The First Billion

Gavallan returned the hug. He tried to say, "Anytime- that's what brothers do for each other," but something was blocking his throat and he couldn't trust himself to speak.

***

The second Suburban had survived the shoot-out intact. Not a dent in its black armor, nor a streak of dirt marring the high-gloss finish. Gavallan and Byrnes walked toward it, Cate following a step behind.

"Why didn't you just cancel the deal after I left you the message?" Byrnes asked.

"What message was that?"

"About the network operations center."

"It's a wreck. We know that. Just like the Private Eye-PO said."

"No," protested Byrnes, stopping short, waiting for Cate and Gavallan to face him. "It's not a wreck at all. On the contrary. That's what I called to tell you. It's a state-of-the-art facility. The NOC is Kirov's beard. Don't you see? It's his disguise. It's what fooled us."

"Fooled us?" asked Gavallan. "How?"

Byrnes described the vast room filled with row upon row of personal computers logging on and off Red Star, Mercury's wholly owned and operated Internet portal. "There were a thousand in there, maybe two thousand. I couldn't count them all. Each logs onto Red Star, then visits a site or two- Amazon, Expedia, the high-traffic sites. Some make a purchase, then they log off. A minute later, they dial Red Star back up again. Over and over, ad infinitum. All running off some master program."

"Metrics," explained Cate, pushing a comma of hair off her forehead. "Has to be."

"I was thinking the same thing," said Byrnes.

"You knew?" Gavallan demanded.

"God, no. But it makes sense. I just wrote about the same kind of shenanigans for the paper. You know… how websites use metrics to manipulate the tally of monthly visitors. It's a gag to fool the firms that measure Red Star's traffic. Make them think Mercury has more customers than it really does. Jett, when you were doing your due diligence on Mercury, didn't you talk to a metrics firm to validate Kirov's claims about Red Star's size?"

"Jupiter in San Jose. Their report tallied perfectly with Mercury's figures. Two hundred thousand subscribers in Moscow alone."

"Of course it did," said Cate. "He knew Jupiter or someone like them would be called in to check how many hits Red Star got every day. He couldn't risk there being a discrepancy. He needed two hundred thousand subscribers to justify his sky-high revenues, and two hundred thousand he got. Only his customers weren't customers at all. They were straw men, or maybe I should say 'straw machines.' " Cate took a breath. "Don't you see? It's a twenty-first-century Potemkin village."

"You're saying he set up shop out here and created a cybercommunity of Red Star fanatics?" asked Gavallan.

Cate nodded disgustedly. "Kirov had it worked out to a fault so you wouldn't question how rapidly the company's revenues were increasing. He knew from the beginning the kind of revenues Mercury had to post to max out its IPO. He could get the money easy. He stole it from Novastar. The subscribers were the hard part. That's what required the creative thinking."

"My God," muttered Gavallan, shaken. "He played us like a fiddle."

"More like a Stradivarius," said Cate. "But his performance is over. And there will be no encore, thank you very much."

Grafton Byrnes signaled his incomprehension. "Hold on, I'm missing something here. What's Novastar Airlines got to do with this?"

Cate explained to him about her dealings with Ray Luca and what had happened in Delray Beach, about the trip to Geneva and Jean-Jacques Pillonel's complicity with Konstantin Kirov to hide transfers from Novastar Airlines to Mercury Broadband and then to Kirov's personal accounts.

"But what put you onto Kirov's case in the first place?"

"Don't ask," said Gavallan, and Cate elbowed him.

"Actually, he's my father," she answered.

Byrnes's eyes registered shock. "You said 'father.' You don't mean…?"

Cate nodded.

"Can't say I see a resemblance."

"Thank God for that." She went on with her explanation: "I don't think we'll ever learn who Detective Skulpin's informant was, but whoever it was that had the guts to go up against my father, I'd like to thank him."

"I think you can forget about that," said Byrnes reticently. "On Friday, Kirov- er, your father- showed up here with a nasty piece of work named Dashamirov. They had three employees of Mercury with them. Dashamirov went to work on them…" The words trailed off. "Anyway, you can figure it out."

Cate Magnus shut her eyes, and a chill seemed to pass through her. "I'm sorry, Graf. I'm sorry about my father. About everything that's happened to you."

"Don't be," Byrnes said. "You didn't have a damned thing to do with this. You're a good egg- I can't imagine the guts it must have taken to come back and face him. The hardest thing a kid can do is step outside the shadow of a parent, especially a father. And then if he happens to be a rogue like Kirov, well…" Byrnes shook his head, then leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you for coming, too."