Rigged

by Ben Mezrich

  The girls smiled at Khaled as he navigated past them, but he ignored their entreaties. He wasn’t shy, but he was proper; where he was from, women did not dress like that, and it simply wasn’t something he was used to. He had had one Western girlfriend during his college years at Cambridge, but she had been from a family almost as religious as his own. Different religion, of course, but she had not challenged his upbringing the way these two nearnaked friends of his uncle’s might. So instead of responding, he simply bowed at them as he went past, then quickly entered the interior of the yacht by way of the open hatch.

  A carpeted stairway led down into a vast, ornate parlor. The carpets were all real fur, the walls thick leather, and there was artwork everywhere. Khaled recognized one Picasso and two Mondrians; his uncle had always been a fan of the post-impressionists. Khaled wasn’t sure that the light from the twin Swarovsky crystal chandeliers hanging from the parlor’s ceiling was sufficient for the artwork, but he certainly would not have insulted the sheik by bringing the fact to his attention. The sheik took such things very seriously.

  Khaled spotted his uncle on the other side of the vast room, seated at a beautiful antique wooden desk by a pair of circular windows. As usual, the sheik was dressed in his white robes, complete with headdress. His square chin was resting on one hand as he leafed through a thick notebook, his lips moving as he worked through some arcane calculations in his head.

  He looked up as Khaled crossed toward him, and a huge smile broke across his sun-darkened face. He leapt up from behind the desk, clapping his hands together.

  “Khaled. Right on time. I trust the trip from Geneva was no problem?”

  Private jet from Geneva to Nice. Private helicopter from Nice down the French coast to Monte Carlo, where a second helicopter had been waiting to take him directly to the yacht. No problem at all.

  “I would travel half the world by donkey to see you, Uncle.” Khaled embraced the older man, nearly losing himself in the creases of the sheik’s robes. When he pulled away, he saw that there were tears in his uncle’s eyes. He knew what the older man was thinking: that Khaled’s father was there, in Khaled’s high caramel cheeks and striking dark eyes. Khaled took a step back, bowing slightly. Though the attention embarrassed him, he would never have complained. He owed the sheik so much. Geneva, Cambridge, before that a year at NYU—he would never have been able to make such a journey without the sheik’s money and influence. And now, he knew, he would have to begin to repay that debt. The sheik had brought him to this yacht for a reason—and though Khaled did not yet know the sheik’s plan for him, he would follow that plan to the ends of the earth. The sheik shook the tears away, and without another word reached into the top drawer of his desk and retrieved a leather portfolio, zipped shut on one side. He looked Khaled straight in his dark eyes.

  “You know the history of our family, Khaled?”

  Khaled nodded.

  “Of course, Your Excellency,” he responded, using the most formal words he could find. He wasn’t sure where his uncle was leading with this, but he knew he had not been brought to the yacht on a whim. His uncle had a plan for him—had always had a plan for him. “A thousand years in the desert—”

  “Bedouins, nomads, wandering—and do you know how we survived for so long? Prospered, for so long?”

  Khaled looked at the sheik. It was hard to picture the man he had always known like this—resplendent in robes, embraced by the trappings of an unimaginable fortune—as the heir to one of the oldest Bedouin dynasties in the region.

  “We kept our eyes open,” the sheik continued, answering his own question. “And we saw when the sand was shifting.”

  He took a heavy breath, then handed the leather portfolio to Khaled.

  “The sand is shifting now, my nephew.”

  Khaled unzipped the portfolio and glanced inside. It was a letter of acceptance, an appointment to a position the sheik had obviously arranged for him. Khaled looked up from the portfolio, eyebrows raised—then nodded. If this was how his uncle felt he could best repay his debt, then he knew where he was headed next.

  He embraced the sheik again. Then he headed out of the parlor. The sun hit him full in the face as he rose back onto the deck. The bikinied girls were on their stomachs now, but still they smiled up at him as he passed. Khaled did his best to ignore them; his heart was pounding, and he could feel the tension rising in his chest. Anticipation.

  The sands were shifting, indeed. And his uncle was sending him directly into the center of that coming sandstorm.

  Chapter 4

  September 10, 2002

  I’m sorry, David. He’s on his way to his son’s swim meet. But I’ll give him the message that you called, I promise. And thanks again for the flowers. You’re such a sweetheart.”

  David sighed to himself, the phone heavy against his ear. He rubbed his free hand against his bleary eyes.

  “No, Harriet, you’re the sweet one. I think I’ve spent more time this week talking to you than my girlfriend. But at least you still take my calls.”

  The woman on the other end of the line laughed. “Flowers today, chocolates yesterday, a photo of yourself on Wednesday with a box of freshly baked cookies—heck, David, you can call me for the next five years if you want. I just wish I had better news for you. But thank you again, and have a nice day.”

  David didn’t move the phone right away, even as the dial tone lashed out at his eardrum. This was getting ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous. How long could Giovanni keep avoiding him? Seven days of phone calls—sometimes five, six times a day—and the furthest he had gotten was Harriet Farelli, Giovanni’s pleasant if a bit matronly-sounding secretary. And David had tried everything. First he’d sent résumés, references, transcripts. Then he’d moved on to the flowers and chocolates, resolved to at least win over Harriet, keeper of the phone, if he couldn’t get to Giovanni himself. But now he was beginning to lose hope. Maybe he could get away with bothering Harriet for a few more days, but sooner or later someone at Merrill was going to wonder why he kept making these trips to the shared office attached to the firm’s main library. And he certainly couldn’t have made these calls from his cubicle up on the eighth floor. Not only didn’t he have a door upstairs, he didn’t really have walls or even much of a desk either. Just a chair, a computer, and a phone in full view of the thirty-five other first-year Merrill slaves—and worse yet, his cubicle was just a few yards away from the open-door office of his tight-ass thirty-year-old boss, who would have loved nothing more than to make an example of David in the first week to scare the hell out of the other firsties. No, David was better off risking suspicion by sneaking off to the library every few hours on some bullshit “research” excuse than getting himself fired by making these calls from his cubicle.

  He leaned back in his chair, twirling the phone in front of him. The library office was small and stark—just a wooden desk, a few bookshelves, a pair of IBM workstations, and the phone. Still, David would have died for an office like this, somewhere he could just go and think, away from the constant noise of the banking floors. The other first-years were okay guys, he guessed; a few of them he knew from HBS, and the rest were pretty much carbon copies from Wharton, Stanford, MIT—wherever they were churning out kids like him, poor saps who’d entered business school at exactly the wrong moment in history. David often wondered where he’d have ended up if those fuckers hadn’t chosen to crash those planes right at the start of his final year at HBS. Certainly he wouldn’t have been at Merrill making seventy-five thousand per annum the hard way.

  Pushing papers and making cold calls would have been heaven compared to what his job had actually turned out to be. By the end of the first day, he had been shifted from investment analysis to private banking. When he’d first heard the words, he’d thought maybe he was getting a break. Maybe he’d be meeting with celebrities and professional athletes and rich CEOs, discussing their investments. But he’d been dead wrong. His boss had him visiting old-age homes
, sitting down with ninety-year-olds talking about retirement funds. He was spending his evenings reading up on IRAs and estate planning, and his days trucking across town to places he could only describe as death’s waiting rooms. It was quite literally the worst job he could have imagined.

  The only bright light in his professional life was that robin’segg-blue card taped to the underside of his cubicle. Every morning at 6:00 a.m., a full hour before the other first-years arrived, he took the card out, stared at the name and number, and hurried to the library to make that first phone call. And every morning it had gone the same way. Mr. Giovanni’s in meetings all day today, he won’t be able to fit you in. Mr. Giovanni’s on his way to Chicago for a lunch. He won’t be back in the city until tomorrow. Mr. Giovanni is playing racquetball this afternoon. He won’t be getting any messages from some punk-ass kid he met at some dinner, a kid he’s probably already forgotten about. . . .

  David closed his eyes, put the phone back in its cradle, and lowered his head to the desk. The wood felt cold against his cheek, and he could hear the quiet whir of the IBMs through the bones in his skull. He was at a loss for what to try next. More flowers? Maybe some jewelry? Fuck, he’d already won Harriet over. She’d probably go on a date with him by now if he were single—and maybe a decade or two older. How was he going to get past her to that bastard in the big office—

  A high-pitched ring reverberated through the desk and nearly made David cough up that morning’s coffee. He lurched back, almost overturning his chair in the process. Then he stared at the phone. In seven days, the hunk of plastic had never rung. David hadn’t even realized that the thing could take incoming calls. For a moment, he wondered if he should answer it. He looked back over his shoulder, at the closed door. He hadn’t seen anyone else in the library as he’d made his way to the office. He shrugged and reached for the receiver.

  “David? Did I find you?”

  David felt his eyes roll back in his head. Just what he needed.

  “Mom, how the hell did you get this number?”

  “A nice young man forwarded me over here when I called the number you gave me last week. Do you have two offices? That’s great, honey, you’re a real Manhattan big-shot now, two offices in one building—”

  “I don’t have two offices. This is the library. And I probably shouldn’t be talking to you here.”

  David felt like putting his head through the desk. He was pretty sure his mother had been forwarded to the library phone by his boss, as nobody else would have been rude enough to answer his phone. That meant his boss was probably hovering around his cubicle, wondering where he was. Great. One week into his first real job, and his mother was already getting him into trouble.

  He couldn’t blame her, of course, because he knew her well enough not to be surprised by the call. She had always been a “hands-on” kind of mom. Especially since his father’s accident, the family had been incredibly close-knit. David’s going off to England for the two-year program at Oxford had nearly sent his mother to the hospital with fainting spells. As far as he knew, his mother had never been on an airplane, had never left New York State. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to say she lived through her only son, and it had taken all of David’s resources not to grow into one of those types of “only sons.” Although sometimes Serena would argue that even his most herculean efforts hadn’t been enough.

  “Well, I just wanted to check in and see how the job is going. And make sure you’re bringing Serena to dinner this Sunday night. You know it’s a very special day for your father.”

  David felt his lips tugging down at the corners; he really didn’t want to think about his father’s special day at the moment, because it was still hard for him to accept what had happened and how it had changed things at home. One year of high-intensity therapy finished was no small feat, and his father deserved to celebrate—but David wanted his mind clear to deal with his current dilemma.

  “I know, Mom. We’ll be there.”

  Before his mom could respond, a loud beep signaled that there was a second call on the line. David raised his eyebrows, wondering how the hell he could get two calls in one day on a phone that had never rung before. Then he realized it was probably his boss. Maybe he was about to get fired. Well, considering that he was supposed to visit two old-age homes later that afternoon, he wasn’t sure that would be such a bad thing. Then again, seventyfive thousand dollars was seventy-five thousand dollars. And even with his scholarship from the Italians, he had loans to pay back. “I gotta go, Mom,” he said quickly, clicking over to the other call before she could say anything else. “Hello? Just finishing up here, I know I’ve been away from my desk a while and I’m really sorry—”

  “David?” a woman’s voice interrupted, and David suddenly realized it was Harriet, Giovanni’s assistant. “You still there? I tried your office number and some unpleasant young man sent me over here.”

  David could picture the smoke coming out of his boss’s ears— two calls forwarded over to David in a matter of minutes. He probably thought David was running some sort of phone sex line out of the library. But David didn’t care about his boss at the moment, because if Harriet was calling him back it had to be good news. “I’m here. Did I get through?”

  “Morton’s, in two hours. The table is under his name. Don’t be late.” With that, she hung up.

  David slapped the phone down, blood rushing to his ears. Then he looked at his watch. He’d have to cut out of work an hour early. Shit, he’d definitely get in trouble, maybe even fired. But Anthony Giovanni had invited him to dinner.

  Or had he? David couldn’t be sure that Harriet hadn’t simply snuck him onto the reservation. Dinner at Morton’s certainly wasn’t the sort of meeting David had expected when Giovanni had told him to try to get on his schedule.

  Well, it didn’t really matter, because David wasn’t going to miss that appointment. Not even an army of Merrill Lynch middle managers armed with rapidly expiring retirement accounts could have kept him away.

  Chapter 5

  Geography aside, it was hard to tell where Wall Street ended and Morton’s began. The minute David stepped through the door of the hallowed steak house cum financial hangout on Forty-fifth and Fifth, he was accosted by a cacophony of sounds and scents that reminded him of the social outings he’d endured back at HBS. The air was so thick with clouds of cigar smoke that David would have needed a gas mask to make out the old-world Chicago decor, and the overwhelming mixed scent of whiskey, bankers, and roasting dry-aged meat was so intense that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to salivate or vomit—maybe a little of both.

  The place was crowded, even though it was barely 6:00 p. m ., and it took David nearly five minutes to get the attention of the overdressed, overweight host with the restaurant’s coveted seating chart. Of course, the rotund man didn’t need to consult the chart to direct David toward Giovanni’s table; though there were four corners to the rectangular steak house, there was only one “corner table.”

  David did his best to compose himself as he made his way through the crowded restaurant, navigating carefully between the tables that seemed dangerously close together, especially considering that most of the waitstaff were obese and most of the clientele were already three whiskeys deep. David hoped he wasn’t sweating too much beneath his herring-gray Brooks Brothers suit. He was pretty sure he had escaped Merrill without his boss noticing his early departure, but the five-block record-breaking journey to the restaurant was a blur of near-death experiences involving taxicabs, pretzel vendors, and tourists. At least now the tourists had something to tell their friends back home about—the crazy fucking kid in a banker’s monkey-suit sprinting through red lights while a guy in a vendor’s apron screamed after him, tossing pretzels at the back of his head.

  Somehow he’d made it, with a few minutes to spare. Following the directions the maître d’ had given him, David spotted his quarry, mentally taking in the corner table with quick flicks of his eyes. Anthon
y Giovanni was seated at the center, his hair and suit immaculate, a glass of scotch at his lips and a cigar in his outstretched right hand. To Giovanni’s left was a man David vaguely recognized from the financial newspapers: Jim Lowell, a preppy, midforties banker and near-billionaire who was currently trying to buy the New York Knicks. To Lowell’s left was another almost familiar face: Doug Masters, the head of a consulting behemoth that had rejected David’s résumé—thank God, as David had no interest in the world of consulting—a few months before he’d landed the Merrill job.

  On Giovanni’s other side was a man David didn’t recognize: dark hair, dark eyes, wide shoulders, young—maybe late thirties, definitely under forty—and handsome in a Baldwinesque sort of way. Not exactly Alec, but somewhere on the way to Billy. The unknown man spotted David first, nudging Giovanni in a manner that immediately told David the two were colleagues, if not equals.

  “There he is,” Giovanni said, waving his cigar and kicking out the empty chair closest to David. “Right on time and not a hair out of place. Gentlemen, meet my assistant’s newest crush, David Russo.”

  David tried not to blush as he shook hands all around, then lowered himself into the free seat, directly across from Giovanni.

  “I’m not kidding,” Giovanni continued, grinning. “Harriet’s got your fucking picture taped to the wall above her desk. Chocolate and flowers? I like a kid who gets creative, but now your girlfriend’s got a real fight on her hands.”

  David laughed as a waiter placed a glass of scotch in front of him, then passed out poster-sized menus. After the waiter had explained the specials, Giovanni waved him away, then finally introduced the man to his left.

  “Nick Reston, youngest president in the history of the Merc Exchange. He’s my right-hand man, and I’d have resigned as chairman long ago if I didn’t have Nick around to keep the fucking traders out of my hair. Now that that’s out of the way, no more business until after we eat. You boys need to realize that to gavones like me and David, eating is religion. You don’t sully religion with business.”