The First Billion

She stopped her pacing long enough to check her watch and compare the time against that of the clock on Federal Hall. Both read 9:20. Her heart raced. Where was he?

"Ekaterina Kirova?"

"Da?" Cate spun. A wiry, dark-haired man attired in a neat houndstooth jacket stood in front of her. She'd never met him before, but she knew him intimately: the soulless eyes, the distrustful smile, the shadow of a beard pushing up an hour after shaving. "Dangerous," Pillonel had said of her father's partner. His krysha. "From the bandit country."

"You have something for me?" he asked.

Retrieving the compact from her purse, she removed the last disc and told him what he would find. "Hurry," she said.

But in contrast to her anxious demeanor, the Chechen was all too relaxed. He held the disc between his fingers, examining it this way and that as if deciding whether or not to purchase an expensive piece of jewelry. "No need. Everything is already taken care of."

"What will you do?"

The man from the bandit country met her gaze, and she felt a chill pass through her. Saying nothing, he slipped the disc into his pocket, bowed ever so slightly, and walked off.

***

The party of three had grown to six. Dodson and Gavallan led the way. DiGenovese, Haynes, and the muscle came behind. Haynes and his two agents had donned the shapeless jackets favored by specialists on the floor. Strung out along the corridor that ran parallel to the floor, weaving in and out of the milling throngs of traders, brokers, and specialists, the group managed to avoid looking like the war party it was.

Dodson pulled up at one of the double doors leading onto the floor. "All right, Mr. Gavallan. Here we are. You heard Agent Haynes. Kirov just left the specialist's booth and is on his way up to the podium. Lead on. And remember- calm, brisk, and orderly. We find Kirov and we take him into custody."

The New York Stock Exchange was divided into four trading rooms: the Main Room, the Garage, the Blue Room, and 30 Broad Street. There was no hierarchy among them. The Exchange's seventeen trading posts, scattered across the floor like giant bumpers on a billiard table, were divided evenly between them. Wide passageways lead from one room to the next. But when people thought of the Big Board, it was the Main Room they envisaged. It was here that trading was inaugurated from an elevated podium every morning at nine-thirty, and here that was halted every afternoon at four.

Gavallan led the way into the Main Room. It was large and airy as a convention hall, two hundred by two hundred feet. The ceiling stood several stories above a century-old plank floor. American flags of every size and shape dominated the décor, sprouting from every trading post and hanging on every wall. Brokers' booths ringed the floor's perimeter. Ninety percent of orders to buy and sell shares traveled electronically through the "superdot" computer system directly to the specialists' booths, where they were automatically mated, buyer with seller, at an agreed upon price. This 90 percent, however, accounted for only half the share volume that traded each day. The remaining 10 percent of trades accounted for the other 50 percent of the volume, and these large, or "block," trades required the human attention of both broker and specialist.

Lowering his shoulder, Gavallan nudged his way through a knot of brokers talking last night's hoops and walked onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Keeping a driven pace, he wound his way across the floor, passing the trading posts where IBM, 3M, Freddie Mac, and AIG were traded. The posts bristled with television monitors, flat screen displays, computer keyboards. Eleven minutes from the opening- 9:18:25, by the digital clocks hanging high on every wall- each was surrounded by clumps of specialists balancing their orders prior to the start of trading. It was difficult to see more than fifteen feet ahead.

Gavallan reached the post that housed the electronic offices of Spalding, Havelock, and Ellis, the specialist firm assigned to trade Mercury's stock. The booth was a hive of activity. Twenty or thirty brokers crowded around Deak Spalding, the firm's top trader, shouting to be heard. It was a scene that played out whenever there was strong demand for a stock, or strong pressure to sell it.

Gavallan glanced toward the podium. A Mercury Broadband banner was draped across the balcony below it. Another larger one hung on the wall behind it, just below the gargantuan American flag that daily paid tribute to the United States of America and the free market it fostered.

"Well, look who's here," said Deak Spalding. "The devil himself, back from the dead. Hey, guy, how are you? I had old man Grasso himself here not two minutes ago, with your buddy Kirov and some of your troops. Gonna be a big opening. Gotta love it."

Spalding was a broad, florid man with an Irishman's ruddy nose and gift for gab. A pink carnation adorned his lapel.