J
ANUARY
26, 2003
O
ut 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-to-face 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 couldn’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. W
hat 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 him
self 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 ever-decreasing 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.
F
EBRUARY
5, 2003
S
uddenly 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 wanted 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-five-foot 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.
Another few yards from the traders were the brokers. Cohen had brought twelve of his colleagues with him—there were probably two private jets waiting for them on the tarmac at La Guardia. Like the traders, the brokers were surrounded by women, but these weren’t flight attendants—they were assuredly models who had been brought in by the high-priced party planners to spruce up the scene.
The rest of the crowd was incredibly upscale, mostly businessmen and their wives and mistresses; David also saw that there
were more than a few Arabs in the crowd, and he assumed that Emirates Air had used frequent-passenger lists to fill out its invites. When David and Serena first arrived, Khaled had introduced them to a handful of the airline’s executives, and David had been impressed by their polite confidence and by the fact that they already seemed to have been swept up by the idea of the energy exchange in Dubai. Then again, it would mean big business for the airline—in a way, this party was almost as important to them as it was to David and Khaled.
And so far the party had been a moderate success. The music had been good, the food spectacular, and the alcohol free-flowing. Then, quite abruptly, the lights had gone out—plunging the great hall into pure darkness. Now the entire crowd was facing the stage in anticipation. And David was squeezing his girlfriend’s hand so hard she was using her nails to defend herself.
As he quietly apologized, loosening his grip, a spotlight suddenly erupted in the center of the stage. In the middle of the circle of yellow light stood a woman in Arabic robes. Her face was entirely covered by a veil, and she was standing behind a microphone.
She leaned forward and started singing. At least David thought she was singing; to his American ears, it seemed like she was just wailing away in Arabic.
David’s stomach convulsed, and he looked at Serena.
Christ.
Serena looked back at him, helplessly. Then he turned and threw a glance toward Khaled, but his Arab friend was just staring straight ahead.
David turned back to the stage. He could feel the crowd starting to fidget, and the wailing was just getting louder and louder, heading toward an ear-shattering crescendo—
And then suddenly the woman reached up and yanked off her veil. She shook out her long, flowing blond hair and then tore off her robes. Underneath she was wearing a sparkling gold bikini. As the crowd roared, another spotlight exploded onto the stage—and there, standing at a second microphone, was the leg
endary crooner Tom Jones, surrounded by ten writhing girls in skimpy gold outfits.
As David’s eyes widened and Serena clapped her hands, Tom Jones launched into a high-octane concert while the girls in gold outfits danced elaborately for the crowd. It was, in a word, amazing.
Grinning ear to ear, David crept away from Serena and sidled next to Khaled. He could see Reston and the board—and they were applauding at the stage like school kids. Vitzi and the traders had cameras out and were snapping pictures, and the brokers were howling like it was New Year’s Eve.
“I think we’re in good shape here,” David whispered. “They seem to be enjoying themselves. At the very least, we’ve definitely stoked their curiosity about Dubai.”
Khaled smiled back at him.
“Maybe they’ll realize that at least part of the Middle East is in the midst of a prime-time makeover. It’s a step forward. We’re getting closer, David.”
David nodded, looking back toward Serena, who was dancing to the beat of the concert. She smiled in his direction and offered a little wave toward Khaled. The minute she’d met the young Arab—at a lunch David arranged that had included Reston as well—she’d fallen in platonic love with him. And she’d been amazingly forgiving about David’s absence over the past few months. That hadn’t helped the guilt David still felt about Jasmine, but it had made it much easier for him to feel cautiously pleased with what they’d accomplished so far.
Though they’d initially struck out with Hatfield, they had the curiosity of the European energy community working for them. They had Reston and a few of the board members at least open to the idea of partnering with Dubai. And they probably had the brokers on board.
“Now it’s time we solved what we’ve been putting off,” Khaled whispered, and David realized immediately what he was talking about. One more piece in the puzzle—second only to the little
task of getting the Merc board to finalize everything and accept Dubai officially as a partner—was the issue of sharia law. David wasn’t sure how that issue would be solved—but he had a feeling it involved another plane trip.
“Now we go to Saudi Arabia?” he asked.
But Khaled shook his head. David looked at him, confused, as Tom Jones belted out a song about love, and the dancers undulated across the stage.
“I thought the Saudis make the decisions about sharia law.”
“That’s correct. But getting an audience with the religious leaders for a business deal like this isn’t that simple. The sheiks—including my uncle—have to be very careful to stay behind the scenes with something as explosive as this; the Arab street is always watching. On this issue, we’re on our own. But there’s a man who can help us. A consultant of sorts.”
David turned to watch as Jones danced with one of the scantily clad girls. What was Khaled talking about?
A consultant with an inside track to Saudi religious leaders?
“Is this consultant here in New York?”
“Not exactly,” Khaled answered. “He can be very difficult to find, actually. But I’ve made a few calls to some of my uncle’s associates, and I did manage to locate him.”
David didn’t like the expression on Khaled’s face.
“Where?” David asked.
Khaled only smiled in response.