The Capitol Game

by Brian Haig

  They had no choice but to pass directly by Abdallah, no option but to drive by the lethal trash barrel ten feet back from the road.

  Abdallah couldn’t resist a smile. What a nasty surprise they were in for.

  The four men in robes peeked over the edge of the building. The street was clear and quiet, no traffic, no pedestrians wandering aimlessly. A perfect target zone, a perfect day to kill.

  They had, three hours before, patiently observed the big barrel being rolled into place, then later watched one tiny urchin enter the neglected building and reappear a few minutes later in an upstairs window. They laughed as the bigger, fatter one fought and squeezed his way into the narrow culvert.

  They watched and they waited.

  They had slipped up onto this rooftop in pitch-darkness the night before. For the past seven hours, between cigarettes and quiet sips of hot tea, between sweating and boredom and baking under the broiling Iraqi sun, they had watched and waited.

  They whispered among themselves, arguing quietly and sometimes heatedly about the quality of the bomb below. Would it work? How well would it work? This was a test, a vitally important one, though this news had been slyly withheld from Mustafa and the two street punks he had hired to do this job. That fired-up, true-believer patriot act he put on fooled nobody. Mustafa was a selfish, self-indulgent crook, plain and simple.

  A mercenary who killed for the cash, nothing more.

  He would’ve pressured for more money had he known. Probably a lot more.

  The bomb was the newest thing, smuggled in a week before from Iran with lots of loud promises about what it could destroy. Supposedly, the device was manufactured to be triggered through the open air, though the four men on the rooftop had no idea how that actually worked. Nor did they care. An Iranian bomb mechanic had babbled on about the particulars—something to do with penetrating rods, and secondary explosives, and sound waves, and signal receptors. All four men were yawning and nodding off long before he finished.

  Who cared? The long-winded blowhard was squandering his breath and their patience. They merely needed to know if it worked. Did it trigger a blast or no? Would it allow them to kill more Americans or not?

  One of the four men edged forward a little. He positioned his video camera against the ledge. He pushed zoom, narrowed the picture frame to the road space directly abutting the barrel, punched start, lit up a smoke, and waited for the fun to begin.

  Bill Forrest had his nose stuffed inside a map. Fifty yards out from the village, he pointed straight ahead at the narrow street. “Follow that until the first intersection, then turn left,” he told Davis, who pumped the brakes and slowed up a bit as was their usual custom anytime they drove through built-up areas.

  Roadside bombs could be hidden anywhere, in animal carcasses, in broken-down cars, or even dug into shallow holes in a road out in the middle of nowhere. Towns and villages, though, offered plenty of camouflage and were particularly dangerous.

  “What a dump,” Davis remarked. The streets weren’t even paved, just flattened-down dust.

  “Slow down a little more,” Forrest warned him, looking worried and tense.

  “Why?”

  “Do you see anybody on the streets? Locals always know when it’s too dangerous to come out and play.”

  Davis scanned the village and saw a few faces poking out of windows. “Well, it is the hottest part of the day. I’d hide inside, too.”

  Just then the radio barked, the same young lieutenant again, the same whiny, needy tone. The captain shook his head, rolled his eyes, and lifted the handset. “Listen,” he told the young officer, “take a deep breath and settle down. I’m trying to watch the road, and you keep interrupting me.”

  Davis stifled a laugh.

  Abdallah held his breath, kept his hand loose, and watched as the convoy approached the barrel. Mustafa had told him not to squeeze the trigger too soon. It had happened twice before, Mustafa warned, young idiots overcome with excitement or nerves who clumsily wasted a bomb and killed nobody. No corpses, no money, Mustafa had threatened with a mean grin that showed where his front teeth had been kicked out in one of his many failed attempts at crime.

  Abdallah glanced up at Hadi, who was leaning out the window, craning his neck and straining to watch the big boom.

  A moment later, the lead vehicle was directly beside the barrel. Abdallah could actually observe the men inside, one talking into a handset, the other, a bit younger-looking, chuckling to himself and steering the vehicle. He vowed that he would wait for a vehicle with more passengers, a much riper target, but in that instant his hand developed a mind of its own and squeezed hard on the device.

  The response was immediate and overwhelming. Abdallah felt the blast literally drive him back another two feet into the culvert, until he felt like a cork stuffed into a bottle. He squealed with pain and clenched his eyes shut to block the barrage of dust from the road. His ears hurt, and though he did not know it, the drums had burst.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw that the Humvee had been blown over, sideways, and now was teetering on its side, like some giant Tonka toy tossed by the wind. It was on fire and he could feel the surge of intense heat even from fifty feet away. He watched a man crawl out, a big man, pulling himself up through the side opening, trying desperately to escape the flames. After a moment the big man in an invader’s uniform ended up on the ground, flopping and pulling himself forward with his arms, which really was the only way he could since his legs were gone.

  The big American seemed to be staring straight into Abdallah’s eyes with a mixture of shock and recognition. Then he lay still for a moment, bleeding and suffering. Abdallah couldn’t hear, but could clearly picture his groans and his pitiful attempts to draw breath. He saw his hand move, go inside his shirt, and he pulled something out and stared at it hard.

  Abdallah used all his might to get out of the culvert and edge forward. The big American just stared at the thing in his hand, and Abdallah strained to see what it was. Clearly the man was dying, and Abdallah wondered, what was the last thing a man on the cusp of death wanted so desperately to see?

  He was out of the culvert now; to his surprise he discovered he could barely walk. Blood was trickling out his ears. He stumbled forward until he stood swaying above the American.

  In the man’s hand was a picture of an attractive blonde woman, hugging two little blonde girls who were laughing and giggling.

  2

  The folder had been passed around the conference table four times, read, dissected, debated, scrutinized, and rescrutinized by the three men for nearly an hour.

  The biography of Jack Wiley held their attention for the first thirty minutes. An impressive man, no question about that. A 1988 graduate of Princeton, peculiarly he had entered the Army, fought in the first Gulf War, then traded his boots for loafers a few months after the last shot was fired. A Silver Star and a Bronze Star: a combat vet and genuine hero to boot. A few intense years drinking the Kool-Aid at Harvard Business School, then he shot straight into the labyrinth of a big Wall Street firm, bouncing through three big firms in ten years.

  A few calls by one of their executives posing as a corporate headhunter to those firms revealed that Wiley was restless, but a steady rainmaker wherever he went. His former employers described him as pleasant, smart, energetic, but also cautious and diligent, all values the men around the table intensely admired. He produced profit by the bushel wherever he went; this quality they admired even more. That success brought a flood of offers from competing firms, and he jumped without compunction for better pay and more exalted titles.

  For the past three years he had been a partner and senior VP at Cauldron Securities, a small, elite private equity outfit with a solid though stodgy reputation.

  Elite because it invested only in midsize, already profitable companies.

  And small by choice, because Cauldron was picky. It hired only the best of the best, only from the top five business schools, drowned the
associates in work and unbearable pressure for five or six years, spit out nine out of ten, and spoiled the keepers with fat bonuses and perks.

  And stodgy because it avoided risk like poison.

  The partner, Edward Blank, put a finger in the air and guessed, slightly dismissively, “Probably made two mil last year.”

  “More like five,” countered Brian Golightly from the seat directly to his right. “Cauldron had a great year and Wiley got a partner’s split. Five even might be a little light.”

  Golightly had taken the initial call from Wiley and, only after a little checking, referred the proposal upstairs. The résumé had been slickly culled from the executive recruiting firm that handled Wiley’s switch to Cauldron. Confidential material, of course, but the headhunters wanted to do a little business with the Capitol Group, favors beget favors, and broaching the trust was, after all, a trifling technicality.

  “Wiley’s single,” Golightly continued, filling in a few details not included in the file. “Army brat, born at Fort Benning, straight A’s through high school, two points from perfect on the college boards.” Then, after a brief pause, “Played lacrosse in college. All-America, attackman, nerves of steel.”

  The other two men lifted their eyebrows. His academic performance, combat heroism, and business success were impressive, but his prowess on the sports field definitely hit the mark.

  Golightly had acquired this valuable tidbit from a Princeton classmate of Wiley’s who happened to belong to his country club. The man was a pompous know-it-all, an unremitting bore, and to boot, an awful golfer. Enduring nine holes of his incessant hacking and slicing and almost endless babbling had been worth it, though. Wiley had started all four years, fearless, lightning reflexes, very quick around the net. Second team All-America his senior year. He also dated the same girl all four years, an English lit major with killer legs and poetic eyes, who now was making her living pushing weepy romance drivel onto the best-seller lists. She said adieu at graduation, when he chose the Army.

  “So what’s he want?” Blank asked, squirming in his seat, a study in festering impatience.

  “He described it only as an opportunity. An incredible opportunity—those were his exact words,” Golightly replied, repeating the same answer he had offered the previous three times Blank had asked. This mystery had occupied most of the past thirty minutes. A quick glance at his watch. “In another minute, you can ask him yourself.”

  Golightly had tried his best to pry this information from Wiley and been politely and insistently brushed off. For whatever reason, Wiley preferred to play it close to his vest until he met directly with the LBO boys.

  The leveraged buyout section of the Capitol Group was the tip of a large, very prosperous, enormously powerful spear. In a firm that viewed business as warfare, they were the assault troops. All were handpicked, chosen for their hunger and their relentless ambition; most important, they had to be cold-blooded and ruthless. They made the deals. They found the targets and kicked down the doors. They located the vulnerabilities and ratcheted up the pressure until the other side caved in to whatever the Capitol Group was willing to pay.

  They borrowed money by the boatload and bought companies, nearly always heavily distressed ones in financial decline, then turned them over to management to be squeezed, downsized, bled dry of impurities and imperfections, refurbished, and sold off for usually three times the cost. Sometimes five. Only those companies that proved wildly profitable—and appeared destined to stay that way—were kept, added to the Capitol Group’s swelling stable of permanent properties.

  The Capitol Group was a factory. An enormously profitable factory. It was privately held; the owners preferred it that way and stubbornly resisted the urge to rake in billions by going public. It spawned a bewildering array of products, from rubber tires, to electronic devices of all sorts, to airplane engines, to defense equipment—almost more products than anybody could count.

  But nobody cared to count. Why bother? The mix of companies turned over so fast, it would be senseless.

  CG owned factories spread around the globe, from Pennsylvania to Hong Kong to the tip of Africa, and raised capital wherever wealth congregated, from New York to Dubai, and most recently Moscow, where ex-Marxist billionaires were now growing like poppies. There were twenty directors at the top, forty so-called partners, and four hundred lesser executives who bought and oversaw a diverse collection of companies employing nearly three hundred thousand workers.

  But had anybody cared to count, CG’s arsenal at that moment included sixty-two companies, a figure that churned and changed weekly and, had it been listed on the stock exchange, would’ve been valued at $110 billion. It was a staggering figure by any measure, and all the more remarkable for an outfit founded only twenty years before by a few penniless, insanely optimistic ex-government types.

  “I think he’s bringing us a takeover deal,” guessed Barry Caldwell, an accounting assassin brought into the meeting at the last minute to act cold and hard. Spreadsheets were his specialty. His froglike eyes could chew through the debits and credits, gauge the assets and liabilities, dart through the income and expenses, and in lightning speed spit out an amazingly precise portrait of corporate health or disease.

  “If not, he’s wasting our time,” Blank answered, slapping a hand on the table. Of course he was bringing a deal. Why else the insistence on meeting the LBO group?

  “It’s time,” Golightly announced, standing and buttoning his jacket. He tucked the folder in a briefcase. The other two men stood and buttoned their jackets as well.

  The door opened, and after a moment, in walked Jack Wiley hauling a buttery tan briefcase in one hand, a stack of slides and spreadsheets in the other. He was taller than they expected, probably six-one or six-two. They took note of the soaked-in tan that spoke of long days on the golf course, along with a build that suggested plenty of gym time. Full head of sandy brown hair, a sprinkling of gray showing at the temples, cold blue eyes. The briefcase and slides landed heavily on the conference table. The usual handshakes and nice-to-meet-yous were quickly and insincerely exchanged.

  The three men were impressed. Without being asked, Wiley fell into a seat, coolly crossed his long legs, and, as if he owned the place, suggested, “Why don’t you all get seated and we’ll start.”

  “Good idea,” Blank answered for all of them. At forty-five, he was the senior man and the only CG partner in the room. He wanted Wiley to know it, too.

  As if on cue, a comely assistant poked her head in. “Good morning, gentlemen. Coffee, tea, soda?”

  Wiley produced a polite smile and, before anybody could produce an answer, announced, “Not yet, thank you.” His eyes roved across the faces on the other side of the table. “First let us find out if we have anything to discuss.”

  Yes, yes, another good idea, the three men across the table agreed. If the meeting was a bust, why prolong the pain with forced small talk and refreshments? Then it’s thanks for stopping by, Jack, don’t let the door bang you in the ass.

  Blank edged forward on his elbows and took charge of the conversation. “So you’re a partner at Cauldron.”

  “That’s right. Three years now.”

  “I’m not familiar with Cauldron. Small, isn’t it?” In other words, You’re lucky to be sitting here with the big boys, Jack—and don’t you forget it.

  “Yes, tiny, actually.” Jack took the putdown in stride and nodded. “We like to think of ourselves as a boutique firm. We’re very selective. We pride ourselves on being nimble, and in our view, size would only hamper us.” After a beat, he smiled lightly and added, “It would also water down the profit share for the partners.”

  Big smiles from all three CG boys. This outright profession of greed warmed their hearts. “What’s your firm’s specialty?” Golightly asked, as if they hadn’t just spent thirty minutes hashing over this very issue.

  “Good question,” Wiley answered. “Our investors tend to be old money, mostly inherited.
Mostly from New York, upper New Jersey, and New England. They have their fortunes, they appreciate it, and they want to appreciate it next year as well. We buy one or two properties each year, no more. Our focus is on lean, well-managed, steadily profitable companies in need of a little capital to expand. Nothing exciting. It’s a good formula, though, and it works.”

  The men across the table smirked and made little effort to hide their disdain. They lived and died on the mantra of no big risks, no big payoffs. Cauldron sounded like a bunch of wimps. Little Leaguers hustling for chump change.

  “You don’t find it stifling?” Blank couldn’t resist asking. Obviously, it would kill him.

  Wiley smiled and ignored the insult. “I spent ten years on the treadmill at the bigger firms. A full decade running the halls, fifteen-hour days, no weekends, plenty of canceled vacations. Ten years of midnight deals hanging by a thread, then trying to turn around turkeys we never should’ve gone near. You boys know the life.”

  The three men nodded. Damn right they knew.

  “I wasn’t burned out,” Jack continued. “But I can’t say I was enjoying myself, either. When Cauldron offered a fast-track partnership, I jumped at it. Understand, Cauldron is very laid-back, a low-pressure outfit. Lots of long lunches where drinking isn’t off-limits. Weekends are sacrosanct. The partners can often be found napping in their offices. And why not? Our investors are content with ten percent growth a year. They throw a wild bash for us if we hit fifteen.” He produced a weak smile for the hungry sharks across the table.

  As he and they knew, at CG, ten would be a disaster. The directors would turn up the heat, pink slips would fly—life would become intolerable for the survivors. This had happened, once, only once, twelve years back. A painful recession had set in. Growth sank to a mere eight percent that year. Blank was the only one in the room with enough tenure to have lived through it. A bloodbath, 365 days of unmitigated terror, twelve torturous months without a day off, a full year of unbearable stress. His blood pressure shot up forty points. He still had nightmares about it.