Black by Christopher Whitcomb Little, Brown and Company Publication Date June 1, 2004 (fiction) Synopsis Chosen to join the FBI's most elite group, hostage rescue agent Jeremy Waller finds unexpected challenges in his mission to counter a terrorist mastermind, a case that is complicated by a beautiful double agent, a wealthy secret keeper, and a Senate intelligence member who has been framed for murder. pp 146-147: (509 words in 1.3 pages out of 368 pages) Sirad hurried down to the parking garage and drove herself to the restaurant, smiling all the way about her new beau. Though ten years her senior, Hamid kept himself fit, stood tall enough to back up his boyish good looks, and carried both an MBA from Stanford and a law degree from Harvard. Like Sirad, who had domestic roots, he had spent his youth in the Middle East - he escaped from Iran with the Pahlavi family as the shah fell in 1979. What most intrigued Sirad, however, was Hamid's life among the shadows of international finance. Thanks to several in-house sources and a few too many glasses of wine, Sirad had learned that this Ivy League Midas had pioneered a complicated and very closely held type of securities trading known as "peripherals." Even in a world conditioned to junk bonds, derivatives, and hedge funds, this venture stood out as a crapshoot, but the potential for profits seemed staggering. The concept, which traced its origins to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Terrorism Futures Project, sounded fairly simple: Third World countries accumulate debt - huge debt - from industrialized nations like the United States and its G8 allies. The more debt they incur, the more interest they pay, and the more they pay, the more they have to borrow. It's a downward spiral that has driven many impoverished nations into civil war and economic collapse. Yet, once a particular country demonstrates strategic falue to the West, it often finds itself flush with debt relief, including upgraded lending status, loan guarantees, or even outright grants. The Soviet Union gleaned more that $20 billion between 1989 and 1999. Other countries have made more. The war on terrorism had increased this calculated generosity dramatically. Since 9/11, countries like Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen had suddenly found themselves in position to trade terrorists for millions of dollars in "aid." Even stable countries like Turkey, Cameroon, Poland, and Kuwait had parlayed the situation into major loan packages. Offering THird World governments money for "humanitarian aid and international goodwill" made sound financial sense for the United STates: backroom payoffs beat troops in body bags any day. Jordan Mitchell agreed, especially once Mirhadi showed him how to make money on America's largesse. Hamid discovered that for a relatively small investment, venture capitalists could "option" foreign debt in exchange for tangible government asse5ts. For pennies on the dollar, investors could speculate on international monetary policy in return for cash, land, natural resources, or infrastructure. It was just like buying mortgage and consumer debt, only with greater risk and significantly bigger rewards. With Mitchell's blessing, Mirhadi carefully masked his new market and began looking for clinents. He set up a Cayman-based subsidiary as cover, then approached wealthy speculators - mostly Arab oil sheiks - who were tired of turning 2 percent in money markets or losing their shirts on dot-com scams. Hamid' Iranian heritage and Middle Eastern connections helped during start-up, but thy the end of the fourth month, this peripherals trading literally too off on its own.