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

Lehman Brothers is absolutely not going to collapse.

This phrase appeared in every corner of Wall Street in various guises during the second week of May 2008.

It's printed in Merrill Lynch's research reports, echoes in Morgan Stanley's morning meeting minutes, scrolls across the bottom of CNBC's live broadcast captions, and is also on the lips of a bespectacled quantitative modeler in Connecticut.

On the same afternoon, at 745 Seventh Avenue, on the 31st floor of the Lehman Brothers headquarters building.

An executive committee meeting was slowly turning like a meat grinder.

There were no pleasantries, no clinking of coffee cups. The person who entered pulled out a chair and sat down as carefully as if pulling out a fuse.

Richard Fuld was perched at the far end of the long table.

He was 61 years old, and his hair was gray.

His jawbone looked like two pieces of cast iron embedded in his face, and his eyes were deeply sunken, radiating a cold light that seemed ready to pounce at any moment.

On Wall Street, people called him "Gorilla" or "Bulldog" behind his back.

It wasn't his appearance, but rather the suffocating ferocity and territoriality he exuded—he would bite through anyone who dared to trespass on his territory.

Over nearly forty years, he rose from a lowly commercial paper trader to the throne.

When he took over Lehman Brothers, it was just a small company with a market value of three billion dollars, but now it is the fourth largest investment bank on Wall Street, with a market value of nearly 07 billion dollars in 600.

Lehman was not his employer; Lehman was his flesh and blood, his entrails.

On the left side of the long table is President and Chief Operating Officer Joe Gregory.

He was widely recognized on Wall Street as "Fuld's shadow." But now, that shadow is dragging Lehman Brothers into the abyss.

Over the past two years, Gregory has acted like a gambler who has lost his mind, relentlessly buying up commercial real estate even when the subprime market was already teetering on the brink of collapse.

His catchphrase is always: "The market will turn around, we just need to hold on."

Even now, with the Titanic having struck an iceberg and seawater already flooding the deck, he is still shouting to hold on.

On the right side of the table is the CFO, Erin Cullen.

Thirty-eight years old.

The youngest CFO at a top Wall Street investment bank, and a darling of financial television channels.

With her impeccable smile and excellent camera presence, she managed to quell institutional investors' panic during the past few challenging quarters through her personal charm.

But in this closed conference room, her aura was dim.

Because everyone present knew a fatal secret: Karen was a lawyer who started out in stock sales.

She simply couldn't understand the labyrinthine CDO structures, repurchase agreements, and Level 3 asset valuation models hidden deep within the balance sheet.

Gregory put her in this position simply by having her be a perfect "speaker".

As for the risks?

The risk management team told her, "Everything is under control."

At the middle of the long table sat several business executives, as well as Michael Stern.

Stern is the global head of Lehman Investment Management (IMD).

He held Lehman Brothers' most profitable and cleanest trump card in his hand—Nuboman.

This asset management company held over $200 billion in client funds and injected over $1 billion in net profit into Lehman Brothers annually. Most importantly, its underlying assets were completely clean, containing not a single cent of subprime junk.

On Lehman Brothers' decaying body, Neuberger Berman was the only fresh, vibrant piece of good flesh.

But precisely because of this, Stern's situation in the room was extremely dangerous. He was guilty of possessing a treasure.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Karen pressed the page-turning pen in her hand.

The screen displayed a preview of Lehman Brothers' second-quarter financial report, which will be released on June 9.

The moment the numbers appeared, the air in the conference room seemed to vanish instantly.

Net loss: -$30 billion.

Lehman Brothers reported its first quarterly loss since it went public independently in 1994.

Karen began reading from her prepared statement. Her voice remained steady, but upon closer inspection, her knuckles, gripping the laser pointer, were white from excessive force.

"...Commercial real estate impairment, downgrading of subprime-related asset valuations, and the multiplier effect of leverage..."

No one interrupted her.

But everyone present knew that this was not a "loss" at all; it was a massive financial drain.

After Karen finished speaking, the long table fell into dead silence.

"We need to manage our expectations regarding how this figure is perceived by the public."

Gregory was the first to break the silence, leaning back in his chair, his tone still carrying that habitual, condescending composure.

"We need to tell the market that this is a 'one-off' cleanup. Lehman's core business is intact, and our liquidity is absolutely sufficient."

"Ample liquidity?"

Stern sneered inwardly.

He stared at the top-secret internal liquidity report in his hand, the huge funding gap looming before him like a black hole.

He took a deep breath, knowing he had to cross the line.

"Richard," Stern ignored Gregory, his gaze fixed on Fuld at the end of the long table, "I have a very straightforward option."

Fuld didn't move; only his eyes, as black as ice, turned and locked onto Stern's face.

It was a real, physical pressure. But Stern did not back down.

"Spin off Neuberger Berman and list it as a separate company via IPO."

Stern spoke very quickly, revealing his hand before Gregory could change his expression:

"Two hundred billion US dollars in assets under management, with zero subprime exposure. Based on current market valuations, it could be sold for five to seven billion US dollars. As long as we sell some equity, even if we only get back two billion US dollars in cash, we can immediately fill Lehman's current liquidity gap."

He placed his hands on the table and leaned forward:

"Richard, this isn't a fire sale of assets. It's using our best gun to cover the entire ship and buy time."

The meeting room fell silent.

Two seconds later, Gregory let out a soft chuckle through his nose.

"Michael," Gregory's voice was soft, as if he were reprimanding an incompetent intern.

"I know you're doing well. But do you even understand what a 'strategic signal' is?"

He tapped the table twice with his fingers: "What will those vultures on Wall Street think once we put our most profitable Neuberger Berman stock out for sale?"

They would assume Lehman Brothers was completely bankrupt and had to pawn even its mahogany furniture! Without this valuable asset as cover, Lehman's remaining balance sheet would be a complete disaster. Therefore—"

Gregory spread his hands: "Strategically, this plan is utterly absurd."

Stern felt a suffocating sensation, like being cut by a dull knife. He turned sharply to look at Karen, hoping the CFO would say something for the life or death of the balance sheet.

Karen kept her head down, her pen scribbling meaningless circles wildly across her notebook.

She would never speak in front of those two men. That was her instinct that had allowed her to survive until today.

Stern gritted his teeth, preparing to confront Gregory head-on.

Michael.

From the end of the long table came a very low, deep voice.

It sounded like the muffled thud of some large carnivore in its throat.

Everyone tensed instantly. Fuld interlaced his fingers, pressed his elbows on the table, and leaned forward like an iron tower about to collapse.

He stared at Stern, his eyes filled with incomprehensible arrogance and cruelty.

"Are you suggesting I cut off my right hand in the street to prove to those bloodthirsty bastards on Wall Street that I'm not quite dead yet?"

Stern froze. "Richard, the numbers are there. If we don't do this—"

"Lehman Brothers didn't need to do that!"

Suddenly, Fuld raised his voice, the sound like a resounding slap against the wall of the conference room.

"Lehman Brothers isn't a sick man to be slaughtered. My company doesn't need to sell its blood to survive. This fucking thing is going to die today, in this room. Got it?"

Absolute power. Absolute delusion. Absolute inviolability.

Stern looked at Fuld's face, hard as stone, and slowly withdrew his hand from the table. He knew the door had been welded shut.

He closed the folder in front of him: "I understand."

For the next forty minutes, the meeting turned into Gregory's personal show.

He was there, going on and on about how to "optimize" the presentation of losses in the upcoming financial report, how to fool the analysts, how to tamper with the wording of the press release, and how to "build market confidence."

Stern sat there like a lucid observer strapped to a bomb, watching a group of madmen figuring out how to give the bomb a nicer packaging.

When the meeting adjourned, everyone quickly stood up.

Gregory patted Fuld on the shoulder, and the two whispered a few words, their faces bearing a kind of vain sense of relief that "crisis management is about to be a great success."

Karen grabbed the documents as if fleeing a disaster and practically ran towards the elevator in her high heels.

Stern was the last one to come out.

The cold white fluorescent lights in the corridor shone on the expensive carpet, casting a pale glow.

Instead of pressing the elevator button, he walked straight to the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the building, put his hands in his pockets, and looked down.

On Seventh Avenue, yellow taxis flow like worker ants.

Look up.

The Goldman Sachs building. The JPMorgan Chase building. The Morgan Stanley building.

Stern didn't know how their CEO viewed Fuld.

But Stern knew that Goldman Sachs and his team were already slowly making their way to the doorway.

Extremely professional, extremely respectable. Like a group of gentlemen in suits, smiling and unhurriedly retreating from a gas station that was leaking gas like crazy, even remembering to hang a "Everything is normal" sign at the door.

On the thirty-first floor of that building, Gregory, who personally pushed Lehman Brothers to a deadly leverage of thirty times, didn't even admit that he had made a "mistake".

The tyrant known as "Gorilla" still firmly believed that he could scare away the approaching Grim Reaper with his roars.

Stern turned his head and stared intently at the closed conference room door at the end of the corridor.

There is no strategy in there.

There was only one grand funeral rite being meticulously rehearsed inside.