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Firing Point

Dmitri Ustinov glanced over at the slightly built Englishman as if he might not have heard the question. Although a mere twenty-two years old, Ustinov possessed a keenly- trained intellect hidden in a bear’s body. Despite his heavy, continuous brow, droopy eyelids, and a stooped stature that made him appear on first glance a bit dense, the man possessed a unique skill set well suited for his present project. His knowledge of complicated computer systems along with his familiarity with the inane, convoluted rules for trading stocks and other securities, were already well celebrated. Even at his young age, he was the chief engineer for testing the revolutionary new OptiMarx equities trading system.

“Problems with the integration to the National Market System,” he answered as they glided past the fifteenth floor. His accent still carried a hint of his native Russian though he had been in the United States for a decade. “The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at how we are doing that. It will be several weeks until we get a ruling out of them.”

Smythe grunted acknowledgment. Damn government bureaus worked on their own timetables. He was accustomed to such roadblocks, but they were still hard to stomach. “What does Chuck Gruver over at the NYSE say?”

“Not a lot of help. He is so damned head up and ass down in the changes to the Inter-market Trading System that he does not have time to help us on this side.”

“Not surprised. About time they fixed ITS. That ticker tape should have been donated to the Smithsonian a long time ago.” The elevator door parted and they walked out into the large open office space of OptiMarx, Inc. The big room was divided into a myriad of cubicles. Alan stepped to the left, toward the hallway that led to his office, while Dmitri headed to the right. Smythe stepped into his corner office. Opposite the door, the room’s glass wall looked out from the New Jersey shore, across New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty toward Lower Manhattan. Ferries scurried across the Hudson River to the north as helicopters buzzed back and forth between the heliports on either shore. Smythe slid into the modern, black- leather chair behind the smoked- glass desk, the panoramic view now at his back. He had hardly begun riffling through his morning e-mail before the intercom on his desk buzzed its annoying interruption.

Without even a “good morning,” his omnipresent executive assistant, Cheryl Mitchell, announced that Mark Stern wanted to speak with him. He sounded, she noted, “Pissed, as usual.”

Mark Stern was the leading investment partner for the west coast venture capital firm, Private Pacific Partners. It was Stern and PPP who were providing the stacks of cash that kept Alan Smythe and OptiMarx afloat.

Smythe grimaced. He took a deep breath before he picked up the telephone and spoke. “Morning, Mark. You’re up early. It’s . . . what . . . six o’clock out there on the coast?”

“Alan, I know damn good and well what time it is,” Stern growled. “My question is, do you? We’ve shoveled over fifty million into that company of yours to date. So far, all we’ve gotten for our money are more and more delays. That excuse you have for a Chief Technology Officer is giving us some cockamamie story about ‘ITS’ and ‘SIAC’ and ‘POPs’ and a half a dozen other acronyms that make no sense to us at all. We don’t want alphabet soup, Alan, unless it’s ‘ROI.’ We want return on investment. Is that so hard to understand?”

Cheryl had stepped into the office to deposit a stack of folders on his desk. Smythe hit the MUTE button on the phone and muttered under his breath.

“Damn VCs. They have egos the size they think their dicks are and brains the size they really are.”

Cheryl waggled her finger and looked at him over the tops of her half-glasses. “Play nice,” she mouthed, then turned and left.

Smythe unmuted the phone. “Mark, calm down. We’ve just had a little delay while the SEC reviews our plan. Couple of days. No big deal. We’re still on schedule. Testing the algorithm is going well and that’s the tough part. Ustinov is doing a great job.”

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