The First Billion

9

They’d moved into a conference room down the hall. A “working room,” they called it, and it was fitted for the late nights and early mornings that claimed so large a part of an investment banker’s existence. Besides the glass table and low-backed chairs, there was a refrigerator stocked with Coke, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and, as if an afterthought in their caffeinated universe, Evian. One cupboard held chips, cookies, and candy bars, and another, rumor had it, fresh fruit—though Gavallan had never seen anyone munching so much as a grape. Next door there was a pantry with a microwave oven, a freezer, and a coffeemaker. A paper plate bearing the remains of Gavallan’s sausage and egg burrito sat half in, half out of the trash can. A pall of cigarette smoke hovered below the ceiling. Let mortals worry about ulcers, colitis, and quadruple bypasses. They weren’t subject to daily deadlines that could cost a firm tens of millions of dollars and their own paychecks that extra, all-important zero.

Gavallan leaned back in his chair, balancing on its rear legs. He’d already gone over the Private Eye-PO’s most recent message and its accusations of misrepresentation and fraud. Reluctantly, he’d let everyone in on Grafton Byrnes’s secret visit to Moscow and his failure thus far to report in. He did not, however, feel it necessary to tell them about Byrnes’s early checkout.

“Listen, people, our back’s up against the wall here,” he said. “We need to take a close look at our deal books and see if we can find any holes that correspond to the areas the Private Eye-PO is attacking—namely, the Moscow network operations center and Mercury’s hardware purchasing. I don’t think we will, but I’m not going to my grave like the captain of the Titanic saying, ‘She’s unsinkable.’ No one’s leaving this room until we decide just what the heck we’re going to do. Comprende?”

His eyes moved from face to face, waiting for someone to pick up the baton. Bruce Jay Tustin, Tony Llewellyn-Davies, Sam Tannenbaum—or “Shirley Temple,” as Tustin had christened the blond, ponytailed lawyer—and Meg Kratzer. He was waiting for someone to share his outrage, but outrage, he knew, implied responsibility, and the Mercury deal had been his and his alone from the beginning. Finally, Meg Kratzer chimed in—Meg, for whom silence was an accusation of laziness.

“Look,” she said. “We handled all customer and managerial questions in-house. If something weren’t kosher about Mercury’s Moscow operations, we would have heard about it from one of their customers. Financial, accounting, and operational issues were completed by Silber, Goldi, and Grimm in Geneva. If there were a problem with Mercury’s physical plant and inventory, they would have found it—guaranteed! I don’t know a bigger tight-ass in the business.”

“I do,” said Tustin, rolling his eyes and lofting a thumb in Meg’s direction.

“I appreciate the compliment, Mr. Tustin,” she responded. “It’s hard to be more thorough than a Swiss with a microscope and a mandate to inspect. Coming from someone who’s such a renowned tight-ass himself, that’s very high praise indeed. I will thank you, however, to keep that greasy kid stuff in which you drown your last three remaining hairs off my deal books. I needed a whole bottle of Mr. Clean to get it off last time.”

“Very funny,” retorted Tustin, above the nervous laughter. “Just so you know, it’s pommade. That’s French, for ‘classy.’”

Meg Kratzer circled the table, passing out a thick red three-ring notebook to everyone present. She was a vital, animated woman, short, stocky, and neatly attired in an olive Valentino two-piece. Her red hair was pulled back into a severe bun. Her blue eyes glimmered with healthy determination. At age sixty-three, she was a mother of four, a grandmother of ten, and self-appointed godmother to Jett Gavallan. She’d put in twenty-five years at a well-known securities house, only to be told when she turned fifty that her shelf life had expired. The termination letter called her “irascible, opinionated, and obstinate,” and said she was “unable to meet the rapidly evolving dictates of the financial arena.”

Gavallan saw those same qualities as forceful, experienced, and demanding, and found her as up-to-the-minute on all matters financial as the most arrogant graduate of Harvard Business School. She was also articulate, responsible, and possessed of a wicked sense of humor.

As the firm’s head of investment banking, Meg had supervised the due diligence performed on Mercury. Its being an initial public offering, this involved the systematic deconstruction and analysis of the client company. Balance sheets were audited; bank balances verified; company officers interviewed (and often investigated); clients telephoned and questioned about their relationship with said company; corporate strategies parsed; and physical assets inventoried down to the last pencil and paper clip. It was a strip search really. With rubber glove and all.

Gavallan pulled the deal book closer, glancing at the Mercury name and logo that adorned the cover. The notebook had to weigh five pounds, and inside it was all the information Meg and her team had collected as part of their due diligence on Mercury.

“Let’s start with clients,” he said, flipping the notebook open. “Section one.”

Section one contained single-sheet summaries of over 150 telephone conversations conducted with Mercury’s clients in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Germany, and Russia. Leafing through the pages, he kept a sharp eye out for those customers based in Moscow. He thumbed past the Czech Ministry of Communication, the Kiev Education Committee, Alpha Bank (Minsk branch office), the Dresden Youth League. All declared themselves satisfied with Mercury’s product and services. Finally, he arrived in Moscow: the Moscow Municipal Transportation Service, the Moscow State University department of telecommunications, NTV (one of Moscow’s larger television networks). Again, all were satisfied. There were more: Romanov Bank, the Greater Russian Health and Casualty Insurance Company, Nezhdanov Construction, Imperial Aluminum Smelting and Manufacturing.

It’s bullshit, Gavallan thought, perusing the summaries. Everything the Private Eye-PO had said is patently false. Unadulterated garbage. And again, he wondered who the man could be, why he was trying to savage Mercury, and why he was making the issue so personal, repeatedly mentioning Gavallan’s pride.

When they’d finished with section one, Meg directed them to section three, titled “Company Infrastructure,” which contained questionnaires filled out by Mercury’s management. In an expectant silence, Gavallan and the others read one job description after another, all dictated by the eager and capable executives who worked at Mercury Broadband. Finally, he came upon one provided by a man he knew, Václav Panišc, Mercury’s CTO—chief technical officer—of European operations, a Czech-born doctor of electrical engineering, formerly a professor of computer science at Brno University.

Gavallan had toured Mercury’s Prague office in Panišc’s company. In his mind, he saw the cool marble floors, the legions of busy workers glued to their workstations, the aisles of servers, routers, and switches housed in trim glass cabinetry. One wall in the office’s conference room displayed a map of Mercury’s European operations and highlighted its expansion plans. Red fairy lamps depicted network operations centers, white lines denoted the cable or satellite connections, blue lights indicated cities with over twenty thousand subscribers, and green lights showed areas where service was to be offered within twenty-four months. Mercury was driving west to Berlin, south to Budapest, north to the Baltic republics, and east to the oil and mining boomtowns of Siberia. Standing there, Gavallan had felt the company’s pulse as surely as if it were his own.

“There’s not a scrap in here,” said Tony Llewellyn-Davies. “Mercury’s as clean as a whistle. Bravo, Meg. Well done, Jett. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about, at least nothing we could see.”

“That doesn’t excuse us if we’re wrong,” cautioned Gavallan. “Our name’s still on the prospectus.”

“Not my name, Jett,” Bruce Jay Tustin pointed out frankly. “She goes south, you’re on your own.”

“Thank you, Bruce. You’re comforting as usual.”

“My pleasure,” replied Tustin. “Naturally, I do expect to get your office while you’re doing your time in the pokey—oh, excuse me, I mean the men’s correctional facility. I’ve always loved the view.”

“Please, Bruce,” cut in Tony Llewellyn-Davies, his cheeks pink with anger. “You’re being exceptionally rude, even for yourself.” He offered Gavallan a look of perfect exasperation, then turned back to Tustin. “You know damned well we agreed I was to get the office.”

“No, me,” said Meg. “The office is mine. Age before beauty, gents.”

Everyone laughed, and the tension in the room was cut by half.

“Thanks, fellas. Thanks, lady,” said Gavallan. “I appreciate your efforts. Now if we can finish up, I believe we’re scheduled to talk to Silber, Goldi, and Grimm.”

Meg Kratzer punched some numbers on the phone. “I’ve got Jean-Jacques Pillonel, their MD, on conference when we’re ready”—“MD” in this case meaning “managing director.”

Gavallan reached a hand over the notebook and activated the speakerphone. “Jean-Jacques, it’s Jett Gavallan. Good morning.”

“Bonjour, Jett. Ça va?”

“We’ve got a minor problem over here. Just a headache, I’m sure. Meg tells me she’s gone over it with you. Can you help?”

“Jett, this is nonsense. I read this web page already. Mercury is here in Geneva with us. We spent a week camping in their offices. Certainly there’s no question of revenues; we’ve got the bank statements from UBS and Credit Suisse.”

“Jean-Jacques, no one is questioning the revenues. It’s a matter of the physical assets.” Gavallan leaned over to Meg Kratzer and whispered, “They handled that too, right?” She nodded, and he said into the speakerphone, “Who did the on-site inventory?”

“Mostly, we hired independent specialists,” Pillonel replied. “Systems engineers, information technology guys, you know. I supervised the project myself. A favor for my American friends. I know this is a big deal for you.”

“Thank you, Jean-Jacques,” said Meg, as Gavallan and everyone else at the table rolled their eyes.

“Jett, listen, no worries, my friend. We checked Mercury up and down. We even look in their shorts and count their pubics, you know. Forget this guy on the Net. Je te dis, ça va.”

Tustin lobbed an arm across the table and punched the mute button. “Ça va, ça va. Same thing the fuckin’ frogs said about the Maginot Line. It ees inveencible! Look how that turned out.”

“He’s Swiss, Bruce,” Meg pointed out.

Tustin shrugged. “Swiss. French. Whatever. A frog’s a frog.”

The room tittered nervously and Tustin turned off the mute.

“And Moscow?” asked Gavallan. “Who did you send?”

“I went myself.”

“You?” It was odd, not to say completely out of the ordinary, for a senior partner of an internationally prominent accounting firm to hole up in a client’s offices and physically inventory its assets. That was a job reserved for “newbies.”

“With my associates, of course,” Pillonel added quickly. “We have a new office in Moscow, so it was a side trip. Like I say, a favor.”

“And you saw all their operations, including the network operations center?”

Suddenly the Swiss adopted a belligerent tone. “Hey, Jett, we put our signature on the offering memorandum. Last time I checked, our name still meant something—or do you pay just anybody two hundred fifty thousand dollars for their help?” The voice regained its diplomatic flavor. “You are worried for nothing. How can Mercury earn so much money without having the equipment to do so? You can’t harvest wheat without a thresher—know what I mean? Mercury is doing a hell of a good job, I tell you. Look at their metrics: over four million hits a day. You know I have an order with you to buy a lot of shares.”

“And we’ll see you get filled,” said Gavallan. “Thank you, Jean-Jacques. Au revoir.”

“Au revoir, tout le monde.”

For a moment, there was only silence. The sound of pens tapping the table. Legs crossing. Meg Kratzer lit a cigarette and took pains to direct her smoke toward the ceiling.

There it was, Gavallan told himself. The managing director of Europe’s largest accounting firm had just confirmed that Mercury’s Moscow operations were up and running. Gavallan asked himself why he hadn’t called Jean-Jacques Pillonel in the first place. Because you can only trust your own, a cynical voice reminded him. Because people lie.

More and more, he was certain the Private Eye-PO had to be someone he knew, someone with a personal ax to grind.

“So, are we back at square one,” he asked his colleagues, “or did we just cross the finish line?” Unspoken, but hanging up there near the ceiling with Meg’s cigarette smoke and the lingering scent of his half-eaten burrito, were the words “postpone,” “shelve,” and “cancel.”

“Where the hell is Byrnes?” griped Tustin.

“Give him time,” said Llewellyn-Davies. “He’ll get back to us.”

“It’s ten o’clock in Moscow. How much time does he need?”

“Relax, Bruce,” said Meg. “I’ll take Jean-Jacques’s word over the Private Eye-PO’s anytime. I’m sure Graf will only confirm what we already know.”

“Maybe,” said Tustin grudgingly. “But I still want to hear from him.”

So did Gavallan. Every minute that passed without word from Byrnes fueled his worry over his friend’s well-being. Still, he was pleased with the give-and-take of the discussion. If there were any doubts about Mercury, it was best that they surfaced within the confines of the office.

“So, Sam, what’s your call?”

“Tough one.”

Tannenbaum was the firm’s resident bohemian. With his tight jeans, flannel shirt, and flowing blond hair, painstakingly groomed and tied into a ponytail, he looked like a refugee from Big Sur. “We seem to be stuck between believing in ourselves and believing the Private Eye-PO. From what I can gather, Mercury is everything we say it is. You think so. Meg thinks so. Jean-Jacques thinks so. Jupiter Metrix says so. It’s a ‘go deal.’ At the same time, we feel compelled to trust the Private Eye-PO because he’s been accurate in the past.”

“Jesus, Shirley, you’re getting me hard,” whined Tustin. “Say what you want to say and let’s get on with it.”

Tannenbaum shot him a withering look, but refused to be hurried, either by Tustin or by any of the other curious faces staring at him. “Unfortunately, I don’t know what to say except that we need to find the Private Eye-PO as quickly as possible and ask him where he’s getting his information.”

“Only one problem,” said Gavallan. “We still don’t know who he is.”

“Can’t we shut him up?” asked Meg. “Slap an injunction on him for false and deprecatory statements? I mean, what he’s doing isn’t any different from some wiseass issuing a phony earnings warning.”

“Sure,” said Tannenbaum. “But again, we have to find him first, then we have to get an injunction, and eventually we have to take him to trial. We don’t have the time. The balloon is going up in five days.”

Gavallan was suddenly restless. Frustration cramped his shoulders and clawed at his neck. Rising from his chair, he walked slowly round the table. All roads kept leading back to the same place. The deal was sound. The Cisco receipts were bullshit. So were the pictures of the Moscow NOC. Some asshole getting his jollies trying to hurt Black Jet or Mercury. It didn’t really matter who he was, or why he was doing it. Which left Byrnes. No one knew better than he how important the deal was. Absent his word to the contrary, there was only one way to go.

“Okay, everyone, that’s a wrap,” Gavallan said. “We all decided on this?” Approaching the table, he extended his hand over its center. “Tony?”

“It’s a go, Jett.” Llewellyn-Davies laid his hand on top of Gavallan’s.

“Bruce?”

“Fuckin’ A, bubba. We’re going in!” Tustin slapped his hand atop the two others.

“Sam?”

The lawyer looked unsure. “Umm, if you say so. Sure.” Another hand joined the pile.

“Meg?”

“Hee-yah!” she shouted, half laughing, throwing her hand on top of the stack. “We’re on the road to glory! Two billion or bust!”

Gavallan felt the weight of the four hands on top of his own. For a moment, his eyes passed from one person to the next. Bruce, the congenital loudmouth. Tony, the gutsy survivor. Sam, the reluctant corporate warrior. And Meg, the discarded treasure.

These were more than his friends, more than the closest of colleagues. These were the members of the family he’d chosen for himself. The pillars of the life he had built after his world had crashed in ruins about him. It all came back to people. To teamwork. To mutual accomplishment. He waited a second longer than usual, enjoying the communion of flesh, the union of wills.

“All right then,” he said. “We’re decided.”

Without another word, he pulled his hand from beneath the others and walked out of the conference room.

Back in his office, Gavallan stood by the window. Patches of blue peeked through fast-moving clouds. The harbor was alive with mid-morning traffic, tugs and ferries and tankers leaving frothy trails in their wakes. Tired, he pressed a cheek to the glass, enjoying the feel of the cool, slick surface against his skin. “Mercury is solid. Mercury is solid.” He repeated the words over and over, a mantra to convince himself and the whole world. But he’d been in the business too long to believe it. Skepticism had become second nature.

Right now only one thing was certain: If what the Private Eye-PO claimed was true and Black Jet Securities went ahead and brought Mercury to market, he, as sole owner of the firm, would be looking at a class action lawsuit of tobaccoesque proportions. Forget recouping the thirty-million-dollar bridge loan. Forget selling the company. Black Jet Securities would be doing a Drexel quicker than he could say “Mike Milken,” and he himself would be learning to trade stocks by Touch-Tone phone from the inside of a federal prison.

Returning to his desk, he found the shaman staring at him. He met the squat carving’s gaze and stared right back.

“Find him,” he ordered the Indian medicine man. “Find him, now!”