“Hear, Hear,” Rohan clinked his cocktail glass and waited couple moments. “Everyone, please listen up. We have the distinct honor today of a few words from Gavin Folsom, Legion Financial’s esteemed executive officer.”
All thirty or so heads turned around, ending their private conversations.
“Thank you everyone. Mila, thanks for setting this up. Where better to begin the fight against the globalist agenda than the Hard Rock Café, huh?” He paused to allow for a few awkward laughs.
“This is a huge day for Legion. We’ve been active for over a month now but it’s not official ‘til you throw a party, right? So while I have your attention, I want to talk about what makes Legion a fund worth celebrating.”
As if on cue, the waiters came around to refill wine glasses and champagne flutes. New beers were brought out to the few who passed on the Bordeaux (Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste) and the champagne (Dom Pérignon, naturally).
“That’s more like it. Rohan always tells me a drunk audience is a receptive audience. He should know. Anyway…”
Gavin continued with his prepared remarks, giving a brief history of the partners and how they came to know each other. He talked briefly about their radical convictions and their unconventional tactics, holding the crowd’s attention until the very end. Finally, he called Rohan on stage. Rohan opted to soften the blow of Gavin’s speech, rather than rile up the audience further.
“Thanks, Gavin. Boy, that’s one serious guy, huh?” He looked around nervously, but when no one laughed he continued, “It’s true, Legion is all the things Gavin talked about, but one thing he missed, which of course he did, is that it’s going to be above all, a lot of fun! I mean it. I’ll give you some advice a dearly departed friend of mine gave me: make play a part of every day, and mischief a part of every evening.”
He paused for laughs but none were forthcoming, so he continued.
“It’s true, social issues will be at the forefront of everything we do here. That’s not just PR. If you know Gavin and I, and to a lesser extent Austin, Jason and Eric… just kidding guys… But yeah, if you know any of us, you know we truly believe in this stuff and we hope you’re here because you believe in it too. But if all you really want is to earn ungodly returns on your investment, well, then… you’ve still come to the right place.”
Rohan blamed the champagne for his incoherence but it was actually something else that was truly bothering him. He gave up on giving the whole speech he’d prepared and tried to finish as rapidly as he could.
“So anyway, while you’re working on this gorgeous island, just remember, if you’re not having fun… you’re not doing it right!
Rohan hopped off the stage. Everyone took it as a signal and returned to their original positions. Gavin caught up with Rohan and whispered excitedly in his ear.
“They’re down!”
Rohan met his excited gaze and nodded. They each returned to entertain their guests.
Their first dry run with the Low Orbit Ion Cannon was a verified success. The next day they would glean the details from the news: The websites of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and PNC Bank were brought down for hours during the busiest portion of the day. Five out of their eight targets were hit, better their own expectations.
The exercise required quite a bit of help and Viktor’s parting gifts came in handy. His hacker buddies provided guidance and helped expand their reach by tapping hundreds of application servers that had lay dormant awaiting a worthy cause, hacked months prior. It was simpler than imagined, manipulating thousands of high powered computers to hit the bank websites. Best of all, soon after the attack was in the news, an opportunistic Islamist group called Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters assumed responsibility and Gavin and Rohan were in the clear.
Still, Rohan did not rest easy. Two days ago, he’d submitted a trade to Eric that he knew would raise eyebrows. The order was for put options on several major banks, which was conspicuous in and of itself.
Stocks across the board were soaring towards all-time highs. Going against this market was just asking to get punched in the mouth. Naturally, Eric rang Rohan to ask about it.
Rohan tried to justify the position, “Well, we’ve got a big position in financials, right? I looked over some of the risk management reports Jason’s been putting out, and it makes sense to buy insurance when it’s so cheap. Premiums are low and you can never be too safe.”
Eric didn’t buy it but he didn’t bother to argue too much. It wasn’t an enormous order, nothing worth wasting breath over at the rate they were raking it in. If by some miracle the banks ended their hot streak, great. If not, it’d be something to give Rohan shit for.
Rohan knew he was about to hear it. The intermittent outages, disrupting service to millions of customers barely moved the needle. When he checked the market’s reaction on his phone, he saw the banks were near the day’s high. He cursed his luck. Not only had he lost money on the trade, he had an uncomfortable conversation with Eric to look forward to. Luckily, neither Eric nor Jason broached the subject at the party, content to enjoy the event and leave serious matters for Monday.
Well, not all serious matters.
“Rohan, man, have you talked to Isabella about that night?” Jason asked him when they had a moment alone.
“What’s there to talk about?” It was another conversation Rohan was dreading.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Jason replied.
“I know what you’re talking about, but what is there to talk about?”
“Fuckin’ hell, shut up with the goddamn riddles.”
“That wasn’t a riddle, it was a rhetorical question.”
Jason grabbed Rohan by the elbow and pulled him closer, “That’s not funny man. You’ve made my life extremely complicated and you’re making light of the situation!”
“Listen, whether I’ve talked to Isabella is completely irrelevant. If you must know, yes, I did talk to her about it. I told her it was a fun night, I like her, but we would respect manager-employee boundaries and just remain friends.”
Jason said nothing, so Rohan continued, “Jason, what you need to understand is that life is all about personal sovereignty, which implies personal responsibility. You get where I’m coming from? You’re solely responsible for your own actions. I may have encouraged you to drink, flirt, ingest drugs, whatever. But you could have said no at any point—“ It was too much for Jason to handle, “I fucking said no about a hundred times!”
Rohan tried to suppress his laugh and failed. People nearby cast glances and Rohan patted Jason on the back as if he’d made a good joke. It seemed to work and they lost their unwanted attention.
“Ok, ok, look, I hear you. It’s a fucked up situation. You cheated with a co-worker,” he suppressed another laugh with great difficulty, “on your girlfriend who you just moved out to Malta, and now you need me to help pick up the pieces. I get it. Well, here’s what you need to do: break up with your girl, send her ass back home and date Li. She’s a good looking girl, she’s sweet, and she hasn’t been emotionally conditioned by romantic comedies. She’s fucking perfect for you man. You know you won’t be able to hide it for long, so why torture yourself. Just tell your girlfriend and get on with it.”
Jason stomped off in disgust.
Rohan was convinced it would be best for him in the long run. He thought about it for a second longer before absolving himself of guilt and moved on to a cheery group of revelers. Now he just had his conversation with Eric to look forward to.
First thing on Monday, in an unusually confrontational stance, Rohan walked into Eric’s office.
“I figure you want to talk to me?”
Eric looked up from his monitor, “What on earth about?”
He went back to studying the numbers and charts on his terminal.
“Ohhhkay, I guess, uh nevermind.”
Having lost his nerve, Rohan began to back out of the door when Eric closed the lid of his laptop and said, “Hold on. Come in and close the door.”
Rohan did and took a seat.
“Even though I’m certain the less I know the better, the intrigue has gotten the best of me. So you knew about the hacks?”
“Mhmm.”
“Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with them Rohan. Or Gavin. You guys better not have been behind them.”
“You saw the news, it was a group of Syrian hackers.”
“My fucking ass it was Syrians! And even if it was, why would they tell you about it beforehand?”
“Well, it wasn’t the Syrians that told us, obviously. I’d been meaning to tell you, but that additional half million investment I put on the books, it was a posthumous contribution. Viktor left those funds to Gavin, along with some other interesting materials. Credentials to forum accounts, IRC chat, stuff like that. We initiated contact with his old hacker friends and eventually started making friends. They were happy to see their comrade back from the dead.”
“They think you’re Viktor!? Do you have any idea what they will do when they find out you lied to them? As if we don’t spend enough on security as it is. Fuck!”
Rohan made a gesture with both arms telling him to settle down.
“Relax, we told them up front exactly what happened. We’d been left behind a trove of data, access to accounts and funds to continue his work. These individuals gave us some tips. Honestly, that’s it. They even made some security recommendations to help reinforce our security.” Rohan finished with a grin. Eric lifted up the lid on his laptop and returned his attention, “I’m not even going to ask anymore. Working with you fucking criminals, who knows when I’ll be under oath. I am just going to take what you’re saying at face value and we’re moving on. In the future, if you ever receive tips, keep them to yourself, okay? Lost everything on those options and it’s obvious to anyone who cares to look that we made some pretty large transactions with suspicious timing.”
Eric shook his head. This guy would be the end of him. But he couldn’t help but ride along, there was far more excitement in what he was doing now than his work at Virtu. To his surprise, he found that island life suited him, despite his initial misgivings at leaving the concrete jungle. As far as course corrections go, this one was turning out quite well. He just prayed it didn’t end in forced cohabitation of a cell upstate.
“You don’t understand Eric, it was meant to be obvious. That was the whole point. We need everyone to think,” Rohan corrected himself, “to know we still have connections on the deep web. They’ll scrutinize our trades and maybe some regulators will ask questions. But what crime have we committed? We traded on a rumor we heard, not insider information by any stretch. In today’s financial industry it’s ambitious at best, ethically ambiguous at worst. Now I just need to work my way back up the trade leaderboard after that stupid loss. Can you believe it didn’t push the stocks down a bit? What’s the world coming to?”
“So you did it for the press.”
“Hey, we’ve got to sell or you’ll have no assets to manage.”
Aggravated, but wanting no more of the conversation, Eric said without looking back up at Rohan, “Have Austin call me so Jason and I can brief him on our response. In case the media pick up on it.”
It didn’t take long for the gifted analysts at Nanex Research to catch on. They published research which was heavily excerpted in a post on Zero Hedge titled, Does the World’s First Bitcoin Hedge Fund Have Hacker Ties? The result was something no head of a sales organization could lament, phones ringing off the hook.