Ravi Subramanian
GOD IS A GAMER
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Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Also by Ravi Subramanian
Prologue
God is a Gamer
Washington DC
New Delhi
Mumbai
Mumbai
Goa
Rio de Janeiro/Goa
Washington DC
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai/Goa
Mumbai
Mumbai
New York
Goa
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
New York
Mumbai
Mumbai
USA
Mumbai
Mumbai
New York
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
New York
Mumbai
Mumbai
USA
Mumbai
USA
Mumbai
Washington DC
New York
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
Washington DC
New York
New York
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
Washington DC/Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
USA
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
Cupertino/Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Sangamner/Mumbai
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Washington DC
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
Washington DC
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai
Epilogue
A few months later
USA/India
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Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
GOD IS A GAMER
Ravi Subramanian, an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, has spent two decades working his way up the ladder of power in the amazingly exciting and adrenaline-pumping world of global banks in India. It is but natural that his stories are set against the backdrop of the financial services industry. In 2008, his debut novel, If God Was a Banker, won the Golden Quill Readers’ Choice Award. He won the Economist Crossword Book Award in 2012 for The Incredible Banker and the Crossword Book Award in 2013 for The Bankster. His most recent novel is Bankerupt. He lives in Mumbai with his wife, Dharini, and daughter, Anusha.
To know more about Ravi visit www.ravisubramanian.in or email him at info@ravisubramanian in. To connect with him, log on to Facebook at www.facebook.com/authorravisubramanian or tweet to @subramanianravi.
To my father
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Also by Ravi Subramanian
FICTION
If God Was a Banker
Devil in Pinstripes
The Incredible Banker
The Bankster
Bankerupt
NON-FICTION
I Bought the Monk’s Ferrari
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Prologue
December 2009, New York
Vijay Banga, President of MasterCard International, was anxiously pacing up and down his third-floor office in the global headquarters located in Purchase, New York.
Miles away, in Foster City, California, Joseph Saunders, the CEO of Visa International, multi-billion dollar payment processing giant and MasterCard’s greatest rival, was in shock too.
The cause of their trepidation was a meeting presided over by the head of a country, a few thousand miles away. It was a routine meeting but it could shake the very foundations of their business model.
Vijay was the more amenable of the two. He knew that American corporates had elephantine egos. Joseph would not step out of his ivory tower to connect with him. Swallowing his pride, he called for his chief of staff.
‘Fix a meeting with Joseph Saunders . . .’ he thundered as soon as the man walked in. Vijay stared at the ceiling for just an instant and added, ‘. . . tomorrow evening.’
‘Tomorrow?’ The chief of staff was surprised. It was too short a notice.
‘Yes!’ Vijay nodded. ‘In Washington DC. Book a suite in your name at the Hyatt Regency. I don’t want the press to get wind of this.’
‘What do I tell Mr Saunders?’
‘You won’t need to tell him anything because he won’t ask.’
At 6.30 p.m. the next day, Joseph Saunders strode into the Hyatt Regency and was ushered into an executive suite on the top floor. Vijay was waiting for him. The two adversaries shook hands graciously.
‘Four billion dollars is a lot of money,’ Joseph began. ‘Today, most of it comes to the two of us.’
‘Yes. Over 20 per cent of my revenue is at stake. We need to do something.’
‘We don’t have a choice—they have to be stopped!’ Joseph and Vijay were in agreement.
The doorbell rang. A worried Joseph turned towards the door.
‘I have requested Senator Gillian Tan to join us,’ volunteered Vijay. ‘Someone will have to force the hand of the US government.’ He peered through the viewfinder and opened the door. ‘Good evening, Senator!’
Tall and handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and a taut complexion that belied his age, Gillian possessed a personality that overwhelmed the suite. If he weren’t a politician, he’d have a real shot at Hollywood.
‘Fifteen minutes is all I could manage at such short notice. It better be quick, and it better be good.’ His tone conveyed authority. Joseph had met Gillian in the past but not as often as Vijay seemed to have. Their camaraderie was evident.
‘Two days ago, Dmitry Rutskoy . . .’ Vijay started off, only to be interrupted by Tan. ‘The Russian premier?’
‘Yes. In his speech at the Duma, he instructed Sergei Makarov, head of Russia’s finance ministry, to come up with a National Payment Card System or NPCS, which would collect fees on all credit card transactions that occur on Russian soil.’
‘Why should that bother you?’ Gillian knew where this was heading, but he wanted to be sure.
‘For every dollar spent on a credit card in Russia, about a cent comes to the card companies. As of now, this is split between MasterCard and Visa.’ Joseph butted in.
‘And that would add up to. . .?’ Gillian was curious to know.
‘Four billion dollars. Russia is one of our largest markets. If Sergei manages to establish the NPCS, the 1 per cent payout to MasterCard and Visa will stop. We will be out of the Russian market in no time. If other coun
tries follow Russia’s lead and set up their own local payment networks, it will kill our revenues all over the world!’
‘So what do you want me to do?’ asked Gillian.
‘Impress upon Russia to protect our interests.’
Gillian contemplated, but only for a moment. ‘Send me a note. I will speak to the President.’ Seeing the relief on the two faces, he rose. ‘Will that be all gentlemen?’
December 2010, United States of America
An innocuous organization shook the US government to its very core.
WikiLeaks was a small international entity that published secret and classified information, leaked by anonymous sources, online. It was threatening to release 300,000 classified documents that could severely embarrass the US government.
A furious US State Department served notice to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, labelling their activities illegal. Undeterred by this threat, in November 2010, WikiLeaks went ahead and published 251,287 US embassy cables. It took the world by storm. Journalists and newspapers in ninety countries carried extracts of the cables.
The US government struck back with a vengeance, leaving no stone unturned to alienate WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks existed to propagate its libertarian ideology and, being a not-for-profit organization, relied on grants and donations from supporters for its survival.
On 1 December, Amazon.com—which hosted the WikiLeaks website in the US—cut off access to it. Amazon’s official release said that WikiLeaks had not honoured a contract but insiders caught on to the fact that Uncle Sam had called.
A week later, Vijay Banga’s phone rang. He was vacationing in India.
‘Hey, Vijay!’
‘Morning, Gillian.’
‘My team contacted your office. They were told you are on vacation.’
‘Only for a few days. I’ll be back after Christmas.’
‘Wonderful. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of time.’
‘Is there something you want me to do?’
‘Yeah. This WikiLeaks thing. . . We don’t want any American citizen donating money to WikiLeaks. We don’t want MasterCard or Visa to be used as gateways to service these traitors. Please cut off all cardholders from making payments to WikiLeaks.’
‘Gillian! Are you serious? What will we say if someone asks us why we did it?’
‘That’s not for me to figure out, is it?’
‘It won’t be the right thing to do, Gillian. We will get a lot of flak for it.’
‘Must I remind you Vijay that the US government did not get into issues of propriety when we lobbied with the Russians for you? Even so, if you want a precedent to strengthen your case, PayPal has blocked WikiLeaks.’
Vijay didn’t respond.
‘You there, Vijay?’
‘By when do you want this done?’ Vijay was worried that this would come back to haunt him. But Gillian was too important to be denied.
‘Thirty minutes? You can stretch it to forty-five if it helps.’
‘Give me till tomorrow at least, Gillian.’ Vijay wanted to check with his legal and compliance teams on the implications of executing something like this.
‘We have to move now, Vijay. You are either with us or against us in this battle against WikiLeaks. There is no third option.’
*
By that evening, Visa and MasterCard had followed PayPal’s example and blocked their customers from accessing WikiLeaks. Every WikiLeaks bank account was frozen. WikiLeaks had run dry. It was the greatest financial blockade on any company in the history of the US. The blockade crippled WikiLeaks to the extent that it began to shut down parts of its operations. Detractors baying for WikiLeaks’ blood had even begun writing obituaries for Julian Assange.
And then, six months later, something rather peculiar happened. On 15 June 2011, at 4.42 a.m., WikiLeaks tweeted: WikiLeaks now accepts anonymous bitcoin donations on 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v.
WikiLeaks, which was built on the concept of anonymous and non-traceable forms of information exchange, had decided to fill its coffers with untraceable digital money—bitcoins.
Unknown till then to 99.99 per cent of the world’s population, bitcoins unintentionally and rather unexpectedly stepped into the spotlight. It stirred intense debates everywhere, from parliaments to coffee shops. It was being dubbed the ‘currency of the future’.
In fact, this blockade of WikiLeaks by MasterCard, Visa and PayPal served as the largest shot in the arm for bitcoins. They were here to stay.
Founded in 2008 by one Satoshi Nakamoto, whose identity was a mystery, bitcoins had a rocky start. Satoshi, a libertarian, proclaimed a man’s right to remain anonymous and decide what is good for him. He introduced bitcoins to give the world its first decentralized digital currency, which could be used over the Internet. The biggest benefit of bitcoins was that they could be passed on from one person to the other via just the click of a mouse, without the intervention of any bank or financial institution. It was a currency that could not be controlled by any government and whose value was completely market-driven. The price of each bitcoin, like shares in a stock market, was determined only and totally by demand and supply.
Bitcoins were stored in digital wallets on users’ computers. Each bitcoin wallet was unique. No names or addresses were linked to it. Bitcoins provided the user with the much-needed anonymity which bank accounts and other forms of storing wealth didn’t. Every wallet was identified by two digital keys —a public key and a private key—both being combinations of twenty-seven to thirty-four alphanumeric characters, such as 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v. The private key was known only to the owner of the wallet, whereas the public key could be shared with others.
If X wanted to transfer bitcoins to Y, he could easily do so by debiting his bitcoin wallet using his private key and crediting Y’s wallet using Y’s public key. As long as the private keys were kept safe and away from hackers on the Internet, no one could transfer or steal the bitcoins and the owners’ wealth would remain safe.
Until bitcoins appeared on the scene, a currency for an anonymous, borderless world, a virtual currency was a pipe dream. Satoshi Nakamoto succeeded in making this dream come true.
Well, almost.
2011
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1
Washington DC
Gillian Tan picked out the Jaeger-LeCoultre from the Orbita Tourbillion watch winder, which held his collection of exquisite watches. He was running late for a senate committee meeting. A lavish breakfast was laid out for him but he had no time to eat. Quite a luxury, if he were to think back to the time when his mother struggled to make ends meet. He had lost his father when he was seven. His mother had pushed him to succeed. Day shifts in a department store and nights in a downtown pub helped her earn enough to fund his education. Scholarships saw him through to graduation. He was an extremely bright and intellectually gifted child who was obsessed with maths. His skills at mathematical analysis and research came in handy when he was drafted into the campaign management team of his dorm-mate, who went on to become the governor of Illinois. His old pal was now the President of the United States of America. Once Gillian entered politics, academics took a back seat, and the desire to excel in the powerful world of American politics took over. And to a large extent, he had succeeded in his quest.
‘I gotta rush!’ he yelled out to his wife, as she emerged from the kitchen with two bowls of cereal and a glass of orange juice on a tray. Three maids and two butlers to handle their daily chores yet Nikki always brought him his breakfast. Like every other marriage, theirs too had seen its highs and lows but just as it was threatening to fall apart, she had managed to pull everything back together.
‘Why don’t you at least drink the juice? It will keep you going till you reach the Hill.’
‘Fine!’ And he walked towards her. He looked at his watch again. It was ticking faster than he would have liked it to. Those idiots from the civil works department had dug up the road a mile from home. Cable work, they said. The entire road had been closed off for the last three days, forcing his motorcade to take a longish detour. His commute had increased by nine minutes.
He gulped down the juice and pushed the door open. ‘Bye, I’m off,’ he said and then, almost as an afterthought, added, ‘honey!’ Nikki rushed to his side for the customary goodbye kiss. ‘Where’s Gloria?’ he asked. ‘Still sleeping?’ Their daughter had just entered her twenties. Nikki looked the other way. It seemed like she was nodding.
As he kissed Nikki on the cheek and turned to go, she asked, ‘Are you meeting the President today?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ He frowned. ‘He’s agreed to see me today after the senate committee meeting.’ He stepped out of the house, the frown intact.
Carl, his driver, was holding the door to the armoured Mercedes-Benz open for him. A special Mercedes was not a regular entitlement. Gillian was on the senate committee advising the government on South Asian foreign policy. The job made him a high-risk target.
Two minutes later, his entourage was zooming past the pristine landscape. His Mercedes was sandwiched between two other cars.
‘We need to get there in twenty minutes, Carl,’ Gillian commanded, his mind still on the meeting with the President. What was he going to tell him? More importantly, how was he going to tell him? He pulled out a few papers from the file lying next to him to focus on the task ahead. The trip metre showed 180 seconds. It seemed like an eternity. Gillian had just about starting settling into his routine, when the car screeched to a halt. The papers fell to the floor.
‘Damn it, Carl! Fast doesn’t mean reckless.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
That’s when Gillian noticed that the pilot vehicle had stopped, forcing Carl to brake. A voice piped through Carl’s earphones. He whispered into the mouthpiece before turning back. ‘The old road has been opened up. You think we should take that?’
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