Rigged

by Ben Mezrich

  She paused, then held out a thin hand.

  “I think we’re just on the same travel schedule. My name’s Jasmine Cross. I work for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group—so if you’re one of our frequent guests, this probably won’t be the last time you’ll run into me.”

  David tried to ignore the sparks running up his spine as he shook her hand. She looked to be about his age, maybe a year or two older. And even through the thick sweater, her curves were torture on his peripheral vision; it took most of his concentration to keep his attention above her turtleneck.

  “David Russo,” he said, introducing himself. “No wonder my friend raves about this hotel chain. And here I thought he was just happy about the Toblerone in the minibars.”

  Jasmine laughed, then cocked her head to one side.

  “Actually, the way you were looking at me in London, I should be suspicious of you. Although any stalker who can afford to stay at our hotels is probably worth the risk of a restraining order.”

  David coughed, suddenly aware that she was looking him over—and even more aware that he was wearing sweats and mud-stained sneakers.

  “I’m not stalking you, but I am bringing down the prop erty value of your beautiful lobby. I need to go upstairs and get cleaned up. But it was a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Cross.”

  He hit the button for the elevator again, and thankfully the doors slid right open. As he stepped inside, he felt her light touch against his arm.

  “How about after your shower you come back down here and take a walk with me. There’s nothing quite like Lake Geneva at night.”

  David swallowed, momentarily unable to answer, as a battle raged inside his conscience. There wasn’t anything explicitly seductive about the invitation—except, of course, that when a girl was this hot, anything she said was by its nature an act of seduction. And when David looked into her eyes—mainly to keep from looking anywhere else—he saw what he interpreted as a hint of loneliness in the darkness of her pupils; maybe she’d seen something similar in him, or maybe she was reaching out because they were two travelers who’d somehow found themselves in the same unlikely orbit. Or maybe she was just bored. Or maybe—fuck it, David was tired of trying to think of maybes.

  Jasmine shrugged, stepping away from the elevator.

  “Unless you’re too tired from your jog.”

  David stopped the closing elevator doors with both hands.

  “I’ll be down in five minutes,” he said.

  He cursed to himself the whole way up to his room. He cursed his way through a lightning-fast shower. He cursed his way all the way back down to the lobby. By the time he caught sight of her again, standing outside on the cobbled sidewalk, her long sable ponytail swaying in the breeze, her dancer’s legs and perfect ass struggling against the tight material of her jeans—he’d completely run out of curses.

  David wasn’t really sure how it happened, or whose fault it was. After the fact, he couldn’t have even re-created it in his mind, because the moment changed so damn fast it defied any sense of time or place—it simply was. One minute he and Jasmine were walking along the snowy banks of the great lake, talking about their lives and their hopes and their dreams, sharing stories of two very different cultures and worlds, trading jokes and gentle barbs—and then the next minute they were kissing, first gently and cautiously, then with a fierceness and a passion that seemed to erupt out of nowhere.

  And at first David’s mind tried to fight back. Christ, he screamed at himself, this is a huge mistake, this is not what I’m here for, this is not who I am. This girl was not Serena—she was a stranger in a strange place, and no excuse of time and location would make this right. But even so, whether it was the thrill of the unexpected, or the crisp alpine air, or the way the lake seemed to shimmer in front of them, for a brief moment, as David’s hands moved beneath her sweater and up the holy curves of her body, as her bare flesh burned against the tips of his fingers, he wasn’t thinking about Serena or Dubai or even oil. For that brief moment, right and wrong seemed like such pathetic little concepts. All he knew for certain was that he didn’t want that brief moment to end—he wanted to stay there on the banks of Lake Geneva forever, as her body enveloped him and her long legs suddenly wrapped around his waist, as he lifted her up into the air and then set her down, as the two of them rolled back and forth in the snow, interlocked, as his hands slid down to the clasps of her jeans, as her lips pressed against his neck, as a feral gasp escaped her throat—and finally, he did stop himself before he moved past the point of no return. Finally, he pushed back from her, rising quickly to his feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t.”

  She looked up at him, confused, tempting, wanting, the steam from the snow still rising off her flesh—a swirl of heat and passion vanishing upward into the pitch-black night. He shook his head, angry at himself.

  “I’m sorry. Really, I have to go.”

  And he turned, quickly heading back toward the hotel. A kiss, he told himself, it was only a kiss, albeit passionate,

  but in that moment, damn it, it had seemed like so much more.

  Chapter 33

  J anu ar y 26, 2003

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire . . .

  By two in the morning the girls were coming by so fast that it was like a moving montage of barely covered body parts: long, stockinged legs; heaving breasts spilling out of demi-bras and tight bustiers; rounded, apple-shaped asses split by leather and lace thongs; and high spiky heels everywhere, from one end of the long carpeted stage that ran through the center of the ballroom to the other. As the girls circulated through the massive hall, they were doing their best to gyrate to the music blaring from the overhead speakers, but it was obvious from the way they were built that none of these girls were dancers—and that, of course, was the point. This wasn’t a strip club—it was the main ballroom of the Four Seasons of Houston. These girls—all seventy of them—were too tall and too beautiful to be anything other than professional models. And the crowd of drunken, hooting men who crowded around either side of the raised stage, gawking at the never-ending parade streaming by—each and every girl garbed in the skimpiest lingerie ever to grace the great state of Texas— weren’t the white trash customers you’d expect to see, chugging Budweiser and sticking dollars down G-strings, but brokers in suits and ties, drinking champagne from crystal flutes.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t think of this sooner,” one of the suits crowed into David’s ear as he stood in the crowd a few feet from the stage. “This is killer, man. Fucking killer.”

  David faked a grin as a stunning Asian in thigh-highs and a lacy French maid outfit sashayed by, eliciting more shouts and applause from the surrounding men.

  “When you said you guys had arranged a fashion show,” David shouted back, “I should have guessed it would be something like this.”

  The suit laughed, clapping a hand against David’s shoulder. Jason Cohen was in his early thirties—like most of the crowd— but his young, tan face and wide, athletic shoulders made him look a good five years younger. David had spoken to Cohen many times on the phone, but this was their first real face-toface meeting. Although David didn’t know Cohen well, he should have guessed from the way the young broker had grinned at him in the limo when he’d first picked David up at the airport that they hadn’t been heading to some quiet restaurant. Even when the limo had pulled up to the majestic Four Seasons on Lamar Street in the heart of the city’s sparkling, modern financial district, David should have figured that Cohen and his buddies had something crazy in mind.

  David glanced past Cohen to the crowd of brokers on either side of the high-class flesh parade. There were maybe sixty or seventy young men in the hall; together, they made up most of the heavy hitters in the Houston broker community—a special breed that David had come to know in his short time at the Merc. Mostly young, almost entirely male, the brokers were the middlemen between the oil giants and the traders on the floor; you c
ouldn’t have an exchange without the brokers—they were a necessary, if sometimes overlooked, part of the oil supply-and-demand equation. Each one of these men salivating at the sight of the lingerie models represented millions of dollars in potential daily trades.

  “Let’s see the meatheads in New York pull something like this off,” Cohen said, jerking a thumb toward the far end of the stage, where ten more models waited their turn to show their stuff. “We had to bring in girls from as far away as Dallas to fill out the roster. Probably cost close to a hundred grand—spread out, of course, between the lot of us. Now that’s what I call a good use of an expense account.”

  David whistled under his breath. The eighties were alive and well in Houston, that was for sure. Even after the debacle of Enron, the brokers—mostly independents with relationships with the exchanges as well as the big oil companies and the major energy-playing banks—lived like the bankers of a different era. Strip clubs, ten-thousand-dollar steak dinners, parties in lavish VIP suites, jaunts to Vegas—the broker lifestyle was unsparingly decadent. The lingerie show at the Four Seasons was pretty elaborate, but David had been hearing stories about broker blowouts like this from Vitzi and the other traders since his first week on the Merc. David remembered one such story, involving Cohen and his buddies, that had taken place a couple of years earlier. A hurricane had swept up the Texas coast and was heading right toward Houston. Rather than close up shop like many of the other businesses in the city, the brokers had caravanned by private jet to the only city that could properly handle both their business needs and their excessive partying needs—Las Vegas. Fifty of them had holed up in the Venetian Resort, racking up record bar tabs at every strip club and dance hall in the City of Sin. What was a little fashion show compared to that?

  David turned his attention back to the stage, where a pair of decidedly Texan blondes in matching white satin baby dolls were gliding by, to the full appreciation of Cohen and the rest of the crowd. Part of him wanted to get the hell out of there, not because he didn’t enjoy the view—he was a guy, after all—but because, after the previous night in Geneva, the last thing he needed was more weight on his already heavy conscience.

  For the past twelve hours, David had been flagellating himself for his foolish loss of control. He’d regretted the thing the minute he’d gotten back to his hotel room, and he’d immediately called Serena, not to confess—although in the end the moment had only gone as far as an extremely passionate kiss, a confession would have been sheer suicide, even if it had been the right thing to do—but to quickly wipe away the memory of Jasmine and their roll in the snow. David knew the incident was something he’d probably have to face later on as his relationship with Serena deepened, but for the moment he just wanted to forget it ever happened. The second he’d gotten Serena on the phone and heard her voice, he had known that she was the one he loved. He didn’t intend to throw that love away because of a stupid moment of weakness.

  The rationalization didn’t make the guilt go away, but at least it kept him focused on what was important: Serena, his job, and his new dream of a Dubai exchange. And the truth was, the sultry display in front of him was actually more business than pleasure—even if Serena probably wouldn’t have seen it that way. The fashion show at the Four Seasons was actually the perfect setting for what David had come to Houston to do: get Jason Cohen and the rest of the Houston broker community excited about Dubai.

  With that one goal in mind, David moved in close to Cohen next to the stage, and while the girls streamed by in everdecreasing strips of silk, leather, and lace, he began to regale the young broker with the same lurid stories he’d relayed to Vitzi on the Merc trading floor.

  As he spoke, he could see the sparks going off behind Cohen’s eyes. Because unlike with the conservative board of the Merc, the darker, crazier side of Dubai was what was going to sell the Middle Eastern exchange to the brokers. These young guns didn’t want to hear about property taxes and the future of energy; they wanted to hear about Russian girls, money, and booze. To sell them Dubai, David needed to sell them on lifestyle—because to them, that’s what mattered most.

  By the time the last half-naked model was making her way down the makeshift catwalk, Cohen’s attention was entirely on David and Dubai, not skimpy lingerie.

  “Sounds pretty amazing,” he was saying, and a few of the other brokers had gathered closer to listen in. “But don’t let all this fool you: we love to live good lives, and we love to have fun, but if there’s an opportunity to make money, that’s what really matters. So don’t just tell me about the clubs, beaches, and bikinis. Tell me I can make some fucking money.”

  David grinned back at him.

  “More than you can imagine.”

  “And the Arabs are gonna let this happen? They’re gonna let

  you trade oil in the middle of the fucking desert?”

  It was really just a play on the question that had come up again and again—would sharia law make room for an oil exchange in an Islamic world? Even though David still didn’t know the answer for sure—Khaled, who had flown straight to New York instead of joining him in Houston, had only hinted that sharia law was something they’d deal with when the time was right—he nodded his head.

  “The sheik of Dubai has set up a free zone. Everything and anything goes in the free zone.”

  It was an exaggeration, but it seemed to work. Cohen clapped his hands together.

  “Let’s get a junket together, brother. Check this out for ourselves. How long’s that flight again?”

  “Fourteen hours from New York. But there’s a quicker way to experience Dubai for yourself.”

  David grinned as he pulled an envelope out from his inside jacket pocket. It was something Khaled had given him before they left Geneva. He handed the envelope to the young broker, who eagerly tore at the clasp, revealing a fancy invitation, written in gold-embossed calligraphy. A few of the other brokers looked over Cohen’s shoulder as he read the invite to himself. Then Cohen looked up, waving the envelope in the air.

  “A party in New York, thrown by an airline? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  David shook his head. He had asked Khaled the exact same question when Khaled first gave him the invite to pass on to the brokers. But Khaled had just laughed at the question. It wasn’t just any airline—it was Emirates Air. Wholly owned and operated by the ruling family of Dubai. Which meant that the party in New York was a party being thrown by the emir of Dubai himself.

  “Trust me,” David said in response.

  Cohen shrugged, glancing at the other brokers nearby, who seemed game. New York was a hell of a lot closer than the Middle East. As Cohen and the rest turned back to the models, who were now gathered, naked shoulder to naked shoulder, lined up for their final bow, David took a deep breath.

  He hoped Khaled understood what was really at stake with the party thrown by Emirates Air. David hadn’t just invited the brokers—he’d also already invited Vitzi and the other young traders. And he’d gone one step further: along with Vitzi, he’d invited Reston and a handful of the more energetic and freethinking board members.

  David knew it was a bold move, but after the roadblock they’d encountered with Hatfield in London and the question that had been brought up in Geneva, he was convinced the time had come to be bold. They needed to leap forward. With that in mind, tomorrow morning he was heading back to New York.

  Sooner or later he was going to have to face the board once again—and Gallo—head on.

  Chapter 34

  Febr u a r y 5, 2003

  Suddenly there was darkness.

  David held his breath as a hush came over the throng of revelers, and his hand tightened against Serena’s. He shivered from the cold marble pillar against his back, and even though he was a good ten feet behind the crowd that stretched all the way from the raised stage at the far end of the great hall to the edge of the polished-marble dance floor, he could feel the expectant energy rising up from them. Part of him w
anted to grab Khaled, who was standing just a few feet away on the other side of the marble pillar and demand to know what was going to happen next. But the other part of him understood that the party was already in full swing, their plan a train filled to capacity and moving at top speed down the tracks; at this point it was clearly out of his and Khaled’s hands.

  David had never been inside Cipriani’s before, but he’d certainly heard of the place many times growing up. Located in the old Bowery building in Midtown, the restaurant and elegant party hall was a true aristocratic landmark and a customary setting for New York’s high-class function scene. The interior of the 1920s building, decorated in the style of an Italian Renaissance masterpiece, was awe-inspiring; a living canvas with sixty-fivefoot ceilings, massive crystal chandeliers, and towering marble pillars.

  At the moment, the masterpiece was also wall-to-wall moderately inebriated men and women, pressed together in a great mass of evening suits, tiny black dresses, tuxedos, and gowns.

  Right before the lights had gone out, David had spotted his own crowd of invitees, in prime positions right up near the stage. Reston and Mendelson were standing in a group with eight other board members. The particular members David had gotten Reston to bring along with him were a good representation of the more freethinking elements at the Merc, and they also happened to be symbolic of the board as a whole: four of them were Italian, four were Jewish, and none had ever been to Europe, let alone the Middle East. At least they had all dressed for the occasion: most were in Armani, and even Mendelson had acquiesced to Reston’s begging and put on a pair of loosely laced moccasins.

  Vitzi, Brunetti, and Rosa were a few yards from the board. At David’s request, Vitzi had also brought a crowd of fifteen of the more popular traders along with them. David didn’t recognize any of Gallo’s team—they were harder to spot without their zebra jackets—but he assumed there might be one or two in the mix. The traders had been moving fast since they arrived at Cipriani’s; now they were intermixed with a group of tall, striking Australian girls, most likely flight attendants invited by the airline.