The First Billion (23 page)

Tatiana nodded her head. Somewhere back up the road, her tourist’s fascination had faded, replaced by a professional’s icy detachment. She did not wish to speak. The pistol tucked into her pants, she simply nodded.

“I will be in the alley in back of the building,” Boris continued. “Once you enter, you have one hundred twenty seconds. Eight men downstairs. Two upstairs—the managers. Shoot, then move. Shoot, then move. Do you understand?”

Again, Tatiana nodded. Shifting in her seat, she adjusted the bandages that flattened her breasts, then pulled the baseball cap lower on her head. Boris took her hand and kissed it. “Go now.”

Tatiana opened the door without a backward glance.

Eight downstairs. Two upstairs. Shoot, then move. Shoot, then move.

One hundred twenty seconds.

Go.

27

Yesterday was the zone. Today was multitasking.

Ray Luca backhanded a glob of ketchup from his mouth and planted his double chili cheeseburger on the only available sliver of free desk. Chewing contentedly, he flicked his eyes from monitor to monitor and screen to screen, from the market being made for Intel to the closed-circuit feed of Thoroughbreds taking their morning run at Hialeah, to the “Money Honey” on CNBC reporting live from the floor of the Exchange and back again. At the same time, he sipped at his coffee, tapped out a series of buy orders, and managed to hum a little ditty.

Let the good times roll. Yeah baby, let the good times roll.

The market was up strongly. The sky was as blue as a Tiffany gift box, and on his lap was a completed copy of the Private Eye-PO’s latest editorial concerning the Mercury Broadband offering. He particularly liked the title. “Mercury in Mayhem.”

Another bite of the double chili cheese, a gulp of coffee, then a moment’s glance to reread and edit.

Private sources report an explosive confrontation Thursday afternoon outside Mercury Broadband’s Moscow offices on Kropotkin Ploshad between OMON militia troops led by Russian prosecutor general Yuri Baranov and members of the FIS (read KGB) loyal to Konstantin Kirov. Armed with a search warrant, Baranov had hoped to seize financial records incriminating Kirov in the theft of $125 million from the coffers of Novastar Airlines. Kirov, law-abiding citizen that he is, denied the OMON troops entry, preferring to let his legion of house-trained espiocrats do his talking for him. No doubt he’ll call Baranov’s visit just another case of political harassment motivated by his advocacy of free speech and a free press.

The question Luca had yet to answer was what members of the state security apparatus were doing at Kirov’s offices and why they had stood to his defense. It was akin to the CIA’s defending Ted Turner on American soil.

Whatever Kirov may say,
the Private Eye-PO continued,
there can be little doubt, dear hearts, that not only he, but Mercury Broadband as well, is skating on very thin ice. Do tell . . . if he didn’t steal the $125 million, who did? Maybe we should ask Jett Gavallan for the answer? After all, if he’s Kirov’s banker, who better to point us to the missing loot?

Stay tuned, campers, for more news from the Russian Kleptocracy.

Luca put down the pages, pleased but tired. It had all started just after eleven last night, when Jack Andrew, a correspondent for the
Financial Times
in Moscow, had called him in a furor to demand how he had known beforehand about the raid on Kirov’s offices. Luca dodged the question, instead pounding Andrew for every detail imaginable about the encounter. Afterward, like any solid journalist, he double-checked his source. He phoned his contacts at the
Post,
the
Wall Street Journal,
and the
Moscow Times.
All of them said they’d heard whispers about the raid, but as yet could get neither Kirov nor the prosecutor general to confirm or deny.

Adding a few comments here and there, Luca folded up the article and put it back into his briefcase. He’d meant to get it onto his server and uploaded to his web page this morning, but he’d overslept, and his cardinal rule was never to miss an opening. Good thing, too. The market was riding an updraft the likes of which he hadn’t seen in a year. Fifteen minutes after the opening the Nasdaq was up 80 points and the Dow up 100.

In a parallel universe, Mazursky and his crew were yelling loud enough to rouse the Miracle Mets. Let ’em, thought Luca. With the news about Kirov, he’d be out of there inside a month. The newsletter would do better than he’d ever imagined. Forget three thousand subscribers. Why not four thousand? Five thousand? Ten, even? Luca would buy a little house and a Boston Whaler he’d had his eye on. He’d arrange a weeklong trip to Disney World for the girls. Maybe, just maybe, he could convince his wife to come back to him.

Enraptured by this rosy vision of the future, he found it difficult to breathe. It could happen, he told himself. It really could. The family back together again. Ray and his four girls. It was all he had ever really wanted.

Minutes passed and the market continued higher, headed straight for the stratosphere. Volume. Tick. S&P futures. All were rocketing up, up, up. One after another he put on a buy, not bothering even to take profits on his earlier positions. At ten o’clock, the Nasdaq was up 150 and the Dow the same. A quick tally showed him ahead twenty-five grand.

Once in a while Luca looked down at the briefcase. Part of him said to close his positions, take his profits, and get home to post his newest article—the sooner the better. But Luca ignored the voice. He wasn’t leaving today. Today he was a trader. He could be the Private Eye-PO tomorrow, and for the rest of his life.

Hello, Ray.”

Luca jolted in his chair as if he’d seen a ghost. “Jett Gavallan. What a surprise. What brings you round these parts?”

“I’m sure you can guess. You’ve been doing some good work—or should I say your sources have. Looks like I was wrong about Mercury.”

Luca eyed him warily. “You’re going to cancel the deal?”

“Postpone it. The company isn’t all bad. Maybe it isn’t everything we billed it to be, but there’s some decent stuff there. It’s Kirov I’m worried about.”

“So you heard?” Luca’s eyes flashed triumphantly.

“Heard what?”

“Yesterday there was a . . .” Luca sat back, rubbing at his chin as a mean-spirited grin darkened his features. “Sorry, Jett, you’ll have to wait and see.”

Gavallan lowered himself onto his haunches so he could look Luca in the eye. “Ray, this isn’t about Synertel. I’m sorry about what happened. It was a lousy turn of events. I can imagine it was a letdown.”

“A ‘letdown,’ was it? Is that what you call losing a billion dollars? Having your wife throw you out on the street? Watching your children shy away from you because they’re too embarrassed to give you a hug? A ‘letdown’?”

“Like I said, I’m sorry it turned out that way. It was a tough break.”

“What the hell do you know about ‘tough’? You, sitting up there in your luxury penthouse, driving your snazzy car? You bankers are all bloodsuckers. Best friends when times are good, out of there like lightning when things get rough. Payback, Gavallan. This one’s on me.”

“I did what I had to do. You would have done the same thing if you were in my place. Look at me, Ray. You know it’s true. Now, listen, I need your help. I have to know where you got your information about Mercury. I’m trying to work back up the chain, figure out who pulled the wool over our eyes.”

Luca laughed, a little wildly. “You’re not serious? You don’t just expect me to tell you.” Shifting his gaze away from Gavallan, he spent a moment tapping an order into his computer. “Tell me, what do I-bankers earn these days? An hourly rate will be fine.”

“This is a lot more important than what I earn.”

“Two hundred an hour?” Luca cut in. “Or am I out of date? Three hundred? Four?”

“It’s not just about Mercury and Black Jet. You’re in this too, Ray . . . or the Private Eye-PO is. We need to talk. You could be in a lot of danger.”

“Danger? Ooh, I’m shivering. Can’t you see me shaking in my boots?” He tried on another smile, but Gavallan’s grim expression stole his mirth. “What kind of danger?” he asked after a moment.

“I’m not sure exactly. But if I can find you, so can Konstantin Kirov. After all the crap you’ve been spreading on the Net about his company, I don’t think he’ll be in a charitable mood.”

Something in Gavallan’s tone reached Luca. The angry cast to his eye softened and the tension left his shoulders. “Okay, okay,” muttered Luca. “But I can’t leave now. Take a look at the market. I got to make some money.”

“Take a break.”

“Got too many open positions. Tell you what, though. I’ll stop at noon for fifteen minutes. Believe me, that’s all we’ll need. Meet me next door at Alberto’s. We’ll have a cup of coffee.”

“Deal,” said Gavallan, rising to go, happy to get out of the rancid confines. “See you at twelve. Alberto’s, right?”

Luca nodded. “And, Jett? Order yourself a drink beforehand. Something strong. You’re going to need it.”

Leaving the building, Gavallan turned left and headed down the sidewalk to his car. He didn’t see the slender young man in the baseball cap enter the building less than a minute after he left.

28

Luca hardly heard the first shot.

A door slamming, he thought, keeping his eyes on the screens, but then came the moaning, the fevered imprecations not to shoot, followed by another bang. This time the noise was unmistakable. Achingly loud. Frightening. His ears rang, and then he caught a whiff of smoke and his nose began to burn. Cordite, he thought. Yet for all the sensory data, it came to him slowly. A gun. A very, very big gun.

At first, he thought it had to be Mazursky, some kind of joke he was playing, but a glance down the aisle told him he was wrong on that score. The Wizard of Warsaw lay twenty feet away, his jaw opening and closing like that of a fish out of water, eyes wide open, a pitch-black crater on his forehead starting to leak blood.

And for a split second, Luca thought, Jesus, it took a bullet to shut that loudmouth up.

But by then Krumins was yelling and running toward the front door. Halfway there he seemed to leap out of his shoes and slam against the wall, and when he slid to the ground there was a wide, bloody red swath tracing his path.

Gregorio stood up in his cubicle, and his blond head seemed all at once to vaporize in a cloud of red mist. Nevins crawled past Luca down the aisle. The gun roared, and he went flat and stopped moving, without even a grunt.

“Ray?”

Four feet away stood the shooter. The voice gave her away as a woman and foreign, though it was hard to tell by how she was dressed.

“Ray Luca?” she asked again.

“Yes?” he said, frozen, confused, very, very scared. Kirov, he thought. Kirov sent you. “What do you want?”

But she didn’t answer. Striking with the speed of a cobra, she wrapped an arm around his neck, brought him to her chest, and laid the pistol against his temple. Paralyzed, he tried to scream, but the words lodged in his throat.

No, no, it can’t be. We’re going to Disney World. My wife and daughters, we’re going to—

29

Along Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach, traffic slowed to a crawl. Jett Gavallan braked, trying to see ahead and determine what might have caused a traffic jam at eleven-fifteen in the morning. He caught a slew of flashing lights, bright metal, and the rush of uniformed men and women to and fro. A pair of police cruisers, strobes spinning, barred the street a block ahead. An auto accident, he surmised. And a bad one at that.

“Tony, Bruce, I want you both to listen to me,” Gavallan was saying into his cell phone. “No more calls to farm out the bridge loan. It’s time we show some confidence in the client. If Lehman wants out, fine. Ditto for Merrill. We’ll keep all fifty on our books. End of story. I don’t want the market to see us sweat.”

“It’s not a question of seeing us sweat,” replied Llewellyn-Davies. “Just simple financial prudence. If I can unload twenty million of our exposure to Kirov, I’m damned well going to.”

“No, you’re damn well not,” barked Gavallan right back.

“He’s right, Jett,” chimed in Tustin. “Deal goes south, you’ll be thanking us, kid.”

“And when it goes through you going to fund me the eight hundred grand we passed up?”

“Youfugginkidddinme?”
bawled Tustin. “I’m just an employee, bwana.”

“Reconsider, Jett,” said Llewellyn-Davies. “That’s a right decent chunk of risk you’re willing to shoulder for eight hundred thousand dollars.”

Gavallan shook his head at their tenacity. Not now, fellas; this is not the time. It was imperative everything continue as before, that he not give the slightest hint he was going to scupper the deal before it hit the street, or that he had an inkling that Grafton Byrnes was in a world of trouble.

“The decision has been made,” he declared. “No more calls.”

He hung up.

It was a picture-postcard day, lacy clouds scudding across a pale blue sky, trade winds blowing up from the Caribbean, tangy with sea salt and suntan oil. Close your eyes and you might hear some marimbas and steel drums, catch a scent of jerk pork roasting on the spit. A day to relax, he decided. Play a little golf, take the boat out for a sail, drink a six-pack on the back stoop. A cynical voice laughed at his middle-class musings. In nine years, he’d never taken a day off except when sick. His longest vacation had lasted all of four days, cut short by the minicrash of ‘98 and the demise of Long Term Capital.

“When you work, work. When you play, play,” Graf Byrnes was fond of saying. “But goddamn it, don’t think the world is going to stop if you don’t show up for work one day. The graveyard is filled with indispensable managers.”

Gavallan took the words to heart, deciding that when this thing was over, when he had Graf Byrnes safe and sound back in his office in San Francisco, he’d do some serious playing. A month in Maui. The safari in Kenya he’d promised himself. Maybe he’d charter a yacht, do a little island-hopping near the Bahamas.

“Alone?”
a cynical voice asked, and the glow of his dream vacation lost its luster.

“Come on, come on. I’m in a hurry here.”

Rapping his palm against the steering wheel, Gavallan urged the column of cars to advance. Yard by yard, the cars edged forward, past the color-coordinated strip malls painted the same gay shade of coral, the casual cafes, the brokerage offices, and the cruise ships offering two-day jaunts to the Bahamas for $99. Delray Beach had the look of a theme park for seniors, with cappuccino and conch fritters replacing cotton candy and corn dogs.

The car in front of him turned onto a side street, offering Gavallan full view of the street ahead. Four patrol cars sat behind the cruisers blocking the road. Parked at odd angles to one another, they looked as if they’d hit a patch of ice and spun to a stop. Two had their noses half to the curb, a third his rear tires on the sidewalk. The last was frozen in the center of his lane, a track of spent rubber thirty feet long attesting to the urgency of his arrival. He sniffed the air. Burnt rubber mixed uneasily with the bloom of summer gardenias and the scent of freshly cut grass.

In the blink of an eye, his curiosity turned to apprehension.

Sliding a knee onto the seat, he lifted himself up and peered over the convertible’s windshield. Emergency vehicles jammed the street: three ambulances, rear doors flung open, gurneys absent; a fire truck; a trio of identical navy Crown Vics that screamed federal law enforcement; and bringing up the rear, a TV van, horn blaring, advancing foot by foot. For all the activity, Gavallan had no way of figuring out what exactly had happened. He knew only one thing: This was no auto accident.

A swarm of uniformed men and women buzzed back and forth across the street, running into and out of a building in the center of the block. Two cops carrying spools of yellow and black tape began to walk toward the building, and the words “crime scene” flashed through his head. A gurney emerged from the building and rattled along the sidewalk, shepherded toward an ambulance by three determined paramedics. Their sober pace didn’t give Gavallan much hope for the patient. Neither did the woman following them, a middle-aged peroxide blond, hands to her face, sobbing. Another gurney rolled out, this one in a hurry. Above the din, he heard a voice. Strident. Losing its calm. “Move it. We got one alive. I need four units of . . .”

The words were drowned out by a chopper flying in low overhead, a Bell Ranger hovering a hundred feet in the air. Police? No. More TV.

It was then he recognized the building: the mint green plantation shutters, the barrel tile roof, the Mediterranean arches. Cornerstone Trading.

“All right, sir, let’s get a move on,” said a tan young traffic cop, patting a hand on the hood of Gavallan’s rental car. “Nothing here for you to see. Detour to your right and be on your way.”

“Any idea what happened, officer?” Beneath the tourist’s smile, Gavallan was aware of his breath coming fast and shallow. He had to fight not to wipe the sweat from his lip.

“Nothing to concern you,” answered the policeman. “Just move along. I’m sure you’ll be able to read about it tomorrow.”

“Looks bad,” Gavallan persisted. “Anyone hurt?”

“Move along, buddy. Now!”

Giving a curt wave, Gavallan activated his turn signal and drove the Mustang rental up the block. After finding a place to park two blocks up, Gavallan ran back to the crime scene. By now a sizable crowd had gathered. He threaded his way through the onlookers, stopping on the sidewalk opposite the entry to Cornerstone Trading. He’d hardly had time to gather his breath before a young man standing next to him began to fill him in.

“Guy just lost it, man. Went in and capped his crew, then did himself. Got every one of them. Ten dudes, all dead.” He was a handsome Hispanic kid, maybe fifteen, with spiked hair dyed henna, a golden nose stud, and cargo pants cut to the knee. “I heard it, man,” he went on. “I work at the Orange Julius next store. It was like this, check it out:
bang, bang, bang, bang.
Shit was loud, and quick, like maybe two seconds between shots.”

“You think you ought to tell that to the police?” asked Gavallan.

“The police? Heck, no. I don’t need that hassle.” Suddenly, the kid jumped back a step, his brown eyes skittish. “You ain’t the man, are you?”

“No,” said Gavallan. “I ain’t the man.” He beckoned the boy closer. “You said, ‘The guy just lost it.’ You know who did it?”

“Nah, man, no one knows. But I know one of the dudes was in there. My man, Ray. ‘Fact I made him a burger this morning—his favorite, a double chili cheese with jalapeños. Calls it his ‘victory burger.’ Dude came in real happy, see, smiling even, and that’s something. My man Ray is one serious dude.”

A victory burger, Gavallan said to himself, remembering Luca’s cocky grin, the mention of having some dirt on Kirov.

“When did it happen?” asked Gavallan.

“When did what happen?”

All at once, Gavallan’s patience left him, evaporated under the tropical heat, worn away by the endless string of setbacks, one more trading loss in Black Jet’s column, who knew? Grabbing the Hispanic youngster by the arm, he shook him once, hard enough to frighten him. “The shooting,” said Gavallan. “The murder. Whatever went on inside of that building.”

“Yo, man, chill,” the kid said, eyes bugging. “Like an hour ago.” He flicked a wrist to check his watch. “Ten, ten-fifteen. Ten-twenty. Round there. We cool now?”

“Yeah, we’re cool.” Gavallan patted the kid’s arm and moved off toward his car. A glance behind told him he’d already been forgotten. The Latino was busy offering his story to the next bystander who’d happened along.

Gavallan wiped the sweat from his forehead.

This was not how the day was supposed to have gone.

The bodies lay where they had fallen. Some sat slumped at their computers, too surprised, too frightened, to have reacted. Others had run, though none had made it more than a few feet from his or her desk. The mess was terrible and overwhelming, gore spackled onto the walls and cubicles in chaotic, Technicolor blotches. Ponds of blood stained the carpet, clotted now, hard as ice. Black Ice.

Dumdums,
thought Howell Dodson as he walked slowly down the center aisle of the trading room at Cornerstone Trading. Bullets modified to flatten on impact. Small hole going in; big hole coming out. He passed a victim, his face missing below the hairline, a gaping mask of blood, bone, and gristle.

Despite himself, he gasped. He’d seen men killed, women too. He’d witnessed death many times over in all its inglorious pageantry. He’d sat at a wooden table, arms and legs bound, and watched as the pinky and ring finger of his left hand were severed with a carpet layer’s dulled blade. The smell of blood and the scent of fear were familiar companions.

But this was different, he thought, stepping carefully over another corpse. These were the innocent, the unknowing, the unsuspecting. Death didn’t belong in these stained, shabby, ordinary corridors.

“Ten bullets, ten bodies,” explained Lieutenant Luis Amoro of the Delray Beach Police Department, a beefy Cubano of fifty who looked about two sizes too big for his khaki rayon uniform. “Guy started at the entrance, went seat by seat taking out each of his buddies, then ran upstairs, got the managers. We figure he came back down afterward, looked around, made sure no one was still alive, everything wrapped up nice and neat, then did himself.”

“Some shooting.” It was the only thing Dodson’s normally glib tongue could manage. For all his time on the job, for all the wanton and terrible things he’d seen and experienced, he was having a tough go with this one. The question “Why?” kept jabbing away at his mind, and he had no answer.

Since entering the building, he’d been overwhelmed by a desperate and irrational fear for his sons’ welfare. Though the infants were over a thousand miles away in McLean, Virginia, safe in their Talbots sweaters and Eddie Bauer strollers, he wanted nothing more than to hold them in his arms and guarantee their safety. “Christ our savior,” he whispered.

Leading the way to the end of the aisle, Amoro knelt beside one of the bodies and pointed to a neat round hole inside the man’s hairline by the temple. “We figure he’s the doer. Everyone else got theirs from a foot or more, usually in the back of the head.”

Dodson eyed the inert form. “Mr. Luca leave any note? Any message for his loved ones?”

“Not a word. Looks like he came in, worked for a little while. Around ten, something must have gotten him pissed. He got up, took out his haymaker, and went about his business.” Amoro did a double take. “Hey, how’d you know his name?”

Dodson ignored the question. His eyes were glued to the banks of monitors, the blinking screens of blue and yellow and green. “Wouldn’t figure a man to be so upset on such a good day,” he said, pointing at the ticker for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. “Market’s up three hundred points. I’d say that’s cause for celebration. Guess there’s just no pleasing some people.”

A large, dull gray pistol lay near Luca’s outstretched hand.

“A Glock,” said Amoro, kneeling down, pointing at the weapon with a pencil. He spoke with a docent’s tone, as if the men were touring a museum, not a charnel house. “Serial numbers are filed off, but if you use an acetate wash you can usually bring them back up.”

Dodson stooped to get a better look at the weapon. “Where do you suppose Mr. Luca got himself a toy like that?”

“I imagine the same place he got his bullets. We took one out of the wall. He wasn’t messing around. These things can penetrate a Kevlar vest. Cop killers, we call ’em. Not a good policy to be on the receiving end of one of these.”

Dodson nodded amiably. “I’ll take that under advisement, Lieutenant Amoro. Thank you.”

“Our boys are checking for prints. We’ll do a residue analysis on Luca’s hands once we get him to the morgue, just to tie everything up.”

“Good idea. Never can be too thorough.” Dodson’s eyes flitted across the crime scene. While murder was a matter handled by local or state police, the day trading angle and the use of the Internet raised questions of interstate commerce and securities fraud, both crimes squarely in the federal purview. Amoro might know a thing or two about dragging up filed-off serial numbers, but he was far too lax in securing a crime scene.

Laying a hand on the officer’s shoulder, Dodson guided him to a quiet corner. “It may interest you to know that Mr. Luca here was the subject of a Daisy tap and a participant in an international investigation involving the Russian
mafiya
. I’m afraid that I’ll have to declare this crime scene under federal jurisdiction. I’d like you and your men’s fullest cooperation.”

Amoro answered with surprising civility. “You want it, it’s yours. Worst crime we’ve had this year is grand theft auto and a rape up on the county line. Between you and me, it’s why I transferred out of Miami. It’s nice to be able to say that murder’s beyond your reach.” He added skeptically, “The Russian mafia in Delray Beach? Come on.”

“World’s a small place,” said Dodson. “Now if you’d be so kind, tell your men not to touch a thing. I’ve called in some of my colleagues from the Miami Dade office. They should be getting here any minute.”