The First Billion (19 page)

“You can?”

“Yeah. Free of charge. Hacking the Pentagon’s a piece of cake.”

“Good-bye, Jason. I’ll wire the remainder of your fee this morning.”

Gavallan hung up the phone and turned his attention to the name and address written on the notepaper:
Raymond J. Luca. 1133 Somera Road, Delray Beach, Florida.

“Ray Luca of Synertel,” Gavallan murmured. “Who’d have figured?”

Synertel was a high-flying manufacturer of optical switches that Black Jet had been set to take public for north of five hundred million dollars. Two weeks before the IPO was set to go, the company’s primary product was trumped by a competitor, rendering it obsolete before it had even been introduced. Gavallan canceled the IPO on the spot. Three months later, Synertel went bust.

Luca’s being the Private Eye-PO explained the pissy note to his warnings. It did not, however, discount the veracity of his statements. Luca might have a bone to pick, but he was telling the truth about Mercury, or at least hinting at it.

Gavallan punched a button on the speakerphone. “Emerald,” he began. “Book me a—” He stopped dead, deciding it might be wiser for him to make his own travel arrangements. “Emerald,” he started anew. “I’ve got to run out for a while. Actually, I’m feeling pretty lousy. Forward any calls to me at home. Thanks.”

Replacing the receiver, he picked up his jacket and satchel, turned off the lights to his office, and shut the door behind him.

From here on out, Gavallan was on his own.

22

We’re using the same guy,” announced Roy DiGenovese when he stuck his head into Howell Dodson’s office at four-thirty in the afternoon. “Gavallan’s paying the same fella we got on contract to the Bureau. Vann. Jason Vann.”

Lifting his feet off the desk, Dodson slid his chair forward and afforded DiGenovese his fullest attention. “Do tell, dear boy. I smell progress.”

Dodson had been reviewing the casework on Kirov and Mercury, trying to figure out what Gavallan’s role in the whole thing was and whether or not it might be wise to alert his friends in the SEC or the Treasury Department about it. It was a thorny issue. The Bureau didn’t need any multibillion-dollar lawsuits accusing its very own Howell Ames Dodson IV of maligning, defaming, tarnishing, or slandering a wholly legitimate enterprise. Every request he’d made to Baranov to send some of his investigators over to Mercury’s Moscow operations center had been met with deafening silence. The man hadn’t lifted so much as a finger. He cared only about Novastar. Mercury was the Americans’ problem.

Dodson had the tape from Mercury Broadband USA, the allegations of a paid informant, and that was it. The skeptic inside him refused to follow in DiGenovese’s rabid footsteps. When it came to fashioning a winning indictment, they were no better off than they were four weeks ago. Effectively, the decision had been made for him. He didn’t dare open his mouth to another federal agency about his concerns over Mercury Broadband. For now, they would remain an in-house matter.

“Vann found the Private Eye-PO,” DiGenovese continued, taking a seat opposite Dodson. “His name is Raymond Luca. He’s a resident of Delray Beach. M.I.T. grad, and get this . . . an ex-con.”

“And what does Mr. Luca do, pray tell, when he’s not playing the Private Eye-PO?”

“No idea. Just got a name and an address. Vann said he could find out more, but he’s already run over his hourly commitment and it would run us another few thousand dollars.”

“Very well,” said Dodson. “Run Mr. Luca’s social security number through the IRS, do a thorough credit check on the man, contact M.I.T.’s alumni relations board. Someone can tell us how he earns his daily bread.” He shifted in his seat, unsatisfied. “What else did Mr. Vann have to tell us?”

“Nada. Just gave me the same info he gave Gavallan.”

“And how much did Mr. Gavallan pay our Mr. Vann?”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Next time ask,” ordered Dodson, wondering if Vann might be holding something back. “And find out where Vann likes his funds wired. I don’t take to people double-timing the Bureau—goes against my sense of patriotism. While you’re talking to our colleagues at the IRS, why don’t you have them take a peek at Mr. Vann’s latest 1040s. Might be nice to have some leverage in the future.”

DiGenovese had been writing all this down on a notepad he carried in his left hand. Finished, he looked up. “Next flight down to Miami’s at seven-fifteen. I booked us two seats.”

“Pardon me?”

“You heard Gavallan,” DiGenovese said, in a tone as surprised as his superior’s. “He wants to permanently shut Luca’s mouth.”

“And do we have any evidence that Mr. Gavallan’s going anywhere near Florida these next few days?”

“Well, no. I mean, not yet. We don’t get transcripts of the wiretaps until twenty-four hours after they’re picked up. I thought it would be a good idea to have a talk with Luca, let him know that he might be in some danger.”

Dodson shot DiGenovese a stern glance as if to say he’d been silly even to think of flying to Florida that evening. In fact, his reluctance to leave so quickly was rooted in his domestic situation. His wife, Clara, was a woman of the times, and would raise holy hell if he popped down to Florida without advance warning. She didn’t stand for unannounced departures, late nights at the office, or working more than a half day on weekends unless absolutely necessary—and “necessary” meant that an agent’s blood had been spilled.

“Calm down, Roy. If you’re so worried about Mr. Luca, give him a call on the telephone. Tell him to lock his front door. I would, on the other hand, enjoy speaking with Mr. Luca about where in God’s name he’s been getting our confidential information. Book us first thing in the morning.”

“You don’t think he needs protection?”

“No, Roy, I do not. Now off you go. Book us those seats for tomorrow.”

DiGenovese shifted in his chair, and Dodson could see he was using all that Ranger discipline of his to keep from arguing. The Army’s fine training won out over DiGenovese’s impetuous Sicilian blood, and after a few seconds he complied. “Yessir. I’ll get back to you about the times.”

“Good man,” said Dodson, beaming. “What’s that you always say when things are going well?”

“Drive on, Airborne.”

“Yes, yes. Well then, ‘Drive on, Airborne.’ ”

23

Cate Magnus held the Nokia cell phone close to her ear, clicking the volume higher so she could hear the man’s voice over the earsplitting whine of a jacksaw.

“It’s just not what we want this week,” Jimmy Murphy was saying. “Metrics are so dry. Your readers don’t give a fiddler’s fart whether Yahoo! gets two million hits a day or two billion. And they care even less what exactly constitutes ‘a hit’ on a website. This isn’t a scientific review here. You’re supposed to liven up the rag, not dull it down.”

“It’s not the methodology I’m interested in, Jimmy,” she retorted, pacing the length of her bedroom. “It’s the way you can cheat on these things. Use one method and it looks like five hundred users a day are logging onto your site; use another and it’s more like five thousand. The whole thing stinks. I mean, who are you supposed to trust?”

“Good question, Cate. Tell you what: Let’s leave that question until next month. Give me something lively, something dishy.”

Cate lowered the phone from her ear and mouthed a very nasty word in Mr. Jimmy Murphy’s general direction. Murphy was the features editor at the
Financial Journal,
a rail-thin, choleric Kansan who took it as part of his job description to be permanently dissatisfied with his writers’ offerings. More and more, he was pushing the column away from the serious fare she favored—namely, an examination of the personal and societal ramifications wrought by a once-in-a-century upheaval in technology—toward dishy, prurient pieces on the lifestyles of the sick and famous. It was partly her mistake. A year ago, she’d written a piece on young women who worked for a certain gentlemen’s club in San Mateo that catered to the wild and wildly expensive whims of the valley’s glitterati, such as they were. One of the girls she’d interviewed had talked about the habits of one of her regulars, a nationally known Internet exec who liked to do weird things with whipped cream, motherboards, and electrodes on his nipples.

Or there was the time Murphy had sent her to Bangalore, India, to check out the booming matchmaking market for up-and-coming high-tech wizards. It was the Indian women who paid for introductions to men, and the depth of questioning they had to endure approached the ridiculous. “How would you propose to cure your husband’s impotence?” “What family remedies can you offer for baldness?” “Would you object to your husband’s taking a mistress? Two mistresses?” and her favorite, “What is the proper serving temperature of chicken tika-tika? In Celsius
and
Fahrenheit, please.”

It wasn’t lost on her that 90 percent of the
Journal
’s readers were men.

This week’s “Gold Rush” dealt with a more serious topic: the internecine warfare going on among competing firms in the field of metrics. “Metrics,” as related to the Internet, involved defining precise methodologies to measure usage of the World Wide Web, or more important these days, providing objective information as to exactly how many visitors clicked onto specific websites.

Now that the bloom was off the rose and the new economy was looking a little long in the tooth, metrics had assumed a new importance. Acquisition had replaced IPOs as the prevalent exit strategy for start-ups, and the price a company could demand was directly correlated to the number of hits its website received. Each company in the metrics game claimed to offer the sole, incontrovertible means of measuring a site’s popularity. The only hard part for the client was finding the boys who’d put you at the top of the list, and Cate was sure that a little extra vig would better your final score.

“Look, Jimmy,” she started again, wincing at the syrupy sound of her voice. “Maybe the piece is a little heavy on the number crunching. Let me talk to rewrite; I’ll soften it up, give it a little more color.”

Cate was frustrated. She’d finally come up with a story that allowed her to put into practice some of the financial carpentry she’d picked up at Wharton, and no one gave a damn.

“You’re not listening to me,” carped Murphy. “Where are those personal items we so loved? Remember last year when you followed a Range Rover into and out of a shop six times in three months? We had letters for a year wondering what happened to that lemon—some nut even wanted to buy it. Hey, hey, here’s an idea! Hot off the wire. Why not give me something about the house. How does a savvy reporter knee-deep in tech hoopla deal with the down-and-dirty world of home renovation? Give me a thousand words on pouring a new slab. How do they do that, anyway, without having to tear down the house?”

“Noisily,” Cate answered, putting a finger to her ear to drown out an eager jackhammer. “Very noisily. Listen, Jimmy, I want you to run my piece as is. Give me metrics this week and I’ll give you whatever you want next Friday. Come on, Murph. A favor.”

“A favor?” Jimmy Murphy’s voice cracked, and she could picture him at his desk, hurriedly figuring the angles. No doubt he was wearing one of his bright red dress shirts with a collar two sizes too big for his scrawny neck. “Deal,” he said, finally. “I’ll get back to you on a subject. Maybe we can find out what Jim Clark’s doing these days. Whatever happened to that boat of his? Maybe you could track it down, go for a sail.”

Cate sighed. That was someone else’s story. A real writer. Someone who possessed the wherewithal to write a book. “Sure thing, Jimmy. See you.”

Collapsing onto her unmade bed, Cate put down the phone while shaking her head. Thank goodness, she’d convinced him to run the column. Time was precious. Even the smallest skirmishes counted as battles. She was mustering her troops, marshaling her evidence for the final assault. Rolling over onto her stomach, she pulled the top sheet off her bed, then the fitted cover. Slipping a hand down the side of the mattress, she found a horizontal indentation, and dug her hand into it until her fingers touched a sheaf of papers. Still there, she confirmed, awarding herself a contented smile. Not the most imaginative of hiding places, but for a girl who’d passed up spy school, not bad.

After replacing the sheets, she made the bed. The room looked better now, friendlier. Her armoire wasn’t drunk, just a little tipsy. The desk Jett Gavallan had built for her beamed with memories of their time together. The furniture was a little too “shabby-chic” for her taste, but it would have to do. The furniture, the bedroom, the house, all of it was cover. A mask she’d put on eight years ago.

Her eyes drifted back to the desk, and she thought of Jett. Jett, her erstwhile love. Jett, her weathered Boy Scout. Jett, her pigheaded ex who refused to blink his eyes at the lights of an oncoming train.

Until seeing him last night, she’d thought her loyalties decided upon, her duties sworn. But five minutes in his presence had weakened her resolve. She wondered how much more she could tell him about Mercury before he’d finally accept her words as the truth. How much before she revealed too much about herself.

Rising, Cate turned on the radio and headed to her closet. The raucous jangle of The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” hit her ears, and immediately she felt better. She loved Western music. The hard guitars, the irreverent edge, the joyous mocking of authority.

Sharif don’t like it

Rock the Casbah, rock the Casbah!

She was still shaken from her early-morning visit. That she hadn’t been harmed was small consolation, runner-up only to the fact that the men hadn’t found what they’d been looking for. Their haphazard rummaging of the house made it clear that no one had any proof she was behind the attacks. They had come to frighten her. They had come to let her know she was being watched and that she could be controlled. They had come to signal that her life as she knew and loved it could come to an end anytime they wanted it to.

They had come to tug at the mask.

Sliding back the door, she chose a pair of faded jeans, a bold blue and white striped dress shirt, and a cowboy’s leather belt Jett had given her on a trip to his ranch in Montana. Cate chose her clothing carefully, rarely buying trendy items or accessories that might be out of style the next season. She knew how to read a stitch and checked a garment’s cut and the quality of its material before making a purchase. She’d worn enough cheap clothes to know the difference between good and bad. Her only extravagance was a pair of Todd’s driving shoes, fire engine red and buffed to a gloss.

Moving to the mirror, she applied her makeup in quick, deft movements. Two strokes apiece for the eyelashes, nothing for the brows—they were too dark as it was, too arched for her liking. A hint of eyeliner. Nothing for the lips. The lips would do on their own, she thought, pressing them together. The lips were her best feature, wide and sensual, full without being grotesque. Yes, she’d keep the lips.

Finished, she took a step back, checking for any sign of the fear she felt bubbling inside of her. Her eyes were clear and registered their usual nonchalance. Her smile was in place, and she was glad to see it still conveyed the promise of mischief, a hint of merriment. She found her face too serious as a whole. The high cheekbones, the narrow nose, the widely spaced eyes—all conspired to lend her a haughty, insolent regard that she felt was the opposite of her true personality.

No, she concluded, giving herself a final looking-over, there was scant sign of fear. And she was cheered by her mastery of her emotions.

Strolling from the bathroom, Cate stopped at the dresser and picked up her handbag. She spent a moment checking the contents—recorder, notepad, digital camera, phone, pager, wallet, hairbrush, tic tacs. All present and accounted for.

Just then, her pager buzzed. She picked it up and checked the digital readout. “Urgent information about our mutual friend. Let me know when to send.” Excitedly, Cate set down her purse and keyed in a response, then dashed downstairs and stood by the fax machine. A minute later, the phone rang and the fax began to stutter.

The writing on the paper was Cyrillic, the stationery that of the “Prosecutor General of the Russian Republic,” but the message was written in English. Dated May 31, the transmission was a copy of a memorandum from Yuri Baranov to “Deputy Assistant Director Howell Dodson of the FBI, Chairman, Joint Russo-American Task Force on Organized Crime.”

Cate held her breath, reading the body of the text.

“Pursuant our inquiry re: subject Kirov, Konstantin R., evidence forwarded my offices regarding Novastar Airlines graded sufficient to obtain warrant. Issuing date 7 June. Details of operation to follow. Suggested timetable: Week 23.”

Operation?
She wondered what they had in mind. Week twenty-three had begun Monday of this week. Damn it, she cursed, why was she always behind the curve?

Cate reread the fax. While there was nothing on the page mentioning Mercury by name, it was a damning document nonetheless. Investors would shy away from an offering for a foreign corporation whose chairman was being investigated on charges of corruption and money laundering by his own government.

Moving to her PC, Cate scanned the document into her hard drive. For all her effort, she was still unsure of the good it would bring. She was sowing doubt, when she needed to be bringing evidence. The article on metrics would help, even if it didn’t mention Mercury. More certain was the pain her efforts would cause Jett. He’d lose the deal and his bridge loan to Kirov. He might even have to part with his company. Wouldn’t it simply be easier to call Jett up and have a heart-to-heart?

About what?
the steely voice inside her demanded.
He’s been warned. There’s nothing more you can do.

Cate ignored the voice. One look at Jett Gavallan last night had brought back all her strenuously suppressed feelings. Lowering her eyes, she remembered the touch of his fingers, the defiant glance when she told him to drop the deal, the tide of blood in his eyes. She told herself it wasn’t fair for any woman to demand so much of herself.

The hard voice laughed.
Fair? What’s fair?
She only had to call to mind her own past—her struggles, her denials, her battle to rebuild a career from scratch, to carve a new identity for herself—to know that “fair” was not a promise life often kept. But there was more to it than that. There were some things she could never say, no matter how much her heart demanded.

Cate regarded the fax, and her sentiment fled. “Too bad,” she whispered, hardening herself to the task. Jett was a big boy. He’d been warned. From here on out he would have to take care of himself. She’d done enough already, even if he didn’t know it.

Straightening her back, she accessed her E-mail program and uploaded the fax. After addressing it to her friend in Florida, she hit the send key, confident that he would know how to make proper use of it.