The First Billion Read online

  “You sure you don’t know this guy?” asked Byrnes. “This stuff sounds almost personal. He had as much fun knocking you as he did Mercury.”

  “No one knows him,” Gavallan replied testily. “That’s his gig. He keeps a bag on his head while he goes around savaging companies. Mercury’s not the first company he’s skewered.”

  “I suggest we find him on the double and shut him up.”

  “I know a guy we can call. Does some work for the government. I’ll get on it right away.” Sighing, Gavallan turned away from the monitor, massaging the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Every time I read it I feel like I’ve been socked in the gut. This is not what we need right now.”

  “No, it’s not,” Byrnes agreed, “but it’s what we got, so we deal with it and move on.” His eyes narrowed with concern over a different matter. “You okay, kid? You look a little tired.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just this on top of all the other crap lately . . .” The words trailed off.

  “If it’s Manzini who’s bothering you, forget it. You had to let his team go. They knew the rules. Around here you eat what you kill. We’re not a bulge bracket firm that can rely on our granddaddy’s clients to throw us some scraps. GM’s not knocking down our door wondering if we might underwrite some debt for them. IBM isn’t about to ask us to do a secondary offering. We have to go out and get it.”

  “Yeah,” said Gavallan. “We make money the old-fashioned way—we earn it.”

  “Damn right,” said Byrnes emphatically. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. They were lucky you kept them on as long as you did. Half those guys were earning a base of three hundred. Look, the Internet vertical was dying. They didn’t produce, they got canned. End of story. We’re not running a charity here.”

  A “vertical” was banking jargon for a particular industry segment. The tech sector was divided into E-commerce, web infrastructure, optical equipment, software, and so on. Each vertical was assigned a team of bankers to service businesses operating in that sector. The team consisted of an equity analyst, a few capital markets specialists, the investment bankers who actually drummed up the business, and two or three associates to do the grunt work.

  “I’m well aware of that,” said Gavallan. “Next time it can be your turn to fire the guy you’ve been going to Warrior games with for five years. Carroll Manzini’s a friend.”

  But he could see from Byrnes’s skeptical expression that he wasn’t buying. Byrnes had a more unyielding attitude toward business. You performed or you got cut. That simple. He’d governed by the same draconian principles when Gavallan had served under him at Stealth training in Tonopah, Nevada, the two-thousand-square-mile cut of yucca and scrub known to conspiracy buffs as Area 51. The funny thing was that back then Gavallan had been happy to live by those rules. He was as confident of his own skills as he was disdainful of the saps who didn’t make the grade.

  Strangely, as chief executive of Black Jet Securities, he was unable to demand of his employees the uncompromising standards he asked of himself. He regretted the most recent firing of twenty-six of his executives and couldn’t help but feel in some way responsible for their inability to generate income for the firm. So what if financing activity in the Internet sector had dried up as quickly as a summer squall? That not a single IPO had been done for an Internet play in months? Or that every other bank on the street had slashed their staffs long before?

  Frustrated, Gavallan looked around his office. It was large but modest, with tan carpeting, textured ecru wallpaper, and comfortable furniture arranged to promote informal discussions with clients. A floor-to-ceiling window ran the length of the room and gave the office a stagelike feel. The plummeting vista was nothing short of spectacular, and nearing the window more than one client had professed an incipient acrophobia. A second glass wall ran along the interior corridor. When Gavallan was alone at his desk, he made every effort to keep the blinds open, as well as the door. He detested the trappings of authority and wanted everyone at Black Jet to know he was available at all times.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “I’m just lousy at that kind of thing. It’s easier to hire a man than to kick him out on his tail.”

  “Oh, but if the world were a fair place,” said Byrnes, bowing an imaginary violin.

  “Get out of here,” said Gavallan. “Come on, cut it out. You look really stupid doing that.”

  He knew his ideas about an employer’s duty were old-fashioned, but he stuck with them nonetheless. His father had worked on the cutting line at Martinez Meats in Harlingen, Texas, for forty years. Forty years hacking the hindquarter off a flayed steer’s carcass, eight hours a day, five days a week, in a fluorescent-lit factory that breathed blood and sweated ambition, where temperatures routinely soared to a hundred degrees during the six-month summer. The Martinez family might not splurge on luxuries like air-conditioning and they certainly didn’t pay much. (Gus Gavallan’s weekly salary of $338 came tucked in a wax-paper envelope delivered Monday mornings at nine o’clock sharp, so that the younger men wouldn’t drink their paycheck over the weekend.) But neither did they fire their staff. In those forty years, Martinez Meats never let go a single man or woman except for absence, tardiness, or public inebriation, and his father’s devotion to the Martinez family was nearly religious.

  Black Jet had barely been in business nine years and Gavallan had already fired, let go, laid off, made redundant—however you wanted to put it—over a hundred men and women, including the latest casualties, Carroll Manzini’s tech-team of banking superstars, twenty-six strong. The thought pained him. He wanted to believe that the bond between a man and his employer went beyond business to family. It was a social contract that exchanged loyalty and service for welfare and security. Maybe he was foolish. Maybe at seventeen thousand dollars a year you had a right to that kind of paternalistic relationship. At half a million bucks plus bonus you were on your own.

  Byrnes laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Toughen up, kid,” he said. “Look at you. Your chin’s falling into your neck, your ass is dragging, and God knows you need a haircut. And that whining . . . Christ, you sound like a dooly crying during Hell Week. The Gavallan I knew was a rock. You didn’t say a goddamn word that day up at Alamogordo. Not before, during, or after. A fuckin’ rock, man.”

  “Easy to be a rock when you’re border trash that doesn’t know any better,” retorted Gavallan, but already he was smiling, feeling a little better. He was remembering the day in Alamogordo. August 2, 1986. Lead-in-Fighter Training.

  The weather had been perfect, hot and mostly clear, with only a few thunderheads to keep away from. The two of them were up in a T-38 jet trainer, Byrnes already a combat-tested pilot, the instructor, and Gavallan his student. After an hour of practicing basic fighter maneuvers, the two were heading in for landing, making plans to rendezvous at the O-club for a few beers and a steak after debrief. Then—Bam!—without warning, the jet’s turbine engine had exploded, severing the hydraulic main, ripping off a chunk of the tail, and sending the plane into wild, uncontrollable gyrations at four hundred knots. One second they were flying level, the next they were pitching wildly, rolling and yawing, the burnt scrub of New Mexico changing places with the powder blue sky with sickening frequency.

  Standing in his office, Gavallan jolted. Sixteen years after the fact, he could hear the whine of the disintegrating engine, the whoosh of the violated air as it battered the jet. Mostly, he recalled the adrenaline rush, the iron fingers grasping his heart and crushing it mercilessly.

  “Everything’s copacetic,” had come Byrnes’s voice, calm as a Sunday morning. “Just let me take care of this fire and we’ll be jim-dandy to land.” And in the same unbothered delivery, he’d begun ticking off the measures to regain control of the plane—depress rudder, bring up left aileron, release the stick to let the nose find its way down.

  But strapped into the front seat, Gavallan knew damn well everything
was not copacetic. His eyes were glued to the altimeter, watching it tick down from four thousand feet at a hundred feet a second. He could feel the G forces increasing, driving him deeper into his seat, nailing his arms to his side. As he counted the seconds until they augered in, his hands automatically reached for the side of his seat, searching for the ejection handles. But when he found them, he immediately let them go. It was an act of betrayal. Of disbelief. No, it was worse. It was a pilot’s cardinal sin: the acknowledgment of his own fallibility.

  The altimeter spun merrily counterclockwise, passing eight hundred feet, seven hundred, six. . . . The plane came out of its death spiral, the nose pointed straight down toward the arid landscape. Gripped with a quiet terror, he waited for the nose to rise. A series of prayers stumbled from his lips. When that failed him, he swore silently. Come on, you son of a bitch. Come up. Just a little, you mutha, just a little!

  Slowly, the plane righted itself. The nose inched up, the wings leveled to the horizon. And as the ground zipped beneath their wings close enough to slap a longhorn’s rump, Byrnes chuckled, as if the whole escapade had been engineered for Gavallan’s amusement.

  “What’d I tell you, rookie?” he asked.

  After landing, the two accomplished their postflight inspection of the debilitated aircraft. A four-by-four-foot section of crumpled metal dangled from the tail, secured by an aluminum thread no wider around than a pencil. Viewing the damage, neither Byrnes nor Gavallan commented. They simply exchanged glances and shrugged their shoulders. That night, “everything’s copacetic” entered lore, meaning, of course, just the opposite—that nothing could be more screwed up.

  “Okay, okay. I get the message,” said Gavallan, walking to his chair and sitting down. “Slap me around a little if I start feeling sorry for myself again.”

  “Yes sir. You’re the boss.”

  Gavallan eyed Byrnes suspiciously. Sometimes he wasn’t so sure. “Look, the pictures of Mercury’s network operations center are fakes. I know that company inside and out. The only question is what we’re going to do about it.”

  “You’ve talked to Kirov?”

  “He called me a few minutes ago. He was livid. Said the comments were nonsense. A ploy to drive down the offering price. He hinted it might be political. He wasn’t sure, yet.”

  “Political? Come off it. If there’s one thing I can tell you about the Private Eye-PO, it’s that he’s as American as apple pie. Still glad you crawled into bed with the enemy?”

  “Kirov’s hardly the enemy. We checked him out backwards and forwards. Even Kroll gave him a clean bill of health. No ties to the mafiya, no indentures to the government, no evidence of corruption or criminal activity. Konstantin Kirov’s the first—”

  “Stop right there,” blurted Byrnes. “I know what you’re going to say. He’s ‘the first truly Western businessman.’ The Financial Times said that, right? ‘The patron saint of the second Russian perestroika.’ Remember, Jett, I read the prospectus, too.”

  Gavallan shook his head. Byrnes would always be an unrepentant cold warrior. “You know, Graf, you missed your calling. You should start up a new chapter of America Firsters. Bring isolationism back into vogue.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Byrnes, lifting his hands palm up. “He’s a wild card, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Well, he’s our wild card, so you better get used to him. If the Mercury IPO goes well, we’ll be doing business with Kirov for a decade. We’re already talking a secondary offering in a year, and he’s asked us to scout some acquisition targets for him. Mercury’s a gusher waiting to be tapped, and we’re darned lucky they chose us to do the drilling. He asked me if I wanted him to send over his jet to bring me to Moscow. He wants to personally show me the premises. He’s worried about how the market’s taking it.”

  “And how is the market taking it?” asked Byrnes. “What’s the word from Bruce?”

  “Too soon to tell, but this kind of thing is never good. We’ll need to engage in some proactive damage control.”

  “So you believe Mr. Kirov?”

  “A hundred percent.”

  “All right then. Let’s look at this closer.”

  Digging his hands into his pockets, Grafton Byrnes began a slow circuit of the room. “This is an accusation of material fraud. The Private Eye-PO isn’t just saying that Mercury isn’t up to snuff, he’s implying we knew all about it, too, and kept our mouths shut. If those photos are genuine, there’s no way Mercury can be doing the business it claims. Two hundred thousand clients in Moscow? Hell, they couldn’t service twenty with that stuff. These accusations are tantamount to saying the company’s entire P&L is a bunch of garbage. We’ve got to imagine that most of our customers will either read this or get wind of it and come to the same conclusions themselves. In a few hours, every one of Bruce Jay Tustin’s salesmen will be fielding calls asking for us to comment on the Private Eye-PO’s claims. Whether we believe Kirov or not, we’ve got to check on Mercury.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And not under his personal auspices, I’m afraid. Tell him you’ll pass on the jet. I’ll give Silber, Goldi, and Grimm a call instead.” Byrnes was talking about the Swiss accounting firm that had performed the due diligence on the deal. “They’re in Geneva; it’s only a two-hour flight for them. They can have this sorted out by the end of business tomorrow.”

  “No go,” responded Gavallan. “I don’t want to bring an outside firm into this. It’s too late for that. We can’t have anyone thinking we have even the slightest doubts about Mercury, not this far into the quiet period. One of us has to go. Like you said, our head is on the chopping block as much as Mercury’s.”

  “One of us?” Byrnes did not look pleased.

  “I’d go if I could, you know that. I’ve got the dinner on Wednesday.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Since when did hospitals start honoring border trash as ‘Man of the Year’? I’ll miss heckling you. I had a few choice tomatoes saved for the occasion.” Byrnes collapsed onto the sofa, resting his chin on folded hands. “And how will your friend Kirov feel about this? He’s bound to find out.”

  “He won’t like it, but he’ll understand,” explained Gavallan. “He knows what’s involved to get a listing on the Big Board. In the end, he’ll thank us for it.”

  “I hope so. I don’t relish getting a guided tour of the Lubyanka.”

  Rolling his eyes, Gavallan opened the drawer and took out a plane ticket. He’d known all along the actions required of the firm. He’d just wanted Byrnes’s opinion on the matter. “Flight goes at one,” he said, waving the slim jacket. “Consulate opens at eight. You’ll need a visa. If you hurry, you might even have time to get home and pack.”

  Byrnes picked up the ticket off the desk, opening the sleeve and reading over the flight details. “You’re a crafty prick, you know that?”

  “What do you expect? I learned from the best.”

  Recalling the moment forty-eight hours earlier, Gavallan caught his reflection in the glass. He was surprised at the man staring back. He looked tired and worn, older than his years. The weight of office, he told himself. The price for making a fortune before the age of forty. And the price for losing it? he wondered. What’s that? Do you get some of your youth back? Learn how to take a few days off? Regain the affections of the woman you love?

  Gavallan put a stranglehold on his thoughts. Self-pity was a loser’s luxury. He heard Byrnes telling him to “toughen up” and felt the wise eyes boring into him.

  Graf, where the hell are you? Give me a call and tell me everything’s all right.

  A minute passed as Gavallan considered taking a dozen actions: canvassing the larger hotels in the Russian capital, contacting the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, even calling the Moscow Police directly. All were premature. If Byrnes had checked out of the Baltschug, he had a good reason. It was silly to worry. He’d give his best friend until noon to call or check in, then reassess the situation.

  A firm hand rapped on h
is door. “Morning meeting’s about to start, boss.”

  “Yeah,” said Gavallan, without turning. “Be right there.”

  Returning to his desk, he made a quick check of his agenda. As always, his schedule was packed to bursting. Quarterly earnings review at ten. A powwow to go over acquisition candidates for a new client at eleven. Roundtable with the executive board to discuss new business opportunities at two. And, of course, the black-tie dinner that evening for which he had yet to write a speech.

  But even as he catalogued his day’s appointments, his thoughts vaulted six thousand miles to the onion domes and cobblestoned streets of a city he’d known forever, but never visited. Moscow.

  Graf, he shouted silently. Talk to me!

  4

  Grafton Byrnes was still trying to figure out when exactly they had left the city and entered the country. It seemed like only five minutes ago they’d been barreling down the road to Sheremetyevo Airport, the driver busily pointing out Dynamo Stadium, home to Moscow’s soccer team, the Ministry of the Interior building built by Stalin, the new Seventh Continent supermarket. Then they’d made a left turn past a car dealership, traveled a ways through a birch forest, and—bang!—they were in the Russian countryside. Eight lanes had dwindled to four, and then two, and now they were bouncing down a dirt road smack in the middle of a potato patch that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.

  Byrnes took out the paper on which he’d written the address of Mercury Broadband’s network operations center. “Rudenev Ulitsa?” he asked skeptically, gesturing at the road beneath them.