Christopher Reich - The First Billion

“It’s spread out,” said Gavallan. “Lehman and Merrill took ten apiece, but it’s still a handshake deal. Best case, we’re left holding thirty million.”

“That’s a high price to win some business, Jett old boy.”

“Maybe,” said Gavallan.

They were talking about the bridge loan he had floated Mercury to win the deal: a short-term, fifty-million-dollar facility to help the company tie up real estate, purchase much-needed hardware, and lease fiber-optic cable. In good times, bridge loans were a wonderful way to leverage the fees a bank could earn on a transaction. You were out the money maybe ninety days. You charged a juicy premium over prime. And you won the loyalty of your client by showing faith and shouldering some of his risk.

But these weren’t good times, and right now the bridge to Mercury was looking to be a damned fool thing. First off, it had eaten up the last of the firm’s capital. Second, it had left Black Jet reliant on current earnings to meet its cash flow requirements. Maybe Tustin was right. Maybe it was a high price. But it had been necessary. Crucial even. Black Jet needed the Mercury business and the bridge had won it, allowing the smaller upstart to steal the prestigious offering from under the noses of the big guns in New York.

So far, Gavallan had managed to farm out twenty of the fifty million to a few friendly banks—half of what he’d hoped. If the deal went south, Black Jet would be out thirty million dollars. It would be too late for layoffs. He’d be forced to sell his company to the first interested party at a fire-sale price. If the deal went south…

Gavallan swore to himself it would not.

“We can’t just sit still,” he said, at once disheartened and energized by the latest development. Like all adrenaline junkies, he functioned best in time of crisis. “Our silence will be regarded as an affirmation of the Private Eye-PO’s warnings. The pictures were one thing, but Tony’s right—he’s gone too far this time. It’s as if he were building a case against us.” Against me, came an unprovoked thought. “Bruce, do me a favor and get Sam and Meg down here, on the double.”

Sam Tannenbaum was Black Jet’s in-house counsel, Meg Kratzer its head of investment banking.

“Aye, aye,” said Tustin, saluting, then turning on a heel and hustling out of the room.

“Stupid git,” laughed Llewellyn-Davies, a bit of color returning to his cheeks. “Doesn’t even know you’re Air Force.”

Gavallan laughed too. “You want a coffee? Something to eat while we wait?”

“No thanks. I’m fine as is.”

“Sure? I’m thinking of a breakfast burrito. Sausage and egg. Maybe a soda. Didn’t teach you to eat like that at Eton, did they?”

“Stone the crows, no. A burrito would probably send me to the heavens.” Llewellyn-Davies coughed once, violently. “Pardon,” he said, raising a hankie to his mouth.

“You okay, Tony?” Gavallan asked, concerned.

“I’m alive, Jett. That’s good enough for me.”

“If you need anything…”

“Yes, I know. Ask.” Llewellyn-Davies knitted his brow inquisitively. “Not looking for another ticket to the ball tonight, are you? Hoping I might opt out?”

“No,” said Gavallan abashedly. “No, no, no.”

“Good, because I have every intention of attending. I can’t wait to see you mount the dais and make a bloody fool of yourself. You have to pay good money for that kind of entertainment.”

“You bastard!” said Gavallan, laughing in earnest for the first time that morning and clapping his friend and colleague on the back. Sometimes it was hard to hide his admiration for Llewellyn-Davies. It had to be damned tough living your life on a leash, he thought, relying on ten different combinations of six different pills—“cocktails,” they were called—to be taken six times a day. He remembered the frail, sallow man who’d showed up for the interview seven years earlier, the thousand-yard stare, the unflinching honesty.

“I’m sick,” Llewellyn-Davies had said. “You can see that. But I can work. Have to, actually. Can’t go out leaving debts behind me. What would my dad say? An accountant, don’t you know?”

His resume read like gold. Oxford, Harvard, a year at a bulge bracket firm before being fired for excessive absences. Gavallan had made some calls beforehand. Smart as a whip, came the unanimous response. Polite. Great sense of humor. Clients love him. But, come on, the coughing, the sweating, all those doctor’s appointments. How long’s he got, anyway? Six months? A year? Who wants to sit next to a fuckin’ cadaver all day long? Besides, you never know. Shit may be contagious that way, too.

“The job’s for a trader on our Swiss franc book,” Gavallan had said. “Pays fifty thousand a year plus a fifteen percent bonus if you don’t lose us too much money. If you have to miss work, get someone to cover for you. If you can’t find someone to cover for you, call me. Understood?”

Llewellyn-Davies had nodded, his jaw clenched, eyes welling. “Monday is it, then?” he’d asked, wiping his cheek with the back of his hand.

“You kidding?” Gavallan had exclaimed, standing and walking to the door. “You’re starting now. Take off that necktie and come with me.”

Gavallan looked at Llewellyn-Davies now, wondering if maybe he was remembering the same moment. Seven years later, Tony wasn’t simply alive but a vital component of Black Jet Securities and one of Gavallan’s most trusted lieutenants. For a few more seconds, neither man spoke, and the silence that invaded the room was soft and comforting.

“Jett, do you think it might be true?” Llewellyn-Davies asked finally, in his mildest brogue. “You think Kirov’s having us on, then?”

“Is it true?” For once, Gavallan didn’t have an answer. Shrugging, he was unable even to mouth the requisite denials. The answers, he knew, lay elsewhere. In the past. In his judgment. In his greed.

And instead of looking at the delicate features of Antony Llewellyn-Davies, he was meeting the brooding, religious gaze of Konstantin Romanovich Kirov the night they had first met six months before.

You are Mr. Gavallan, I think.”

“Mr. Kirov. It’s an honor.”

The two were standing in a plush reception hall on the campus of Stanford University. Kirov had been invited to deliver the annual Grousbeck lecture on foreign affairs. As his subject, he had chosen the current state of the Russian legal system, and his performance had been impressive, an impassioned sixty-minute discourse hitting all the buzzwords a liberal California audience was dying to hear. The need for an independent judiciary, ratification of the nation’s highest judges by a legislative authority, freedom of the press, the right to free speech. It was the Federalist Papers dressed up in an Italian blazer, Cartier links, and Lobb shoes, and topped off with an irresistibly cosmopolitan Russian accent. Kirov was still glowing from the standing ovation he’d received.

“Such a joy to speak to an American audience,” he said, patting his brow with a folded handkerchief. “If only my countrymen understood the importance of democratic institutions as well as yours. I must always remind myself that you have two hundred years’ experience to put your ideas into practice. Russia has a thousand years of an altogether different experience: oppression, tyranny, poverty. In short, the boot.” He balled his hands into fists and stamped his foot dramatically on the wooden floor, but his optimistic grin promised Gavallan and the circle of devotees around him that if Konstantin Kirov had anything to say about it, “the boot” would soon be a thing of the past.

“Shall we find someplace private to speak?” Kirov asked Gavallan, and grasping him amicably by the arm, led him from the crowded reception room into a quiet hallway outside. “There, that is better. Now we can talk. Man to man.”