Ben Mezrich - Rigged

Oil.

Three-thirty in the morning, maybe closer to four.

David Russo would always remember the moment when clarity first

There was something uniquely soothing about the whir of helicopter

Im sorry, David. Hes on his way to his sons

Geography aside, it was hard to tell where Wall Street

Monday morning, 8:59 A.M.

The first thing David noticed as he stepped out onto

David stepped out into what looked to be a lounge,

The view was like something out of a science fiction

Are you sure about this?

David came awake to the sound of classical music.

Monday morning, 9:10 A.M., the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Four hours later, David was so deep in oil, he

David grimaced as he kicked sawdust off his only pair

If one were to choose a place in which to

I could get used to this, Serena said, and David

As Davids index finger plunged toward his laptops keyboard, he

David should have seen the bombshell coming the minute Harriet

For the third time in ten minutes, Khaleds life flashed

Look at the bright side, kid. At least they werent

How long do you think we could stay in here

Now this was the way to travel.

The minute he slung his carry-on bag over his shoulder,

From the very moment David lowered himself into his seat

The nightclub was called Kasbah, though it didnt need to

The swimming pool was enormous and shaped like a kidney;

It wasnt until David was sitting in the first-class lounge

At that very moment, ten miles away, Khaled closed his

You have three minutes. Dont embarrass yourself.

The trading floor was in full swing as David stepped

Its kind of like chess. The key is always to

If ever there was a moment that seemed to justify

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

Suddenly there was darkness.

Two days before his twenty-sixth birthday, David made a life-altering

If the villains in a James Bond movie had been

In a perfect world, David would have come to his

Twenty minutes later, when David stepped through the entrance of

Wow, youre really not much for that lived-in look, are

Ten A.M.

Eight hours laterand at thirty thousand feetDavids celebration was still

Even during takeoff, the hundred-million-dollar jets twin Rolls Royce engines

The minute David stepped out of the taxicab and onto

O il.

On the Arab street, they have another name for it: the Black Blood of Allah. A gift, handed down directly from God, endowing the Muslim world with everlasting power over the West.

In the West, oil is no less influential; it is inarguably the most important tradable commodity on earth. Oil is the source of wealth and power, the currency that drives the world economy. Some believe it is also the cause of most wars and acts of terrorism.

In truth, theres a reason men fight wars over oil: at its essence, oil is energy. It powers everything. It is, in itself, power, but power with a pricehistorically, oil has always divided the world into two opposing forces: those who have , and those who need .

Very soon that historical fact may change. Because very soon oil may also end up bringing the world together in a way that politics, diplomacy, and war never could.

T hree-thirty in the morning, maybe closer to four.

A packed club in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, a place called Gypsy Tea. Trendy as hell, the velvet rope outside lorded over by a doorman with a shaved head and a name nobody could pronounce, and a girl in a leather skirt so short she could have worn it as a wristband. Two couch-strewn floors teeming with pretty people in designer clothes, their New York hip-factor ratified by the fact that it was past three in the morning on a Tuesday and that theyd somehow made it past the door-bitches and their mysterious and uniquely New York vetting practices. The music was dangerously loud, bouncing off the walls in ear-shattering waves, and the champagne was flowing freely, splashing down the sides of crystal flutes and splattering all over the thick faux-leather carpeting.

The VIP area took up most of the back corner of the first floor, separated from the rest of the club by another velvet rope. The bouncers at this rope were wearing headsets and holding clipboards, but the clipboards were really just for show. If you were going to get into the VIP, the bouncers wouldnt need to find your name on a list. The crowd beyond the rope was youngtwenties and thirtiesand obviously well-heeled. Bankers in tailored Brooks Brothers mingled with hip-hop execs in Armani and Sean John. Prime Time celebs swirled about like errant weather patterns, trailing wakes of PR flunkies, oversized bodyguards, and harried assistants. And of course, there were girlsthere were always girls, models from Ford and Elite and Next, too tall and too thin and too angled, more giraffes than gazelles.

David Russo watched the circus from the safety of a corner banquette, his shoulders tense beneath the thin material of his charcoal-colored Zegna suit. The banquette was lodged behind a black marble table, which struggled beneath a glass metropolis of champagne and vodka bottles, ensconced by overflowing buckets of ice. David had a drink in his handsomething with vodka, he assumedbut he hadnt even taken a sip. Although he was not a stranger to places like this, he was definitely an outsider. At twenty-six, he had never made a hobby of decadence, and at this hour he was usually holed up in his office, preparing for the markets next opening, or home in bed with Serena, his girlfriend of two years. But tonight he hadnt had much of a choice. In less than a week, Davids entire life was going to changeand he had to tread carefully. He had to keep up appearances, act as though nothing was out of the ordinary, no matter how far from ordinary things were about to become.

Fucking awesome, isnt it?

Michael Vitzioli winked at him from a thickly cushioned couch to his right, then high-fived the two young men sitting across the table from them. Joey Brunetti and Jim Rosa shouted something back, but their voices were lost in the noise of the club. David smiled and nodded, stifling his nervous energy as best he could. He had been watching the three traders decimate bottle after bottle of alcohol for the past few hours, and he was beginning to believe that the night would never end. For the hundredth time, he regretted accepting the invite from Vitzi and his trading partnersbut really, David couldnt have turned them down. Over the last six months he had worked hard to win the trust of the tradersno small task, considering how different his background and theirs seemed to be. Even the way the three young men were dressedVitzi in a leather jacket and ripped jeans, Brunetti in a denim ensemble that would have given Serena a heart attack, and Rosa in what looked to be an overpriced sweat suitbetrayed the different paths theyd traveled to this chaotic, late-night moment. Even so, the three men had finally grown to accept David as one of their own. And if what David had planned was going to work, he needed to remain in their good graces. He needed to continue to play the part.

Hell of a party, he shouted back to Vitzi. Youre gonna break a record tonight. That waitress nearly fainted when you ordered that twelfth bottle of Cristal.

Vitzi grinned. The excess of the evening was a point of pride to him, especially because he knew that word of the nights spending spree would move across the trading floor faster than hed been spreading drinks around the VIP room. Vitzi certainly didnt care about the money; he had made five hundred thousand dollars profit that morning. Half a million wasnt a record for the Merc Exchange, but it was a pretty damn impressive take. Especially considering that just two weeks earlier Vitzi had turned twenty-four.