The First Billion

Incisex stock had begun trading on Nasdaq- the National Association of Securities Dealers' Automated Quotation System- thirty minutes earlier at 6:55. Ticker symbol CSXI- pronounced "sexy"- Incisex was a pioneer in the field of nanotechnology, the branch of science concerned with building sophisticated engineering devices- engines, motors, valves- on a submicron scale. The company's breakthrough product was a battery-powered valve no bigger than the head of a needle that when surgically implanted into a coronary artery restored proper blood flow to the heart. For men and women suffering from arteriosclerosis or any vasocirculatory problems (and for their cardiologists), it was a godsend. The IPO would net Incisex seventy-five million dollars, funds it would use to move into larger facilities and to upgrade its research and development efforts. Black Jet's fee was the standard 7 percent of the offering.

"Seventeen bid, seventeen and a quarter ask," announced Bruce Jay Tustin from his post behind a dozen color screens and monitors. "We're going up, up, up!"

The issue had been priced at $14 a share and after thirty minutes of trading, demand had lifted the shares 20-odd percent to $17. Checking a screen above Tustin's shoulder, Gavallan saw that buyers outnumbered sellers three to one. It was a far cry from the bonanza days when one new issue after another would double or triple on its first day of trading, but Gavallan wasn't complaining. In a rational world, a first day's gain of 20 percent qualified Incisex stock as "popping" all the same.

"I think we can open the champagne now," he said to an assembly of four men and two women standing to one side of the room. "Mr. Kwok, would you do the honors?"

On cue, Wing Wu Kwok, a newly hatched associate who had accompanied the Incisex brain trust on their two-week road show across America, uncorked a bottle of Moët & Chandon, filled a half dozen flutes, and offered round a silver tray bearing beluga caviar, toast points, and china dishes brimming with chopped egg white and diced onion.

Gavallan accepted a glass of bubbly and raised it high. "To Incisex and that rarest of all marriages- profit and the public good. Cheers!"

There were huzzahs all around. Hugs and handshakes followed the clinking of glasses.

"May the sun be ever in your eyes," Tustin chimed in, "and the wind at your ass."

"Here, here." Gavallan managed a smile, but just barely. Two hours' sleep had left him exhausted and haggard. With Grafton Byrnes's predicament increasingly weighing on him, it was difficult to maintain a cheerful façade. If no one had remarked upon the dark circles beneath his eyes, it was only because he was the boss.

For a few minutes, he mingled with the executives from Incisex, taking refuge from his worry in the cloak of chief executive. He slapped some backs, he partook of the caviar, he extolled his clients' rosy future. But even as half his mind concentrated on projecting a carefree exterior, the other half remained fraught with doubt. Two words from his best friend had turned Cate Magnus's hotly worded suspicions about Kirov and Mercury into Gavallan's worst nightmare.

"Everything's copacetic."

Gavallan had to imagine the rest. Grafton Byrnes was being held against his will somewhere in Russia and would never return. He knew too much. He was sure to be killed, if he wasn't dead already. It was all that simple. That terrible.

Pondering his conclusions, a new thought dawned on Gavallan, one that his trusting mind decided was more frightening than the rest. If Kirov felt so secure that the Mercury offering would come to market that he would risk kidnapping Byrnes, he had to have someone in place at Black Jet to push through the offering despite the chairman's opposition, someone highly enough placed in the company that he might persuade Jett that Byrnes's disappearance was a coincidence, nothing more.

As quickly as it had come, the lull on the trading floor abated. Lights began flashing on the checkerboard consoles that connected Black Jet to over a hundred banks, brokerages, and financial institutions around the world. Voices boomed as traders greeted their clients with news of the strong offering. Casters groaned as the bankers recommenced their daylong jitterbug.

The trading room of Black Jet occupied the entire western length of the fortieth floor. Desks ran perpendicular to floor-to-ceiling windows, twelve carrier decks bisected by a flight tower constructed from the newest in flat-screen monitors. Currencies were to the left of the room, followed by bonds, options, and finally, equities, both domestic and international. Chairs were situated at four-foot intervals and nearly every post was occupied by a man or woman, standing, seated, or in some pose in between. One hundred forty traders in all, and when things heated up, the place took on the frenetic currents of a Middle Eastern bazaar. It was the Casbah gone California, Evian and Odwallah replacing hookahs and hashish.