NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

He had a happy life, a job he loved, a good marriage, an easy commute, good health, and a President of his own party who sometimes reminded him of Howard Roark, the hero in his favorite novel, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

Now, on the morning of December 2 he was enjoying a quiet breakfast, his wife smiling behind The Washington Post at his side, when the phone rang behind her. His eyes were on the Bloomberg Channel and she needed to nudge him for him to accept the cordless handset.

"Yeah." He listened. "Hm-hmmm. Hm-hmmm. The President? Hm-hmmm. No, no panic, no certainly, not yet. Hm-hmmm. Yes we'll take a hit, but we'll do our best. Hm-hmmm. OK, bye now."

"What was that?" Andrea Mitchell Greenspan asked, her reporters' ears hungry for a story, but her wifely loyalty knowing she couldn't ask for it.

"Hmm? Nothing, dear. The office is all. Sleep well?"

But after the pleasantries were dispensed with, Greenspan got into his suit with some haste, barely tieing his tie as he took the elevator to a waiting limo. As soon as he hit the back seat he grabbed the phone there and started making calls.

He called the World Bank, his opposite numbers in England and Frankfurt, and left a message with the Bank of Japan. By the time the door opened he was ready, and rushed to his office keeping careful only for his steps, as any good septuagenarian must.

He brushed past his secretary and closed the door behind himself, a little harder than he should have. He glanced at his screens, sat down in his chair, and watched as an assistant marched in one door and his secretary came in the other, carrying a steaming cup of coffee. (It was one secret he kept from Andrea -- the office coffee was better than her brew.)

He let his heart sink toward normality and looked with amusement at his aide, who looked like he'd just come from a rock concert, tie askew, hair mussed, coat maladjusted, an excited look on his face -- oh, the young.

"Relax," he said. "There is some short term turbulance, a little overseas selling matched by a little price-matching. Let's not panic."

"Sir," the aide said. "Do you know the 30-year is now trading in Europe at 6.5? The price is down to 73!" He meant, that the rate on the government's 30-year paper, which he had almost stopped issuing in the wake of the Clinton boom, now had a yield of 6.5%, and bonds issued at around 4% were now trading at 73 cents on the dollar.

"Irrational pessimism," Greenspan said calmly. "Issue a statement. The fundamentals are sound. There are always opportunities in volatility. The government remains committed to the dollar.

"Now, after you issue that statement I want you to get word out through the Governors that we're to defend the dollar's values in all markets. I want authority for a succession of $10 billion coupon passes, as many as we'll need. We'll buy as they sell and we'll be fine. Joe Gibbs would envy our ground game." He said that last as a joke. He liked the Redskins, but the aide loved them, and was suffering with another poor season.

The aide left. Greenspan sipped his coffee. He kept his eye on his screens, waiting for the reaction. He saw the dollar trades, $2.50 against the Euro, 4 Yuan to the dollar, 96 Yen, and smiled. His bank remained the greatest financial engine in the world, and he wasn't going to back down from an economic fight with his Chinese counterpart. They wanted out, let them get out. Then let's make some money.

He was working through his paperwork and still waiting for the turn two hours later. The Yuan rate was down to 3.75. He pressed an intercom button. The aide answered. "How are the coupon passes going?"

"Like fingers in a burst dike, sir. Each pass is at a higher yield. We're up to 6.86."

"How many have you done?"

"Five, sir." That meant the Fed had taken $50 billion out of the market, and still the price was falling. "How many more can we do, sir?"

"What's the Chinese foreign reserves?"

"Over $400 billion at last count, sir."

"Set a teleconference with the governors for noon." He rang off and called in his secretary. "See if you can get Japan. Wake them up if necessary. I should have heard by now. Get me the European Central Bank on the line as soon as you can. We're going to pour oil until this hurricane stops."

As the door closed behind her he wondered, for the first time, if he had enough oil. His mind drifted to his bank's creator, the old southerner Carter Glass. Glass had been through some tough times...the Panic of 1907, the Great Depression...yet the agencies he helped create in the Senate had seen us through to this day. Greenspan considered himself the keeper of a great legacy, the Indispensible Man by virtue of his title, Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

But the Fed had never fought a war before. It had supported wars, but it had never been on the front line. And this time, he knew, it was on the front line. He picked up the phone, placed a call to the President, and began humming "Rule, Brittania."

"Where are the Japs?" he muttered to himself.