A $50 million margin call? I'll short Wall Street.

March 6, 2008, 2:15 PM.

Farstar Capital Office.

Isabella clicked the save button, locking the draft of the anonymous email she was going to send to the risk control officer of the Massachusetts pension fund into an encrypted offshore server.

The email included a comparison table of real data compiled by Lu Ze.

"Ready."

She turned to look at Lu Ze, "It can be sent at any time."

Lu Ze was sitting in front of the Bloomberg terminal, about to speak, when his Blackberry phone on the table suddenly vibrated.

There was no caller ID. The screen only displayed four words: Unknown Number.

On Wall Street, those who can completely erase incoming call numbers and even hide the basic number range of telecom operators are definitely not ordinary salespeople or ordinary institutional traders.

Lu Ze stared at the screen for two seconds, picked up his phone, and pressed the answer button.

He didn't speak.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, followed by a deep, hoarse, aged voice with a distinctly Jewish New York accent.

"Mr. Lance Walker, is that right?"

"I am."

Lu Ze's voice was as calm as a stagnant pool.

"I heard that you recently made a very... thrilling trade at Goldman Sachs' over-the-counter options desk."

There was no mockery or curiosity in the old man's voice, only a cold, detached scrutiny, as if examining a specimen.

"Bear Stearns is bearish, maturing on March 21st. The whole of Wall Street is making fun of you."

"If you're here to laugh too, you don't need an encrypted line," Lu Ze said.

A low chuckle came from the other end of the phone, carrying the rough feeling of lungs that had been eroded by nicotine for years.

"My name is Nathaniel Greenberg."

The old man said, "I'm not interested in jokes. I'm only interested in people who can see what's behind the joke. Tonight at 8 PM, 12th Street, Lower East Side, 'Sushi Masaru' Japanese restaurant. The owner's name is Uchida. Tell him you're looking for me."

The old man didn't ask Lu Ze if he was free, nor did he ask if he was willing to come.

He gave the address and then hung up the phone.

"beep--"

Lu Ze took his phone and casually tossed it onto the table.

Isabella looked at him: "Who?"

"Let's look for it."

Lu Ze leaned back in his chair, his fingers interlaced, and said, "Nathaniel Greenberg."

Isabella immediately turned around, her fingers flying across the keyboard. Her intelligence-gathering skills were top-notch.

But when the first round of search results appeared, she visibly paused for a moment.

"What's wrong?" Lu Ze asked.

"...Too much data, and it's too old." Isabella frowned slightly, the screen's blue light shining on her surprised face. "Boss, this person is no ordinary figure on Wall Street."

She quickly clicked the mouse, dragged several key documents to the main screen, and began a rapid presentation:

Nathaniel Greenberg, 62 years old. Founder and CEO of Hammer Capital, an independent hedge fund. The fund manages a relatively small amount of capital, which has remained around $6 billion for many years, and it never accepts new external funding.

"His nickname on Wall Street was 'The Hammer'."

"Why is it called that?" Lu Ze asked.

"Because he always manages to deliver the heaviest blow at the most vulnerable point in the market."

Isabella swallowed hard, her tone growing increasingly grave as she reviewed the historical transaction records:

"On Black Monday in 1987, the US stock market crashed by 22% in a single day. Three days before the crash, he shorted the S&P 500 index using options and earned his first 20 million."

During the 1998 LTCM (Long-Term Capital Management) bankruptcy crisis, he liquidated all related positions a week before the Russian government bond default and shorted high-yield bonds at the peak of the crisis.

During the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, he aggressively shorted the Nasdaq on the day it broke 5,000 points.

Isabella raised her head, a hint of awe in her eyes:

"He's not a star fund manager; he's a 'living fossil' who's been hiding in the shadows of the market, surviving three major stock market crashes. What's even more frightening is his government background—"

She pulled up a scanned copy of a yellowed old newspaper: "In 1990, he was appointed as a special advisor to the U.S. Treasury Department and participated in the entire process of the cleanup and liquidation of the 'savings and loan crisis' that swept across the United States."

"What does this mean?" Lu Ze asked, as if testing her.

Isabella, quick-witted, immediately replied:

"This shows he's well-versed in the political and business revolving door between Wall Street and Washington! He knows all too well how the government intervened during the financial crisis, how it bailed out victims, and who it chose to sacrifice! Why would someone like that suddenly call you?"

A brief silence fell over the office area.

Outside the window, a few white doves flew over the glass curtain wall of the skyscraper, leaving fleeting shadows.

Lu Ze picked up the whiskey glass on the table, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at the city where money never sleeps.

"An old monster who has survived three collapses and participated in the cleanup of national-level crises."

Lu Ze said softly,

"Isabella, retrieve Hammer Capital's full-year net asset value returns for 2006 and 2007."

Isabella paused for a moment, then typed again to access the organization's database.

A dozen seconds later, her eyes widened.

"This...this is impossible."

"read."

「2006年，铁锤资本全年净值增长11.2%。2007年，也就是次贷危机已经开始爆发、约翰·保尔森做空次贷狂赚150亿美金的那一年——铁锤资本的全年净值增长只有……4.5%？」

Isabella stared at the screen in disbelief.

For a top-tier short-selling veteran who had experienced three stock market crashes, 2007 should have been a year of celebration.

Even Goldman Sachs knew the subprime mortgage crisis was coming and started building short positions, but Greensberg, a cunning old fox who made his living by sensing market cycles, completely missed this century's short selling opportunity and didn't even beat the industry average return.

"He messed up?" Isabella asked.

"He didn't fail; he just backed down."

Lu Ze turned around, a chilling insight flashing in his deep black eyes:

"If a hunter can't smell his prey, it's a matter of ability."

"But Greensberg had dealt with the housing credit crisis back in 1990, so it's impossible that he couldn't smell the rottenness of the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis. He wasn't wrong; he was held back by something."

"Risk Control Committee," Isabella immediately realized.

"That's right."

Lu Ze nodded.

"The older he gets, the higher his reputation becomes, and the more afraid he is of losing it. His quantitative team, his compliance department, and his investor committee must have forced him to cut his short positions during the market rebound just before the subprime crisis broke out."

Lu Ze walked to the table and casually tossed the Bear Stearns list aside:

"Can you imagine what that feels like?"

"How does it feel?"

"An old captain, who saw an approaching tsunami through a high-powered telescope, was told by his sailors that it was just a slightly larger storm. To reassure everyone, he put down his telescope and let the ship continue to drift at sea."

Lu Ze's lips curled into a smile that was hard to decipher—whether it was mockery or cold indifference was unclear.

"Then, he watched helplessly as others (Paulson) used the nautical charts he had seen to haul away a ship full of gold."

"For an old hunter who has been proud for thirty years, this is worse than death. He doesn't lack money; what he lacks is confirmation of the judgment he has been so proud of all his life."

Isabella held her breath. She suddenly understood.

"So..." she looked at Lu Ze,

"Now, in this old hunter's extreme self-doubt, he hears about a young man in his early twenties, with no connections, who, like a madman, used his last five million dollars to buy a doomsday stock option with only twenty days to live?"

"Yes," Lu Ze said calmly.

"Moreover, you're buying a bearish stock, betting that the giant will suddenly collapse within twenty days."

Isabella's voice trembled slightly, "While everyone else was laughing at you... only he felt that you saw something he wanted to see but dared not see."

"He didn't come to laugh at me."

Lu Ze downed the last sip of whiskey in his glass. The glass fell to the wooden table with a dull thud.

"He came to me to see if he could find a reflection of his younger self. He wanted to see what a truly unrestrained person, someone who would risk everything on a surfboard if he saw a tsunami, really looked like."

Isabella looked at the young boss in front of her.

It was only at this moment that she truly felt a sense of terror in her heart.

After the other party made a mere 30-second phone call, Lu Ze was not intimidated by the other party's reputation and status. Instead, he peeled back the layers like an onion, dissecting the inner weaknesses of a big shot who had dominated Wall Street for 30 years without reservation.

"So... what are you going to do?" Isabella asked.

"Should we go see him? If he, with his deep government connections, finds out we're secretly shorting Bear Stearns, wouldn't that be detrimental to us?"

Why can't I see him?

Lu Ze stood up, took off the black bandage that had been wrapped around his head and left only faint traces, and threw it into the trash can next to him.

He picked up the deep blue suit jacket draped over the back of the chair, put it on, and straightened his collar.

"He's not that free. He knows what I want, and I know what he wants."

Isabella.

Lu Ze stopped at the door and, without turning his head, gave the order:

"The email to the risk officer of the Massachusetts pension fund will be sent precisely at 7:00 AM tomorrow morning, after I meet with Greenberg tonight."

"It's time to pour that glass of warm water."

After saying that, he pushed open the door and walked towards the elevator at the end of the corridor.