Rigged

by Ben Mezrich

  Reston gestured at him to take his customary seat in the corner of the room. He thanked the board one more time, then quickly took his place.

  “Okay,” Reston said as he moved toward the front of the room, “on to other business. Let’s go over the minutes from our last meeting. . . .”

  And just like that, David’s moment was over. He tried to ignore the sweat pooling beneath his shirt as he listened to Reston drone on about end-of-the-year margins and tax calculations. He also tried to keep his head down and his attention away from the table—but at one point deep into the meeting he couldn’t help himself. He looked up—and saw only one set of eyes aimed back in his direction.

  Deep-set, slitted eyes.

  Well, at least I made an impression on one of them, he thought to himself. Then he quickly lowered his gaze.

  Forty unbearable minutes later, David watched as the last board member filed out of the room—and still nobody had glanced in his direction, not even for a second. He waited until Reston had shut the door, leaving them alone in the vacuumlike atmosphere, before he slowly pulled himself off his chair.

  “I guess that’s that,” he said glumly. “Looks like I got turned down.”

  Reston turned, and David realized suddenly that Reston was grinning at him.

  “No. If they had turned you down, you’d know it. That was a tacit yes. No one is willing to go on record either way—because they don’t know what’s at stake. And the way you went at Gallo—that was fucking brilliant. No better way to get the board behind you than to make it look like you’re sticking it to the Don.”

  Reston tapped his hands against the table. “Two hundred fucking pages of notes—and don’t think for a minute that they didn’t scan at least the first few chapters. You convinced them that Dubai is a player—and nobody wants to go down on paper as ruining our chances of being a part of what’s going on there. Especially since the Merc can make a ton of money by opening a new trading center—and as long as we don’t compete with ourselves, everyone’s gonna benefit. And none of the board is going to go on record siding with the guy who just called the whole Arab world a bunch of ragheads. So at the moment you’ve been given the go-ahead. A subtle authority to proceed.”

  David stared at him, shocked. He couldn’t believe what Reston was saying. The Texan walked over to him and put an arm around his shoulder, then led him toward the door.

  “Here’s my advice as you go forward with this. Keep your fucking mouth shut. Don’t mention the project again until it’s too late for anyone to stop it from happening. The longer you can go before anyone knows what you’re up to, the better.”

  David nodded. His entire body was trembling. He couldn’t wait to tell Khaled, and then Serena—though after their last argument, he wasn’t sure if she’d celebrate with him or dump his belongings out onto the curb. Because David knew that this was only the first step. A huge first step—but still, just the beginning of the work that lay ahead.

  “Now, you get on a fucking plane right away,” Reston said, putting David’s thoughts into words, “and start building the relationships you’ll need to make this happen. Your first step is probably London. You’ll need to get our friends at the trading floor there on board right away. Then a few other hot spots in Europe to get the international energy community on track. Then the brokers in Houston—fuck, you’re the one who wrote a fucking book on this project, why am I telling you what to do? Just get on a goddamn plane before anyone tries to stop you.”

  Right before David stepped out the door, Reston swung him around, then gave him a friendly slap on the cheek.

  “You did good, Harvard boy. But I still think this is gonna be a miracle if it works out.”

  David smiled back at him.

  “At the very least, I’ll get a few frequent flier miles out of it.”

  His mind was already whirling ahead—to the places he was going to go, the people he needed to meet.

  But first there was one more thing he needed to do.

  Chapter 30

  The trading floor was in full swing as David stepped through the double doors. It was only 11:00 a.m., but from the fre netic motion coming from the trading pits, it was obvious the day was going to be even more chaotic than usual. David, of course, knew the reason for the tumult: a few days earlier, the National Weather Ser vice had predicted a warmer than normal winter for the Northeast—which meant that the demand for heating oil would wane. The report would be devastating to some traders and a boon to others—but to David, at the moment, the shouts, screams, and shoving were simply background noise. At the moment, he was on a mission.

  It took him less than a minute to spot Vitzi and his bright orange and red jacket, leaping up and down a few feet deep into the main trading pit. He was obviously trying to unload some crude position—and just as obviously failing to get the price he wanted. But David knew it was a temporary loss for the big kid; Vitzi was fast becoming one of the most successful meatheads in the game, and David was glad for their burgeoning friendship. Even more so, at the moment, considering that Vitzi was also the perfect vessel for what he had in mind.

  David reached the edge of the pit and waited for Vitzi to finish unloading his crude position. When Vitzi finally turned and spotted him for the first time, David waved the thick-shouldered kid over. Vitzi grinned, shoving a pair of smaller traders out of the way, and gave David a big bear hug.

  “Back from the Middle East with your head still intact? I guess a goombah like you isn’t even worth kidnapping, eh?”

  David laughed, then wriggled out of Vitzi’s grip.

  “Man, I wouldn’t mind getting kidnapped if it meant an extra day in Dubai.”

  “What do you mean?” Vitzi asked.

  Without pause, David launched into the most graphic—and only partly fictitious—story about Dubai’s all-night party culture, from the Australian flight attendants and their all-night pool parties to the Russian models who trawled the streets to the Arabian princesses who staffed the hotels; from the massive discos where everything was available to the street racing on the Sheik Zayed to the back alleys where you could find the most perverse pleasures imaginable to the members-only oceanside brothel that Seebeck had shown him. As Vitzi’s eyes grew wide, David wrapped it all up with a bullshit story about three blondes he’d met in a communal hot tub at some crazy outdoor beach party and graphically described what they were doing to each other as David floated nearby.

  As he spoke, David snuck a glance past Vitzi, toward a group of young traders about twenty yards away, huddled around a bank of broker-connected telephones. They were easy to spot: their black-and-white zebra jackets made them stand out in the room full of color. David smiled inwardly, then went back to his story, which he finished on a high note—something about an Emirates Air flight attendant and a bathtub full of frozen daiquiris—good enough to evoke a full high-five from the widely grinning trader.

  “You fuckin’ animal” was all Vitzi said. Then he gave David a thumbs-up and headed back into the pit.

  David turned, his work on the trading floor finished. He tried to keep his cool as he rushed back into the elevator—but inside he was doing cartwheels. His plan was now in motion.

  David knew that his inflated, sex-fueled stories would sweep around the trading floor in a matter of hours; as he’d been reminded by everyone he’d met at the Merc, that was the nature of the place. Vitzi would tell Rosa and Brunetti, and from there the tales would move from pit to pit until everyone was talking about the hookers in Dubai, the mega-clubs, and the all-night parties. Eventually, the stories would reach the zebra-striped traders, who in turn would parrot the information to Gallo. Exactly as David had planned.

  Even before their confrontation in the boardroom, David had known that Gallo was his main threat as he moved forward with the project. After what had happened, there was no way Gallo was going to sit back as David pursued something that seemed so dangerously new. Unless, somehow, David gave him the idea that the
exchange wasn’t the real reason he was interested in Dubai.

  David grinned at his reflection in the elevator doors. Once he heard the stories from Vitzi—via his own zebra-jacketed traders—Gallo would assume that the real reason David was pushing the Dubai exchange was because it gave him free rein to party in the world’s newest city of sin. Gallo would think he’d figured out David’s angle, and his concerns would be somewhat allayed—allayed enough at least to buy David some time.

  At the moment, time was David’s most crucial resource. Reston was right: to pull this off, Khaled and David would need a miracle. More accurately, a series of miracles.

  Well, what better place to look for miracles than a magical little sheikdom in the center of the Middle East?

  Chapter 31

  J anu ar y 24, 2003

  It’s kind of like chess. The key is always to think six steps ahead of the other guy.”

  David nearly fell off his stool as he dodged the rail-thin arm that shot past him toward the miniature conveyor belt. At least his reflexes were still intact; jetlag combined with eight marathon hours of meetings had taken its toll on his vision, appearance, and certainly his hair—which, he could see from his reflection in the glass that partially covered the conveyer belt in front of him, was sticking up from his head in disobedient, curly twists of brown— but not his reaction time. A good thing, because it appeared he’d need every ounce of his athleticism to survive the emaciated Brit’s lesson on the finer points of eating Kaiten-zushi.

  When the Brit had first suggested that they try the conveyer sushi place on top of the famous Harvey Nichols building in Knightsbridge, David had loved the idea. He’d read about the popular Japanese restaurant fad in the British Airways magazine on the flight over—which seemed like so long ago, even though he’d been in London for less than ten hours. But as soon as the Brit had ushered them to seats at the circular counter—right in front of a tight curve in the long moving belt that wound through the upscale hip restaurant—David knew they were in for an interesting meal.

  “That’s why I love this place,” the Brit enthused, waving a newly captured bright yellow plate in the air in front of David’s face. “It’s like an analogy to the business world. Eating as a form of war. And you mustn’t ever underestimate the competition—or you’re certain to go home hungry. That bastard simply has no idea who he’s dealing with.”

  The Brit made an obscene gesture at another diner on the other side of the circular counter—a middle-aged man in a tweed jacket– pants combination—who quickly looked away. Then the Brit grinned, placing his new conquest next to a pile of similar yellow plates, and went to work on his freshly won dish—strange, brightly colored twists of raw fish.

  David cracked a smile, then glanced past the Brit to Khaled. He could see that his Arabic friend was equally amused by the antics of their evening’s tour guide. Then again, even if the man had taken them to the most conservative pub in London—rather than this mousetrap of a restaurant where colored plates wound past the customers at varying speeds, tempting them to make snap decisions or forfeit choice pieces of sushi to those with more pressing appetites—he’d still elicit amusement simply from his bizarre appearance. Gaunt as a stick figure, with a shock of bright orange hair, thick plastic glasses, and a dark pinstriped suit that hung off his skeletal limbs like some sort of Bond Street kimono, Marvin Hatfield was quite a sight for jetlagged eyes.

  Certainly he didn’t look like a se nior vice president of one of the most powerful companies in the U.K.—actually, one of the most profitable corporations in the entire world. But as it turned out, the orange-haired Brit was the director of new projects for UK Petrol, the third-largest producer of crude oil in the United States and the seventeenth-largest producer of crude overall. UKP also happened to be one of En gland’s largest industrial companies— and inarguably one of the biggest players in the oil business.

  David had been shocked that he and Khaled managed to get a meeting with Hatfield and his team at UKP, but it had turned out that the combined influences of the Dubai Ministry of Finance and the New York Mercantile Exchange opened some pretty heavy doors.

  The meeting itself had taken place two hours ago, at one of UKP’s main offices in London’s financial district. It had been David and Khaled’s last meeting of the day; that day had started forty minutes after their hired car picked them up at Heathrow and dropped them off for a breakfast with the heads of London’s energy exchange. They’d gone from that breakfast to lunch with a handful of gasoline fund managers who were heavy hitters on the London exchange, followed by afternoon tea with a team of consultants who had offered to help them navigate deeper into the European trading community—then a second helping of tea in the company of a pair of real estate developers whom Khaled had chosen as the most likely candidates should they ever actually be prepared to break physical ground in Dubai.

  But of all the long day’s meetings, there was no doubt in David’s mind that the sit-down with BP had been the most important. If, somehow, they managed to convince UKP to get behind their efforts—even if only philosophically—it would give them leverage over the entire European oil community. So when he and Khaled had first walked into the sterile conference room at the UKP office building and the skeletal, orange-haired Brit had taken one look at them and exclaimed, “What is this, kiddie hour? You lads look like you’ve just taken your A-levels!” David had nearly vomited right down the front of his brand-new Zegna suit. Still, he and Khaled had plowed ahead with their presentation, taking turns summarizing the reasons why an exchange in Dubai was so important, what it would do for the region, and how it could become profitable and a major international player in a very short time. It had been hard to gauge Hatfield’s opinion of their presentation from his decidedly British lack of expression—so when the orange-haired, freakish VP had suddenly ended the meeting by inviting them to dinner à la conveyer belt, they had gleefully accepted.

  Now, an hour into a meal that seemed more a sporting event than anything else, David was no more certain of their situation with UKP—but a lot more skilled at collaring moving platefuls of raw fish.

  “Now that’s a good one,” Hatfield applauded as David grabbed what looked to be a dish filled with unagi off the belt. “I think the Yank’s getting the hang of it.”

  Hatfield grinned at Khaled, who raised a thumb in appreciation. Hatfield grinned even harder, then leaned back and suddenly slapped both of them on the back.

  “You chums are good sports,” he said, “even though I think you’re both completely bonkers.”

  David raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t an expert on U.K. slang, but he was pretty sure the orange-haired muppet was calling them crazy. Ironic, to say the least.

  “An oil exchange in Dubai,” Hatfield continued, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of blood-red salmon. “A free market cornerstone in an Islamic sheikdom.”

  “I know it seems improbable,” David started, and the Brit nearly coughed up his fish.

  “Improbable? You’re talking about a center for trading derivatives in a country largely ruled by sharia law.”

  David nodded. After first hearing the term from Khaled in Dubai, he had spent some time over the past couple of months researching sharia law and how it applied to what they were attempting. Basically, sharia law was a system of rules derived from Islamic principles of jurisprudence—political, economic, and social order as dictated by a sometimes modern, sometimes ancient interpretation of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

  And Hatfield was right: under strict sharia law, the trading of derivatives would be haraam, forbidden. But according to Khaled, in practice as it applied to Dubai, sharia law was whatever the religious and political leaders in Saudi Arabia decided it was. When it came to matters of business in Dubai, Saudi Arabia was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, because of its level of investment in the region and its power over the sheiks themselves. In many ways, Saudi Arabia pulled the strings that made the entire Middle
East work. Its massive wealth gave it tacit veto power in the region, and for something as important as a Dubai exchange to succeed, Saudi Arabia would have to be on board. At the moment, David and Khaled had no clear idea how the Saudis were going to react to their project, but Khaled had explained that it was a subject they would deal with when the proper time emerged.

  For the moment, Khaled simply waved a chopstick gently through the air. “The ministry believes that the concept of the free zone covers the trade of derivatives.”

  David glanced at him, wondering if it was the ministry talking or just Khaled. Over the past few months, Khaled had often made grandiose statements like that—and David could never be sure what was really behind his young counterpart’s confidence. Khaled never seemed truly concerned about what his boss might think; David wondered if Khaled’s attitude was simply the product of his privileged upbringing or if he really was that powerful.

  Hatfield swallowed his salmon, then crossed his marionette arms against his chest.

  “Okay, putting that issue to one side, do you really think this can happen? David, will your traders in New York—and our traders here in London—accept an Arab exchange?”

  David knew where Hatfield was heading. It was the same question he had been asking himself for months. The more he read about the divisions between the Eastern Islamic world and the West, the more depressed he became. Since 9/11, you didn’t have to look far to find evidence of how bad things were. Every newspaper and every television news show spent twenty minutes on the subject every day.

  “This division between us,” Hatfield continued, mostly addressing Khaled, “these feelings we have toward each other—in London you see evidence of it every day. Protests over immigration, counterprotests, etc., etc. The Arab street hates the West, the West fears and despises the Arab street. Can people really change?”