The First Billion

Byrnes slid from room to room, noticed but unquestioned, his suit and tie and confident posture as good as any E-ZPass. His relief in learning that the Private Eye-PO's pictures were bogus was outweighed only by his desire to know what in the world all the new equipment was being used for. He didn't remember reading any plans for a buildout of this proportion. As unobtrusively as possible, he followed the train of deliverymen through the corridors, passing from the main building to an outstation that had not been visible from the road. Just ahead, a security guard stood in front of a pair of swinging doors. He was holding a clipboard, and as each piece of equipment passed through the doors he checked both the item and the man's name against his list.

Byrnes allowed himself only a moment's hesitation. Then, hurrying his pace, he approached the security guard and handed him his business card. "Good evening," he said in English. "I'm a friend of Mr. Kirov's. He invited me to visit." And before the man could answer, Byrnes thanked him, smiled, and followed the next deliveryman through the doors.

He was standing inside a very large room, one hundred feet long and seventy feet wide. The floor was white. The walls were white. The ceiling was white, and from it hung rafts of fluorescent lights suspended by thin cables. Table after table ran the width of the room. On them was arrayed an army of personal computers: hundreds… no, thousands of PCs arranged one after another in perfect rows. The screens blinked on and off. On and off. He walked closer. One screen read, "Welcome to Red Star. Please enter your password." The computer did as it was asked and the PC logged onto Mercury's signature portal. The welcome screen went blank, replaced a moment later by a familiar web page. Somewhere on the page, he read the greeting "Hello, Sergei Romanov," but a moment later the screen blinked and traveled to another electronic address. The PC continued its peripatetic iterations, bouncing from one site to another for a minute or two, then logging off. A few seconds passed, and it began the same trick again.

Byrnes advanced a few rows and watched another PC perform the same operations, only visiting different websites. He stood mesmerized, floating in a white universe of personal computers, wondering what the hell was going on. He took a few more steps and watched some more.

And then, it hit him.

Taking in the entire room at once, he whispered, "My God. It can't be."

***

When he emerged five minutes later, his first act was to phone his office. It was near noon in San Francisco. This time the call went through.

"Yeah?" answered a familiar voice.

"Oh, it's you," said Byrnes, a little surprised that Gavallan hadn't answered his private line. "Where's Jett?"

"Not around right now. What's up?"

"Is he close by? It's important I talk to him."

Byrnes caught the sound of an engine revving hard and jogged toward the Lada. A gold Mercedes sedan was flying down the road, leaving a curtain of dust in its wake. No roadblock for him, Byrnes mused; no playing kissy-face with Uncle Vanya of the traffic militia.

"Where are you, Graf?" came the voice in his ear. "You sound a million miles away."

Byrnes tapped his foot nervously. No one but he and Gavallan knew about the excursion to Moscow. "Just get Jett. And hurry."

"Cool down. He's not here. I saw him a while ago, but he may have stepped out."

The Mercedes was a hundred yards away and showed no signs of slowing. Byrnes hesitated, hoping the sedan would pass through the intersection, knowing in his gut it was headed here, and that whoever was inside was looking for him. As the Russian police didn't drive late-model Mercedes that retailed for a hundred grand a pop, he had a feeling he was in for a rougher brand of justice. He looked around. It would be easy to duck back into the building, to hide among the workers. But why? He'd done nothing wrong. As Mercury's banker, he had every right to be here. His visit was unannounced, but not surreptitious. He had every intention of phoning Mr. Kirov once he assembled his findings. The thought of being found cowering inside an empty cardboard box decided the matter. Galvanized, his feet took firm possession of the ground, and he rummaged in his pockets for a business card.

"All right, all right, listen then," he said into the phone. "It's about Mercury. You have to tell Jett everything I'm about to say verbatim. You got that? Verbatim. You won't believe it."

And for the next sixty seconds he rattled off everything he'd seen inside the Moscow network operations center, stopping only when the Mercedes sedan had pulled to a halt ten feet away. "You got that?"

The voice sounded shocked. "Yeah, I got it. It just sounds a little crazy. I mean, that's not even possible, is it?"