Power Down

by Ben Coes

  He turned back to the bar. “So what’s your deal?” he asked. “Actress? Writer?”

  She laughed. “Dancer,” she said. “Ballet and modern.”

  “Interesting,” he said as he took a sip from the glass.

  “Juilliard. I graduate in May.”

  “Do you have anything lined up?”

  “I’ll be training in London, under Stephen Greenston.”

  “I don’t really know much about ballet.”

  She laughed.

  “Greenston is kind of the godfather of the modern European ballet, what they call the ‘literal’ ballet.”

  “Good for you. Where are you from?”

  “Ireland. A small town on the coast, near Kildare. And what do you do?”

  “Boring stuff. Kind of like a mutual fund.” Fortuna took another sip from his glass. He looked at his watch. It was almost 11:00 P.M. “I’m going to walk around a bit. Thanks for the drink.”

  “Sure,” said Darien.

  Fortuna walked through the nightclub, nodding several times at people he knew. At one couch, a group of three men and two women were seated.

  “Alex,” said one of the men sitting on a couch.

  “Hi, Joe,” said Fortuna, shaking hands. “Good to see you.”

  “This is Alex Fortuna,” Joe Lombardi said, introducing Fortuna to the group. “Won’t you join us?”

  “Yes, won’t you join us?” asked one of the women, a blond-haired woman in a stunning red dress. She smiled at him. He’d never seen her before.

  “Please join us,” said another woman, another blonde. This one he did recognize. It was Charlotte Haviland.

  “Hi, Charlotte,” Fortuna said, smiling. “How are you?”

  She didn’t answer, instead reclining in the large sofa with her wineglass, smiling and shaking her head.

  In front of the group, on the table, a silver tray sat. On it, several dozen lines of cocaine were neatly cut into lines.

  “If you insist,” Fortuna said, smiling. He sat down next to the blond woman. She reached forward and lifted the tray, placing it on her lap. She handed him the rolled-up $100 bill on the tray.

  Fortuna leaned down and Hoovered up three lines. He took another sip from his glass.

  “How do you two know each other?” asked another woman, a brunette who was slightly overweight.

  “Alex runs a hedge fund,” said Lombardi. “We’re in the same line of work.”

  Fortuna smiled. “Ours is much smaller than Joe’s,” he said. “He’s much more successful. If you want to invest your money, do it with him.”

  Lombardi laughed. “Yeah, my ass. What are you looking at these days?”

  Fortuna picked up the rolled-up bill again and leaned down, doing another line. He smiled but declined to answer.

  They talked for a while longer. Every so often, Fortuna turned and glanced at the bar. If she wasn’t pouring a drink, Darien returned his look.

  After an hour, Fortuna stood up. He walked through the room, elated from the drugs, nicely wired but not out of control; the way he liked it.

  He walked back to the bar.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Leaving?”

  “Yes. Early meeting tomorrow.”

  “I thought you were the boss.”

  He stood at the bar for a moment longer. They looked at each other, locked eyes. After a moment she averted her eyes.

  “I’m done in a few minutes,” she whispered without looking back at him, in shyness, just loud enough for him to hear.

  They kissed in the Mercedes on the way uptown. When they arrived at Fortuna’s apartment, she made him walk her through the entire apartment, room by room. She was astounded by the sheer size of the place, the view, the art, everything.

  In his bedroom, they took their clothing off. Fortuna unbuttoned her black blouse. Her body was a hard, sculpted thing of mastery, of beauty, toned from a lifetime of dance.

  He took her hand and they walked to the hallway, down to a stairwell that led them up to the rooftop. He opened the door and the cold winter air blew at them ferociously, but they laughed. They ran across the deck to where clouds of steam arose in the lit-up area where the hot tub was. They jumped in, laughing. She moved to him; they kissed. Soon they were making love in the heated water.

  At some point, they returned to the bedroom and made love again before falling asleep.

  In the morning, it was Sarah, the maid, who woke them up with a tray, on top of which were two cups of espresso, a New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice. It was 7:05 A.M.

  “Good morning, Alexander,” Sarah said.

  “Morning.”

  They sat and read the papers, drinking espresso.

  “I could get used to this,” Darien said. She immediately regretted saying it.

  Fortuna said nothing. He hadn’t heard what she’d said. His eyes were on the Times headlines:

  KKB-Anson Target of Terror Strike;

  Savage Island Project and Capitana Territory Destroyed;

  CEOs of Both Companies Targeted for Assassination in Colorado

  He picked up the internal phone. He got out of bed and stepped into the bathroom. He dialed Karim.

  “Where is Mahmoud?” Fortuna asked, keeping his voice low, his anger nevertheless coming through. “If he didn’t escape—”

  “Mahmoud’s back in South Bend. There was a fight. He thought he killed them all.”

  Fortuna’s stomach tightened and he shook his head, trying to control his anger.

  “ ‘Thought’? Marks might be able to identify him now.”

  “I know.”

  Fortuna looked through the bathroom door at Darien, naked on the large bed. He smiled at her. “It’s time to tie off the other loose ends,” he told Karim as he walked back into the bedroom and climbed next to Darien. He pulled the young Irish beauty closer to him.

  “You mean . . .”

  “Yes. Today. Right now.”

  25

  BOWEN ROAD

  HONG KONG, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

  Orieshe Yang walked through the ornate lobby forty-four floors below the high-rise condominium she owned near Victoria Peak. It was the Saturday following a successful, though stressful, week. Her schedule hadn’t permitted her to go for a run in more than two weeks. Today, she told herself, she would run at least twenty kilometers and let the pain of the long distance cleanse her body and clear her head.

  Her employer, PBX Fund, had started the week with just over $3 billion in assets. As of last night, when she left to meet her fiancé for dinner at Cépage in the city’s Star Street precinct, PBX’s net asset value had tripled.

  It had been an astonishing jump, but also a disturbing one. Her boss, a man named Alexander Fortuna whom she’d never met, had directed an investment strategy at the beginning of the week she hadn’t fully agreed with, an allocation of all of the fund’s assets into one sector, and one specific geography, only to watch as the sector itself was hit by a series of dramatic terrorist attacks.

  Almost as if he had known, she thought.

  A year ago, she’d left the safety of Wellington Management in Boston, where she had earned upwards of $1 million a year, for the unknown of a secretive hedge fund in the Far East. Her base pay at PBX was more than $10 million. A few years at PBX, she figured, and she could do whatever she wanted. She could teach elementary school, or become a sculptor. After all, she was only thirty-one years old. But now her mind raced. Was she being paranoid? Manifesting some kind of guilt over the money she was making? In addition to her base pay, Yang also earned a bonus based upon the performance of PBX. Last night over dinner, she had calculated what her bonus would be in two weeks, the end of the fiscal year. Net asset value had just soared by $7.1 billion. Her bonus was one-half of 1 percent of the appreciation, after figuring in an 8 percent preferred coupon on the amount of capital in PBX Fund a year ago. In two weeks, if the fund stayed relatively close to wh
ere it stood last night, Yang would receive a bonus of $26 million, give or take a few hundred thousand dollars. In her first year with PBX, Yang would take home more than $36 million.

  Which only made her feel more unsettled about the week’s events.

  Yang began her run down Bowen Road. It was crisp out, a perfect day for a run, in the low sixties. She started slowly and soon fell into a groove.

  She felt the loosening, calming rhythm of the cadence of her sneakers on pavement. She’d been right: running made her feel much better. For the first time in at least ten days, she began to relax, transported by the solitary challenge of the run.

  The vehicle was a short, green delivery truck taking bread to the hotels along the waterfront. As she came to within a hundred yards of the entrance to Bowen Road Park, the truck crossed two lanes of traffic as the driver seemed to lose control of his vehicle. It swerved wildly toward Yang. She didn’t have time to scream; she didn’t even see the truck until the last second, as she heard a screech of tires just behind her. The truck barreled into her at more than forty-five miles per hour, sending her careening ahead, headfirst onto the hard pavement of the street. The truck kept moving forward, running her over before it crashed into a tree alongside the road. Later, it would be discovered that the truck had lost its brakes. The driver, a Saudi, would cry at the misfortune that his truck, which he’d driven for more than four years, had wrought.

  In London, Derek Langley closed the office door at Passwood-Regent at a little after eight o’clock Friday evening, clutching his athletic bag in his hand. It was an old bag, but he carried it with pride. The letters “CU” were emblazoned in red along the side of the Navy blue bag; these were the letters of the Cambridge University swim team, of which he’d been a member nearly a decade before.

  Langley liked to go to the Royal Automobile Club, where he was a member, and swim for an hour every night.

  He walked the mile and a half to the club. It was cold outside. Except for the young blond attendant at the front desk, the club seemed empty. That’s how it always was on Friday nights. He got ready in the locker room, then walked down the marble floored hallway to the swimming pool. Langley dived into the deserted pool and began his swim.

  Langley could not help feeling good after the week that had just passed. It had been a glorious week after a somewhat mediocre year. Passwood-Regent began the week with assets of $3.6 billion; it finished the week with $10.4 billion. Before leaving the office, Langley had calculated his bonus. All told, his bonus in two weeks would total nearly $50 million. At twenty-nine, Langley was already worth more than $200 million. Still, this would be his best year ever. He would buy something this year, he thought, as his long, muscular arms slashed through the water. Perhaps a country estate, or a plane. The problem is, he didn’t really want either one. The only things he really enjoyed were working and swimming.

  Langley’s thoughts drifted to Alexander Fortuna. After two years of working for his secretive boss, he was finally going to meet him. Fortuna had told him that afternoon of his plans to be in London in early January. Langley was excited. Fortuna, to the young man, was a hero. Perhaps the best investor he’d ever known, a man who blended a willingness to bet the farm with an almost superhuman ability to wait patiently until opportunities arose. Fortuna, Langley knew, had made his first billion by the time he was thirty-two. Could Derek do that? He didn’t see how. Unless he started his own fund, as Fortuna had at a similar age. Something he might just summon the courage to ask Fortuna about.

  At some point, a swimmer entered in the lane to the left of him. Langley didn’t notice as the dark-haired man entered the pool area. He did, however, notice when the swimmer began working out to his right, a burly man whose back and torso were covered in shaggy hair. He recognized the big man. His name was Malik and he liked to swim Fridays also.

  As his hour in the pool drew toward its completion and fatigue began to settle into his arms and legs, he felt hands grabbing at his feet from below. He struggled and yanked his legs but it was no use. He looked beneath him, where Malik and another man were pulling him beneath the water. Each man held a leg. He swung his arms wildly at the men, striking them in the head, in the shoulders. But it was like hitting wooden boards. These men were powerful. The struggle caused whatever breath he still had to be consumed that much quicker. Finally, in desperation, Langley breathed the water in.

  Even the best swimmers drown, the papers would later report. He died doing what he loved most, his mother was quoted as saying. At Cambridge, the new pool house, which would be built with money left to the school by Langley, would be called the Derek K. Langley Field House.

  In Manhattan, Sheldon Karl stared out over Wall Street from his office window as the week came to a close. From his office on the fifty-fifth floor of the building at 2 Wall Street, he could see the Hudson River and the rest of lower Manhattan. If he looked to his right, he could also see where the World Trade Center had once stood. Karl didn’t like to look in that direction, though he’d gotten used to it. Karl’s older brother, Fitz, had died on 9/11. He’d worked for Morgan Stanley, a trading firm in the south tower. The plane flew directly into the floor Fitz had worked on.

  Christmas was less than a week away, a time during which Karl always thought about his brother. Their parents both died of cancer when he and Fitz were in elementary school. They were both raised by their aunt and uncle in Philadelphia. Until 2001, for ten or eleven years in a row, Karl had spent Christmases with Fitz and his wife, Jenny, at their rambling yellow colonial house near the ocean in Westport, Connecticut. The day after Christmas, they’d pack their bags and drive to Stowe for a week of skiing. Now Jenny was remarried to a writer for The New York Times, a bearded intellectual who seemed to like talking about himself, politics, and little else. The last time Karl saw them was at a dinner more than a year ago, on the Upper West Side, at which Jenny’s new husband, after a considerable amount of red wine, said that the terrorists who’d flown the plane into the World Trade Center were misunderstood, that the only way we would ever stop more 9/11s from happening would be to understand them and their motivations, and to help educate them about making “better choices.” Karl had walked out of the dinner and never looked back. He didn’t particularly like politics, either side of it, but he knew an asshole when he saw one.

  The hedge fund he worked at was small compared to many of the funds on Wall Street. Below $10 billion in assets, a fund is considered subscale. Below a billion, a fund is considered a hobby. But Karl knew that no firm could match Kallivar’s performance that past week. My God, he thought as he shut down his two computers. The numbers are real. They’re actually going to hold.

  In one week, the assets of the firm had more than tripled. Kallivar’s $3.2 billion now totaled more than $10 billion. His boss, Alexander Fortuna, had called him that afternoon to congratulate him on a good week. Fortuna had recruited him from his old firm, Sowbridge Capital. They’d worked together at Sowbridge before Fortuna left, “retired” as he told Karl and the other investors at the firm. When Fortuna decided to start investing his own money in a new fund, and asked Karl to oversee it, he’d been flattered. Fortuna, everyone at Sowbridge knew, was not only a billionaire, but was the best investor at the firm.

  In three years at Kallivar, Karl had made more money than he knew what to do with. Instead of buying a house up at Stowe, he bought part of the resort itself, from AIG. He owned an entire floor of the Stanhope, where he lived, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He collected art, wild modernist art, including a sculpture of a mutilated cow encased in glass, which he’d kept for a year in his living room before donating it to the Whitney.

  In two weeks, Karl knew that the year’s check would be the biggest yet. As he stood looking out the window, at the darkened skyline, at the city he’d once been so intimidated by, then enthralled with, a city that he now understood and had mastered, he realized he’d give it all just to get his brother back, even if it was only for a mi
nute. The only thing that diminished his sense of achievement was his solitary status. Sheldon Karl was lonely.

  He shook his head. He always felt this way around Christmas. Time to go grab a drink. Friends from Wharton were gathering that night at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. Then he’d go home and do some lines of cocaine and call Tina. At $5,000 a night, not exactly his girlfriend, but less expensive than a wife. And easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

  Karl called his car service. He took the elevator down to the ground floor and buttoned his Burberry overcoat. He walked outside and climbed into the dark Lincoln sedan.

  “Evening, Mr. Karl,” the driver said.

  “Hi, Bobby.”

  “Straight home, sir?”

  “No. I’m meeting some people for dinner. Sistina’s.”

  “Second Avenue?”

  Karl nodded.

  As the sedan glided quietly onto Water Street, he took The Wall Street Journal from the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him and glanced quickly through the headlines. An article caught his eye, analyzing the effects of the destruction of KKB’s hydroelectric facility in Canada, and the explosion off the coast of Colombia, at Capitana, Anson Energy’s big petro strike. A dot portrait of CEO Ted Marks’s smiling, handsome face stared from the paper just above the fold. For the first time, Karl learned that Marks had nearly died in what seemed to be an assassination attempt linked to the explosions.

  A strange feeling came over Karl as the sedan went uptown and he read the article. Kallivar had lost more than $400 million in KKB and Anson Energy over the past two days alone. But Kallivar’s climb, he now realized, was sparked by KKB and Anson.