poorhouse.”

  “How long will it take to set up?”

  “Only a couple of hours. We should be able to have everything set up so when we make the deposit into our primary account, we’ll be able to instantly make the transfers into our new accounts to protect the money.”

  “When are we going to get it?”

  “Most likely tomorrow, Friday, why?”

  “I’m thinking of going with you, the office is a real zoo today.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You may think the low oil prices are good, however, it’s killing our margin. Do you remember me telling you last night there’s a rumor floating up from HQ that there could be a layoff soon?”

  “Yes, what of it?”

  “It looks like 20 to 25% of the company is going to be laid off tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Do you think you’re going to be one of the 20%?”

  “I don’t think I was on the list until Joe told Marshal about us winning. When I came in this morning, everyone was giving me a funny look. They think I’m going to quit, as such I think they will put me on the layoff list because I’m now an easy one to cut.”

  “Why don’t you just ask Marshal? You two are friendly, you’ve done him a lot of favors before. If you’re on the list, maybe he’ll pay you off today so you won’t have to go in tomorrow, Friday firings are depressing. There’s no reason for you to stress about it. We’ll go get the money, and then celebrate.”

  “OK, I’ll let you know when I see you tonight.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  Hanging up, I hear on the news that the cost of a barrel of oil fell today to $42.00. I thought, maybe the reducing oil prices isn’t such a good idea. The timing of our win couldn’t have been better if there’s a chance Lacy is going to be laid off. With me out of work and semi-retired, we relied on her income and her medical insurance benefits.

  Lacy called at 4:30 PM to say she was on the way and could I meet her in the garage to help her. At 4:55 PM I heard the garage door open, I met Lacy as she pulled into the garage. She smiled while nodding to me. “You were right, I asked Marshal to be honest with me. He closed his door telling me I wasn’t originally on the list, but after hearing we won the lottery, he added me because he felt I was going to quit anyway. It allowed him to keep someone who was a single mother. I told him I understood and took the rest of the day off.” Laughing, she said, “I’m taking the rest of my life off.”

  “Honey, it’s going to be OK. We’ll get through this.”

  “You don’t understand, I’ve worked since I was 16. This is the first time I haven’t had a job. What are we going to do without insurance?”

  “$28 million. Did you forget?”

  “Why don’t you take me out to dinner tonight? I think we can afford it. Did you call the lottery people?”

  “Let me get my coat. Sure did. We’re set to pick up the check tomorrow.”

  Over a glass of wine, Lacy tells me, “Honey, I think you may be right, the economy is sliding into the crapper. Marshal told me he and his wife bought a new house in West Virginia last weekend.”

  “Why the hell in West Virginia? It’s going to take him 90 minutes to get to the office.”

  “He told me if oil prices stay below $50 a barrel the company will most likely close our branch and many others. At his age, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to find another job.”

  “He’s only 57 isn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he said it’s almost impossible to find a job that pays him similar to what he currently earns. He said the new house has enough land they’ll be able to raise animals and grow their own food to be self-sufficient.”

  “How many acres did he buy?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Marshal didn’t strike me as a farmer.”

  “He’s not. He said he’s also going to cash in his 401K, for what he said is usable shit.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. I asked him, he said, he expects the market to crash within six months. He’s going to cash out his 401K and IRAs before the market enters free fall. He agreed with you that Greece is going to be the spark that sets the Euro on fire, taking down the EU. He said OPEC is driving the cost of oil down in order destroy the fracking industry, it's sure taking a toll on us. He said he expects once OPEC buries our fracking industry, they’ll bring the cost of a barrow of oil back to over $100. He said you should keep an eye on Russia and China, they’re going to use the financial situation against us.”

  “I didn’t realize Marshal paid that much attention to everything.”

  “Honey, remember he has two PhDs, one in economics, and one in math. He said he made a medium-sized fortune shorting the market in 08 and another fortune in 13-14 when he projected the market was going to jump. He said he’s getting out of the market and suggests we not get in. He’s converting everything he can to gold. He gave me a memory stick with some files for you. He said you should understand the math.”

  “That sounds scary. When is he moving?”

  “He said in thirty days. I’ll check the files when we get home. I was thinking if we’re going to move, we should move closer to the kids. If we assume the market is going to crash, I don’t like living on the outskirts of D.C. Remember the riots in Baltimore? I don’t want to be anywhere near race riots.”

  “I told you, I won’t move to Iowa, we visited there once, I hated it. Tell Sammi to move East, I also don’t like Illinois, where Shelly and Todd live.”

  “Shelly can’t move because of the custody issues, Sammi won’t move because of Ricky’s job. We could move someplace close to both, but still be in an area that we’d like.”

  “Like where?”

  “Nashville, or some place close to it. I don’t want to live in Ohio, there’s also Kentucky?”

  “I think I like Nashville better.”

  “I have an idea, why don’t you pack a bag; we’ll collect the money and we’ll hit the road to investigate different areas. We can stop and see the kids while we’re at it. Since you’re out of a job too, what do you have to lose?”

  Lacy laughs, saying, “I like it. By the way, Marshal did give me a little gift.”

  “Huh? What kind of gift?”

  Lacy laughs, she hands me an envelope, “He gave me six months pay and my six weeks accrued vacation. It’s a month per year, it’s what everyone else is getting on Friday.”

  “Well, this is a nice surprise. When it rains, it pours, I thought they were going to give you two, maybe four weeks pay, and your accrued vacation. I didn’t expect this.”

  Laughing, Lacy asks to see the desert menu, something she almost never does. I look at her in surprise. “I’m celebrating.”

  “I’ll join you.”

  We return home and pack for a week before going to bed, we have a big day ahead of us. Early the next morning we drive the 2 hours to Richmond. We have our pictures taken, we sign a couple release forms, we can’t stop staring at the check. I’ve never seen a check with so many numbers on it. $28,774,653.00. We’re both shaking while holding the check. Next stop the closest Bank of America branch which thankfully is less than two blocks away. Walking into the bank, a woman says, “Welcome to Bank of America, how can I help you?”

  “We’d like to make a deposit.”

  “I can help you with that, do you have your ATM card?”

  “Yes, we’d like to split the deposit into two accounts.”

  “No problem.” The teller looks at the check turning white and starts shaking. She calls out, “Mrs. Redding, may I see you, please?”

  The manager joins the teller, I ask her, “Is there a problem?”

  The manager looks at the check saying, “We’re going to have to put a hold on these funds until the check clears
.”

  “No, you're not. It’s a certified check drawn on Bank of America, which is this bank. The lottery commission banks at this very branch, you can check their balance. You’re not supposed to put a hold on certified checks, if you do, I’m sure Wells Fargo across the street would like our business.”

  Mrs. Redding looks at me saying, “I’ll have to check with corporate, would you like to sit in my office. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Don’t go far with our check. I’d like it if you stayed someplace I can see you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, which feels like a year, Mrs. Redding returns smiling, “Would you like some coffee?”

  Lacy says, “Yes, please.”

  Lacy opens a CD in the amount of $250,000, we deposit the rest into our normal checking accounts with the intent to start transferring to other accounts as soon as we’re out of the bank. I figure if we find a place to live, we may want to bargain with cash in hand.

  We left Richmond with $15,000 in cash and $28 million in different accounts. We started our journey to see our girls and granddaughters while thinking about where we’re going to move. While I’m driving, Lacy logs onto and pays off everything we owe. Laughing, she says, “We’re now debt free.”

  “I wonder if that was a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “If the market turns to crap, we might have been able to negotiate paying a lower amount.”

  “Honey, BFD, even with our two cars it was less than seventy thousand. We’re free and clear. It came out of what Marshal gave me. We haven’t touched our winnings yet.”

  We both looked at each other and laughed. Lacy logged onto the bank’s website and started to transfer our funds to our other accounts.

  We drove West on Interstate 64 until we reached Interstate 81 South, which we took into Tennessee, where we picked up Interstate 40. Lacy wanted to stop in Asheville, she’d heard it was nice, so we picked up Interstate 240 to State Route 74. By the time we arrived in Asheville, we were dead tired. We pulled into the Hilton Biltmore Park. We checked into a king suite, something we wouldn’t have done before Wednesday. The Hotel General Manager told us they were booked for a convention starting on Monday. We figured a couple of days would give us the flavor of the area. After a nice dinner, we crashed for the night. We’d been driving eleven hours and were emotionally and physically drained.

  I woke to a knock on our suite door, Lacy told me to stay in bed, she’d ordered room service for breakfast. I asked, “Why, it’s free downstairs.”

  Lacy laughed, saying, “I think we can afford the $50.00.”

  “Too expensive.” We both laughed. During breakfast, we called a real estate agent the Hilton’s General Manager suggested. She met us in the lobby at 10:30 AM, we spent two days looking at the nicest homes in the city. At dinner Sunday night Lacy looked at me saying, it's very pretty, but I want to see Nashville. How far away are the kids?”

  “Ten to eleven hours from here.”

  “And from Nashville?”

  “Six hours, maybe less if we live on the North side of the city, which is where I think we should look.”

  “I like that. Close enough to see them when we want and not so close that we’ll end up being a babysitter every weekend.”

  “Fine with me, we’ll leave in the morning. Nashville isn’t far.”

  As we’re getting ready for bed, we watch the evening news. The reporter said, “The new Prime Minister of Greece announced today he wasn’t able to reach agreement on renegotiating revised terms for Greece’s $270 billion in German loans. Prime Minister Tsipras announced he was pulling Greece out of the EU and returning to the Greek Drachma. Tsipras said he expects to have new Drachma’s in the banks within a few days. Most experts think this is the end of the European unity dream and the end of the Euro.”

  “Lace, I think the other shoe is going to drop very soon. I expect to see Gold soar.”

  “Why don’t you buy some online right now?”

  “Okay.” It took me thirty minutes to purchase $100,000 in gold since we didn’t have an open account with any of the brokerage companies. When the European markets opened gold jumped $100 an ounce as soon as trading started, the price of gold continuing to increase all night while we slept. In the morning, Lacy asked me. “Jay, if you knew gold was going to jump, why didn’t you buy more last night?”

  “I couldn’t. The agent said the max they would sell me is $100,000. Even that took two discussions with his manager. I can buy more when the bank opens.”

  “Why not call BoA’s special number they gave us, maybe they can help us.”

  “Crap, I forgot all about the special number, I told you I’m getting old.”

  I called the special high net worth customer service number the BoA General Manager gave us. They helped me purchase another $100,000 worth of gold. Our average price was $1,290 an ounce. By the time the Chicago gold market opened, gold was selling for $1,660 an ounce. We made over $28,000 by doing nothing. Gold closed the day over $1,920 an ounce, our paper profits were increasing by the hour.

  Right after breakfast we left for Nashville.

  Lacy kept checking the price of gold and silver on her phone, she was amazed how quickly the cost jumped. We kept buying as we drove to Nashville. We pulled into Nashville at midday. We checked into a suite at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. We had dinner while watching a live concert. We called the local real estate agent, one the agent in Asheville introduced us to. We agreed to meet her after breakfast the next morning.

  Before retiring, the late night news reported that Italy and Spain were preparing to leave the EU and drop using the Euro, returning to their old currencies.

  Lacy looks at me, “Think you should buy some more gold?”

  “Why not, what do we have to lose?” Logging on to our account with the gold dealer, I purchased another $500,000 before shutting down for the night. I’d been able to buy it at $2,044 an ounce. In the morning, gold passed $2,400 an ounce when Spain, Italy, and Portugal confirmed they were writing off their debt and leaving the EU. Major banks were already warning they were going to lose billions on the collapse of the Euro. A few of the international banks said they might even fail. I’m happy we were very careful where we parked our money. What happened to, ‘too big to fail’?

  Lacy looked worried, “It’s going to get much worse isn’t it?”

  “Yup, The EU is finished. It’s going to fall apart within a couple of months. The US dollar is going to jump in value before it crashes. I think we ought to see what kind of deal we can cut while the market is going crazy, cash in hand is worth a lot more than any mortgage.”

  The New York stock market opened the next morning down 1,000 points and continued to fall even though the NYSE stopped trading three times during the day trying to cool the traders off.

  Chapter 3

  FBI Senior Special Agent in Charge Gray frowns as he reviews his notes from his last interview with Evgeny Buryakov. They reached an agreement that in exchange for political asylum and entrance into the witness protection program, Buryakov agreed to spill his guts. SAC Gray shakes his head thinking, it's worse than what we thought, he was sent here to use automated trading algorithms to disrupt the stock market and our futures markets. He said the FSB’s economic department sent him here to sow the seeds of our market destruction. He told us that when Putin devalued the Russian ruble, the ruble lost 50% of its value in only two weeks. The FSB thinks the USA dollar can be collapsed in a similar manner. Russia will be able to come back while we won’t. Who in D.C. is going to believe this story? All of them have their heads stuck up their asses. None of them can see the real world. We’re getting screwed while they play around sucking up to Obama. I think it’s time to retire and prepare for the end. Buryakov told me he was able to upload his programs which are being remotely controlled from Moscow. The FSB has us by the short hairs. We’re playing right into their hands. He said there’s very little we can do now to avoid the collapse.

 
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  A squad of Russian Spetsnaz arrives in Poltava to investigate the destruction of the Russian tanks, they investigate the burned out hulks that used to be new T-90 main battle tanks. Captain Second Rank Sarnoff looks at the ruins thinking, it had to be the Yankees. No one else has the weapons to defeat our new T-90s. There has to be some proof let behind they were responsible. While the Captain is looking at the destroyed tanks his sergeant yells, “Captain, I found something.”

  Captain Sarnoff jogs to the fourth destroyed tank in the row. “What did you find?”

  “Missile pieces.” Holding out his hand, he drops small pieces of burned circuit boards into the captain’s outstretched hands. Looking at the small circuit board fragments, the captain sees the small “Made in the USA.” Silk screened on the edge of one of the green boards. He smiles, “Sergeant, very good work. Let’s go home.”