"That's part of the reason we wanted to see you. If, strictly as a hypothesis, they were to do something like that, as fast as possible, how long would it take? Just throw your hat at the number, wild guess."
"Time, you mean?"
"Exactly."
"Well, let's look at it a second here. I'd guesstimate that all the exchanges together—Big Board, American, Merc, CBOT, NASDAQ, Pacific, the rest—probably have a dollar volume upwards of . . . how many billions a day? Say twenty billion, easy, maybe more, the way volume's climbing. But that figure's purely hypothetical. If Dai Nippon dumped all those securities on the table at once, the value of their portfolio would go to hell."
I glanced at Tam.
"That's how we see it too," she said. And nothing more.
"What are you two suggesting?" He was visibly rattled. "Noda'd never pull anything that crazy."
"Bill, with all due respect, let's proceed one step at a time here with this hypothesis," I went on. "Assuming, just for purposes of discussion, he did decide to do something like that, unload everything, what's the fastest way?"
"Hell, I'd have to think."
"Come on, man. Financial derring-do is your special trade," I pressed him. "What if DNI's mainframe was used to set up a global trading network? Began dumping worldwide?"