The First Billion

by Christopher Reich

  “Da. Rudenev,” said his Tatar chauffeur. He blurted a few words in Russian that Byrnes caught as “Long street. Goes to city of Rudenev.”

  “Eto Daleko? Is it far?”

  “Nyet.” The man shook his head emphatically. “Very close now.”

  Byrnes looked at him a second longer, wondering if he might be possessed of some criminal intent. He dismissed the thought out of hand. If the guy wanted to rob him, all he had to do was pull over on any side street and stick a gun in his face. A look over his shoulder confirmed they were not being followed. The road behind them was empty, desperately so. Svetlana’s or Tatiana’s—or whatever her name was—protectors were no doubt still at Metelitsa, concentrating their efforts on the next unlucky schlemiel. He stared at the setting sun, a dusky orange dome melting into the infinite plain. Russia, he thought, shaking his head. It was like watching a sunset on another planet.

  They passed a row of dachas, small brightly painted cottages with steep, angular roofs. He’d always imagined dachas to be quaint, well-constructed cabins that lay hidden in pine glades. Maybe some were. These, however, were slapdash and garish, one plunked down next to the other with not a green tree in sight. The dachas looked uncared-for, as did the gardens and fences that surrounded them. In fact, his one overwhelming impression of Russia so far was of neglect. Offices with shattered windows, roads scarred with potholes, cars rusted beyond belief. He refused to think about the fire escape he’d climbed down an hour ago. He had a feeling the country was running as fast as it could just to stay in the same place. If he’d seen a mule pulling a hay cart, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Somewhere back there he hadn’t left just Moscow, but the entire twentieth century.

  A half mile down the road, a blue strobe flashed urgently. Gripping his hands on the dashboard, Byrnes leaned forward, willing his pilot’s eyes to focus. He made out a stubby automobile bestriding the narrow road. The car was white with green doors. The traffic militia, Byrnes groaned inwardly. On his ride in from the airport, he’d noted several similar automobiles parked in the center of tangled intersections. In each case, an olive-smocked policeman had stood nearby paying no mind to the horns blaring around him, doing damned all to right the congested thoroughfares. In a country famous for its corruption, the traffic militia had a reputation second to none. He didn’t care to imagine what had brought them this far into the countryside a few minutes before nightfall.

  “Shit,” spat the driver, clearly sharing his anxiety. Shooting a worried look Byrnes’s way, he braked to a halt and produced his papers.

  A pug-faced militiaman approached the car. Ducking low, he peered into the windows, looking between Byrnes and the Tatar. The disparity between the two couldn’t have been greater: Byrnes in his custom-tailored suit and five-hundred-dollar shoes, the Tatar in worn wool trousers and a frayed red pullover. The militiaman said a few words, then backed away from the car.

  “A bad accident ahead. The road is closed,” explained the Tatar. “We must go back. But first he wants you to get out and show him your passport.”

  “I have to get out? How come?” Byrnes didn’t know why he was so surprised. In anticipation of the request, he’d already removed his passport and slipped a hundred-dollar bill inside the cover. Preparing a servile smile, he stepped out of the car and walked toward the militiaman.

  “Good evening,” he said in halting Russian, wanting to show he was one of the good guys.

  The militiaman approached slowly, rolling his boots, thumbs tucked into a heavy utility belt. He was a block of a man, more chunky than muscular, heavy around the shoulders and neck. He was dirty. Visibly dirty. Dirt flecked his cheeks. His hair was greasy and uncombed, his mustard uniform dotted with stains. Deliberately, he slid his baton from its holster.

  “Passport,” he grunted.

  Byrnes eyed the baton. Dents and chips and scuffs decorated its length. Losing the smile, he handed over the passport. The baton flicked through the air, so fast as to be a blur, cuffing Byrnes’s wrist and sending the passport tumbling to the road. “Hey,” he shouted, grabbing at his hand. “Watch it, you sonuva—”

  The next blow was faster, if that was possible. Harder, too—a lightning-quick jab to Byrnes’s unsuspecting gut. The baton disappeared into his midsection before caroming back a split second later, robbing Byrnes of his belligerence as well as his breath. He fell to a knee, eyes bulging as he prayed for his lungs to start working again.

  The militiaman pointed at the hundred-dollar bill lying on the ground. “Yours?” he grunted in English.

  “No,” coughed Byrnes.

  The militiaman motioned for Byrnes to hand it to him. Struggling to his feet, Byrnes picked up the note and his passport and handed them to the policeman.

  “Spaseeba.” The unkempt cop stared at the passport for a few seconds. “What hotel, please?”

  “The Baltschug. In Moscow.” From the corner of his eye, Byrnes could see the Tatar, standing at the rear of the car, hands folded in front of him, eyes making a meticulous study of the rocks near his shoes. The militiaman returned to his car, placed a call on his radio, smoked a cigarette, talked a little more on the two-way, then came back. Curling a finger, he motioned for the Tatar to join them. He barked a few words, looking at Byrnes.

  “You are not guest at the Baltschug,” the Tatar translated. “The hotel does not know you. The officer would like to know where you are staying, please?”

  “The Baltschug.” Byrnes could not keep the irritation from his voice. “I checked in at four o’clock. Room 335. Look, I have a key.” He delved into his pocket for the room key. Not finding it, he tried the other pocket, then his jacket. He remembered the tempting blond leaning close to him, rubbing his leg. “Please tell the officer that he can accompany me back to the hotel. I’ll be happy to show him my room. My suitcase, my clothing, everything is there.”

  But the militiaman was already shaking his head. An amused grin said he’d heard this one a hundred times before. “No,” he said in his brusque English before rattling off a few more bursts at the Tatar.

  “We must go,” said Byrnes’s chauffeur worriedly, pulling at his sleeve. “The road is closed. A bad accident farther on.”

  “Go? Hold on a goddamn minute,” cried Byrnes, freeing himself. “The guy still has my passport. I’m not going anywhere.” He took a step toward the police officer, his ingrained belief in law and order overruling his common sense. “I’m an American citizen. You have no right to keep my passport. Please, I’d like it back.”

  “When you check into a hotel, you are to call police,” explained the Tatar, scuttling back to the Lada. “They will bring you passport. Now please, we go.”

  “Ask him how much he wants for it. Here, here’s another hundred.” The militiaman feinted with the baton, and Byrnes jumped back. “You go,” barked the policeman, ignoring the proffered currency. Then slipping the passport into his breast pocket, he ambled back to his beat-up patrol car.

  Furious, Byrnes climbed into the Lada. The Tatar started the car, executed a neat three-point turn, then steered them back toward Moscow. Turning in his seat, Byrnes stared behind him. Fading into the distance was the same featureless vista that had played out before him for the past thirty minutes, a rutted, dusty road rolling like a draftsman’s straightedge into the horizon. The Tatar began humming a tuneless melody, his breath whistling through chipped teeth. The car bumped along and Byrnes kept staring over his shoulder at the blinking strobes, feeling cheated and unjustly persecuted, asking himself what he might have done differently to effect a better outcome. He had no doubt he’d get his passport back—or that it would cost him another hundred dollars, if not more. He was sure the cop had never called the Baltschug. Of course, there was no accident, but his mind did not allow him to go any further. He waited until he could no longer see the militiaman, then said, “Stop.”

  The Tatar dashed an annoyed look his way. “We go home now. I take you to hotel. You sleep. I sleep. Okay?”

>   Byrnes slipped his wallet from his jacket and took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Stop,” he repeated. “Please.”

  The Tatar sighed painfully, as if he knew what Byrnes was going to ask, then slowed the car.

  “I must go to Rudenev,” Byrnes said. Using his hands, he indicated his desire to make a bell-shaped detour around the militiaman. He was sure the Lada was sturdy enough to handle a few miles through hardscrabble fields. When the Tatar hesitated, Byrnes took out another hundred and pressed both bills into the man’s creased palms. Two hundred dollars was probably double his monthly salary. “Please. It’s important.”

  The Tatar stuffed the bills in his pocket and grunted as if Byrnes’s request was but the final depredation forced upon him by a world going to the devil. Pulling off the road, he said, “I am Mikhail. Pleased to meet you. You are millionaire, maybe?”

  Byrnes shook the callused hand. What was it about this place? “Graf. Likewise.”

  They drove through the fields for half an hour. The Lada bounced and groaned and rocked, keeping up a steady assault on the Russian potato industry. Never did the needle on the speedometer surpass twenty kilometers per hour. The sky was darkening quickly, and Byrnes thought if they didn’t find the network operations center soon, he’d be spending the night in the countryside instead of in his four-hundred-dollar hotel room.

  An outcropping of buildings came into shape a kilometer ahead. The silhouettes were low, right-angled, and unimaginative, no different than a strip mall or office park. He thought he could make out a satellite dish.

  “Rudenev 99?”

  “Da.”

  Byrnes laughed, then clapped his hands and expelled a soft “Hooray!” He knew it was common for satellite downlinks and cable relays to be located at the periphery of metropolitan areas; land was cheaper there and it was easier to lay cable in undeveloped areas. He just hadn’t expected to be so far outside the city. Only then did he make out the squadron of small trucks and automobiles parked in front of the buildings. Dark figures scurried like ants back and forth between the vehicles.

  As they drew closer, he was able to discern four separate buildings, one at each corner of an intersection. The “ants” were workmen. Some were clad in overalls or jumpsuits, others in denim shorts and T-shirts. To a man, they were busy unloading large rectangular cartons from the trucks and carting them on dollies into the building with the satellite dish on its roof. No one paid the Lada any mind as it climbed onto the road and drew to a labored halt.

  With a strong elbow and a few oaths, Byrnes opened the door. “Please wait,” he said.

  The driver got out of the car and lit a cigarette. Byrnes made a note to ask for his address so he could FedEx him a carton of Marlboros.

  Buttoning his jacket, he set off through the throng, intent on making his way into the building. He had only to glance at the cartons being wheeled inside to get a sharp, sick pain in his stomach. Now he knew what Jett had meant when he said he felt as if he’d been socked in the gut. Printed on the boxes were names like Dell, Sun, Alcatel, and Juniper—the brightest lights of the new economy. He walked stiffly, expecting at any moment to be stopped and asked who he was and what he was doing there.

  The center of activity was a large warehouse painted a totalitarian gray, windowless and boasting double doors through which a nonstop stream of men filed in and out. Painted on the wall was the Mercury Broadband name and logo. He recognized the building from the picture the Private Eye-PO had posted on the web. No doubt about it: He was in the right place. Taking out his cell phone, he dialed the office. A recorded message informed him the call could not be completed at that time.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, sliding the phone back into his jacket.

  Working to keep his gait slow, his bearing relaxed, Byrnes took up position by the front doors. Fluorescent lights blazed inside. The atmosphere was hushed, as reverential as that of a cathedral. The workmen kept to a long corridor, disappearing into another part of the building. What the hell, he said in a bid to buck himself up. You’ve come this far, why not go whole hog?

  And tightening his tie, he ducked inside Mercury Broadband’s Moscow network operations center.

  His first impression was that the pictures were wrong.

  The operations center was a model of its kind. Rack after rack of server sat in black metal cages. Video cameras monitored every room. Liebert air conditioners kept the temperature an ideal sixty-five degrees. A corps of technicians manned a sophisticated console keeping tabs on the company’s metropolitan operations. Every now and then a red light would flash on a map of the city, indicating a problem at a relay station or outlying node. Immediately, a technician would pick up the phone and attempt to solve the problem.

  Byrnes slid from room to room, noticed but unquestioned, his suit and tie and confident posture as good as any E-ZPass. His relief in learning that the Private Eye-PO’s pictures were bogus was outweighed only by his desire to know what in the world all the new equipment was being used for. He didn’t remember reading any plans for a buildout of this proportion. As unobtrusively as possible, he followed the train of deliverymen through the corridors, passing from the main building to an outstation that had not been visible from the road. Just ahead, a security guard stood in front of a pair of swinging doors. He was holding a clipboard, and as each piece of equipment passed through the doors he checked both the item and the man’s name against his list.

  Byrnes allowed himself only a moment’s hesitation. Then, hurrying his pace, he approached the security guard and handed him his business card. “Good evening,” he said in English. “I’m a friend of Mr. Kirov’s. He invited me to visit.” And before the man could answer, Byrnes thanked him, smiled, and followed the next deliveryman through the doors.

  He was standing inside a very large room, one hundred feet long and seventy feet wide. The floor was white. The walls were white. The ceiling was white, and from it hung rafts of fluorescent lights suspended by thin cables. Table after table ran the width of the room. On them was arrayed an army of personal computers: hundreds . . . no, thousands of PCs arranged one after another in perfect rows. The screens blinked on and off. On and off. He walked closer. One screen read, “Welcome to Red Star. Please enter your password.” The computer did as it was asked and the PC logged onto Mercury’s signature portal. The welcome screen went blank, replaced a moment later by a familiar web page. Somewhere on the page, he read the greeting “Hello, Sergei Romanov,” but a moment later the screen blinked and traveled to another electronic address. The PC continued its peripatetic iterations, bouncing from one site to another for a minute or two, then logging off. A few seconds passed, and it began the same trick again.

  Byrnes advanced a few rows and watched another PC perform the same operations, only visiting different websites. He stood mesmerized, floating in a white universe of personal computers, wondering what the hell was going on. He took a few more steps and watched some more.

  And then, it hit him.

  Taking in the entire room at once, he whispered, “My God. It can’t be.”

  When he emerged five minutes later, his first act was to phone his office. It was near noon in San Francisco. This time the call went through.

  “Yeah?” answered a familiar voice.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Byrnes, a little surprised that Gavallan hadn’t answered his private line. “Where’s Jett?”

  “Not around right now. What’s up?”

  “Is he close by? It’s important I talk to him.”

  Byrnes caught the sound of an engine revving hard and jogged toward the Lada. A gold Mercedes sedan was flying down the road, leaving a curtain of dust in its wake. No roadblock for him, Byrnes mused; no playing kissy-face with Uncle Vanya of the traffic militia.

  “Where are you, Graf?” came the voice in his ear. “You sound a million miles away.”

  Byrnes tapped his foot nervously. No one but he and Gavallan knew about the excursion to Moscow. “Just get Jett. A
nd hurry.”

  “Cool down. He’s not here. I saw him a while ago, but he may have stepped out.”

  The Mercedes was a hundred yards away and showed no signs of slowing. Byrnes hesitated, hoping the sedan would pass through the intersection, knowing in his gut it was headed here, and that whoever was inside was looking for him. As the Russian police didn’t drive late-model Mercedes that retailed for a hundred grand a pop, he had a feeling he was in for a rougher brand of justice. He looked around. It would be easy to duck back into the building, to hide among the workers. But why? He’d done nothing wrong. As Mercury’s banker, he had every right to be here. His visit was unannounced, but not surreptitious. He had every intention of phoning Mr. Kirov once he assembled his findings. The thought of being found cowering inside an empty cardboard box decided the matter. Galvanized, his feet took firm possession of the ground, and he rummaged in his pockets for a business card.

  “All right, all right, listen then,” he said into the phone. “It’s about Mercury. You have to tell Jett everything I’m about to say verbatim. You got that? Verbatim. You won’t believe it.”

  And for the next sixty seconds he rattled off everything he’d seen inside the Moscow network operations center, stopping only when the Mercedes sedan had pulled to a halt ten feet away. “You got that?”

  The voice sounded shocked. “Yeah, I got it. It just sounds a little crazy. I mean, that’s not even possible, is it?”

  But Byrnes didn’t answer. By then, the door of the Mercedes had opened and Tatiana, or Svetlana, or whatever the gorgeous pickpocket with the satin blue eyes wanted to call herself, had stepped into the Russian night. In her hand she held her friend’s nickel-plated Colt revolver, and she was pointing it at his chest.

  “Allo, Graf.”