“Mr. Reingold, Mr. Zhu, I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m Emerson Jordan. I run the currency desk. I just wanted to say goodnight to Alan.” Turning to Reingold, he added: “It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir. We met last year in New York.”
“I remember,” said Reingold. “And I gather you had another good year.”
“Well, thanks, yes, we did,” Jordan said. “But we had help. Especially this afternoon.”
As he said this, Jordan nodded toward Stack.
“I hear you made a stirring comeback,” Reingold said, smiling. “Have you met Mr. Zhu?”
“I haven’t yet had the pleasure, sir,” Jordan responded, shaking the hand of the billionaire real estate mogul everyone assumed was one of Stack’s key guanxi. “You’re quite a celebrity on the trading floor, sir.”
“It’s a privilege to do business with the firm,” Zhu said. “Thanks for stopping by, Emerson,” Stack said, speaking for the first time. His tone was courteous, but it was also a kiss-off.
Jordan was going to respond with a play for time, when Reingold jumped in: “Yes, thanks for stopping by. X.D. is giving us a ride back to the Hive. Why don’t you come along?”
It had been a rough early afternoon, but since then, Jordan’s luck had taken a turn for the better.
X.D., as Mr. Xiaodong Zhu was known (a concession to foreigners’ inability to pronounce even the simplest Mandarin), was chauffered around town in a forty-two-foot stretch Hummer — the kind, Jordan reflected, that only drug dealers and rap-stars would be caught dead in back home. The Hummer had two PC-equipped desks, fully reclining seats, a fifty-inch flat-panel HDTV, and a lounge. In addition to the driver, it was staffed by a steward, who navigated, checked traffic via the government-sanitized Internet, refilled the mini-bar, and, at every stop, brushed grime off the car with a feather duster.
On board the Hummer, the four men settled into the lounge, and Zhu’s steward opened a bottle of Laphroaig, pouring four glasses. Zhu reached for one, raised it toward his guests.
“I have promised to show Mr. Reingold my car,” Zhu said. “Before I do, however, I would like to toast Mr. Jordan.”
“Here, here,” said Reingold.
Jordan considered playing along, but decided not to risk it. “I’m sorry?” he said.
“One of my companies was overweight with baht this morning,” Zhu explained. “We needed some time to convert before the Ministry meeting. Without your help, we’d never have gotten out.”
“I see,” said Jordan, even though he didn’t.
“Thanks to your efforts,” Zhu continued, “some folks in New York temporarily concluded that the Ministry wasn’t going to relax the peg. Unfortunately for them, this conclusion was wrong.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Reingold said, raising his glass.
So that explained Jordan’s temporary $280 million loss — and the near — heart attack that had accompanied it. Stack’s contacts had floated rumors to grease Zhu’s wheels — and Draco had fallen for them. No wonder Stack had been so cool. Remembering the depths of the afternoon’s panic, the walk of shame across the trading floor, the conviction that an entire year’s worth of work (and, likely, his job) had vaporized, Jordan once again felt the heat of humiliation flood into his cheeks. Would it have killed Stack to let him in on the game? This must have been the story that Wilson had threatened to spill at dinner — that the currency desk’s ‘god among men’ was so blind that he didn’t even see he was a pawn.
Zhu slipped out of his seat and headed forward, with Reingold following. As plush as it was, Zhu’s Hummer was more luxurious than the G5 in which Reingold had just floated across the Pacific, so its interior could hardly have been of interest. But Zhu’s conglomerate had paid Whitney Gilman $172 million in fees that year, so if necessary, Jordan knew, Reingold would lick the tire treads.
Zhu and Reingold’s departure left Jordan alone with Stack — the moment he had been trying to engineer all evening. To Jordan’s annoyance, however, Stack took the opportunity to check his BlackBerry. As Jordan watched Stack scroll through e-mails, he took another sip of his Laphroaig, felt its warmth radiate outward from his throat and stomach, emboldening him.
“Well, that certainly sheds some light on this afternoon,” Jordan said, aggressively.
Stack stiffened ever so slightly, and his thumbs stopped working the BlackBerry keys — a reaction that, for him, was almost frenzied.
“All’s well that ends well,” Stack said, without looking up. In the long, infuriating silence that followed, Jordan took another swig of Laphroaig.
“Speaking of ending well,” Jordan said, “I—”
“This is not a good time,” Stack shot back, again without looking up.
“Well, can we talk before the final decisions are made?” Jordan asked.
“They’ve already been made,” Stack said. “And this is not a good time.”
“When—”
“It’s not a good time,” Stack said again, sharply, suddenly looking straight at Jordan. “And the politics in New York” — at this, Stack nodded toward Reingold, who was hunched over a computer with Zhu in the belly of the Hummer — “have made this a challenging year.”
Stack returned to his BlackBerry, leaving Jordan to chew on this — and to chase it with another belt of Laphroaig. So Stack was going to fall back on the “challenging year” crap? He was Alan Stack — not some dime-a-dozen managing director — surely he could do better than that. Maybe the bonus pool was just fine and Stack was hoarding most of it for himself. That was what some of the sleazier managing directors did: duped their people into thinking that the department had gotten stiffed, then kept the lion’s share.
Jordan’s indignation was getting up a good head of steam when a bolt of fear arced through him. Maybe there was another explanation for Stack’s frigidity. Maybe Jordan’s name was already on the execution list. It was Reingold, after all, who had invited Jordan on this last supper of a limo ride. Maybe Stack just didn’t want to break the news to him tonight.
“We aren’t the only game in town anymore,” Jordan said, a feeble threat, and one that, to his embarrassment, sounded as awe-inspiring as a mouse squeak.
“We’re the best game in town,” Stack replied, still engrossed in his BlackBerry. “And we are only as good as our team.”
Stack stopped short of pointing out that Jordan was only as good as his team, a pulled-punch that, in another mood, Jordan might have appreciated. In his current mood, however — drunk, over-caffeinated, and deep into his Laphroaig — he wasn’t grateful. Instead, he felt shafted and exposed. And he was still feeling that way another Laphroaig later, when they reached their destination.
The Hive was a ninety-seven-story needle two blocks from the glittery Pearl TV tower in Pudong. It had been designed to symbolize industriousness and dedication — to facilitate work, to honor work, to beatify work — and it did this by eliminating the need for its inhabitants to do anything but work. Many of those who worked in the Hive, including Jordan and Stack, also lived, shopped, ate, worked out, and drank there. The lower third of the building housed condos. The middle third restaurants, grocery stores, health clubs, night clubs, and the only mid-building heliport in the world. (The best tables in the sixty-third-floor restaurants hung above the heliport’s doors, so diners could watch executives nip to and from the airport and Hangzhou like bees.) The top third held the most expensive office space in Shanghai.