Under Pressure: A Lucas Page Novel

by Robert Pobi

  “And that is where we are this hour. After the break, I will be joined by Dr. Melanie Rimbaud, former vice director of the Anti-Terrorism Consortium, a private think tank that aids governments around the world in the fight against political and ideological extremism. Dr. Rimbaud currently teaches diplomatic ethics at Harvard and has a new book out titled Good Ideas, Bad Ideas: How to Know the Difference in a Complicated and Often Chaotic World.”

  17

  26 Federal Plaza

  Kehoe was at his desk, trying to put the letter into some sort of perspective. It lacked passion and was light on details, but the message was clear, and it was impossible to miss the promise of chaos shining through the flat prose. And if the Guggenheim was only the opening salvo, this guy would test the whole system.

  Beyond the glass wall, the television screens all displayed liquid crystal variants of the same thing—a talking head staring gravely into the camera and offering an opinion on an issue they knew nothing about. It was three minutes past the hour, and even though CNN had broken the story as an exclusive (which didn’t make sense to Kehoe; the bombers should have sent it to every media outlet in the country—that was how you sowed chaos), it had already migrated to the other networks, and once again he was both impressed and troubled at how quickly information traveled in the digital world. Especially the wrong information.

  He knew that in the movable feast of news, the letter would soon be replaced with some other cultural sound bite. You couldn’t trust the media to handle information responsibly, but you could always trust the media to act like the media. Which meant that there was a certain amount of predictability in their behavior.

  Kehoe didn’t bother reading the letter again, he just stared at the general form of the mini manifesto. Two paragraphs. Not a lot. But enough. When they put this case to bed, the letter would figure prominently in the story—it was their first true lead. Kehoe never forgot that while his people were trying to figure out what a suspect was thinking, the suspect was usually trying to figure out how they were thinking.

  Kehoe was still staring at the printout when there was a knock on his door. It opened before he looked up, and a big shadow that could only come from Otto Hoffner canopied his desk.

  Hoffner waited for a cue to speak; Kehoe’s people knew that just because he was silent, that didn’t mean he wasn’t working.

  Kehoe leaned forward and steepled his fingers under his chin. “What is it, Otto?”

  True to form, Hoffner’s face didn’t play around with any sort of emotion—he was one of those fabled bureau types who never broke character, not even at the office Christmas party. “I just thought you should know Page left.”

  “What do you mean, left?”

  “Forensic Linguistics was running us through the letter, and before Tranter completed his takeaways, Page walked out.”

  “Did he say anything before he left?”

  “That the letter wasn’t written by a human being.”

  Before Kehoe could ask him to clarify the statement, Hoffner added, “He said it was written by a machine.”

  Kehoe ran that through his head. “Did Whitaker go with him?”

  Hoffner nodded a single time.

  Kehoe thanked Hoffner and the man squeezed back out through the door.

  Kehoe sat unmoving for a few moments as he shifted the pieces to the appropriate mental columns. When he had thought things through a few times, he picked up the phone and called Chawla, who answered in one ring.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “How are you and Page getting along?”

  There was a pause that Kehoe knew meant Chawla was trying to find a way to be diplomatic.

  “I want the truth,” Kehoe prompted.

  “He’s a nut. He just ran out after presenting some half-baked idea that the letter sent to CNN was written by a robot or an android or … hell, I don’t even know what he was talking about.”

  Kehoe remembered something that the celebrated conductor George Szell said about Glenn Gould: That nut’s a genius. “Don’t take it personally, Sam. It’s just how he is. You need to find a way to work with him—he’ll give you a lot of added value.”

  There was obvious disappointment in Chawla’s voice when he said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up.

  Kehoe placed the phone down on his desk and went back to his meditative posture, fingers once again steepled under his chin. He had been in the pose less than thirty seconds when his desk phone rang. He punched the hands-free and sat back. “Brett Kehoe.”

  “Yes, sir, this is Stan Tranter.”

  “What can I do for you, Tranter?” He tried not to sound irritated, but he had been up for a day and a half and he could hear the tension in his own voice.

  “I wanted to let you know that I ran that letter through analytical software to see if we could learn anything.”

  “And?”

  “And there’s better than an eighty percent chance that it was written by a text-compacting algorithm.”

  “A text-compacting algorithm?”

  “Yes sir, it’s a text summarization tool used to reduce large quantities of data to a manageable size. It’s used a lot by lawyers.”

  Kehoe thanked Tranter before hanging up.

  When he was once again alone with his thoughts, he leaned back in his chair and, for the first time in twenty-one hours, almost smiled.

  “Welcome back, you nut.”

  18

  Wall Street

  Whitaker looked around the elevator, visibly impressed with the posh surroundings. “This is nicer than my apartment.”

  “It’s also bigger.”

  “No shit. I have to store my shoes in the oven.”

  Lucas was about to ask her if she had ever forgotten about them when she fired it up, but she hit him with one of her preemptive answers. “I’m more of a takeout girl.”

  “I see.”

  She switched gears, going into business mode. “What are we doing here again?”

  “We’re investigators.”

  “And?”

  “We’re investigating.”

  The car slowed, then stopped, and the bell binged, the old-school brass needle on the dial pointed at the top floor. The doors slid open to a richly appointed reception area. Two women in expensive dresses and even more expensive smiles sat at a desk the size and polish of a vintage Cadillac. Behind them, on an oak-paneled wall, a brass sign read Knechtel Equity.

  As Lucas and Whitaker approached, both women nodded a hello and in perfect stereo harmony said, “Hello, Dr. Page, it’s a pleasure to see you again.” They gave Whitaker a shared smile.

  Whitaker raised an eyebrow and looked over at Lucas with her What-the-fuck? face. His thoughts on bankers were as well known as his stance on guns—he refused to have anything to do with either one.

  Lucas said, “May I go in?”

  They nodded in unison at some vague point down the hallway. “He’s expecting you.”

  The receptionists stayed with the desk and Whitaker followed Lucas down the hall, past bronze busts of historical figures—the movers and shakers of human history.

  Whitaker jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Weyland or Tyrell?” She was almost whispering.

  Lucas ignored the question and opened a door for her. “Remember, we’re investigating.”

  The next room also had a desk the size and finish of a flagship automobile—this one occupied by a woman who looked like she had been smelted in the same foundry as the two out front, although of an older vintage. “Dr. Page, nice to see you again. Please go right in.” Her tone was level, but she glanced up at Lucas’s hair twice—which was a new thing for him; people usually got weirded out by his metal parts.

  “Thank you, Renée.” Lucas led Whitaker through a floor-to-ceiling door that had a brass knob polished smooth from years of use.

  The office beyond was something out of the golden age of Hollywood—a fitting home for Captain Nemo. Or at least a swanky place to hang out. It had a corner vie
w of the southern tip of the island and felt like it was somehow suspended in the clouds above the metropolis. The floors were Portoro marble covered with the finest Persian rugs. Other than a massive desk and a pair of silk sofas, the only furniture was a pair of Shagreen armoires by Carlo Bugatti that flanked the fireplace. The rest of the space was taken up with a library that was three levels high, each level with a walkway and banister—the kind of library that took generations to build.

  But the real attraction was the taxidermy display in the middle of the room—a giant Kodiak on its hind legs, lips pulled back in a silent roar, facing down a charging aurochs pushing seven feet of horns with sterling silver tips—a metaphor for the bull versus bear philosophy of the modern robber barons. It belonged in a glass diorama at the American Museum of Natural History.

  A man came around from behind the desk, his hand out. “Page, nice to see you.” He looked like he had been assembled by Edith Head while she was channeling Archie Leach, and it didn’t take a lot of imagination to picture him spending a lot of nights at black-tie functions with a bunch of society types.

  Lucas and the man exchanged a friendly greeting, and Lucas motioned to Whitaker with his green hand. “Paul Knechtel, I’d like you to meet Special Agent Whitaker.”

  Knechtel extended a hand, gave Whitaker a warm smile, and said, “It is a pleasure to meet you, Special Agent Whitaker.” It was a gentle and genuine greeting.

  Knechtel turned to Lucas and said, “I have a meeting in twenty minutes. Should I cancel it?”

  “Is it anything important?” Lucas asked.

  “With the bombing last night, everything has suddenly become important. Especially tech stocks.” He hit a button on his desk. The door opened immediately and the receptionist came in. “Yes, sir?”

  “Renée, would you please get me an apple and ginger juice?” He turned to Lucas and Whitaker. “And you would like?”

  “Coffee,” said Lucas.

  “Perfect.” Whitaker was watching Lucas for pointers on what was going on.

  “Two coffees, then.” Knechtel walked over to one of the sofas and pulled the fabric at his knees as he gently folded into the silk brocade. He checked the big gold Panerai on his wrist. “Do I need to cancel my meeting?” He examined Lucas’s hair but didn’t say anything.

  Lucas sat down on the opposite sofa. “I’ll make this short—time for a cup of coffee notwithstanding. You can make your meeting.”

  Whitaker sat down beside him and Lucas opened with “I’m looking into the Guggenheim bombing.”

  Knechtel’s smile faded. “I lost some friends yesterday. The whole street is shook up—everyone knew someone who was there.” His focus slipped, and for an instant he was somewhere else. “That letter turned in to CNN is already causing ripples in the market. Tech stocks got a little bump—the brokers aren’t happy that someone took a swipe at their city and they’re trying to fight back the only way they know how.”

  Lucas shook his head. “That letter was horseshit. I doubt it has anything to do with what’s going on.”

  Lucas and Knechtel had been friends since MIT, back in their teens when Lucas was working on his first doctorate. Knechtel came from the kind of wealth measured in the number of museums with the family name over the capstone. He had an IQ that was almost supernatural—a gift that he applied toward a PhD in a branch of jet propulsion so theoretical that only a handful of people in the world understood its uses. But school had just been an exercise to limber up his thinking for the eventual step into the family business. Which meant he was a billionaire turned rocket scientist who ran an investment firm as old as Wall Street itself.

  Lucas eased back into the sofa. “This is all unofficial, Paul. I’m only here for your opinion. Can you tell me anything about Horizon Dynamics that might not be public knowledge?”

  Knechtel’s earlier ease was replaced with concentration as he went into recall mode. “They came out of nowhere about eight years ago—small firm built up by a midwestern family. They started cleaning up environmental damage caused by fracking—decontamination and soil rejuvenation. Their approach was next level—nanotechnology, AI-driven solution choices. All very high-tech. They had a captive market because most people are interested in taking out of the earth, not putting back in, and they built up a good reputation. Six years back they decided to cash out and were bought by the Hockney brothers.

  “The Hockneys are very private people, and virtually unknown to your average man on the street. But they’re a force to be reckoned with on Wall Street. From what I know, it was Seth who instigated the deal, which is unusual—William is known as the decision-maker and the brains of the operation. Also, the company’s record on environmental stewardship was in direct contrast to the Hockney track record, so it didn’t seem like an obvious choice for them. But they poured money into infrastructure, hiring emerging talent because they were smart enough to know that Horizon’s reputation had been built on innovation. William had his fingers in the pie by this point, and the rumor is he’s the one who hired a Finnish national named Timo Saarinen to head up R&D.

  “Saarinen is smart, and his work in botany had been short-listed for a Nobel Prize about fifteen years back. He still tours and does TED Talks about environmental issues as they relate to big business. He’s a known commodity, and if he gives a process or a firm his seal of approval, it’s a guaranteed step up for everyone involved. Under Saarinen’s direction, Horizon took off.

  “Fast-forward to now, and the brothers Hockney decided to go public and cash in. Their IPO today was going to bring in capital to help HD deal with the growing international demand for environmental stewardship—public opinion around the globe is changing. International expansion is something the Hockneys do know about—they’ve always been good at bringing good old American know-how to the world. The party at the Guggenheim was a Here-we-are move designed to bolster the IPO. What very few people know is that there was going to be an announcement at the gala last night.”

  “What kind of an announcement?”

  Knechtel leaned forward and his tie dropped out of his lap. “The Hockneys have expanded into nation-state financing—there’s money to be made competing with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, which is the People’s Republic’s neocolonial grab at resources. They finance a country’s infrastructure using said country’s natural resources as collateral, and when payments aren’t made—which is what they count on—the borrowing country loses control of its resources. They’ve been particularly aggressive with this program in Africa and South America.” Knechtel paused as Renée came back in and placed a sterling tray down on the burled surface of the coffee table.

  She filled two porcelain cups from a Georgian pot before emptying a bottle of mulched sludge into a tall glass that she placed in front of Knechtel. There was something dreamlike, almost ethereal about her, and as she walked out, Lucas realized that she hadn’t made any noise at all, not with her heels on the marble floor and not while she had poured the drinks.

  By the expression Knechtel was wearing, it was obvious that he was working something out as he picked up his health concoction. He took a sip, pursed his lips as he swallowed, and looked over at Lucas. “I can’t tell you how I know this, but the announcement was that Horizon had secured a multibillion-dollar project in Paraguay—the cleanup of a bauxite mining site. That would have pushed the value of their IPO up by a sizable margin.”

  Whitaker shifted in her seat and looked over at Lucas, who was lining up all the pieces in his head. “What are the alarm bells I see going off in your head, Paul?”

  Knechtel took another sip of his health potion. “The Paraguayans have been in town for a week now, hunting up financing for an infrastructure deal. The IMF has approved them for a seventy-billion-dollar ceiling, which means that they can comfortably be expected to pay back fifty of it before they have to resort to creativity in their payment schedule. The IMF is conservative, and the Paraguayans are here trying to get more money on bette
r terms, because seventy bil won’t cover everything they need—it’s a big package, and they’re looking for everything from roads to airports to a new hydroelectric dam that’s going to be the third largest in the world. They need north of a hundred and twenty billion to make that happen. The Chinese don’t care about the ceiling the IMF provided, because their goal is to own the country, and they’d love to finance the deal. But the Paraguayan government is making difficult long-term financial decisions over easy short-term ones, and they want to stay clear of the Chinese. They are one of only five countries in South America that have been able to avoid signing on with the Belt and Road Initiative, the others being Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and French Guiana.”

  Lucas was staring at his coffee. “Do the Hockneys have that kind of money?” Even though people liked to throw the term billion around on television as if it were commonplace, Lucas knew that kind of money was more esoteric than many believed.

  Knechtel waved the question away. “They wouldn’t use their own money—they’d set up a fund and have investors buy in. Or they could partner with a few banks and have them sell it to their investors.”

  Lucas stood up and began a slow walk around the room. “So the announcement would have bolstered the IPO, making money for the Hockneys out of the gate.” He paused by the taxidermy mount and stared up at the giant Kodiak.

  Knechtel finished his drink and pushed the coaster into the center of the table. “Yes. And if they ended up funding the Paraguayan infrastructure deal, they would have lent the money to the country, which would have then given it back to them when it purchased services from Horizon Dynamics. And they have dozens of construction companies under their wings.”

  Lucas floated the thing through his head. “So they lend the Paraguayans a hundred and twenty billion dollars—money that they get from investors? The Paraguayans then use that money to purchase services from Hockney-owned companies. And the Paraguayans have to pay back the money? With interest?”