Stern sat for a moment, twisting his lip as he pondered his next move. He tapped the desktop with his fingertips and fought to remain calm, to keep his temper under control.

OptiMarx had promised to be a veritable gold mine from the beginning. That’s why he had enthusiastically committed vast quantities of the fund’s capital to the effort. Why he had just as willingly tossed in a large part of his own personal fortune after it. His due diligence had been as comprehensive as ever. Everything had turned up positive. The venture had appeared golden.

OptiMarx was a reputable company with a solid contract to modernize the nation’s primary stock exchange. How could it miss?

Now, there was considerable risk. That limey idiot, Alan Smythe, was on the verge of ruining everything. At this point, Stern wasn’t sure if the guy was incompetent or criminally stupid.

Did the son of a bitch think he could hide his silly little scheme from Mark Stern? After all, Stern had not managed to work his way to the top of one of the most powerful VC firms in the world by allowing small-time grifters and con artists like Smythe to pull their amateurish stunts on him. That wasn’t the complication. If the SEC got suspicious, if they caught even the slightest whiff of anything amiss, they would ensnare OptiMarx and, with it, PPP’s and Mark Stern’s money in a morass so deep and sucking none of them would ever escape. The company would be so tangled up in endless testing, complicated reviews, eternal litigation, and constant inspections that the money would run out long before the system was close to launch. All that would happen even if they never uncovered Smythe’s clumsy little scam.

Then there was the other matter, a slight snag that hit Stern even closer to home. It had seemed so easy at first, and had been necessary at the time. Stern needed to lay his hands on ten million dollars to cover a margin call when some of his personal high-tech investments went sour on him. His broker had not been very understanding. The boys at Bund Systems were much more helpful and had proposed a rather simple solution. They would be most happy to slip him the money he needed under the table. All he would need to do in return was arrange for OptiMarx to contract for Bund’s hardware when they built the new trading system, even if it was little more than overpriced junk.

Now Alan Smythe was shying away from his end of the bargain, claiming the equipment was not compatible, that it would not meet the specs the Exchange was demanding.