The First Billion

by Christopher Reich

  To Kirov’s left rose the New York Stock Exchange itself. It could have been a temple on Mount Athos, so perfect was its architecture: the soaring Doric columns, the broad plinth, the bas-relief sculpture running lengthwise beneath the roof.

  The limousine pulled to a stop. Kirov got out of the car without waiting for the door to be opened. Staring up at the Mercury Broadband banner that hung in front of the fabled Exchange, he gasped.

  My God, he thought, I’ve done it.

  The wheels of the Learjet touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport at 8:47 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. The eight-passenger aircraft performed an abbreviated rollout, braking sharply and making a quick starboard turn off the runway. The doors to the flight deck opened, the engines revved, and the plane began an easy ride to its parking slot. Unbuckling his safety belt, Gavallan leaned forward, rocking slightly. Through the cockpit windscreen, he watched the impressive girth of a China Airlines jumbo jet cross their path. Inexplicably, the plane came to a halt directly in front of them.

  “What’s keeping the guy?” Gavallan shouted to the flight deck.

  “Waiting for an inbound jet. It’ll just be a couple of minutes.”

  “A couple minutes?” Gavallan wiped a hand across his face, looking to Cate for reassurance. Her only response was to bite her lip and go back to patting her foot nervously.

  After an eternity—three minutes by his watch—the Lear arrived at its designated parking slot. The engine died and the plane rocked forward as the brakes were applied and stopped. Rushing to the door, Gavallan leaned hard on the exit lever. The door opened inward, sunlight flooded the cabin, and he went down the stairwell.

  A small entourage waited. Three agents of the federal government left the comforts of their four-wheel mount and hurried to the plane. Gavallan recognized the tall, lanky man with the shock of brown hair, the seersucker suit, and the pair of bifocals perched on his forehead as Dodson. Four days earlier he’d seen him talking on the phone beneath the portico of the Ritz-Carlton.

  “Mr. Gavallan, Howell Dodson. It’s a pleasure, sir,” the FBI man said, extending a hand. “Nice flight?” But if his voice was politeness itself, his posture was stiff, his face a mask of tension.

  “We’re here, that’s what counts.”

  “Miss Magnus, I presume.” Dodson gave her his hand and with a cock of the head shepherded them toward the waiting car. “We’ve got a helicopter standing by to ferry us to Manhattan.”

  “Tell me the rotors are turning,” said Gavallan.

  “The rotors are turning, Mr. Gavallan,” said Dodson. “Are you sure we can’t call ahead? Pull in Kirov as soon as he shows up? We do have resources available.”

  “No, thank you. That’s not part of the deal.” This was something Gavallan had to do himself. The FBI was there in a supporting role only, even if the Bureau didn’t know it yet. Reaching the sedan, Gavallan tried to open the door, only to find Dodson’s hand placed firmly against the window. “Just a second there. You can see that I’ve kept up my end of the bargain. I wouldn’t want to go any further without seeing some good faith from your side.”

  “You don’t trust us?” asked Cate, stepping forward.

  “I’m not in the trust business.” The smile was gone, the eyes direct, demanding.

  Opening her purse, Cate drew out her pink compact, clicked it open, and handed Dodson a slightly dusted minidisc. “I’m not sure what program was used to store the information on the disc. You’ll have to do your best with it.”

  “All that counts is that the data’s there. Three years’ of banking records, correct?”

  “Oh, it’s there all right,” said Cate. “And then some.”

  “Thank you kindly.” Dodson handed the disc to a fat, unattractive young man chafing in a catalogue-ordered blue twill suit. “Here you are, Mr. Chupik. I don’t mean to rush you, but you have eight minutes to let me know what’s on this disc.”

  “Piece of cake,” said Chupik, sliding into the front seat and feeding the disc into his laptop computer. “I’ll do it in five.”

  The jump light burned red.

  The members of Team 7 stood as one, affixing their static lines to the jump cable. Team Leader Abel shuffled forward through the bare fuselage and opened the main cabin door. With a mighty rush, a chill midnight wind swept through the airplane. The biting cold stung his cheeks and brought tears to his eyes. Grasping either side of the door, he looked outside. A pine forest rushed beneath them, a dense lush carpet close enough to touch. They’d been crossing it for thirty minutes and still it ran on, measurelessly.

  Stepping back, Abel checked his watch and signaled “Five” with his fingers.

  All eyes were on him, yet no one responded. There was no need. All tactical contingencies had been dissected, analyzed, solved, and solved again. The time for words had passed. The time for deeds had arrived.

  The Beechcraft 18 began a slow ascent. The altimeter rose from 250 feet to 300, then 350, the magnificent radial engines sawing the air with demonic fervor. Several modifications had been made to prepare the plane for its current purpose. All passenger seats had been stripped, all carpet and insulation torn out until the interior cabin was an aluminum and iron husk. Auxiliary fuel tanks were installed in the rear of the fuselage, gifting the plane with a two-thousand-mile range. A sophisticated satellite navigation system had been installed to insure that the men located their target. And unbeknownst to all—even the pilot—a remote-controlled detonation system was attached to the starboard fuel tank: three pounds of plastique governed by a long-distance radio signal.

  The Beechcraft leveled off at 400 feet. The pilot slowed the aircraft’s speed to 250 knots. From this height and at this speed, the soldiers of Team 7 would jump. It was a standard LALO jump: low altitude, low opening. Once outside the aircraft, they would fall fifty feet before the static line deployed their chutes. Five seconds later they would impact the ground at three times the usual landing velocity.

  The forest vanished with a silent white clap. The tundra ran before them, a pale wilderness advancing to the edge of the world.

  And then he saw it. Pump Station 2. A necklace of orange lights glimmering far on the horizon. A wisp of smoke rose from the power plant. No homing signal could have been better. Despite his training, Team Leader Abel’s throat swelled and grew tight.

  He raised three fingers.

  Passing through the doors at 18 Broad Street, Gavallan received his visitor’s badge, walked through the metal detector, then slid through the turnstiles that governed admittance to the Exchange. He’d been on the floor a dozen times over the years, yet he never entered the building without getting a certain buzz in the hollow of his stomach. It was no different this morning, except that coiled among his normal feelings of awe and respect was the unmistakable frisson of danger.

  Dodson followed him closely, showing his badge, and Roy DiGenovese entered next. Mr. Chupik had stayed in the car. He’d needed only three minutes to open Pillonel’s files. Scrolling page by page, transfer by transfer, deposit, by deposit, through Novastar’s banking history, Dodson had looked on with a reverent gaze, saying the same words over and over again: “Well, ain’t that sweet.”

  “Miss Magnus doesn’t care to join us?” Dodson asked once the three men had assembled in the small foyer just inside the entryway.

  “I think she’d prefer to wait outside. She’s seen enough.” Gavallan didn’t add that Kirov was her father, or that she had plenty to do on her own outside the building. Some things the FBI didn’t need to know.

  “A rough few days, Mr. Gavallan?”

  “You can say that.”

  “I know you had wished to speak with Mr. Kirov alone. Fine by us. Still, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know we’ve taken some steps to see that Mr. Kirov does not flee the premises. If you’ll just follow me for a moment.”

  Dodson led the way down a short corridor, stopping at an unmarked door and knocking once. An African-American agent wearing
a navy windbreaker with the yellow letters FBI stenciled on its breast poked his head out the door and said, “Kirov’s here. We got him on the closed circuit. He’s just leaving the specialist’s booth. Did you get what you wanted?”

  Dodson grinned while patting the man’s shoulder. “You have no idea, Agent Haynes.” The grin disappeared, and Dodson found his no-nonsense self. “Our operation is a go. Alert building security that we will be making an arrest. It might be wise to trade your windbreakers for some trading jackets. And bring along a few of your men. Calm, brisk, and orderly, Agent Haynes. Am I clear? We keep our weapons concealed at all times.”

  As the agents conferred, Gavallan peeked into the waiting room. Eight men and women dressed in the same navy windbreakers stood around drinking coffee, shooting the shit, and checking the pumps on their street-sweeper shotguns. It was the FBI’s Tuesday morning coffee klatch.

  “They’re going to stay in here, right?” he asked.

  “Strictly backup. I’m sure we won’t have the slightest need for them.”

  “All right then,” said Gavallan. “Let’s go.”

  67

  Cate waited in front of the visitors’ entrance to the Exchange, pacing back and forth, craving a cigarette, though she’d never smoked in her life. The morning air was cool and invigorating, the sidewalk bathed in the shadow of the surrounding skyscrapers. Still, she was sweating. Every minute or so, she checked her watch. Where was he?

  She searched the parade of faces, men and women walking purposefully up and down the street. Businessmen in three-piece suits, tourists in shorts and T-shirts, artists carrying sketchbooks and easels. At the corner of Wall Street and Broad, street vendors were selling black-and-white photos of Manhattan, magazines, financial texts. The pavement pulsated with the vibrant human cargo. Hugging her arms around herself, Cate wondered if she was doing the right thing. She knew very well the consequences of her actions. Once taken, there would be no going back.

  “He’ll serve two or three years, tops. And there’s no guarantee of that,” Pillonel had scoffed in the archives of Silber, Goldi, and Grimm’s headquarters. “Besides, it’s not the government he should be afraid of, it’s his partner.”

  She thought of the nasty little dacha north of Moscow, the crude torture chamber with its floor stained black by blood. She remembered Alexei and Ray Luca. She forced herself to imagine the countless others who had suffered or died at Kirov’s hands, and the countless more who would surely follow. The blood ties to her father, frayed and fragile, unraveled yet further and finally broke, taking with them her doubt. Someone had to stop her father. At last, she had a way.

  A tented canopy had been erected on the sidewalk. Beneath it, two long tables were stacked high with caps and T-shirts bearing the Mercury logo. Handsome young men and women were giving the merchandise to passersby, along with brochures describing the company. Cate looked on, disgusted. It was a fraud, a farce, a fairy tale with a very unhappy ending.

  She stopped her pacing long enough to check her watch and compare the time against that of the clock on Federal Hall. Both read 9:20. Her heart raced. Where was he?

  “Ekaterina Kirova?”

  “Da?” Cate spun. A wiry, dark-haired man attired in a neat houndstooth jacket stood in front of her. She’d never met him before, but she knew him intimately: the soulless eyes, the distrustful smile, the shadow of a beard pushing up an hour after shaving. “Dangerous,” Pillonel had said of her father’s partner. His krysha. “From the bandit country.”

  “You have something for me?” he asked.

  Retrieving the compact from her purse, she removed the last disc and told him what he would find. “Hurry,” she said.

  But in contrast to her anxious demeanor, the Chechen was all too relaxed. He held the disc between his fingers, examining it this way and that as if deciding whether or not to purchase an expensive piece of jewelry. “No need. Everything is already taken care of.”

  “What will you do?”

  The man from the bandit country met her gaze, and she felt a chill pass through her. Saying nothing, he slipped the disc into his pocket, bowed ever so slightly, and walked off.

  The party of three had grown to six. Dodson and Gavallan led the way. DiGenovese, Haynes, and the muscle came behind. Haynes and his two agents had donned the shapeless jackets favored by specialists on the floor. Strung out along the corridor that ran parallel to the floor, weaving in and out of the milling throngs of traders, brokers, and specialists, the group managed to avoid looking like the war party it was.

  Dodson pulled up at one of the double doors leading onto the floor. “All right, Mr. Gavallan. Here we are. You heard Agent Haynes. Kirov just left the specialist’s booth and is on his way up to the podium. Lead on. And remember—calm, brisk, and orderly. We find Kirov and we take him into custody.”

  The New York Stock Exchange was divided into four trading rooms: the Main Room, the Garage, the Blue Room, and 30 Broad Street. There was no hierarchy among them. The Exchange’s seventeen trading posts, scattered across the floor like giant bumpers on a billiard table, were divided evenly between them. Wide passageways lead from one room to the next. But when people thought of the Big Board, it was the Main Room they envisaged. It was here that trading was inaugurated from an elevated podium every morning at nine-thirty, and here that was halted every afternoon at four.

  Gavallan led the way into the Main Room. It was large and airy as a convention hall, two hundred by two hundred feet. The ceiling stood several stories above a century-old plank floor. American flags of every size and shape dominated the décor, sprouting from every trading post and hanging on every wall. Brokers’ booths ringed the floor’s perimeter. Ninety percent of orders to buy and sell shares traveled electronically through the “superdot” computer system directly to the specialists’ booths, where they were automatically mated, buyer with seller, at an agreed upon price. This 90 percent, however, accounted for only half the share volume that traded each day. The remaining 10 percent of trades accounted for the other 50 percent of the volume, and these large, or “block,” trades required the human attention of both broker and specialist.

  Lowering his shoulder, Gavallan nudged his way through a knot of brokers talking last night’s hoops and walked onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Keeping a driven pace, he wound his way across the floor, passing the trading posts where IBM, 3M, Freddie Mac, and AIG were traded. The posts bristled with television monitors, flat screen displays, computer keyboards. Eleven minutes from the opening—9:18:25, by the digital clocks hanging high on every wall—each was surrounded by clumps of specialists balancing their orders prior to the start of trading. It was difficult to see more than fifteen feet ahead.

  Gavallan reached the post that housed the electronic offices of Spalding, Havelock, and Ellis, the specialist firm assigned to trade Mercury’s stock. The booth was a hive of activity. Twenty or thirty brokers crowded around Deak Spalding, the firm’s top trader, shouting to be heard. It was a scene that played out whenever there was strong demand for a stock, or strong pressure to sell it.

  Gavallan glanced toward the podium. A Mercury Broadband banner was draped across the balcony below it. Another larger one hung on the wall behind it, just below the gargantuan American flag that daily paid tribute to the United States of America and the free market it fostered.

  “Well, look who’s here,” said Deak Spalding. “The devil himself, back from the dead. Hey, guy, how are you? I had old man Grasso himself here not two minutes ago, with your buddy Kirov and some of your troops. Gonna be a big opening. Gotta love it.”

  Spalding was a broad, florid man with an Irishman’s ruddy nose and gift for gab. A pink carnation adorned his lapel.

  “Doing good, Deak, thanks. Which way’d he—?” A soft hand fell on Gavallan’s shoulder and he spun to see to whom it belonged. “Hello, Tony.”

  “Jett. You’re back. Thank God, you’re all right.”

  “You weren’t expecting
me?”

  “Frankly, none of us were,” said Tony Llewellyn-Davies. “Not a word from you since Friday. The FBI saying you’re a murderer. We didn’t know where you’d gone or what you’d been up to.”

  He was dressed nattily in a double-breasted blue blazer with his requisite gray flannel slacks and club-striped tie. His cheeks were flushed, his blue eyes excited.

  “I find that a little hard to believe,” said Gavallan. “You if anybody should have been able to tell them. After all, if you’re such good friends with Konstantin Kirov you ought to have known.”

  Llewellyn-Davies bit back his surprise, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly. “We’re hardly ‘friends.’ I’m sure I hardly know him any better than you do.”

  “Cut the crap, Tony. I’ve spoken to Graf. He told me about the call . . . the one you conveniently forgot to relay to me. You knew firsthand Mercury was rotten a week ago. Actually, I guess you knew it a long time before that. Anyway, it stops here. We’re pulling the plug on the deal. It’s over. I just want to have a quick word with Kirov before I let everyone else know.”

  “Jett, no . . . you’re mistaken. You’re talking nonsense. Really, you are.”

  “How could you? We built something. We did it together. Seven years, Tony. Christ, you’re on the board as it is. What was it? More money? A spot at the top? What he offer you?”

  Looking at his associate, Gavallan felt betrayed, ashamed, and naive. Part of him still thought it couldn’t be. Not Tony, of all people.

  “I don’t know. Respect. A chance.” Llewellyn-Davies sobbed, a single pathetic cry, and lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Jett. Give me a minute to explain. Not here—come into the booth. It’s already embarrassing enough as it is.” He tried to smile, and a tear ran down his cheek. “The floor doesn’t need to see a pooftah having a good cry.”