Prologue
September 21. Steve Gardner sat quietly in a forty sixth floor office in
downtown Manhattan.
It was 8:15 on a Saturday morning, and the offices of Storm and Fellows were
nearly deserted. Steve would normally have been asleep at this hour, or perhaps
sipping a first cup of coffee while skimming the
Times in his cramped Soho
apartment. Despite four and a half years of working at the midtown headquarters
of a multinational conglomerate, he'd never fully shaken the nightowl lifestyle
of his undergraduate days, to which he happily reverted on weekends.
But today was different. Early Saturday morning, he'd been told, would be his
only opportunity to meet David Zhao "the man who understood how profit happens."
Through determined effort and a lucky connection or two, Steve had worked his
way to the fringe of one of the circles in which Zhao was known. So he had some
inkling of the unique ...
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