The First Billion

Byrnes kept a mirthless smile to himself. What did the French say? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. "No thank you. Novastar's account at the Moscow Narodny Bank will be fine." He handed Pillonel a piece of stationery bearing the account numbers. "By three-thirty today, gentlemen."

65

It was the quiet time.

The time for reflection. The time to put your personal thoughts in order, separate the good from the bad and take a measure of your life. The time to settle things. The last free moments before the operation went tactical, because once it went tactical and you were doing what you'd trained these last four months to be doing, the only things you thought about were the mission, your part in it, and maybe, if you had the courage, whether you'd get out of it on the other end alive.

The members of Team 7 sat at the edge of the landing strip, using parachutes for seats, twelve castaways eating their rations of Pop-Tarts, Fritos, and protein bars, drinking their Gatorades and Diet Cokes. They were Americans, all of them- the baseball caps and work boots, the insouciant smiles, the two-day beards. Or so you'd swear until looking closer. And then, as you examined each one by one, you would shake your head. Here, the cheekbones too high, the eyes vaguely Asiatic. There, the blond hair a shade too blond. This one's gaze too dark, mirroring a fatalism bred over centuries. That one's face too gaunt, hunted, fearful.

They were born of the East. Mother Russia's children.

A stiff wind snapped at the waist-high grass that bordered the strip. Behind them, the Bering Sea lapped at a beach even more desolate than the deserted airfield. The water was calm and glassy, a dark, dark green that went on forever. If you stood on your tiptoes and the air was clear enough, which it wasn't so late in the evening, and you had the right frame of mind, the proper imagination, you might just see the Alaskan coast forty miles away.

But none of the men looked. No one stood. It was the quiet time.

It had been a long journey to the abandoned airfield on the very edge of the Chukchi Peninsula. Seventeen hours without sleep and the mission had not yet begun. From Severnaya they had traveled to Nordvik by a rusting Tupolev transport, and from Nordvik to Anadyr by a snazzy Air Force Ilyushin. The last hundred miles had been traveled in the rear of a Kam truck that smelled as if it had been routinely used to haul sheep to the slaughterhouse. Each leg of the mission was cut off from the next. Compartmentalized. No one asked where they came from or where they were going.

They were spirits.

Ghosts that never were.

A team that did not exist.

Somewhere in the wind danced the drone of a faraway engine. The team rose to their feet and looked to the sky. The drone grew into a silhouette and the silhouette into a silver form. A minute passed and the Beechcraft 18 came into sight. It was a vintage 1960s floatplane that had earned its stripes ferrying fishermen to and from the Canadian wilds. Its new incarnation called for a more hazardous duty, and the oversized radial engines had been souped up accordingly. Pontoon floats grew from the bottom of the plane, and as the Beech hovered low over the airfield they looked like twin torpedoes, primed and ready to drop. Wheels bobbed from the floats, and the plane struck the landing strip with a military finesse.

Barely had it stopped before the commandos had pulled themselves aboard. Webbing had replaced seats in the stripped-down fuselage. Blankets would do for heating. The men took their places, throwing their chutes on the floor between their feet. Their packs, and the sensitive cargo they contained, they held in their laps.

The Beechcraft turned and roared down the runway, lifting gracefully into the gray-tinged sky. The forecast was good, notwithstanding the gusting northerlies. This high in the latitudes, the wind was a constant, and if not your friend, an enemy to be made peace with.

Inside the fuselage, the men checked their equipment a final time, then closed their eyes. They did not sleep. They rehearsed. They concentrated. They willed themselves to their highest level.

The quiet time was over.

66

In New York City, on this third Tuesday in June, the sun rose at 5:24. The dawn promised a flawless day. Wisps of cumulonimbus raked a hazy blue sky. A freshening breeze kept the temperature in the low sixties, dousing Wall Street with the honest, vital scent of the East River. Outside the New York Stock Exchange workers draped an enormous ba

Inside the building, television crews set up for what promised to be a hectic day. Twelve networks had constructed production facilities on the mezzanine level ringing the Exchange's principal trading floor. Making the circuit, one passed cramped, brightly lit ministudios for CNN, CNBC, the BBC, Deutsch Fernsehen, Nippon Television… Journalists could be glimpsed applying their makeup, brushing their hair, and practicing their "good morning smiles."

By 7 A.M., the first reports were going out live to audiences around the world. The talk today centered on one subject: the Mercury Broadband IPO. What would be the first day pop? Would the stock keep its head? Was Mercury an exception to a moribund market or the pioneer of a long-awaited rally in technology stocks?

Konstantin Kirov rose at seven-fifteen, showered, shaved, and dressed in a sober gray suit and maroon tie. Despite last night's warnings, he'd slept remarkably well. What will be, will be, he told himself. He'd taken every precaution. He was convinced that once the stock began trading, no one would have the nerve to stop it. If Gavallan were going to make a move, he would have done it long before now. What was the American saying? "No news is good news."

Giving himself a final once-over in the mirror, he asked himself if he was being too confident, too cocksure. Up came his hand with a last spritz of cologne. No, he decided, just realistic.

Picking up his briefcase, Kirov left his suite and took the elevator to the first floor, where he was joined for breakfast in the main dining room by Václav Panišc, the CTO of Mercury's European operations, and Janusz Rosen. The bankers were absent, no doubt putting in an appearance at the office before making their promised rendezvous at the Broad Street entrance to the stock exchange at nine o'clock. Kirov ordered a large breakfast, then picked at it. His appetite had deserted him.

At eight-thirty, he and his colleagues decamped to a black stretch limousine berthed in front of the hotel. Kirov settled into the backseat for the drive downtown. The chauffeur a

The limousine turned onto Broad Street, and through the windows Kirov stared at an imposing neoclassical building at the far end of the street. A steep flight of stairs led to the building, and even he could recognize the statue of George Washington at the top of the steps. The chauffeur explained that the building was Federal Hall, the seat of the United States government from 1776 to 1791. Across from Federal Hall stood the old headquarters of J. P. Morgan & Co., from whose offices the legendary financier had built his empire and dictated the course of the American economy.