Rigged

by Ben Mezrich

  Twenty-four hours ago, the invitations had finally gone out.

  One for each board member—including Reston—and one extra, for the Don himself. In David’s opinion, the invites were a work of pure art. Khaled’s people had spared no expense. They’d hired the best calligrapher in New York and printed the entire thing in swirling fourteen-carat gold. David had spent so much time hovering over Harriet’s shoulder as she checked and rechecked the lettering that he could still see the golden words whenever he closed his eyes:

  His Highness Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai, cordially invites yo u to be his personal guest at the Dubai World Cup, the world’s richest horse race. All first-class accommodations and travel included.

  As David watched Harriet cross his office, printout in hand, David once again mentally congratulated Khaled for his brilliance; in fact, his Arabic friend was more of a genius than even he had realized.

  The Dubai World Cup—now just one week away, hosted by the emir at the spectacular Nad Al Sheba Race Course—was the world’s biggest money horse race. The Merc Exchange, at its heart, was basically the world’s most profitable casino. If there was one thing that men who gambled for a living loved, it was a good horse race. If anything was going to get these guys to Dubai, it was a personal invite to the Dubai World Cup.

  “Here you go,” Harriet said as she handed him the computer printout. “All the RSVPs are in and accounted for.”

  David was almost afraid to look at the paper in his hands. He had spent the entire morning pacing back and forth in his office, biting his nails at the thought of this moment. The only distraction had been a quick phone call from Vitzi, down on the trading floor, inviting him out for a night of unrelated celebration; as it turned out, Vitzi had just made a killing in crude in the first fifteen minutes after the opening bell—nearly half a million dollars in sheer profit. A few of the meatheads were going to party at some club in the Flatiron District, and they’d demanded that David come along.

  David hadn’t known if he’d be in any mood to celebrate, but he couldn’t turn Vitzi down; after all, he’d worked hard to get the traders to accept him as one of their own. One more night out with the gang wasn’t going to kill him.

  Then again, as he finally got up the nerve to scan the computer printout, running his eyes down the long list of board members’ names, maybe by the end of the day he’d have already killed himself.

  His chest fell as he scanned the list a second time; nope, he’d seen right: out of all thirty board members, only three had check marks by their names. Christ.

  “I guess that’s that,” David said grimly. All that work. For nothing.

  Harriet just laughed at him.

  “David, I put check marks next to the board members who turned the invite down.”

  David looked up from the printout. Harriet grinned at him. Holy shit.

  The board was going to Dubai.

  Chapter 40

  Mar ch 2003

  Ten a.m.

  The scorching desert sun already high in the cloudless sky. Somewhere in the sand, a scorpion crawled through the mindnumbing heat. Inch by inch, the insect made its way forward—a strange little symphony of churning claws and outstretched pinchers, the coordinated effort of a prehistoric brain and nervous system a million years beyond their expiration date. A brain so small, the scorpion did not notice as the sand gave way to hard, black pavement. A nervous system so primitive, the scorpion could not detect the hawk plunging out of the sky directly up above, talons raised for the kill.

  Nor would the scorpion ever know how at the very last minute the hawk aborted its dive, with a twist of its magnificent wings, as it suddenly caught sight of the fleet of fifteen silver BMW limousines hurtling down the deserted highway at ninety miles per hour. How one minute the scorpion was there, crawling across the asphalt, and the next minute it was gone, in a blast of revving engines and steaming hot rubber.

  Inside the lead BMW, David Russo was having a hell of a time pouring the champagne. Managing three crystal chutes with one hand while uncorking a bottle of Dom with the other was difficult enough, but attempting the feat at ninety miles per hour, while the limo’s tires squealed beneath him—each curve in the paved highway tilting his entire world—was nearly impossible. After three attempts, David finally gave up. Truth be told, the champagne was just overkill. The expressions on Nick Reston’s and Alex Mendelson’s faces—when they weren’t smashed up against the tinted windows, watching the desert flash by—said it all.

  From the moment Reston, Mendelson, and the twenty-eight board members who’d accompanied David on the journey halfway around the world stepped out of the jetway at the Dubai International Airport and first caught sight of the line of fifty white-robed Arabs waiting to collect them and their bags, they’d all fallen into a near-catatonic silence—but when they’d been ushered outside, just in time to watch the fleet of fifteen silver BMW limousines pull into the receiving circle, they’d erupted in exclamations of pure amazement. Certainly, the first-class cabin of Emirates Air had prepared the board for a luxurious arrival, but none of them—not even David—could have predicted that the emir’s personal fleet would be waiting to take them into the city.

  Now the desert was screaming by on either side of David’s lead BMW limo, and Reston and Mendelson were pinned to those windows in anticipation. David could only assume that the rest of the board members, split up between the other cars in the caravan, were reacting with the same sense of wonder. Even Gallo—alone in the last car, by his own choice—would have had to agree: so far, the experience that was Dubai almost defied description.

  David grinned to himself as the BMW tilted thirty degrees— the tires skidding over another high curve—and then the city appeared before them in all its glistening glory.

  “My God,” Reston said.

  David knew exactly what Reston was feeling. David looked from the Texan to Mendelson and saw the same childlike expression flash across the older man’s wide face.

  “Wait until we get closer,” David said. “It only gets bigger as you get closer.”

  “What the hell is this place?” Mendelson asked. “And why isn’t it on the news every day?”

  David shrugged, grinning even harder. If Mendelson was even mildly bothered that he was in an Arab country—in a sheik’s car, no less—he certainly wasn’t showing it. He seemed completely swept up by the excitement of their arrival—and really, they hadn’t even actually arrived yet.

  According to Khaled, the BMWs were just the beginning. Over the next few hours the board members were going to get a full tour of the city. They were going to see everything: the massive shopping malls, the indoor ski slope, the magnificent zoo, the world-renowned indoor sports complex, the under-construction Palm and World Islands—and of course, the financial center, the free zone where the Dubai exchange would be located. When they were done with the tour, they were going to be checked in to two floors of the Emirates Tower, where David had stayed on his last visit—each member in his own lavishly appointed two-floor suite. The board would have full run of the city—with everything paid for by the emir himself—until the cars came to collect them once again for the short trip over to the racetrack.

  “It’s amazing,” Reston continued as the BMW accelerated again, settling in for the last few miles sprinting into the heart of the City of Gold. “Look at all the fucking cranes. It’s like a scene out of Star Wars.”

  David nodded. It really was like watching a Hollywood movie unfold in front of your eyes. So far his plan was working perfectly—and it was only ten a.m. If all continued to go well, by midafternoon—when the board arrived at the racetrack ten miles outside of the city—David and Khaled would be palpably close to fulfilling the dream that had driven them for the past four months. And if the horse race itself lived up to Khaled’s description, there was no way the board was going to turn its back on Dubai.

  The BMWs were impressive, the city itself spectacular—but f
rom what Khaled had told David, the Dubai World Cup was really going to blow the board members’ minds.

  The entire open-air stadium shook as fifty thousand people leapt to their feet and a great roar rose up into the bright afternoon sky. Down below, the horses were a blur of flesh and muscle; nostrils flared, long legs churning, the tiny jockeys bent impossibly forward against the horses’ great, undulating backs, the details of who was first and second and third lost in a minor tornado of chalk, red dirt, and sweat. But David didn’t really care about the horses, even though he was up on his feet and shouting with the rest of the crowd, the adrenaline racing through his veins, his arms pumping wildly into the air.

  The view from the emir’s royal viewing box—uncovered, regally carpeted, and extended twenty rows up above the circular track—was unmatched. The twenty-eight board members—plus Gallo, David, and Khaled—were spread out across four rows of cushioned seats, but not a one of them was still seated. They were all like David—alive and on fire with the heat of the crowd, the spectacle of the event. To call it a horse race did not do the Dubai World Cup justice; it was a true happening, a lavish affair down to the dress of the crowd—jackets and ties for the men, expensive gowns for the women—and the beauty of the stadium itself, a marble and gold complex that would have thrilled even the most jaded Caesar of Rome.

  “This is unreal!” one of the board members shouted from the row in front of David.

  “This is Dubai,” Khaled responded, from David’s right. Khaled was the only Arab in the royal box with them—the emir himself had chosen to watch the event from somewhere nearer to the track, since a pair of his own horses were in the competition—and Khaled had been more than a good host during the first few hours of the event, enduring the ribald conversational style of the extraders, their profanity-laden vocabularies, and their common use of cultural stereotypes. But as the excitement of the race multiplied toward the current crescendo, Khaled seemed to have been swept up right along with them. His usually serene expression had cracked wide open, and now he was smiling as wildly as David, so enraptured with the moment that he hadn’t noticed the two bodyguards of the emir until they had reached the velvet rope that separated the royal box from the rest of the stadium. Without a word of explanation, the bodyguards gestured toward the board members to follow.

  The next thing David knew, the whole lot of them were being led down the stone steps that bisected the stands—and right out onto the field. Before he could even compute what was going on, he was standing in the winner’s circle shoulder to shoulder with all twentyeight board members, Khaled, Gallo, the emir’s royal family, and, a few feet away, flanked by his attendants, the emir himself.

  From the field, the roar was deafening. Flashbulbs were going off like firecrackers, the crowd’s applause echoing off the marble, stone, and gold like thunder, and the horses whinnying and pawing at the grass in the background. David just took it all in—the stadium, the audience, the emir. Then his attention moved to the board members’ faces. Every one of them was flushed and smiling, caught up in the moment. Even Gallo, near the back of the crowd, had a look of amusement on his gnarled old face. Reston and Mendelson were right up next to the emir, sandwiched between two of the oversized bodyguards, posing for pictures, grinning like they’d both just won the World Cup themselves.

  David turned back to the crowd and let the applause of fifty thousand people wash over him. The way he felt inside, they might as well have been clapping for him instead of a horse, congratulating him for what he’d achieved. Italians, Jews, Arabs, all joined together—the beginning of something truly new.

  David was certain it was a moment that every board member, and Gallo, would remember for the rest of his life.

  Back at the hotel, the celebration continued out on the stone patio that encircled the massive, temperature-controlled swimming pool. The pool area was like an oasis: clear blue water surrounded by potted palm trees, oversized umbrellas, reclining deck chairs, a well-stocked juice bar, and an outdoor Mediterranean restaurant nearby, some high-class place with “Mosaic” in its name and an actual tiled mosaic for a floor. In fact, it was the Middle East’s largest mosaic, according to Khaled, who hadn’t returned with them from the race, opting instead to accompany the royal family to a private affair in the nearby Burj Al Arab. The Emirate Tower pool was brightly lit both from below and above, despite the long shadow cast by the early evening sun as it crossed behind the massive tower. From David’s vantage, lying back against a deck chair with a mango juice in one hand and a towel in the other, it was easy to believe that the great hotel and office tower was indeed the tallest building in the Middle East—Europe as well, for that matter—and the third-tallest hotel in the world.

  A much lower shadow interrupted David’s thoughts, and he moved his attention from the tower to Mendelson and Reston, who were suddenly standing over him, fancy juice drinks in their hands, grins on their faces. For the first time, they weren’t acting like David’s superiors; they were acting like his friends, and it was a great feeling. Likewise, the other board members who were lounging nearby, on deck chairs and in the pool and over at the outdoor restaurant, had all been treating David the same way all afternoon, ever since they’d returned to the hotel from the racetrack. David hadn’t been this popular since high school—and he was loving every minute of it.

  “Maybe they’ll elect you sheik,” Reston joked as he took a seat on a chair next to David’s. “Get you some nice robes, let you run the Merc in New York and the one here at the same time. I’d be happy to stay by the pool and soak up the sun for a few years.”

  “You know the desert sun’s not good for you,” Mendelson joked back, sitting next to Reston on the lounge chair. “Shrivels you up in no time. Look what it did to him.”

  Mendelson gestured over his shoulder, and David strained his neck just in time to lock eyes with Gallo, who was sitting by himself under an umbrella on the far side of the pool. Gallo waved his ever-present cigar, and David grimaced; he’d kind of hoped to avoid running into Gallo until they were all back in New York and the board had actually put the vote on record—but maybe this was as good a time as any to get this over with.

  “Whoops,” Reston said, realizing that Mendelson’s joke had just put David in Gallo’s path. “Looks like the shriveled Don has got you in his sights.”

  David sighed.

  “I guess it’s time to go kiss his ring again, eh?”

  Reston grinned.

  “Better you than me, Harvard boy.”

  David took his time making his way across the patio, shaking hands with board members as he went. As he approached, he noticed that Gallo had actually combed his hair for the first time since they’d met and was still wearing his jacket and tie from the horse race as he sprawled out on the deck chair. Thankfully, the jacket wasn’t zebra-striped; it was gray and sallow, almost the same color as the man’s wrinkled face.

  “You think this changes anything?” Gallo started right in as David finally reached his side. “You got ’em all hot and bothered out here in the sand, and you think now you’re running the show?”

  Despite Gallo’s bravado, David could see it in his pitted eyes as the old trader lay there on the deck chair: Gallo knew that the Dubai exchange was a done deal. He could make a stink all he wanted, but the board was going to vote in David’s favor. There was nothing Gallo could do to change that.

  David looked right at him. He decided it was finally time to tell the man what he really thought.

  “Fuck you, Mr. Gallo.”

  For a brief moment, it looked like Gallo was about to swallow his cigar. Then he coughed, took the cigar out of his mouth, and shook his head. When he looked up at David again, he was smiling.

  “Okay, congratulations, kid. I underestimated you.”

  But it was obvious from the way he said the words that he wasn’t really conceding anything. After all, this was still the same guy who had confronted David in a butcher’s shop and shown him pict
ures taken surreptitiously of him and his girlfriend. This was the same bastard who had filled David’s hospital room with enemas after David had nearly died during his first board meeting.

  Gallo wasn’t going to stand in the way of the Dubai exchange—but he was still the Don. Still, David didn’t care. He was finished kissing the man’s ring.

  “Yeah, well, it happens. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. And try to stay out of the sun. You look like hell.”

  David started back across the patio toward Reston and the other board members. He’d made it less than five feet before Gallo called out after him.

  “You just watch your back,” the old man said.

  David continued walking as Gallo added, almost under his breath:

  “Because you know I’ll be watching, kid. I’m always watching.”

  Chapter 41

  Eight hours later—and at thirty thousand feet—David’s celebration was still in full swing. He wasn’t sure which of the board members had smuggled the six bottles of Dom into the Emirates Air first-class cabin, but Reston was doing the pouring, Mendelson was strolling up and down the aisles handing out the glasses, and David certainly wasn’t complaining. Even though there was still a vote to be taken and a whole lot of practical negotiations to go, David knew that the tide was moving in his favor. The board members had been charmed by Dubai, and they wouldn’t have any reason to stand in the way of a Dubai exchange that would inevitably make them all a lot of money and raise the profile of the Merc. The traders, for their part, would have to see that their little monopoly in Lower Manhattan needed to open itself up to globalization, and this was the first step in a new way of looking at the commerce of oil. The Dubai exchange wouldn’t be competing with them, since it would focus on a different form of oil contract; instead, it would be a region-uniting complement that would raise energy currency to a whole new level.