The First Billion

by Christopher Reich

  “It’s nothing,” said Byrnes, turning his hand this way and that to show he was in no way hindered. “A mishap with my car. I find I’m getting clumsier with age. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

  “A friend of my brother’s is a friend of mine. Excuse me if I’m not quite myself. I’m still reeling from the news.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t . . .” It was then that Byrnes noted the beleaguered cast to Pillonel’s eyes. They were red and puffy. His nose was runny, his cheeks not flushed, but inflamed.

  “You have not heard? Jean-Jacques is dead. He was in Zurich on his way to a short vacation. A robber surprised him and Claire in their hotel. They were both killed. It’s terrible. I shudder.” The baritone cracked and a tear rolled down Pillonel’s cheek. He tried to keep a brave front, but a moment later a sob racked his chest, his stern mouth quivered, and he began to cry in earnest. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “I don’t know why I came to work. My wife told me to stay home. She said I was a fool to come.”

  “My condolences,” said Byrnes, without sympathy. He wasn’t surprised Pillonel was dead. The news hadn’t hurried his pulse a beat. If anything, he experienced a brief and satisfying surge of justice done, even if it was cruel on his part. Jean-Jacques Pillonel was as responsible for his ruined thumbs as Boris. He deserved partial credit for the deaths in Florida, and if things didn’t turn around quickly, they could stick him with the dismantling of Black Jet Securities, too.

  Cautiously returning his gaze to his host, Byrnes caught a passing glimpse of his own reflection in the window. Dressed in a charcoal Brooks Brothers suit, hair neatly combed, thumbs discreetly bandaged, he actually looked presentable. A short discussion with the embassy’s legal attaché, a man Byrnes pegged as the local CIA resident, had produced a diplomatic passport, an interest-free loan in the amount of a thousand dollars, and a ticket to Geneva the next morning with an onward connection to New York (including an armed escort onto the plane). A hot meal, a soft bed, and ten hours’ sleep had done the rest. Moscow, Boris, and the dacha were quickly fading into a corner of his memory he hoped to rarely visit.

  “There, I am better,” Pierre Pillonel said after a minute, taking a last swipe at his nose. “Please excuse me.”

  The two men sat at a lacquered maple conference table, taking their time to unbutton their jackets and nap their slacks, uncap their pens, and take a sip of the mineral water that had been poured for them prior to their arrival.

  “So?” said Pillonel, a false, professional smile pulling at his cheeks. “How may I be of assistance to you?”

  “As you may know, Black Jet Securities is set to take Mercury Broadband public later today on the New York Stock Exchange,” Byrnes began. “It’s a large deal. A two-billion-dollar equity offering.”

  “I’ve read about it. Should I be asking to buy some shares?”

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be such a good idea.”

  “Non? Why not?”

  “Sadly, we’ve come into possession of evidence showing that Mercury is not exactly the company we sold our investors. Konstantin Kirov, Mercury’s chairman, has been siphoning large sums of money from another of his investments, Novastar Airlines, and using the funds to inflate Mercury’s balance sheet.”

  “When you say a large sum, you mean how much exactly?”

  “Hundreds of millions of dollars.”

  “Dieu,” Pillonel said under his breath.

  Byrnes nodded in agreement. At least they were talking the same language. “Naturally we’re canceling the offering. This morning before the opening bell, we’ll announce that the IPO has been shelved indefinitely. It will be an embarrassment to Black Jet and a setback to Mercury Broadband, which we feel is still a vibrant, attractive company. We’re quite upset at the development. As Mercury’s bankers, we feel we should have spotted the problem earlier. If we’d chosen our partners more wisely this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Byrnes let the words hang there, checking for a response from Pillonel—a sympathetic shrug, a world-weary sigh, an admission that “Yes, this could happen to any of us”—but the Swiss banker remained unmoved, his gaze not giving away a thing.

  “Black Jet Securities has an obligation to shelter Mercury from Kirov’s misdeeds,” Byrnes continued. “We want to do everything possible to insure that Mercury’s future as a viable enterprise does not suffer because of its chairman’s bad behavior. I like to think the Russian government has a right to the money stolen from Novastar.”

  The mention of money lit a fire behind Pillonel’s eyes. Abruptly, he sat straighter, lifting his chin from his neck. “But of course you are right. One cannot condone such behavior. These oligarchs are too much. They think the entire country is their own private fief. They steal a little from here, a little from there. Their conduct is deplorable.” He took a sip of water and shrugged fatalistically. “But how do you hope to convince Mr. Kirov to give back the money?”

  “I don’t. He’s a crook and a murderer. He’d never give it back. But I can convince you.”

  “Me?”

  Byrnes delved into his jacket pocket for a translucent envelope and flipped the minidisc onto the table. “Jean-Jacques was working in cahoots with Mr. Kirov to help Mercury defraud Black Jet and the investing public. They cooked the books together and Kirov paid Jean-Jacques to falsify the due diligence Silber, Goldi, and Grimm performed on Mercury. When Mr. Gavallan presented Jean-Jacques with the evidence this past Saturday, your brother broke down and revealed what he’d done. Somehow Konstantin Kirov got word of his duplicity. Your brother wasn’t going on vacation. He was getting the hell out of the country. You don’t really think Jean-Jacques was killed by a thief, do you?”

  Byrnes stared at Pierre Pillonel. It was hard to believe he and Jean-Jacques were twins. One was the model of continental sophistication, the other its opposite. “If you look at the disc, you’ll find that Kirov transferred the money he stole from Novastar to your bank.”

  “To the Banque Privé?” Pillonel slid the disc back to Byrnes. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know. I am not his account manager. Many of our clients hold numbered accounts. I don’t have to tell you of our secrecy requirements.”

  Lies. Lies. Everywhere lies, rued Byrnes. Since when had dishonesty become the currency of discretion? He waited a moment, taking a deep breath. He felt depressed. Deeply and achingly depressed. Leaning across the table, he whispered, “Cut the bullshit, Pierre. You know Konstantin Kirov is a client of yours. Your brother sent him to you nine months ago to open an account and I wouldn’t doubt it if the three of you went out and broke bread together and told each other how you were going to screw the world.”

  Pillonel shook his head and lifted a finger. His mouth even moved, but he couldn’t bring himself to protest.

  “You are a partner at the bank, correct?”

  “Yes,” said Pillonel. “Managing partner, in fact.”

  “And as such you are liable for the firm’s debts and grievances, non?”

  “It is a private bank,” said Pillonel. “I am a partner. Therefore I am liable. It is the law.”

  “Then let me make this clear,” Byrnes went on, his voice as cold and hard as a diamond. “If you don’t wire every cent of the money Konstantin Kirov stole from Novastar Airlines back to the airline itself, I will make sure that you are shown to have been involved in Kirov’s scheme from the very beginning. Whether you really were or not, I don’t know and I don’t care. But if you don’t cooperate, I will do my best to link your brother’s fraudulent behavior with your own and tie all three of you together into one great big daisy chain. Family being family, and twins being especially close . . .” Byrnes shook his head, letting the threat of a public trial, the front-page articles, the two-minute reports on the evening news finish the sentence for him. “Don’t answer now. Check the disc. It’s all there.”

  Without another word, Pillonel left the conference room. Byrnes stood and looked out at the lake, cal
m and glassy, promising a hundred summer idylls. He was wondering where Gavallan was, if he’d made it to New York, and if even then, he could pull off his plan. Or more precisely, if Cate would allow him to.

  And after that? Byrnes asked himself. What are you going to do? Go back to work? Sit back down at your desk as if the last seven days hadn’t happened? He wasn’t sure. He knew he wanted to see his kids. He thought about making amends with his wife and chucked the idea posthaste. That part of his life, at least, was over. He decided Pierre Pillonel hadn’t been so wrong to venture to his office while in mourning for his brother. There comes a point in life when your work and your self—your own idea of who you really are—grow so intertwined as to be inseparable. Byrnes realized he’d reached that point a long time ago. When you spend twelve hours a day, day in and day out for seven years, you pretty much become the job. And so, where to? Home, thought Byrnes. To San Francisco. To Black Jet. If Jett could succeed in saving the company, he wanted to be there at his side to help.

  Five minutes later, Pillonel returned, accompanied by a dour, rail-thin man whom he introduced as Monsieur Buffet, the bank’s in-house counsel. The attorney shook Byrnes’s hand once, as if sealing a bargain. He had dark, depthless eyes, and as he spoke they remained drilled on Byrnes. “You realize that the bank abhors criminal behavior in every shape and form. That we do not as a matter of highest principle deal with persons of anything but the most sterling character. And that we knew nothing—I repeat, nothing—about Mr. Kirov’s activities vis-à-vis Novastar Airlines.”

  “Yes, I realize all that,” said Byrnes. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

  “And should the bank agree to your request, that should in no way be construed as demonstrating either our knowledge of or our complicity in Mr. Kirov’s affairs.”

  Again, Byrnes nodded.

  “A terrible business,” said Pierre Pillonel, waving his attorney into a far chair. “Black days. So hard to know who to trust, who not to.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Naturally, we are prepared at this instant to wire the funds to the account you mention . . . or to any other account you may wish for us to help you set up.” Pillonel paused, but only for the shortest of moments. “A numbered account with our affiliate in the Bahamas, perhaps?”

  Byrnes kept a mirthless smile to himself. What did the French say? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. “No thank you. Novastar’s account at the Moscow Narodny Bank will be fine.” He handed Pillonel a piece of stationery bearing the account numbers. “By three-thirty today, gentlemen.”

  65

  It was the quiet time.

  The time for reflection. The time to put your personal thoughts in order, separate the good from the bad and take a measure of your life. The time to settle things. The last free moments before the operation went tactical, because once it went tactical and you were doing what you’d trained these last four months to be doing, the only things you thought about were the mission, your part in it, and maybe, if you had the courage, whether you’d get out of it on the other end alive.

  The members of Team 7 sat at the edge of the landing strip, using parachutes for seats, twelve castaways eating their rations of Pop-Tarts, Fritos, and protein bars, drinking their Gatorades and Diet Cokes. They were Americans, all of them—the baseball caps and work boots, the insouciant smiles, the two-day beards. Or so you’d swear until looking closer. And then, as you examined each one by one, you would shake your head. Here, the cheekbones too high, the eyes vaguely Asiatic. There, the blond hair a shade too blond. This one’s gaze too dark, mirroring a fatalism bred over centuries. That one’s face too gaunt, hunted, fearful.

  They were born of the East. Mother Russia’s children.

  A stiff wind snapped at the waist-high grass that bordered the strip. Behind them, the Bering Sea lapped at a beach even more desolate than the deserted airfield. The water was calm and glassy, a dark, dark green that went on forever. If you stood on your tiptoes and the air was clear enough, which it wasn’t so late in the evening, and you had the right frame of mind, the proper imagination, you might just see the Alaskan coast forty miles away.

  But none of the men looked. No one stood. It was the quiet time.

  It had been a long journey to the abandoned airfield on the very edge of the Chukchi Peninsula. Seventeen hours without sleep and the mission had not yet begun. From Severnaya they had traveled to Nordvik by a rusting Tupolev transport, and from Nordvik to Anadyr by a snazzy Air Force Ilyushin. The last hundred miles had been traveled in the rear of a Kam truck that smelled as if it had been routinely used to haul sheep to the slaughterhouse. Each leg of the mission was cut off from the next. Compartmentalized. No one asked where they came from or where they were going.

  They were spirits.

  Ghosts that never were.

  A team that did not exist.

  Somewhere in the wind danced the drone of a faraway engine. The team rose to their feet and looked to the sky. The drone grew into a silhouette and the silhouette into a silver form. A minute passed and the Beechcraft 18 came into sight. It was a vintage 1960s floatplane that had earned its stripes ferrying fishermen to and from the Canadian wilds. Its new incarnation called for a more hazardous duty, and the oversized radial engines had been souped up accordingly. Pontoon floats grew from the bottom of the plane, and as the Beech hovered low over the airfield they looked like twin torpedoes, primed and ready to drop. Wheels bobbed from the floats, and the plane struck the landing strip with a military finesse.

  Barely had it stopped before the commandos had pulled themselves aboard. Webbing had replaced seats in the stripped-down fuselage. Blankets would do for heating. The men took their places, throwing their chutes on the floor between their feet. Their packs, and the sensitive cargo they contained, they held in their laps.

  The Beechcraft turned and roared down the runway, lifting gracefully into the gray-tinged sky. The forecast was good, notwithstanding the gusting northerlies. This high in the latitudes, the wind was a constant, and if not your friend, an enemy to be made peace with.

  Inside the fuselage, the men checked their equipment a final time, then closed their eyes. They did not sleep. They rehearsed. They concentrated. They willed themselves to their highest level.

  The quiet time was over.

  66

  In New York City, on this third Tuesday in June, the sun rose at 5:24. The dawn promised a flawless day. Wisps of cumulonimbus raked a hazy blue sky. A freshening breeze kept the temperature in the low sixties, dousing Wall Street with the honest, vital scent of the East River. Outside the New York Stock Exchange workers draped an enormous banner emblazoned with Mercury Broadband’s logo across the building’s proud Doric columns. Measuring fifty feet by thirty-five, the banner was decorated with a stylized drawing of Mercury’s helmet—the disclike headplate garlanded with two lightning bolts—and the company name, painted gold against a royal blue background.

  Inside the building, television crews set up for what promised to be a hectic day. Twelve networks had constructed production facilities on the mezzanine level ringing the Exchange’s principal trading floor. Making the circuit, one passed cramped, brightly lit ministudios for CNN, CNBC, the BBC, Deutsch Fernsehen, Nippon Television. . . . Journalists could be glimpsed applying their makeup, brushing their hair, and practicing their “good morning smiles.”

  By 7 A.M., the first reports were going out live to audiences around the world. The talk today centered on one subject: the Mercury Broadband IPO. What would be the first day pop? Would the stock keep its head? Was Mercury an exception to a moribund market or the pioneer of a long-awaited rally in technology stocks?

  Konstantin Kirov rose at seven-fifteen, showered, shaved, and dressed in a sober gray suit and maroon tie. Despite last night’s warnings, he’d slept remarkably well. What will be, will be, he told himself. He’d taken every precaution. He was convinced that once the stock began trading, no one would have the nerve to st
op it. If Gavallan were going to make a move, he would have done it long before now. What was the American saying? “No news is good news.”

  Giving himself a final once-over in the mirror, he asked himself if he was being too confident, too cocksure. Up came his hand with a last spritz of cologne. No, he decided, just realistic.

  Picking up his briefcase, Kirov left his suite and took the elevator to the first floor, where he was joined for breakfast in the main dining room by Václav Panič, the CTO of Mercury’s European operations, and Janusz Rosen. The bankers were absent, no doubt putting in an appearance at the office before making their promised rendezvous at the Broad Street entrance to the stock exchange at nine o’clock. Kirov ordered a large breakfast, then picked at it. His appetite had deserted him.

  At eight-thirty, he and his colleagues decamped to a black stretch limousine berthed in front of the hotel. Kirov settled into the backseat for the drive downtown. The chauffeur announced that due to congestion on the FDR Drive, they would be taking the West Side Highway. Traffic was moderate and they made good time, passing the Javits Center, the USS Intrepid—a mothballed aircraft carrier used for various charity functions—and the reconstructed World Financial Center.

  The limousine turned onto Broad Street, and through the windows Kirov stared at an imposing neoclassical building at the far end of the street. A steep flight of stairs led to the building, and even he could recognize the statue of George Washington at the top of the steps. The chauffeur explained that the building was Federal Hall, the seat of the United States government from 1776 to 1791. Across from Federal Hall stood the old headquarters of J. P. Morgan & Co., from whose offices the legendary financier had built his empire and dictated the course of the American economy.