The Garden of Betrayal (5 page)

He swiveled on his stool to face me.

“Didn’t I already ask you not to fucking lie to me?”

I picked up my beer and took a sip, meeting his gaze levelly. I really didn’t know who’d come up with it. Jokes and nicknames swept across trading floors like wildfires, and you rarely learned the source. What I did know was that there were a lot of guys who resented Alex because he was the boss’s son, and because anyone else with Alex’s track record would have been out on his ass years ago.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized a few moments later. “I’m kind of a wreck right now.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The barman cutting limes a few feet away was obviously listening, so I suggested we move to a table. Alex had his glass refilled first. Less than ten minutes after walking through the door and he was on the equivalent of his fifth drink. We settled in a corner beneath a clock with oversized clown feet swinging side to side like a pendulum. A polka dot–painted arm protruding from the side rocked back and forth in time with the feet, perpetually threatening to launch a cream pie.

“You know what sucks?” Alex asked, elbows on the table as he rubbed his scalp with both hands.

“What?”

“That you’re such a hard guy to whine to.”

I gave him a smile to acknowledge the humor in the remark. It was something I’d noticed—people were self-conscious about complaining around me. Almost no matter their difficulty, my hardship trumped theirs.

“I just wish …”

“What?” I asked, as he trailed off.

“I made mistakes back when I had Torino. My dad says that mistakes are contagious.”

His mistake had been trying to launch his own fund fresh out of graduate school, the way Walter had launched Cobra when he left the army. But where Walter succeeded, Alex had failed, as almost anyone his age would. His confidence had never recovered.

“You can’t change the past,” I said, repeating a truth I struggled to accept every day.

“Maybe not,” he mumbled. “But it’s like that butterfly thing. Everything might have been different.”

I leaned back in my chair unhappily. It was something I’d seen before—guys who got smacked around by the market, and who became obsessed with some specific event or decision that had gone the wrong way. Like the former high school quarterback who’d be playing in the pros if only the coach had let him pass more the night the college scout came around, they became convinced that everything would have worked out fine if it hadn’t been for that one unlucky moment. It was a level of delusion I hadn’t seen Alex descend to before, and if he’d been anyone else, I would have finished my beer and walked out on him. I’d spent too much time with drunken traders to have any patience for their particular brand of self-pity. Alex was different, though. It wasn’t just that I was grateful to him. I cared about him, if only because he so clearly needed to be cared about. I wanted him to be happy.

“Listen,” I said, reaching out to nudge his shoulder. “Can I be honest with you?”

“Of course,” he answered stiffly.

“You’ve been giving this job your best shot for years. Maybe it’s time to admit that the hedge-fund business isn’t what you’re cut out for. Look at me: I’m a smart guy, but I realized long ago that I don’t have the constitution to pull the trigger every day. And look at the people who are successful—a lot of them are just riding for a fall. Fifty percent of everything is luck. You know that. So why continue to beat yourself up?”

“You think generating return is about being lucky?” he demanded acidly.

“You think luck isn’t important?” I countered.

“For most guys. But what about people like my father? The ones who never blow up?”

Walter had thrived during the financial implosion, hoarding Treasuries and relentlessly shorting the banks. His success had burnished his already immaculate reputation to a godlike sheen.

“The ones who haven’t blown up yet, you mean. Read some history. Napoléon looked pretty good until he took off for Moscow. Anybody can roll snake eyes.”

Alex opened his mouth and then visibly bit back an angry reply, taking another slug from his glass.

“You should be focused on the political stuff,” I advised. “There’s a big opportunity for you there.”

He shook his head dismissively.

“Why not?”

“I’d prefer banging cocktail waitresses,” he muttered sarcastically. “That was the job Fredo got, wasn’t it?”

Alex was being both stubborn and stupid. Walter and his circle had left Washington alone until the late nineties, when a handful of congressmen made a halfhearted attempt to regulate hedge funds in the wake of the Long-Term Capital Management disaster. Once politics caught their interest, it hadn’t taken them long to figure out that it wasn’t dissimilar to the other arenas they played in, save that the trick was pushing money into the game without breaking any rules, as opposed to taking it out. They had a lot of money, and they were very good at working around the rules. Walter’s latest stratagem was to channel his coterie’s largesse through a new, ostensibly independent public advocacy group: Americans for Free Markets. He’d suggested that Alex become the group’s first CEO. Alex—predictably—had interpreted the offer as a vote of no confidence in his trading abilities, and sunk deeper into his funk.

“You’re not thinking about this right,” I said, wishing I could cut through the bitterness and disappointment to the Alex I used to know. “You could become very influential.”

He shrugged and drained his glass, rattling the ice cubes at the barman. I kept quiet against my better judgment, wondering if I was going to have to carry him home.

“That reminds me,” he said, when the barman had left. “I’m supposed to invite you to the NASCAR lunch tomorrow.”

NASCAR was the extant political organization, an informal club
that Walter and his protégés had first convened fifteen years earlier to coordinate their initial forays into Washington. The decidedly less high-minded name was an acronym of its closely held mission statement: Never accommodate stupid congressmen and regulators.

“Why me?” I asked.

“Senator Simpson is going to be in. His handler, Clifford White, called today and asked if you could join. The senator has some new thoughts on energy policy.”

Simpson was tipped as an early favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. It surprised me that he’d break bread with Walter and his cronies in the current political climate, but a moment’s reflection led me to wonder whether it mightn’t be a shrewd move. The newspapers would likely be vilifying someone else by the time the election rolled around, and the big money for national campaigns always came from Wall Street.

“Any other guests?” I asked.

“Nikolay Narimanov. White invited him as well.”

Narimanov’s name was more of an enticement to me than Simpson’s. The wealthiest and most successful of the Russian oligarchs who’d risen from the ashes of the Soviet Union, Narimanov had built an energy empire that spanned the globe. I’d been following his companies for years, but I’d never met him.

“That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it?”

“I’m just the messenger boy. Yes or no?”

Meeting Narimanov wasn’t an opportunity to pass up.

“Yes.”

“Okay, then.”

We sat in silence while Alex drank some more. The clown clock struck the hour overhead, hands spinning rapidly in opposite directions. Alex suddenly lurched toward me, spilling vodka onto the table.

“Tell me,” he pleaded, voice thick. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” I asked, realizing he was about to cry.

“Not despair.”

I laid one hand on his as a tear trickled down the side of his face. After Kyle disappeared, I’d had panic attacks, bouts of crushing chest pain that dropped me to my knees and left me gasping for air. It had taken three separate cardiologists to persuade me that there was nothing physically wrong. The severity of the attacks had lessened through
time, but I still felt the tightening in my chest when I got overloaded with work or family stuff.

“Everyone despairs. Trust me. What’s important is to find a reason to keep going. A job you enjoy, or a girl. A family …”

“You had something special. It doesn’t work out for everyone that way.”

I half closed my eyes, waiting a moment for the emotional pain of the thrust to dissipate. It was true. Claire and I had had something special, with each other and with the kids. Alex was the product of a bitter divorce, one that had left him and his mother estranged from his father and laid the groundwork for his obsession. I took a deep breath and plunged on.

“Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it makes me sick to see you beating yourself up because you think you’re letting Walter down. You’re his son. You shouldn’t have to grovel for his affection.”

Alex rubbed his hairline again, nodded without meeting my eye, and threw back the rest of his vodka.

“You’re right,” he slurred. “I’m his son.” He got up, almost overturning the table. “I have to go now.”

“Back to the office?” I asked apprehensively.

“No.” He flapped one hand at me vaguely. “I have to be somewhere. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I trailed a few feet behind as he staggered out the door and flagged a taxi. He fell into the rear seat and slumped sideways as it drove away. Rubbing the back of my neck with one hand, I realized my underarms were damp with sweat. I hadn’t known he was drinking this heavily. The barman stared silently as I approached.

“How much do I owe you?”

“He has a tab.”

It figured. I dropped a ten on the counter for my beer anyway.

“How often does he get like that?”

The barman shrugged, perhaps reluctant to talk about a valued customer.

“Maybe you should consider cutting him off.”

“Maybe,” the barman replied. “But he’d only go someplace else. And I’m not the one making him unhappy. You ever think about that?”

I headed back to the office, needing to get caught up on e-mail and to prepare some notes for my next day’s bulletin. Late afternoon is a productive time for me, the sole quietus in the global trading day. New York is done by four, the Asians don’t get going until eight, and Sydney and Melbourne—the only open financial centers—are too small to generate much activity. Absent the blinking phone lines and beeping market data screens and the constant background cacophony of rage and glee from the trading floor, I can concentrate.

An hour later, I threw my pen onto my desk and gave up. Alex was on my mind, but more than that, the images I’d seen earlier were haunting me. Hundreds dead, and every one of them somebody’s child. A voice in my head noted bitterly that at least these families knew what had happened to their loved ones and could grieve accordingly. It was a hateful, self-pitying thought, and I did my best to push it away as I packed my briefcase. I wanted to be home with Claire and Kate.

It was dark and cold out, but the sky had cleared. Cobra kept a line of Town Cars waiting from five to midnight despite the straitened economy, and Walter—ever gracious when it came to small things—allowed me free use. I stepped into the lead car and told the driver my address. He handed me a copy of the afternoon
Post
and then jockeyed his way into the dense traffic. The pipeline explosion dominated the first ten pages of the paper, and I was identified by name as the source of the Nord Stream video in two separate articles. Both mentioned that I’d declined comment. My reticence had been more than a desire to protect
Gavin—I wasn’t interested in garnering publicity on the back of a tragedy.

There was a time when I’d thought very differently. Back when I was a Wall Street hotshot, I’d been as calculated in my pursuit of column inches as any scheming politician. Every war, every natural disaster, every refinery fire or tanker accident, was an opportunity for me to elevate my professional profile by pontificating on TV and in the press, explaining what the event meant to the energy industry and speculating as to what might happen next. It shames me to recall that I never took a moment to sympathize with the people afflicted, instead taking pride in my “objectivity.” The single great lesson of my adult life—and one I’d give anything not to have learned so well—is that we’re all vulnerable.

I set the
Post
aside and shifted restlessly in my seat. As always at this time of year, the avenues were choked with suburbanites intent on seeing the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center or the animatronic store windows on Fifth Avenue. A surprising number were still driving massive, fuel-guzzling SUVs. Looking out the window at the noxious clouds of automotive exhaust, I found myself wondering what the world would look like in fifty years. It’s not just global warming—everyone in the energy business knows there isn’t anywhere near enough oil and gas in the world to meet long-term demand under any realistic economic scenario. It’s a strangely obvious issue that doesn’t get much play, perhaps because the constituencies that might naturally address it are too busy focusing on the quixotic objective of reducing consumption. Energy demand fluctuates with global GDP, but in the long run, no number of power-efficient fluorescent bulbs are going to offset skyrocketing use from developing nations. Every single available drop of oil and molecule of gas is going to be consumed by somebody, somewhere, unless there’s a lower-cost alternative, and the sooner we figure out that alternative, the less painful the inevitable transition is going to be. No matter what happens in the future, though, I strongly doubt there will be anything like a Cadillac Escalade, save perhaps in a museum.

Rashid called as my car entered Central Park. We worked our way through the usual preliminaries and then spent a few fruitless minutes probing each other on Nord Stream. Neither of us had anything more to tell the other.

“What’s your interest here, anyway?” I asked. OPEC dealt with oil, not natural gas. And to the extent its members also exported gas, their customer was Asia rather than Europe.

“Nothing specific. A couple of Middle Eastern banks are in the Nord Stream financing syndicate. One lost its European head today. And the senior people in the Kingdom get edgy whenever there’s a terrorist event. They like to be kept informed.”