Reston noticed where David was looking and leaned forward over the table between them.
“You’ve got a good eye, kid. His name is Dominick Gallo. He’s the biggest trader on the floor—hell, maybe the biggest in the history of the Merc. He’s been here even longer than Giovanni—fuck, he was born on that trading floor. Worth about three hundred million, maybe even more. We call him ‘the Don.’”
David raised his eyebrows. That was just too much.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Not to his face. But, yeah, among the board. I told you, this place is a family business, and Gallo’s family has been in this since the beginning. He’s got immense power over the traders, especially the older guys, the ones who came up with him. He’s like a god on the trading floor. And he’s a real mean bastard. He comes to all the board meetings, just because he can. And that often turns the board meetings into pitched battles, sometimes all-out wars. See, technically, the traders own the Merc, even though we on the board run it. So if the Don doesn’t agree with something, we often have to cater to him.”
David realized with a start that Gallo was now looking right at him and Reston. The cigar jerked up and down in the man’s chalky lips as those eyes gave David the once-over.
“His power base extends way beyond this place,” Reston said, waving past David at the older trader. “He’s used his money to buy up journalists, politicians—whoever he needs. And the amount of money he moves through this exchange puts the banks and even Big Oil under his skirt. So we don’t fuck with him, and he doesn’t fuck with us. Usually.”
David watched as Gallo took the cigar out of his mouth and suddenly pointed it right at him.
Reston kicked him under the table.
“I think the Don wants you to come over and kiss his hand.”
David looked at Reston, who shrugged. David wondered once again what the hell kind of world he had gotten himself into. A place like Merrill Lynch had been easy to figure out:
there were bosses, and bosses’ bosses—a clear hierarchy. Here it seemed more like warlords and barbarians, all crashing into one another. Still, it was exciting to think about how much money was being made downstairs and what was at the core of all this insanity—oil.
“I’m kidding about the hand,” Reston said as David rose from the table. “Just go over and introduce yourself. And try not to say anything that pisses him off.”
David nodded, though he knew that sometimes he had a knack for that sort of thing. He pushed his way through the crowded lounge, heading straight for the zebra jackets.
The young men parted as he arrived, making room for him across the table from Gallo. There wasn’t a chair, so David stood, assuming that was the protocol. Gallo never changed position, his feet still up on the table, the cigar back in his mouth, his hands clasped behind his head.
“So you’re Giovanni’s new kid,” he grunted, more a mumble than anything else.
David held out his hand.
“David Russo. It’s an honor to meet you. I’m just learning the ropes around here, but any advice you have for me would be greatly appreciated.”
Gallo looked at David’s outstretched hand like it was a hunk of rotten fish, making no move to reciprocate. David heard snickers behind him from the younger traders watching like a gang of fucking hyenas.
“Every year Giovanni brings in an Ivy League piece of shit kid like you,” Gallo said, never removing the cigar from the corner of his mouth. “Coming up with all sorts of Ivy League ideas about how we could make the place more—what’s that faggy word you HBS guys are so fond of? Oh yeah,
efficient.
”
There was real laughter now coming from the traders, and Gallo seemed to be enjoying the moment. He rolled his eyes, black marbles spinning in the center of those ominous, dark circles.
“Well, let me save you the trouble, kid. I’ve been trading here
since it was potatoes and Reston over there was a gleam in some bull-riding, whiskey-drinking Mick’s eyes.”
David had already figured out that there was a divide between the heart and the brain of this place—but was shocked at the outright hostility coming from the man Reston had called the Don. David had barely said a word, and already this guy seemed to hate his guts.
“You want advice?” Gallo continued, finally taking the cigar out of his mouth to jab it like a knife in David’s direction. “Keep your ass up on the fifteenth floor, and your head in Giovanni’s lap. That’s the best way for you to stay out of trouble.”
With that, he waved David away. David stood there for a brief second, stunned. Then the raucous laughter from the traders broke his trance, and he quickly made his way back to Reston’s table. Reston was grinning as David shakily lowered himself back into the seat.
“Don’t worry,” Reston joked, obviously getting the gist of what had gone down from the look on David’s face. “His bite is way worse than his bark.”
“I don’t think he likes me very much,” David managed.
“Hah. That old fuck doesn’t like any of us, but me and Giovanni—and by extension, you—have a special place in his heart. See, we’re not just suits fighting a turf war with the traders; we represent something even worse—change. Gallo has built up his fiefdom for fifty years, he’s made a fortune, and his family has had this place all to themselves for three generations. Now he thinks we’re threatening all that. Modernizing the exchange, going international, automating trading—hell, one day, if we have our way, there won’t even be a trading floor, and guys like Gallo will have a hell of a time adapting. You think the Don knows how to work a fucking Mac? This is his home, he understands it—and he thinks we’ve come here to take his home away. And you know what? Maybe he’s right. But that old fucker won’t be around forever.”
Just long enough to make my life miserable,
David thought to
himself. His hands were trembling under the table. He’d never been overly intimidated by assholes before, no matter how powerful they were. But something about Gallo scared the shit out of him.
“Maybe you can think of a comeback by the board meeting tomorrow morning,” Reston suggested. “Gallo will be there, you can bet on that. And from the looks of things, he’s gunning for you right from the start. Usually he gives Giovanni’s kids a week or two to get acclimated before he knocks ’em down a peg. So consider yourself special.”
Reston seemed more than a little pleased, and David questioned for the first time if he’d acted a bit impetuously, shifting jobs without doing a little more research. He reminded himself that Giovanni was in charge here, not Reston or Gallo. And he was here to work for Giovanni—his idol, the man he one day wanted to be.
Still, looking over at Gallo and the laughing, zebra-jacketed hyenas, David wondered what it really took to thrive in an environment like this. With his first board meeting less than twenty-four hours away, David had a sinking suspicion he’d find out soon enough.
S
EPTEMBER
15, 2002
T
he view was like something out of a science fiction movie. A veritable forest of massive cranes, spanning as far as the eye could see, each one attending to futuristic monsters of concrete and steel, rising up toward the heavens like fingers reaching for God. Lush greenery interspersed with sweeping glades of sand, man-made fountains and waterfalls and beaches mingling with twenty-first-century roads, bridges, and tunnels. Camels on dirt paths just twenty yards from Ferraris on superhighways, Arabic men and women in traditional robes and burkas strolling past Europeans in Armani suits and the latest fashions of the Parisian runways. London was cosmopolitan; this was simply another planet altogether.
“Like a dream,” Khaled said as he touched the floor-to-ceiling windowpane with his outstretched fingers. Directly ahead, in the distance, he could see the great Burj Al Arab Hotel rising up above the coastline, its beautiful billowing sail soaring a thousand feet into the air. Khaled had checked into the world’s only seven-star hotel the night before—and the miraculous construct had been even more mind-blowing at night, surrounded by dancing sculp
tures of water and fire. Beyond the Al Arab, he could just make out the palm tree–shaped man-made island, Palm Islands—still under construction, but already one of the great wonders of the modern world. And closer, nearly straight down from where he was standing, he could see the great arched, three-hundred-foot-high, glazed-granite building that acted as the entrance to the city’s work-in-progress financial center, the Gate.
Khaled shook his head, stepping back from the window. The scale of it all was almost dizzying. Especially from twenty stories up in one of the most modern office buildings in the world.
“Indeed, it is a dream. Though at times, you’ll see, even the most wonderful dreams have a way of keeping you awake at night. The work here never ends.”
Khaled smiled as he turned to face the portly deputy finance minister. Minister Hakim Al Wazali was a good head shorter than Khaled, with a round, amiable face, puffy cheeks, and thick, sausagelike lips. His white ceremonial robes did not help his appearance, making him seem more marshmallow than man—but Khaled knew that this marshmallow was actually one of the more powerful people in the region, and truly deserving of his post at the forefront of one of the greatest financial miracles in Middle Eastern history.
“It is an absolute honor to be here. I thank you for the opportunity from the bottom of my heart,” Khaled responded, and he truly meant what he said. Looking around the glass-walled office, at the sophisticated decor that included a glass desk with inboard computer, multiple flat-screen TVs, bookshelves filled with finance texts resting side by side with religious literature and political tomes—it was a dream come true.
He could hardly believe that this office was now his own.
“No need to thank me,” Hakim said, waving a thick hand in the air. “Your résumé is nothing short of spectacular. Top grades at Cambridge and the University of Geneva Business School. Five languages, proficiency in computers, mathematics, and religious law—we were lucky to find you.”
Khaled nodded, accepting the compliment, though inside he felt a slight tinge of guilt. He knew his résumé was only part of the reason he had been offered the position, working directly beneath the finance minister in this office in the staggeringly modern Emirates Tower, just two floors below the minister’s own. The truth was, his uncle was a great friend to the nation as a whole, and a personal friend of Sheik Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the all-powerful emir of the magical city-state. Sheik Maktoum and his brother, Sheik Muhammed, had created this futuristic oasis by sheer force of will; Khaled’s uncle had sent Khaled to work for them because, in his mind, there was no greater place for a young man to grow into a true leader.
“Anyway,” Hakim said, pulling his robes around him as he headed for the office’s smoked-glass door, “I’ll give you a chance to settle in before afternoon prayer. After prayer, I’ll take you to meet the rest of the staff. You’ll see that we have a top-notch operation—you’ll fit right in, I’m sure.”
Khaled thanked the man again and watched as he waddled away in a swirl of white robes and jiggling limbs. Then Khaled turned back to the magical skyline.
He only hoped he could live up to his résumé and his uncle’s connections. He was determined to repay his debt tenfold.
Watching the endless traffic of people, cars, and commerce in the magnificent city down below, he felt a burst of adrenaline. He was staring at what could only be described as the future—not just of the region, but perhaps of mankind as a whole.
Khaled prayed to Allah that somehow he would be an important part of that future. That somehow he would find a way to make a real difference—for the sheik, for his father, and for himself.
S
EPTEMBER
16, 2002
A
re you sure about this?”
David closed his eyes as he pressed his face against the cool glass of the VW Bug’s side window. He could feel the sweat pooling beneath the stiff collar of his Oxford shirt. He placed a hand against his stomach, right where the shooting pains seemed to be coming from—then grimaced as the pain seemed to get worse at his touch. He angrily pulled his hand away, gave Serena a quick peck on her worried cheek, then reached for the door handle.
“I’m not missing my first board meeting because of a stomachache,” he said as he pushed the door open. An icy breeze swept into the car from the direction of the river, sending a shiver down his spine. “I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe you’re just nervous,” Serena responded, her hands still on the steering wheel, but he could tell from the way she said it that she didn’t believe it herself. She knew him better than that. Sure, he got nervous, but he was also the most driven guy either of them knew. Nerves had never brought him down before. And nerves couldn’t possibly explain the waves of nausea that were moving up his body.
Of all the days to get food poisoning, this had to be the worst. It was like some supernatural sick joke. At least Serena had been able to borrow her sister’s car to drive him down to the Merc—or at least as close as they could get to the bright blue police barriers that kept traffic away from the fortified building—so that he didn’t have to take the subway, which would have been a real adventure, considering how rotten he felt. Anyway, there was no way he was going to miss his second day of work. Especially since Giovanni would be there.
“I’ll survive,” David said, managing a forced smile. He shut the car door and hurried past the police barricades. More pain shot through his stomach as he half-jogged the two blocks to the front entrance of the Merc, but he refused to acknowledge it, refused to let it slow him down. At the very least, he was determined to make it through the morning. He’d reassess the situation after lunch.
After getting buzzed through the glass revolving doors, David made short work of the security procedures, passing through the twin metal detectors and showing his brand-new work ID to the armed guards stationed outside the lobby elevators. David also had a trading-floor ID pinned to the lapel of his understated, off-the-rack, gray-blue suit jacket, but he hoped he wouldn’t be seeing the trading floor anytime soon. He doubted his upset stomach would be able to handle the chaos at the moment. It was going to be hard enough coming face to face with Gallo again after the episode of the night before.
Leaning against a corner of the elevator as it rose upward through the building, David went over the scene again in his head. He’d relayed the entire episode to both Serena and his mother after he’d gotten home from work, and neither of them could believe how over the top the guy had been, or how Reston had simply laughed it off—as if that sort of animosity was expected and even condoned. David was glad his father hadn’t been on the phone as well—knowing him, David figured his advice would have involved a baseball bat and an inevitable assault charge.
David knew he got most of his hotheadedness from his father; the women in his life were his counterbalance—or at least as much counterbalance as a fifty-year-old Sicilian fireball and a twenty-five-year-old Latina bombshell could be.
Both had eventually suggested to David that Gallo’s posturing was just that—a bit of dramatics to impress the traders who worked for him. David had an instinctive feeling that it was more than that—and that the turf war between Giovanni and the board and Gallo and the other traders was real and problematic—but he assumed he would learn how to stay out of the line of fire. Until then, he’d have to keep his eye on Gallo, at least until the guy accepted him, and do his best to prove himself upstairs and downstairs. Despite what Reston and Gallo might think, he wasn’t just another Harvard boy slumming under Giovanni’s wing; he came from the same place as Gallo and the traders, so he was in a unique situation of having a foot in both worlds. If he could figure out how to use his background and his skills, he was certain he could thrive.
But first, he had to survive his second day at work. The minute he stepped out onto the fifteenth floor, he saw that things were different in the brain on the morning of a board meeting. The place was full of people—mostly men in their forties and fifties, well dressed in suits and ties, all heading toward one of the doors at the end of the long hall lined with cubicles. Harriet was standing in front of her desk, handing each of the men a thick envelope as they passed by. When she saw David coming toward her, she rolled her eyes and waved one of the envelopes in his direction.
“Notes from last week, new business, holiday pledge drive, etcetera,” she said. He noticed she was chewing gum, and despite the pain that was still rising up from his stomach, he had to smile. He liked her more and more.
He took the envelope from her and glanced at the steady stream of men in suits.
“So this is the board?”
“Everybody’s here. There are thirty of them altogether. And
the Don, of course, who always makes an appearance. He’s inside already. Mr. Giovanni too. You probably should have gotten here a little earlier today, but you’ll know better next time.”
David nodded. He would have gotten there earlier if he hadn’t been busy throwing up in a corner of the parking garage where Serena’s sister stored the VW. He glanced past Harriet at a blank spot on the wall above her desk.
“What happened to my picture, Harriet? Are you moving on to someone else already? I thought I’d last in your heart at least a week.”
Harriet smiled, then shrugged. “Actually, it was gone when I got to work. I guess Mr. Giovanni wanted to make room for another kid, just in case you don’t work out.”
David was pretty sure she was joking.
“I’ll bring you a new one if I last the month,” he said, and he moved past her with a wink.
The fifteenth floor’s main board room was pretty much what David had expected, having spent a fair amount of time in similar rooms at various investment banks and consulting companies during the hellish job interview process before business school graduation. Rectangular, antiseptic, with high ceilings and stark white walls, except for one side that was nearly all tinted glass, overlooking the river down below. A huge oak table, surrounded by high-backed matching wooden chairs, took up most of the room. Most of the seats were already occupied; a good dozen more men had also congregated at the back of the room, where a table of bagels, doughnuts, and trays loaded with Styrofoam cups of coffee had been set up.
David quickly located Giovanni at the head of the table, deep in conference with Reston, who was leaning over his right shoulder. Mendelson was a few seats down from Reston; David would have had to go under the table to see if Mendelson was still barefoot, but he had no reason to believe otherwise. Mendelson saw him, smiled, then pointed to a chair that was placed a few feet behind Giovanni’s commanding position, right beneath a huge,
blank blackboard. David silently thanked the older trader and quickly made his way toward the chair.
Giovanni saw him as he passed by and gave him a quick wink and a thumbs-up. David smiled back, relieved that the daggers in his stomach had momentarily subsided. Maybe whatever he had eaten had finally surrendered, and anatomical peace had been restored.
As David lowered himself into his seat beneath the blackboard, his eyes wandered to the far end of the long wooden table, directly across from Giovanni’s roost. It didn’t take him long to spot Gallo: the dilapidated crown of steel-gray hair, the deep-set dark eyes, and, of course, the cigar clamped between his teeth. Gallo was also the only man in the room not wearing a suit; he had traded his zebra-striped jacket for what looked to be a velour zippered pullover. David could only guess that the man was wearing matching sweatpants. Christ, what his father would have said at the sight of the old-school multimillionaire powerbroker. Gallo really was something right out of the goddamn
Sopranos.
Giovanni cleared his throat, and the board members milling around the breakfast table quickly took their seats. Reston started the meeting off by reading from a prepared list of items, most of which David did not understand because they had to do with regulatory policies and day-to-day exchange business. It wasn’t until Reston got into the more esoteric subject of where the exchange was heading that David really perked up and listened. A difficult task, considering that his stomach had started bubbling again, and there was now a strange rushing sound deep in his ears.
“As you all know,” Reston was saying, “the future is coming at us pretty fast. Trading software is getting more sophisticated by the day, and it won’t be long until a fully automated energy exchange is possible—”
“Over my dead body.”
Even through the rushing in his ears, David recognized the voice immediately. It had been seared into his skull the night
before. Gallo had both hands splayed out on the wooden table in front of him and was giving Reston and Giovanni a look of pure hatred.
“I said ‘possible,’” Reston repeated. “Whether we want to go in that direction or not is something to study and discuss—”
“Study and discuss all you want,” Gallo interrupted again. “Meanwhile, we traders will continue to trade, making millions for ourselves and for you fat cats up here.”
There were whispers moving around the room as other board members glanced at Gallo angrily but didn’t dare to speak up. Giovanni put a hand on Reston’s shoulder, then smiled across the table at Gallo.
“We’re not here to argue about the future, just to take a look at where it’s heading. We might just already have the most efficient way the world knows to price oil—for all the chaos, I know as well as you that the system works. A perfect market, in a way, with purposefully imperfect parts. But that doesn’t mean we stick our heads in the sand. We keep our eyes open, we study the changes that are happening around us, and we react if we have to.”
Gallo rolled his eyes, then tapped cigar ash toward the carpet.
“Whatever floats your boat. Have your new Harvard kid write up a few hundred pages for all of us to look at. I’m still using the papers your last kid drew up to insulate my beach house.”
There was laughter all around. David would have blushed at yet another mention of his degree had not the rush in his ears suddenly become a dull roar. It was so bad that when he felt a buzz in his pants pocket he thought maybe it was something else internal erupting—then realized it was actually his BlackBerry going off. He thought about ignoring it, but then decided that the tension was so obvious between Giovanni and Gallo, nobody in the room would be looking at him.
He slid the BlackBerry out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. To his surprise, the text was from Reston:
You look like shit.
David looked up, but Reston was facing the other direction. David reached a hand to his forehead—and felt a sheen of sweat so thick it drenched his sleeve. The roar in his ears was so loud now that he could barely hear Giovanni responding to Gallo—something about the exchange needing to get out of the dark ages—and then he couldn’t hear anything at all because the daggers of pain in his stomach suddenly exploded in full force. He felt like he was being torn in half. He screamed, then saw the floor rising up at him. The next thing he knew he was lying on his back on the carpet, surrounded by board members. He struggled to focus and found himself staring right at a pair of bare feet.
Then Reston had one of his arms and Mendelson the other, and they quickly half-dragged, half-led him out of the boardroom. Giovanni was a few feet behind, shouting into his cell phone, something about having the car ready to take David straight to the hospital. David tried to say something, but Harriet put a damp washcloth over his face and took over for Reston and Mendelson. She was obviously much stronger than she looked, as she had no problem guiding him into the elevator. David’s last view of the fifteenth floor was from behind the washcloth: the board members peering out through the open boardroom door, while Reston, Mendelson, and Giovanni returned to the meeting, Giovanni shouting at the gawkers that everything was under control. Then the elevator doors slid shut, and David was alone with his pain, mortification, and Harriet.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Giovanni’s limo is waiting by the lobby doors. The driver will take you right to the hospital. I got your mother’s number from your employment forms, and she already called your girlfriend. I’m sure you’re going to be okay.”
David tried to thank her, but the pain was so intense that it took all of his strength not to curl up on the floor. After an eternity in the elevator, they finally reached the lobby. As Harriet
handed him off to a pair of security guards to take him to the limo, she whispered in his ear:
“Now that’s what I call making a first impression. First time I’ve seen the Don drop his cigar in fifteen years.”
David didn’t have time to enjoy her sense of humor, as suddenly his knees buckled and his world went pitch-black.