Rigged (20 page)

I
t wasn’t until David was sitting in the first-class lounge in the Emirates Airline terminal twenty-four hours later, waiting to board his return flight, that he finally came to a decision on Khaled’s proposal. Although David’s resolve had been building throughout the past day—ever since Seebeck had brought him home from the final after-hours party at five in the morning—it wasn’t until he was sitting in a leather chair in the lavish airport lounge, sipping orange juice out of a crystal glass, that he saw the final sign—and it was something he simply could not ignore.

“David fucking Russo. Now what the hell are you doing here?”

A friendly hand came down on his shoulder, and David nearly dropped his orange juice. He looked up—and it took him a good minute to recognize the skinny kid in the pinstripe suit who was standing in the airport lounge next to him. The kid had thick glasses, pointy ears, and a really bad haircut, but he was smiling like he owned the world—and that smile was what gave him away.

“Irwin Cutler,” David said, surprised. Then he stood and
shook the kid’s hand. Cutler had been one of the top students who graduated with him at HBS; the son of a carpet king from St. Louis, Cutler was a double Crimson, having spent four years as a Harvard undergrad before entering the B-School. A bit of a geek, he was also one of the sharpest kids David had shared classes with—and now here he was, standing there in the first-class lounge, wearing a suit that looked like it cost as much as David’s rent.

“I could ask you the same question,” David continued, after they both sat back down. “What are you doing in Dubai?”

“Mckinsey, baby. Actually, this is my third trip. And I saw Smitty last night, at Tangerine. He’s here full-time now. This place is ridiculous, isn’t it? Off the hook.”

David raised his eyebrows. Smitty—Walter Smith Jr.—was Cutler’s roommate at HBS. If David was not mistaken, Smitty was an analyst at UBS, where his father was a partner. And he had moved to Dubai? Tangerine sounded familiar—but then, David had seen so much in the past twenty-four hours that some of his memories were already beginning to run together. His last day in Dubai had been amazing—but also a total whirlwind. After being woken up by the ubiquitous Arabic call to prayer that floated in through his hotel room’s open patio door, he’d toured a dozen construction sites in the rapidly growing International Financial Center. Lunch had been at the Dubai Four Seasons, and dinner at a nearby Thai place, followed by another night at another disco—this one a spectacularly modern complex with a laser light show on the ceiling and a fountain in the middle of the dance floor made to look like an active volcano, spitting plumes of fiery red liquid ten feet into the air.

And from there things had gotten even wilder. Khaled had once again handed him off to Seebeck, who had taken him to three more after-hours parties. At about four in the morning, when David finally suggested that it was time to head back to the hotel, Seebeck had grinned and told him there was just one more stop to make.

David had been surprised when Seebeck pulled his Porsche to a stop in front of what looked like a quiet oceanside mansion a few miles from the center of town. The place was too quiet for an after-hours party, and the austere front facade—marble pillars, wide front steps, detailed heavy wooden doors—didn’t look like the entrance to any club David had ever seen before. It wasn’t until Seebeck had slipped a shiny black plastic card into a slot by one of the pillars and the great wooden doors had swung inward that David realized what sort of place this was.

The front hall of the mansion had been designed to look like some sort of Arabian oasis: a shimmering, egg-shaped wading pool took up most of the area, surrounded by a gold-tiled foyer decorated with palm trees, ivory-white benches, and woven, free-standing hammocks and swinglike chairs. Scattered about the foyer, David counted at least fifteen staggeringly beautiful women of varying ethnicities, dressed in elegant silk robes. Some were lounging on the hammocks, benches, and swings; others were standing around the wading pool, hands on hips, long bare legs extending out from beneath the swaths of silk.

David had stared at the women in the opulent lobby—and it had slowly dawned on him what this mansion by the ocean was. Then he had turned to Seebeck, shaking his head. As tempting as the scene was, he knew instinctively that it was not for him.

“I’m sorry, man. I think I really should be getting back to the hotel.”

Seebeck had only shrugged. He had waved at the girls in the lobby, then led David back toward the car. The huge wooden doors shut behind them, and as Seebeck slid behind the steering wheel next to David, he offered a simple explanation.

“Khaled asked me to show you everything, David—even the Dubai he doesn’t need to know about.”

And David had understood. There were so many layers to this city; Dubai was truly unique, and in two days he had only scratched the surface. Khaled had arranged for Seebeck to take him around—although at first it had seemed a serendipitous ar
rangement—because he’d wanted David to understand: there was a good reason why Dubai was the fastest-growing city in the world, why businesses from all over were flocking there, why the expat community was thriving to such a degree.

But it wasn’t the mansion on the ocean or the discos or the restaurants or the beautiful girls trawling the streets and shopping malls that had sealed the deal for David; it was the geeky kid in the pinstripe suit sitting next to him in the first-class lounge—what he had already said and especially the bombshell he dropped next.

“In two months,” Cutler added, grinning from pointy ear to pointy ear, “I’m also going to be living here full-time. Mckinsey is bringing over fifteen of us. Got us sweet apartments right by the beach.”

And just like that, David’s decision was made. The smartest kid from his graduating class was moving to Dubai—sent by the top financial consulting firm in the world. And Cutler’s roommate, an HBS legacy whose father was a major player at the biggest bank in New York, was already living there.

David knew exactly what that meant. Khaled could tell him stories about billion-dollar projects and economic free zones all he wanted—but the real evidence that the place was about to explode was right here in this first-class lounge.

When the smart young kids start showing up, then it’s time to open your eyes.

Dubai was happening. And David was right there, in the middle of it.

“Well, you might be seeing a lot more of me,” David said, and Cutler grinned back at him.

The decision had been made. Now all David had to do was head back to New York and somehow sell the idea of an oil exchange in the Middle East to a boardroom full of Italians and Jews.

A
t that very moment, ten miles away, Khaled closed his eyes as the soft tones of a classical guitar ballad filled his brightly lit office. The music had been a gift from a classmate in Geneva, an Egyptian girl whose parents had worked for one of the studios that produced a few of the earlier films of Khaled’s father. Though Khaled was hardly a fan of Egyptian pop music, he had always found this particular CD soothing, especially the complicated guitar ballads at the end; it had become a habit of his to play this particular song over and over whenever he truly needed to think. As he did so, he tried not to dwell on the irony that his relationship with the CD had far outlasted his relationship with the Egyptian girl. Ironic—but not surprising considering that he’d never had a girlfriend, or even a real friendship, that had lasted more than a few months.

Perhaps it was yet another symptom of his nomadic upbringing; you didn’t make friends on movie sets, and you had brief liaisons that almost always ended when the director yelled “Cut!” for the final time. And you didn’t keep girlfriends for very long when you moved from boarding school to boarding school, country to
country, at the whim of a billionaire sheik. But you did learn how to read people—because you often had to make quick judgments if you were going to have any sort of relationships at all.

Khaled opened his eyes and looked down at the photos and typewritten notes that were spread out across his glass desk. He had compiled the dossier over the past forty-eight hours—beginning even before David Russo had first boarded the plane in New York. He had similar dossiers on Nick Reston, Anthony Giovanni, and many of the other major players in the New York Mercantile Exchange, but Russo’s file was the only one that seemed important at the moment. Because at the moment it seemed that the success of Khaled’s idea lay in the hands of the fresh-faced young man.

Khaled knew that his fantasy of a Dubai exchange was audacious; in fact, it had taken enormous effort just to convince the minister to let him invite a representative from the Merc to Dubai. And although the emir himself had tacitly allowed Khaled to continue forward—after Khaled had submitted a thirty-page proposal explaining why he felt such an exchange would benefit Dubai, to the continued glory of the ruling family—he knew his charge was tenuous at best. The river of distrust ran both ways, and there were stereotypes and emotions to overcome on both sides. Still, Khaled knew, with a certainty that grew every day, that the project was important—and indeed possible. But not without the Merc—and thus not without David Russo.

Certainly, Khaled and the Ministry of Finance could attempt to open an energy exchange without the help of the Americans. They could throw money into the project until it grew roots. They could build a beautiful building with a state-of-the-art trading floor, bribe traders from London and even New York to come play—but Khaled had no doubt that such an exchange would end up a failure, no more significant than an indoor ski slope or a shopping mall. Because without the legitimacy that the Merc would bring to the Dubai exchange, the rest of the world would not take it seriously. Like so many other things in Dubai, it would be viewed as a curiosity—another of the emir’s whimsical creations.

Khaled gravitated toward one of the photos on his desk, one of David Russo in an Oxford crew sweatshirt that, like most of the other photos, Khaled had pulled off the Internet. Originally, it had been printed in the Oxford school newspaper, after Russo’s crew team won some long-forgotten race.

Russo was grinning in the picture, his square jaw and wavy brown hair having captured the attention of the photographer as much as the expression of pure joy on his face. Looking at the picture, Khaled was reminded of a story from his second year at Cambridge about an American from Oxford who had punched out the captain of the Cambridge crew after a particularly nasty race. Khaled had no doubt he was looking at the same American; he could see it in his eyes, the competitive heat, the determination. This kid was a fighter.

And he was also smart. Over the past twenty-four hours, Khaled had been both surprised and impressed by how fast Russo had caught on to what Dubai was all about. He’d understood, almost instinctively, what Khaled was hoping to achieve by bringing an exchange to the Middle East: Dubai would benefit in so many ways by being a part of the pricing of oil—and the entire region would move forward in the wake of such a venture. When Russo had first told Khaled about his father and the emotional injuries he’d sustained on 9/11, he hadn’t been searching for sympathy; he had been letting Khaled know that the obstacles they would face had nothing to do with money. The obstacles they would have to overcome had to do with people, beliefs, ideas, and emotions.

Khaled felt his hands ball into fists. Of all the projects he’d been pitched since coming to Dubai, only the exchange took aim at truly making Dubai the representative of a new, worldly Middle East. The very obstacles he and Russo would face—people, beliefs, ideas, and emotions—were the things that needed to change if Islam and the West were ever to truly become two parts of a whole.

David Russo understood, and he was a fighter—but he was also young, and he didn’t have a billionaire sheik as an uncle.
By his bloodline, Khaled had the ear of the minister of finance and enormous resources at his fingertips. David Russo would be fighting his side of the battle on his own. And though David had not been specific, he had said that there were powers at the Merc who would certainly try to stand in his way.

Khaled paused for a moment, letting the vibrations of the guitar strings clear a path for his thoughts. Then he reached for his phone.

It took him a full ten seconds to dial the fifteen digits from memory; the call was now encrypted, as secure as modern technology allowed. After a series of metallic clicks, Khaled heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line:

“Khaled, this is indeed unexpected. You’ve caught me with my pants down—quite literally. I was about to change into a wet suit because your uncle has decided to go for a swim.”

Khaled smiled, trying to picture the sheik’s enormous Lebanese bodyguard in a bathing suit. Agha must have been quite a sight, his bulging muscles rippling beneath the overstretched rubber. Among other things, Ali Agha was an expert diver; before the sheik went in the water, Agha always surveyed what would be swimming beneath him. Agha was thoroughly professional—which was exactly what Khaled needed.

“I’m glad to hear my uncle is out enjoying the sun,” Khaled responded.

“We’re off the coast of Corsica at the moment. The girls are taking turns waterskiing off your uncle’s new cigarette boat. It’s quite a scene.”

This Khaled chose not to picture. He paused, collecting his thoughts, then spoke quietly into the phone.

“Ali, I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything, young sir.”

Khaled quickly told Agha what he needed—down to the very last detail. If Agha was surprised by the request—and most certainly he had to be, since Khaled had never asked him for anything like this before—he did not let it show in his voice.

“I can put together a team,” Agha finally responded. “With your uncle’s approval, of course. It shouldn’t be too difficult, from what you’ve described.”

Khaled nodded. He was not concerned about his uncle’s approval; his uncle would understand, since the project was exactly the sort of thing he was born to support. Khaled was much more concerned that the favor he was requesting be executed with the utmost discretion.

“I will personally get involved,” Agha continued, putting Khaled at ease. “If your uncle approves, I can even go to New York myself.”

“Thank you, Ali,” Khaled said, completely confident in Agha’s professionalism. “I doubt that will be necessary, but thank you. I will send you all the information I have right away.”

After more pleasantries were exchanged, Khaled hung up the phone and began to gather the photos and notes from across his desk. He’d messenger the entire package to Agha—and then the thing would be put into motion. Khaled had no doubt that the Lebanese bodyguard was entirely up to the task.

David Russo would still be fighting the battle on his own, but if the battle turned ugly, Khaled—and Agha’s team of professionals—would do what was necessary to help out.