Page 50 of The Oligarch's Daughter

Bad news traveled fast at Aquinnah, as it did in the whole financial world. The worse the news, the faster it sped through the circuits. And this news was very bad.

Aquinnah’s fixed-income division had invested a huge sum—10 percent of the firm’s assets—in Argentinian debt. The news was all over theWall Street Journalonline and Bloomberg and everywhere else: Argentina had defaulted.

While Paul had been having fun with Madagascan vanilla, Aquinnah’s fixed-income division had lost their shirts. To be specific, they’d lost over four hundred million dollars, or 10 percent of all the assets under management. That erased all gains elsewhere at Aquinnah.

It was a disaster. There was no more cash to deploy in the firm. Nothing more to invest, which meant that Paul’s team couldn’t buy stocks. All activity was frozen. And no one would get bonuses.

Everyone, even those who had had nothing to do with the bond guys’ fuckup, was affected. People were leaving the firm in droves. Over the course of one day, Paul realized there was no future for him at Aquinnah.

*

That same afternoon, he got a call from a recruiter. He got such calls from time to time. Headhunters are much reviled in the industry, but they’re used by everybody, and this time, Paul decided to take the call. He was interested in what they had to say.

Everyone on the Street knew what had happened at Aquinnah. They all smelled blood in the water. The headhunter was calling on behalf of the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgeport Associates, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. It was founded and run by Steve D’Orazio and worth twenty-five billion dollars. In 2008, when just about every hedge fund tanked, Bridgeport was up 10 percent. D’Orazio had self-published a book of advice and investing philosophy. He called itWisdom.

Bridgeport Associates was famous for having an abusive and cruel workplace. Thirty percent of all new employees left within a year. Paul had always sworn he’d never take a job there.

“Tell me what you have in mind,” he said to the headhunter.

*

Tatyana was at home feeding Pushkin, who was a picky eater, easily distractible. When Paul arrived home, the dog trotted to the front door to greet him, jumping up, paws in the air. This was a first.

Paul liked dogs, as much as a non–dog owner could, but he’d found his approaches to Pushkin mostly thwarted. He would lean down to pet the little creature, but Pushkin would scuttle away. Pushkin was a one-person dog.

“You’re home early,” Tatyana said, kissing him. “I need your help.”

“I need a drink,” Paul said.

“First, can you plunge the toilet?”

She had a balky toilet that was prone to overflowing. Since moving into her apartment, Paul had plunged it a number of times. It was one of the things he didn’t like about living in Tatyana’s apartment, besides the fact that it was too small: there wasn’t even room for his clothes, which he piled in neat stacks on the floor.

When he returned from plunging the toilet, Tatyana handed him a drink and thanked him. She’d poured him some Four Roses over ice. She had bought bourbon for him after he moved in. She’d poured herself a glass of Whispering Angel rosé.

They sat at her old enamel-top kitchen table, and Paul told her what had happened at Aquinnah. It took some explaining; she didn’t understand what “fixed-income” meant or how debt worked, but when he told her he wouldn’t be getting a bonus (the biggest part of his annual income, normally) and had no chance of being promoted, then she got it.

He told her about the call from the headhunter.

“Sounds like a good job,” she said. “Are you going to take it?”

“Let me tell you about Steve D’Orazio,” he said. “He was fired from his first job for punching his boss in the face when he was drunk.”

“Oh.”

“He’s a world-class asshole. He has a philosophy he calls radical honesty. Which means that he and all other supervisors and officers of the company feel free to be abusive to their underlings. When you go into work each morning at Bridgeport, you have to lock up your personal cell phone. All employees are under surveillance at all times. D’Orazio’s famous for saying, ‘If you’re not worried, you need to worry.’”

“You wouldn’t work there, would you?”

He gave her a look.

“Good,” she said. “And my father’s offer?”

“You want me to work for your father, don’t you?”

“Me? Don’t misunderstand me, Pasha. I want to support you. I want you to do whatever you want.”

“You don’t care?”

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