Rigged

by Ben Mezrich

  “And it’s not just the nightlife,” Khaled continued. “The citizens here recognize that many of our visitors come from very different cultures; as long as the respect flows both ways, there are no problems with the many varied lifestyles.”

  David nodded. Khaled had already explained much of this in the BMW ride over from the Emirates Tower. The conversation had begun when David asked him about something he had seen in the lobby of the building: a woman was showing a marriage certificate to one of the security guards before entering an elevator that led up to her hotel room. Khaled had explained that after a certain hour women and men were allowed into the same room only if they proved that they were husband and wife. It was all very quiet, very reserved—but the rules were there, and this was assuredly a double society. You could drink and play in the clubs, but you didn’t flaunt things in public, you didn’t walk outside with a beer, and you didn’t try to bring a girl back to your hotel.

  At the Kasbah, the alcohol flowed and the girls wore miniskirts; outside on the street, women didn’t have to wear burkas— though David had indeed seen a few in the hotel lobby and on the sidewalks—but they didn’t flaunt their sexuality either. There were codes of behavior, but once you understood that, Dubai seemed as free as anywhere else David had been. And from the looks of the Kasbah, there was certainly room for debauchery.

  At the moment, however, David was sticking to Perrier—partially out of respect for Khaled, who did not drink for religious reasons, and partially because he wanted to keep his mind sharp as he surveyed the Dubai scene. Ever since he’d left the conference room, his thoughts had been on overdrive; though he still believed it was an impossible idea—and one that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to take part in—he had already begun deconstructing the notion of a Dubai oil exchange analytically, like they’d taught him in business school.

  Breaking it down to its simplest form, David realized that to build an oil exchange in Dubai you needed three things: you needed the physical exchange; you needed the personnel who would be willing to go trade there; and you needed the rest of the world to take it seriously.

  Considering the amount of money the emir had been pouring into construction, the physical exchange was not an issue. And places like the Kasbah—and the multitude of high-end restaurants, lounges, and dance halls that Khaled had shown him on their tour—went a long way toward solving the second task. It was incredibly important to be able to show traders and brokers that living in Dubai was really no different than living in London or New York—that the comforts they expected were available and there was ample opportunity to spend the money they’d be making. David stretched his neck to peer over the brass-rimmed balcony toward the dance floor below. Certainly, there were women everywhere—some as beautiful as he’d ever seen walking down Fifth Avenue, and that was saying a lot. In fact, the club seemed disproportionately women—tall, well-dressed, striking women with plenty of makeup, mostly in groups of four or five, writhing to the beat coming from the huge overhead speakers.

  Khaled nodded to David. “Although it’s not something generally spoken about, our after-hours scene has also flourished with the growth in the expat community. Women from all over Europe—models, royalty, socialites, the party set—have come, following the wealth to its source.”

  David turned back to his Perrier. Selling the lifestyle of Dubai wouldn’t be the hard part, that was for sure. It was the third aspect of building an exchange that would be the nonstarter. How would the trading world take seriously a center of pure capitalism smack-dab in the center of the Middle East? Khaled had been giving him the full-court press—first-class travel, first-class hotel room, a tour of the megaclubs—and still he was having trouble believing that Khaled was entirely serious. He was truly beginning to like the kid, and he respected his intelligence—but what was his angle? Didn’t he have to have an angle?

  “Khaled, you studied in New York, Cambridge, and Geneva. Now you’re working on multibillion-dollar deals with developers, banks, whatever. Why do you want to go after something like this, a twenty-million-dollar project that will probably fail anyway?”

  Khaled paused as a pair of young Lebanese men dashed by their table, chasing a pretty blond Russian who was heading for the stairs that led to the dance floor. Then he leaned forward over the table.

  “David, I’ll be honest with you. I’m not like most of the young men in this city. I am not here chasing wealth. My uncle is one of the richest men in the world. My father—rest his soul—always provided me with the best that life had to offer. I could leave Dubai tomorrow, go live in one of my uncle’s many palaces, or enter the party circuit in a dozen cities around the globe—maybe along the way drop my beliefs and pretend I was a secular and free Lebanese like many of the Arabs who visit Dubai on vacation pretend—but none of that interests me.”

  His high cheeks were flushed, and there was real fire in his dark eyes.

  “Dubai, for me, is not about wealth and Western-style debauchery. I believe I was sent here to make a difference.”

  It was strange to hear something like that, especially in a place like this. David knew that Reston would have laughed his way right down to the dance floor, corralling a waitress or two in the process. But David didn’t feel like laughing. Instead, he was again reminded of his father—and about what his thoughts had been when that airplane was heading toward his window. About doing something important.

  David looked at Khaled, at his dark Arabic features. It was more than irony—it almost seemed like some sort of cosmic joke. That the thing his father spoke of—the important thing that David could do—might come from a kid with those features, in a place like this.

  “Khaled,” he started, then he stopped himself. Did he really trust this kid enough to tell him what he’d kept inside for more than a year? And why him? Why here?

  But David knew the answer. He wanted Khaled to know—and respond to—what he carried inside.

  “On 9/11,” he started again, “my dad was at work on the twenty-seventh floor of the World Trade Center. I was at Harvard Business School at the time, and I was sleeping off an all-night study session in my dorm room. I got a call from the dean’s office and rushed over in time to see the buildings collapse on TV. I was so hysterical, they gave me these knockout pills to keep me from hurting myself. By the time I woke up, they’d found my father. He was alive. In fact, he had no physical injuries to speak of, but sometimes the worst kinds of injuries don’t show up on X-rays and MRIs.”

  Khaled’s expression softened, but he did not turn away. Nor did he interrupt; he just let David say what he had to say.

  “He’d been trapped inside that building, watching people burning and falling to their deaths—and it just broke something inside of him. Two days later, he suffered a serious heart attack. Then, after he’d gotten out of the hospital, the panic attacks and the claustrophobia started.”

  David blinked away memories he didn’t want to talk about: His father unable to see him graduate because he couldn’t get on an airplane. His father calling him, desperate, from the basement of a department store because he couldn’t get back into the elevator or find his way upstairs. His father, this big, Italian tough guy, unable to do the most simple fucking things in life, like ride in the back of a taxi or get on a city bus.

  “A couple of weeks after that happened,” David finally continued, “I wanted to bomb the whole fucking Middle East. This incredible rage overcame me—to the point where I almost lost myself. It took months for me to realize how stupid I was being— and I’m embarrassed by my own reaction, even today, a year later. I don’t think I’m racist, and I don’t blame the Arab world for the actions of a handful of terrorists. But I do know, firsthand, the sort of feelings much of the West has for your part of the world.”

  Khaled lowered his eyes for a brief moment, then shook his head. “Then you also know why we have to at least entertain the idea of working together on this. Why this exchange may be the most important thin
g you ever do.” He looked up, his intensity magnified. “David, this might be hard for you to understand, but when 9/11 happened, most Arabs felt the same pain and anger that you did. We wanted to hunt down the men responsible and kill them—not only had they murdered innocent people, but they’d killed a part of our culture too and set us back so many years in our efforts to be respected by the West. But the Arab world is complicated; educated, powerful Arabs like my uncle could not come forward and speak these things—because the Arab street would not have allowed it.”

  David had heard the term only a few times before: the Arab street, the pictures of the Arab world that Americans saw on TV whenever a terrorist bomb went off or an anti-American rally made the news. In truth, he doubted that the Arab street was as unfamiliar a concept as most Americans probably thought. It was the consensus of the silent mob—the people, the everyday Joes. In America it was akin to the silent majority. The passionate—though often misled and disillusioned— people who populated the cities and towns across the country. In the Arab world the silent majority’s voice was heard in the street because in many ways the street was the center of Arab culture.

  “My uncle—along with my father before he died—has spent a lifetime quietly finding ways to work around the Arab street, to try to fix many of the problems of our region, but also to find ways to unify us with the West. I think you and I have an opportunity to do the same.”

  David listened to Khaled speak. He had never told anyone other than Serena about the day his father had been ruined by the collapsing building. He could hardly believe that he’d shared the story with Khaled, a total stranger, but somehow it seemed to make sense. And what Khaled was saying—could it also make sense?

  David shook his head. He and Khaled were just two kids. Still, deep in his mind, he couldn’t help wondering: What if somehow they brought the Merc to the Middle East? What if they built that damn soccer stadium in the middle of the Arab desert?

  Would the rest of the world really come and play?

  David’s thoughts were interrupted as Khaled suddenly rose from his seat. David turned in time to watch a young man approaching across the VIP balcony. If David had had to guess, he would have placed the young man’s age somewhere around thirty; European-looking from the way he was dressed—in a sleek, buttoned-down shirt, designer slacks, and a tapered DKNY jacket—he had a confident, polished gait and slicked-back brown hair that reminded David of the rich trust-fund kids he’d known at Williams and Harvard.

  The young man was grinning as he reached their table and held out a hand to Khaled.

  “Khaled,” he said, and his accent immediately pegged him as British. “Never expected to find you here, out slumming with us Eurotrash.”

  Khaled nodded toward David. “Just entertaining a new friend from the States. David Russo from New York, this is Stephen Seebeck, London. He’s with Signature Asset Management out of the U.K. Real estate, banking, what have you. He’s also quite a regular in the late-night expat scene.”

  “There’s nothing regular about us,” Seebeck said. “In fact, I’m on my way to a wonderful little soiree right now. I don’t suppose you chaps would like to tag along? What do you say, Khaled— show our new friend the real Dubai?”

  David was beginning to wonder how many “real” Dubais there were. Khaled sighed, patting Seebeck on the shoulder.

  “Sadly, I don’t believe I can keep up with you and your friends. But I think David should take you up on your offer. He’s seen as much of the city as I can show him tonight. My Dubai usually ends where Mr. Seebeck’s version begins.”

  Seebeck winked at David. “What do you say, New York? Ready for a second act?”

  Part of David would have been content to stay talking to Khaled, but another part of him figured there wasn’t any better way to get to know a city dominated by foreigners than by following a European kid out into the night. He grinned back at the Londoner, then made his good-byes to his new Arab friend. After Khaled had shaken both their hands, Seebeck walked David down a set of stairs to a back entrance behind the VIP balcony. As they pushed past a group of dancing Southeast Asian women, Seebeck leaned in close to David’s ear.

  “Khaled’s a good egg, and piety’s a wonderful thing. But—no disrespect intended—why spend your time trying to pray your way into some future paradise when it’s right here in front of you?”

  They reached a pair of double doors at the back of the club, and Seebeck pushed his way through with an outstretched palm. They burst out into a back street that ran perpendicular to the club. Parked a few feet from the curb was a bright red Porsche 911 convertible: top down, black leather interior, ivory-white dashboard glistening in the low evening light.

  With a flourish, Seebeck produced a set of shiny keys and flashed an equally ostentatious smile.

  “In Dubai, this is what we call a company car.”

  A minute later, David was hastily strapping himself into the bucketed passenger seat, his body vibrating as Seebeck revved the RPMs. David took a deep breath—the smell of the leather from the seats mingling with the scent of burning gasoline—as the expat shifted the car into reverse, burned a streak of pitch-black rubber into the pavement, and skidded away from the curb.

  Chapter 26

  The swimming pool was enormous and shaped like a kidney; curved, tiled in marble, and brightly lit from below by more than a dozen underwater spotlights, its double-ellipsed circumference spanned the entire length of the gated modern condo-complex that rose up, four stories high, above its shimmering aquamarine surface. Surrounding the pool was a vast stone-tiled patio teeming with wicker deck chairs and tables, umbrellas, and potted palm trees. Mingling between the palm fronds and twists of wicker were about fifty people, maybe more—and from the looks of things, the party was just getting started. Throbbing hip-hop music echoed off the stone tiles as model-hot girls in skimpy bikinis cavorted with young men in designer jeans and fitted T-shirts. Waiters in white uniforms carried trays overflowing with Arabic delicacies—stuffed vine leaves, olive cakes, hummus dips, and Syrian bread—while pool boys in pale blue uniforms handed out towels and bathrobes. No matter that it was probably close to midnight; the air was a balmy seventy-five degrees, and the mood seemed as bright as the spotlights at the bottom of the pool.

  “My God,” David said as Seebeck led him through a gated entrance toward a mildly less crowded section of the patio. “What is this place?”

  “A pool party, David. Haven’t you ever been to a pool party?” Seebeck paused to give hugs to a threesome of lithe girls in matching white bikinis, sitting together on a reclined deck chair. Then he continued forward, David rushing to keep up.

  “I know it’s a pool party. I mean, why here? Who are all these people?”

  Seebeck grinned back at him.

  “You mean who are all these girls. These condos are owned by Emirates Air. This is where they house their flight attendants. So my friends and I, in our infinite wisdom, have turned this place into the best after-hours scene in Dubai. With the help of some corporate credit cards, of course.”

  David watched a group of girls in the shallow end of the pool playing a form of volleyball with what looked to be some sort of Middle Eastern melon.

  “These girls are all flight attendants?”

  “That’s right. Australians mostly. That’s why they’re all so goddamn tall. They grow them like that in Australia. Emirates Air picks and chooses the prettiest of the pretty and puts them all up here. Sometimes as many as seventy girls.”

  Seebeck slowed his swaggering gait as they approached a group of four well-dressed young men standing beneath a pair of palm trees. The four men all looked to be between David’s age and Seebeck’s. Actually, David had yet to see anyone over thirty; this could have been a party at any trendy club in downtown New York—except the girls were even prettier and the men were even better dressed. Also, David noticed, nobody seemed to be drinking any alcohol. Three of the four young men in front of him were holding cl
ear bottles of water, and the fourth had a soft drink in a can.

  Seebeck made the introductions; two of the young men worked at the same asset management company as Seebeck and were both from the U.K. One of the remaining two was an investment banker from Germany, and the fourth was a real estate consultant from Barcelona. None of them seemed even remotely surprised when David told them where he worked; it was obvious that none of them doubted for a moment that Dubai was becoming the focus of every business—not just real estate, tourism, and banking. And from what he’d seen of Dubai so far, David had to admit that no upwardly mobile young man would need any excuse to want to be there.

  “And this is just one of a dozen parties going on tonight,” Seebeck said to David as his friends bantered with each other about some soccer league they had started with a group of Indian money managers. “There’s another set of condos about four blocks away full of corporate secretaries—mostly Swedish and Swiss—that we may visit if this gets tiresome. Then there are nine or ten after-hours clubs where the Eastern European girls hang out. Mostly prostitutes actually, but they’re really nice to look at.”

  He winked in a way that made David think that he’d done more than look, but then he quickly changed the subject by grabbing a pair of bottled waters off a tray carried by one of the waitstaff.

  “I know, it’s not exactly vodka and Red Bull, but we have to show some semblance of respect. For the most part, we’ve traded excess for alcohol. Even so, of course, the emirate doesn’t exactly condone these parties. And certainly, Khaled and his bunch don’t like the idea of bikini-clad Aussies and Bulgarian prostitutes. But there’s sort of an unwritten rule here: you live how you want to live, you just don’t flaunt it when you’re around the Arabs. You don’t stumble down the street drunk, you don’t hold hands with a girl in public, and unless you’re about to jump into a swimming pool, you don’t dress like you’re on your way to an orgy. Even if you are.”