From that moment on, David was no longer in some ratty hotel in Beijing; he was five years in the future, on the morning of the first ringing of that trading floor bell—the bell that was going to change the future of the Middle East, and with it the future of the world.
David wasn’t going to stop talking until the Fat Man saw that same morning, heard that same bell, and imagined that same beautiful future. And after that, David didn’t care if he got caught in some government crackdown in the streets outside or got collared trying to sneak back into his hotel—because at that mo
ment nothing else mattered to him. The Fat Man was the key to understanding sharia law, and sharia law was the next step in their journey.
David hadn’t come this far to let a little international incident get in his way.
F
EBRUARY
20, 2003
I
f the villains in a James Bond movie had been anywhere near as expedient as the Fat Man, good old Bond would never have lived past the opening credits. A bare twenty-four hours after David had managed to sneak, unnoticed, past his Chinese government minders—who, along with Ms. Chen, were watching a soccer match on a portable TV instead of watching the locked hotel-suite door of an American “agitator”—and into his room at the Grand Hyatt, Khaled had gotten the phone call from the Saudi embassy in New York. Not only had David and Khaled been granted a meeting with the two highest-ranked Saudi religious officials in New York—but the meeting was going to take place in just a few short hours. That meant there would be no chance for Gallo to pull any more of his shit—on the off possibility that he’d somehow figured out what David was up to in Beijing—or for anything else to get in their way. At the very least, they would be getting a fair hearing on the issue of sharia law.
David had half-hoped the meeting would take place at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., itself—he could only imagine what level of majesty he’d find inside the
three-story stone building steps from the White House—but instead he’d had to settle for a visit to the Saudi consulate building on Second Avenue in New York. The consulate, it turned out, looked pretty much like every other building east of Fifth in Midtown—except for the security post out front, complete with X-ray detectors staffed by armed members of the New York National Guard.
David and Khaled had quickly been ushered past the security by a young Arabic man in a dark blue suit, then led through a quiet marble lobby to a mirrored elevator. Four stories higher, they’d been met by another young man in a similar suit, who’d taken them to another lobby, this one carpeted, with pictures of Saudi Arabian cities on the walls and two framed portraits of King Fahd. A third young man had collected them in the second lobby and led them through a pair of double wooden doors into a well-appointed office—fifteen-foot ceilings, expensive-looking Oriental carpeting, and lavish tapestries on three of four walls. There was a desk on one end of the rectangular office, facing a sitting area, complete with elegant Italian couches, a low wooden coffee table, and a pair of high leather-backed chairs. Both chairs were occupied by elderly Arab men in robes—presumably the Saudi religious leaders—who rose the minute David and Khaled entered the room.
David didn’t know whether to bow, shake hands, or simply drop to his knees. Khaled had explained to him that these two men were extremely high up in the hierarchy of Saudi religious academia; both were leading scholars at the premier religious university in the Saudi capital, with the ear of the ruling family. Though this meeting itself was unofficial and would never be spoken of in the press or in any other public forum, it was David and Khaled’s one shot at getting the necessary, implicit approval from the Saudi religious establishment to go forward with the Dubai exchange. Without these men, and their good graces, David and Khaled’s attempt at an exchange would basically unravel in the face of the eight-hundred-pound gorilla that
was the Saudi empire; even the threat of a religious edict against the exchange would render it null and void. In short, these two scholarly men held all the cards, so David followed Khaled’s lead: a little bow followed by a handshake for each of the men, then a third little bow of respect toward another portrait of King Fahd that hung on the wall behind the Italian couch. Then one of the robed Saudis made a gesture at the young man who’d brought them in, and he quickly scurried around the desk to collect a silver tea set that had already been prepared for the meeting. The young man offered the tray to David and Khaled, who each took a steaming cup.
Once he was seated next to Khaled on the couch, David did his best not to blush, fidget, or turn away as the two elderly Saudis both looked him over. When they finally turned their attention to Khaled, David exhaled, relieved that at the very least they hadn’t thrown him out of the room. Though he couldn’t be sure exactly how old the two men were, from the depth of their wrinkles and the mass of concentric circles around their eyes, they had to be well into their eighties. Certainly, they were important men; it was obvious from their robes, which seemed to have been spun out of the finest silk, and from their wizened features, which seemed to emanate nobility in a way David had never seen before. Something about the taller of the two men reminded him a little of Giovanni; one day, when he was old enough, Giovanni would sit with that same, high-shouldered bearing—the look of a man who had earned his respect, not a man who had been born into it. David had no idea what sort of lives these two religious leaders had lived, or how they had gotten to this place, but he knew, instinctively, that they deserved his respect.
For the next three hours, David gave them that respect—and little else, considering that the entire meeting took place in Arabic, Khaled only paused to translate the few times that the two religious leaders nodded in David’s direction, and by his fourth cup of tea David was spending much of his energy trying to keep his fingers from trembling too noticeably from the caffeine.
From the few snippets of the conversation that Khaled gave him, he understood that the main issue the two elderly men were discussing had to do with derivatives. It seemed that the main problem with the idea of a Dubai exchange was the implication of certain tenets of Islamic law that derivatives were essentially
haraam
—prohibited. Under a strict interpretation of the Koran, the concept of interest was not allowed. And the trading of all derivatives—be they gold futures, stock options, or oil contracts—had an unavoidable component of interest.
As the two religious men dug into this issue, the questions they asked Khaled seemed to grow more heated; at one point one of the men even rose halfway out of his seat, jabbing a wrinkled finger in Khaled’s direction as he made a point in thick, furious Arabic. But Khaled remained perfectly calm, bowing as he seemed to agree with the scholar—then quietly explaining why, even so, the exchange should be permitted. David caught a few terms in his response that helped him understand the gist of Khaled’s argument—even before Khaled whispered a translation to him.
Basically, Khaled argued, Dubai’s emirate had indeed instituted free zones where such interest was allowed, in practice. The two religious men countered, again somewhat heatedly, that the Dubai exchange would incorporate trading policies that would extend well beyond the free zones: as people flocked to trade oil from all over, derivatives would essentially be traded out of Dubai from one end of the world to the other. But Khaled, undeterred, explained that this process was more like the arbitrage that went on in the souks of the Arab street than the interest-bearing strategies forbidden by sharia law.
While David listened to the two robed men arguing with Khaled and then with one another, he was amazed at how technical their discussion seemed to be; this wasn’t some question of kosher foods or holiday ritual—this was an argument about a complicated financial instrument. And yet, the two old men didn’t seem to have any problem discussing the subject. Likewise, Khaled never backed down from their questioning, no matter
how inquisitive and strident they became. He remained calm, collected, respectful—but forceful as well. He wasn’t going to give up, and David could see that Khaled’s persistence impressed the two scholars almost as much as his arguments. And it was also obvious that the two men had already done much research into the questions they asked, because most of Khaled’s answers did not seem to come as surprises to them. Obviously, the Fat Man had done his job—for which he’d been highly compensated by Khaled’s people—by communicating the issue in great detail to the two old men, and now they were deliberating on the subject as if it were no different, or more secular, than a question about feeding pork to a starving man.
By the end of three hours, David was literally on the edge of his seat. It wasn’t simply the caffeine that had his feet bouncing beneath the coffee table—it was the idea that these two men were about to make the decision that would change the Dubai exchange from an idea into a reality—or would stop David and Khaled dead in their tracks. Although Khaled was still calm and collected, David could see he was beginning to tire. The sheer intensity of the questioning from the two religious men was beginning to take its toll—when suddenly, without warning, the two men stopped speaking entirely and rose, as one, from their seats. Before Khaled or David could move from the couch, the two Arabs moved away from the seating area and headed straight toward the door. David started to rise after them, but Khaled grabbed his arm and pulled him back down.
“They leave first,” he said simply. “We wait, out of respect.”
David nodded, swallowing back his nerves. When the two men were out of the room, he turned to Khaled.
“What happened? Did they say yes or no?”
“Neither.” Khaled’s expression was unreadable. There was sweat on his brow, which he wiped at with the sleeve of his jacket.
“Neither? What the hell does that mean? Don’t tell me we need to find another Fat Man. I’m not climbing out of any more hotel windows.”
Khaled straightened his lapels, quietly finished his tea, then finally rose from the couch. Then he smiled, and David could see the excited relief in his eyes.
“No more hotel windows, David. Tomorrow I am heading back to Dubai. If your board agrees, in two weeks we will break ground on the Dubai exchange.”
David gasped at him. Suddenly he understood. It was exactly like it had been with the board at the Merc: the Saudis weren’t going to say yes, and they weren’t going to say no—and it was only the second part of the equation that mattered.
They hadn’t said no.
Which meant that the Dubai exchange wasn’t
haraam
. It wasn’t forbidden.
David grinned, and before Khaled could escape, he gave the Arab kid his second Russo hug.
“This is it, isn’t it? We’re almost there.”
“If you don’t get off me, they’re going to arrest both of us for improper behavior.”
As Khaled separated himself from David’s grip, David realized that his cell phone was going off in his pocket. He retrieved the phone as they headed out of the office and back into the consulate lobby.
He didn’t recognize the number, but he was in such a good mood that he answered anyway. To his surprise, he definitely recognized the voice.
“David, guess what? I’m in New York.”
The French accent tugged at an area much lower than his heart, and he nearly dropped the phone.
“Jasmine?”
Khaled looked at him, and David could see the warning in his friend’s eyes. He had told Khaled about the night in Geneva, and Khaled hadn’t judged him on his momentary lapse of control—but Khaled hadn’t wanted to hear the details either. That sort of lack of control wasn’t something a lifelong Muslim truly understood.
“Yes, it’s me,” Jasmine said. “I’m at the Mandarin New York. One night only. And I’d love to see you.”
David swallowed, heat rising in his cheeks. Then a sudden thought hit him. He hadn’t given Jasmine his cell phone number. He was hotheaded, but he wasn’t that stupid.
Had she looked him up on some hotel guest list? He didn’t remember ever putting his cell phone number down on any registration form, but then again, Khaled had made all the arrangements; maybe Khaled had listed David’s cell as a contact number when he’d booked the rooms?
David realized he was being foolish. Even if Jasmine hadn’t found his number on a hotel form, plenty of people had his cell phone number—one call to the Merc, and she could have gotten it from Harriet. Or she could have called his home in Staten Island—which was listed—and simply asked his mom. There were a dozen ways she could have tracked him down. The question wasn’t really how—it was why. And why now? Considering how well things were going, this was a distraction—and a complication—he certainly didn’t need.
An image of her flat naked stomach, arched against the snow, flickered behind his eyes. Then he quickly shook his head.
“This is kind of a bad time,” he said into the phone as he followed Khaled toward the elevator that led out of the consulate. “And I’m about to step into an elevator—”
“David, just come by the hotel and see me. One drink. And I promise, there’s plenty of Toblerone in the minibar.”
Khaled was already in the elevator. David knew he needed to hang up the phone. He needed to forget about her high cheekbones and incredible curves—
“I won’t twist your arm,” she said finally. “It’s okay. I just thought it might be fun to see you. But if you’re too busy, I understand.”
And just like that, David felt himself saying the words: “I’ll be there in ten minutes. But I can’t stay long.”
Then he was in the elevator, the connection was lost, and Khaled was looking at him like he was the biggest fucking infidel in the Western world.
Sadly, for once, David couldn’t disagree.
I
n a perfect world, David would have come to his senses the minute the icy, early-evening breeze hit his face when he and Khaled stepped out of the Saudi consulate and onto Second Avenue. But in reality, David didn’t reach for his cell phone until his cab was past Fifty-seventh Street, just a few short blocks away from the Mandarin, and he didn’t dial the number that had shown up when Jasmine first called for a good five minutes after that. In fact, the cab was pulling to a stop in front of the luxury hotel—uniformed doormen swarming like the flying monkeys from
The Wizard of Oz
—when David finally waved at the driver to keep on going, destination unknown, as he held the cell phone to his ear.
Jasmine answered on the third ring. She sounded a little out of breath, bringing up more memories of Geneva, but David was determined to do the right thing. He wasn’t sure what had made him change his mind—but now all he could think about was Serena and the future he hoped to one day have with her. A dalliance in Switzerland was one thing, but a full-out affair simply wasn’t in his personality.
“I’m sorry,” he said into the phone. “Something came up.”
Jasmine seemed to understand.
“Okay, David. Maybe next time.”
The taxi driver was looking at him, and David just gave him another wave.
Keep on going, man, anywhere but here.
“The thing is, Jasmine—”
“Not necessary. You don’t build expectations out of a roll in the snow. But it’s a small world we live in, David. Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
With that, she hung up, and David lowered the phone, exhaling. He looked out through the cab window. It was dark now, a little after seven-thirty, and the lights from the traffic and the storefronts on either side blended into strips of flashing color. More than anything, he felt—relieved.
“You want to go somewhere in particular?”
The driver was looking at him through the Plexiglas divider. David was about to give him his address when the phone in his hand started vibrating. He glanced down and saw the text message as it appeared across the display.
Need to see you, asap. Trading floor. Twenty minutes. Nick.
The phone number was unlisted, which was a little strange considering that David had Reston’s BlackBerry number imprinted in his cerebral cortex by now. But things were now moving quickly with the Dubai exchange, and since David and Reston hadn’t spoken since Beijing, it wasn’t surprising that some sort of brushfire had obviously popped up. Maybe Gallo was making some noise—or maybe it had nothing to do with Dubai at all. Reston’s text had asked David to meet him on the trading floor. Maybe it had something to do with automation, Reston’s other pet project. In many ways, automating the trading floor was an even bigger firestorm waiting to happen than Dubai. Gallo and his kind would survive the Middle East, but Microsoft was another monster altogether.
While he gave the taxi driver the Merc’s address, David grinned at the thought of Gallo going up against Bill Gates. He then shot a text back to Reston’s BlackBerry, and a second text to Serena, explaining that he was going to be late, again. Reston didn’t respond, but Serena came back almost immediately with a sad face, followed by two happy faces, one with a tongue sticking out. David grinned at the icons.
He’d try to put out whatever fire Reston was fighting as fast as possible so he could get home to his girl and add a few more happy faces to the mix.
I
T WAS EIGHT-FIFTEEN
by the time David passed through the security post in the lobby of the Merc, flashing his ID badge to the skeletal after-hours staff—consisting of four uniformed, armed guards and an elderly supervisor with a clipboard—and letting the twin X-ray machines bombard his cellular structure to their hearts’ content. Once he was in the elevator, rising up through the building, he took another look at his BlackBerry, but there was still no response from Reston. Obviously, the Texan was using a different phone tonight. Maybe Reston had lost his BlackBerry again; David remembered a hellish afternoon during his second month at the Merc when he’d had to track down a phone Reston left on an airplane. A Harvard degree meant even less in the infuriating catacombs of JFK than it did in the halls of the Merc.
David shrugged, putting his phone back into his pocket. He’d find out what Reston wanted soon enough. He tried not to let his creative mind invent potential disasters as he waited for the elevator to reach the trading floor. Sadly, it was a losing battle: by the time the doors finally slid open, David was half-expecting to find the floor crawling with poisonous snakes.
Instead, the dimly lit, cavernous room seemed completely deserted; as David stepped away from the elevator, the only sound came from his own shoes against the freshly polished floor. Obviously, the cleaning crews had already come and gone. The
snowfall of paper tickets that usually filled the various trading pits had been swept away, and the computer screens and telephone banks were all dormant, the monitors wiped clean and the last traces of eight hundred sweaty Italians and Jews vacuumed out of the ether. In fact, the only light in the room came from a few hundred seemingly coordinated screen savers and the digital readouts on the big board up above. Closing prices blinked out into the relative darkness, bathing the larger pits that were closer to the board in an eerie, reddish glow.
David took a few more steps into the room, then squinted across the trading floor.
“Nick?”
His voice echoed between the warren of computer banks and through the deserted pits. David had never been on the trading floor after-hours before, and even though it was only 8:00
P.M.,
it may as well have been the middle of the night. Strange that he’d somehow beaten Reston to the floor; maybe the Texan was still up in his office, or on his way down. David was about to head back to the elevator when he heard a sound coming from somewhere on the other side of the cavernous room. A cough maybe, or someone clearing his throat. David rolled his eyes and started forward again. Reston had chosen a strange time to play games with him. Maybe the Texan had just gotten back from Little Tijuana’s and was planning some tequila-fueled practical joke.
“Come on, Nick,” David called across the dark room. “I rushed all the way over here. What the hell is so important?”
He reached the first bank of computers and phones and cut left, paralleling the largest trading pit, trying to follow the cough back to its source. He was surprised at how narrow the alleys between the trading posts were; he’d never really wandered through the warrens of the different trading positions before. He was now strolling through a real maze of high-tech equipment and shoulder-high partitions stretching all the way around the hundred-foot crude pit. As he went, he had to be careful not to trip over
the rubber cables and spaghetti-like extension cords that crisscrossed the tiles beneath his feet. No wonder Reston and Giovanni were always talking about automation, this place was a freaking mess—
David’s thoughts were interrupted as a flash of motion flickered by his peripheral vision. He stopped, squinting over the partition to his immediate right. There, maybe twenty yards away, on the other side of the circular, sunken trading floor, someone was dodging in and out of the natural gas cubicles. David couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the man was wearing a trading jacket; still, he was too far away for David to see any of the jacket’s details.
“Nick, what the fuck?” David shouted across the floor at him. “This isn’t funny.”
Again no answer. David paused, wondering what the hell he should do. He wasn’t going to chase his drunk boss all over the trading floor. Then he felt a buzz in his pocket and realized his BlackBerry was going off again. He angrily retrieved it and glared down at the display.
To his surprise, the text wasn’t from Reston. It was from Khaled.
Get out. Now.
David’s eyes widened.
What the fuck?
Before he could respond, he suddenly saw another flash of motion, this time from straight ahead, at the end of the long alleyway of computers and telephones. Someone was moving toward him. It was too dark to make out any of the man’s features—but from his size and catlike gait, he could see it definitely wasn’t Nick Reston. And this time David had a clear view of the man’s trading jacket: black and white stripes, like a zebra.
David swallowed, blinking hard. He watched as the man moved toward him. What the hell were a couple of Gallo’s traders doing on the trading floor after 8:00
P.M.
? And why hadn’t they responded when he’d shouted Reston’s name?
David realized that his BlackBerry was still vibrating, a metallic earthquake against his palm. He glanced down at the display. Khaled again:
David. Get out. Now!
Christ.
David stumbled backward a few steps, breathing hard. The man in the zebra jacket was moving faster now, striding straight toward him. David didn’t know what the hell was going on—but he didn’t like it. He had no idea how Khaled knew where he was. And he didn’t know what the hell Gallo’s traders were doing on the trading floor after-hours. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
David took one more step backward, then swung around on his heels—
And there, just a few feet in front of him, blocking the aisle, was a third man in a zebra-striped jacket. The man was big, maybe six-three, with spiky brown hair and acne scars on both cheeks. David didn’t recognize the man’s face—but he was pretty sure he wasn’t a trader. At least, David had never seen him before, and the jacket’s sleeves barely went past his elbows.
David froze, his heart racing in his chest. If the man wasn’t a trader, what was he doing on the trading floor? And what did he want with David?
David decided he didn’t want to find out. He could hear footsteps from behind him, getting closer. He had only a second to react. So he did the only thing he could think of.
He lowered his shoulder and barreled forward. The big man stepped back, obviously surprised by the sudden charge—and the heel of the man’s right foot caught on one of the extension cords. He stumbled and David crashed by him, shoes churning against the hard floor. David felt a hand grab at his arm, but he was moving too fast. A second later, he was sprinting through the maze of computers. He didn’t know if the zebra jackets were behind
him—but he didn’t care. He could see the elevator now, and the doors were already halfway ajar. His adrenaline spiked, and he lunged at the opening—
And nearly slammed headlong into a huge man on his way out. David caught himself, skidding to a stop in time to see two more men step out of the elevator behind the first. David stared up at the huge man in front—and saw that he was wearing a janitor’s uniform. His massive muscles bulged beneath the light blue material.
“Excuse me, sir. We’re here to clean the carpets.”
The man’s accent sounded Arabic or Pakistani, David couldn’t be sure. At the moment, he didn’t care. He rushed around the three janitors and into the elevator. He jabbed his finger at the buttons—he wasn’t even sure what floor, he was just punching whichever buttons were closest. It wasn’t until the doors had slid shut and he had collapsed back against the elevator’s wall that a sudden, strange thought hit him like a fist to the face.
There weren’t any carpets on the trading floor.