The folder had been passed around the conference table four times, read, dissected, debated, scrutinized, and rescrutinized by the three men for nearly an hour.

The biography of Jack Wiley held their attention for the first thirty minutes. An impressive man, no question about that. A 1988 graduate of Princeton, peculiarly he had entered the Army, fought in the first Gulf War, then traded his boots for loafers a few months after the last shot was fired. A Silver Star and a Bronze Star: a combat vet and genuine hero to boot. A few intense years drinking the Kool-Aid at Harvard Business School, then he shot straight into the labyrinth of a big Wall Street firm, bouncing through three big firms in ten years.

A few calls by one of their executives posing as a corporate headhunter to those firms revealed that Wiley was restless, but a steady rainmaker wherever he went. His former employers described him as pleasant, smart, energetic, but also cautious and diligent, all values the men around the table intensely admired. He produced profit by the bushel wherever he went; this quality they admired even more. That success brought a flood of offers from competing firms, and he jumped without compunction for better pay and more exalted titles.

For the past three years he had been a partner and senior VP at Cauldron Securities, a small, elite private equity outfit with a solid though stodgy reputation.

Elite because it invested only in midsize, already profitable companies.

And small by choice, because Cauldron was picky. It hired only the best of the best, only from the top five business schools, drowned the associates in work and unbearable pressure for five or six years, spit out nine out of ten, and spoiled the keepers with fat bonuses and perks.

And stodgy because it avoided risk like poison.

The partner, Edward Blank, put a finger in the air and guessed, slightly dismissively, “Probably made two mil last year.”

“More like five,” countered Brian Golightly from the seat directly to his right. “Cauldron had a great year and Wiley got a partner’s split. Five even might be a little light.”

Golightly had taken the initial call from Wiley and, only after a little checking, referred the proposal upstairs. The résumé had been slickly culled from the executive recruiting firm that handled Wiley’s switch to Cauldron. Confidential material, of course, but the headhunters wanted to do a little business with the Capitol Group, favors beget favors, and broaching the trust was, after all, a trifling technicality.

“Wiley’s single,” Golightly continued, filling in a few details not included in the file. “Army brat, born at Fort Benning, straight A’s through high school, two points from perfect on the college boards.” Then, after a brief pause, “Played lacrosse in college. All-America, attackman, nerves of steel.”

The other two men lifted their eyebrows. His academic performance, combat heroism, and business success were impressive, but his prowess on the sports field definitely hit the mark.

Golightly had acquired this valuable tidbit from a Princeton classmate of Wiley’s who happened to belong to his country club. The man was a pompous know-it-all, an unremitting bore, and to boot, an awful golfer. Enduring nine holes of his incessant hacking and slicing and almost endless babbling had been worth it, though. Wiley had started all four years, fearless, lightning reflexes, very quick around the net. Second team All-America his senior year. He also dated the same girl all four years, an English lit major with killer legs and poetic eyes, who now was making her living pushing weepy romance drivel onto the best-seller lists. She said adieu at graduation, when he chose the Army.

“So what’s he want?” Blank asked, squirming in his seat, a study in festering impatience.

“He described it only as an opportunity. An incredible opportunity-those were his exact words,” Golightly replied, repeating the same answer he had offered the previous three times Blank had asked. This mystery had occupied most of the past thirty minutes. A quick glance at his watch. “In another minute, you can ask him yourself.”

Golightly had tried his best to pry this information from Wiley and been politely and insistently brushed off. For whatever reason, Wiley preferred to play it close to his vest until he met directly with the LBO boys.

The leveraged buyout section of the Capitol Group was the tip of a large, very prosperous, enormously powerful spear. In a firm that viewed business as warfare, they were the assault troops. All were handpicked, chosen for their hunger and their relentless ambition; most important, they had to be cold-blooded and ruthless. They made the deals. They found the targets and kicked down the doors. They located the vulnerabilities and ratcheted up the pressure until the other side caved in to whatever the Capitol Group was willing to pay.

They borrowed money by the boatload and bought companies, nearly always heavily distressed ones in financial decline, then turned them over to management to be squeezed, downsized, bled dry of impurities and imperfections, refurbished, and sold off for usually three times the cost. Sometimes five. Only those companies that proved wildly profitable-and appeared destined to stay that way-were kept, added to the Capitol Group’s swelling stable of permanent properties.

The Capitol Group was a factory. An enormously profitable factory. It was privately held; the owners preferred it that way and stubbornly resisted the urge to rake in billions by going public. It spawned a bewildering array of products, from rubber tires, to electronic devices of all sorts, to airplane engines, to defense equipment-almost more products than anybody could count.

But nobody cared to count. Why bother? The mix of companies turned over so fast, it would be senseless.

CG owned factories spread around the globe, from Pennsylvania to Hong Kong to the tip of Africa, and raised capital wherever wealth congregated, from New York to Dubai, and most recently Moscow, where ex-Marxist billionaires were now growing like poppies. There were twenty directors at the top, forty so-called partners, and four hundred lesser executives who bought and oversaw a diverse collection of companies employing nearly three hundred thousand workers.

But had anybody cared to count, CG’s arsenal at that moment included sixty-two companies, a figure that churned and changed weekly and, had it been listed on the stock exchange, would’ve been valued at $110 billion. It was a staggering figure by any measure, and all the more remarkable for an outfit founded only twenty years before by a few penniless, insanely optimistic ex-government types.

“I think he’s bringing us a takeover deal,” guessed Barry Caldwell, an accounting assassin brought into the meeting at the last minute to act cold and hard. Spreadsheets were his specialty. His froglike eyes could chew through the debits and credits, gauge the assets and liabilities, dart through the income and expenses, and in lightning speed spit out an amazingly precise portrait of corporate health or disease.

“If not, he’s wasting our time,” Blank answered, slapping a hand on the table. Of course he was bringing a deal. Why else the insistence on meeting the LBO group?

“It’s time,” Golightly announced, standing and buttoning his jacket. He tucked the folder in a briefcase. The other two men stood and buttoned their jackets as well.

The door opened, and after a moment, in walked Jack Wiley hauling a buttery tan briefcase in one hand, a stack of slides and spreadsheets in the other. He was taller than they expected, probably six-one or six-two. They took note of the soaked-in tan that spoke of long days on the golf course, along with a build that suggested plenty of gym time. Full head of sandy brown hair, a sprinkling of gray showing at the temples, cold blue eyes. The briefcase and slides landed heavily on the conference table. The usual handshakes and nice-to-meet-yous were quickly and insincerely exchanged.