The First Billion

"Everything's copacetic," had come Byrnes's voice, calm as a Sunday morning. "Just let me take care of this fire and we'll be jim-dandy to land." And in the same unbothered delivery, he'd begun ticking off the measures to regain control of the plane- depress rudder, bring up left aileron, release the stick to let the nose find its way down.

But strapped into the front seat, Gavallan knew damn well everything was not copacetic. His eyes were glued to the altimeter, watching it tick down from four thousand feet at a hundred feet a second. He could feel the G forces increasing, driving him deeper into his seat, nailing his arms to his side. As he counted the seconds until they augered in, his hands automatically reached for the side of his seat, searching for the ejection handles. But when he found them, he immediately let them go. It was an act of betrayal. Of disbelief. No, it was worse. It was a pilot's cardinal sin: the acknowledgment of his own fallibility.

The altimeter spun merrily counterclockwise, passing eight hundred feet, seven hundred, six… The plane came out of its death spiral, the nose pointed straight down toward the arid landscape. Gripped with a quiet terror, he waited for the nose to rise. A series of prayers stumbled from his lips. When that failed him, he swore silently. Come on, you son of a bitch. Come up. Just a little, you mutha, just a little!

Slowly, the plane righted itself. The nose inched up, the wings leveled to the horizon. And as the ground zipped beneath their wings close enough to slap a longhorn's rump, Byrnes chuckled, as if the whole escapade had been engineered for Gavallan's amusement.

"What'd I tell you, rookie?" he asked.

After landing, the two accomplished their postflight inspection of the debilitated aircraft. A four-by-four-foot section of crumpled metal dangled from the tail, secured by an aluminum thread no wider around than a pencil. Viewing the damage, neither Byrnes nor Gavallan commented. They simply exchanged glances and shrugged their shoulders. That night, "everything's copacetic" entered lore, meaning, of course, just the opposite- that nothing could be more screwed up.

"Okay, okay. I get the message," said Gavallan, walking to his chair and sitting down. "Slap me around a little if I start feeling sorry for myself again."

"Yes sir. You're the boss."

Gavallan eyed Byrnes suspiciously. Sometimes he wasn't so sure. "Look, the pictures of Mercury's network operations center are fakes. I know that company inside and out. The only question is what we're going to do about it."

"You've talked to Kirov?"

"He called me a few minutes ago. He was livid. Said the comments were nonsense. A ploy to drive down the offering price. He hinted it might be political. He wasn't sure, yet."

"Political? Come off it. If there's one thing I can tell you about the Private Eye-PO, it's that he's as American as apple pie. Still glad you crawled into bed with the enemy?"

"Kirov's hardly the enemy. We checked him out backwards and forwards. Even Kroll gave him a clean bill of health. No ties to the mafiya, no indentures to the government, no evidence of corruption or criminal activity. Konstantin Kirov's the first-"

"Stop right there," blurted Byrnes. "I know what you're going to say. He's 'the first truly Western businessman.' The Financial Times said that, right? 'The patron saint of the second Russian perestroika.' Remember, Jett, I read the prospectus, too."

Gavallan shook his head. Byrnes would always be an unrepentant cold warrior. "You know, Graf, you missed your calling. You should start up a new chapter of America Firsters. Bring isolationism back into vogue."

"Okay, okay," said Byrnes, lifting his hands palm up. "He's a wild card, that's all I'm saying."

"Well, he's our wild card, so you better get used to him. If the Mercury IPO goes well, we'll be doing business with Kirov for a decade. We're already talking a secondary offering in a year, and he's asked us to scout some acquisition targets for him. Mercury's a gusher waiting to be tapped, and we're darned lucky they chose us to do the drilling. He asked me if I wanted him to send over his jet to bring me to Moscow. He wants to personally show me the premises. He's worried about how the market's taking it."

"And how is the market taking it?" asked Byrnes. "What's the word from Bruce?"

"Too soon to tell, but this kind of thing is never good. We'll need to engage in some proactive damage control."

"So you believe Mr. Kirov?"

"A hundred percent."

"All right then. Let's look at this closer."