The Set-Up

The last thing Charles Black expects, when he lands in Basel to represent the U.S. at the monthly meeting of national bank leaders at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is arrest by the Swiss police. Recently resigned after four years at the helm of the Federal Reserve Board, Black is a temporary special envoy to the BIS--until its Swiss and British delegates charge him with misuse of high office and a half-billion-dollar fraud, and the Basel prosecutor sends him to a fifteenth-century jail. Erdman's title gives the game away: someone really was speculating on interest and exchange rates using confidential BIS information. Black and his financially savvy wife encounter both venal and vicious adversaries as they strive to clear his name.