The Prince of Risk

by Christopher Reich

  Astor stepped closer to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Allie, stop. Come on. What do you want? Tears? You know how it was between us.”

  She knocked his hand away. “Don’t call me that. You don’t have the right.”

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s me.”

  “We’re divorced. Get that through your head. I came here as a courtesy. Nothing more.”

  “Just doing your job, right?” Astor peeled back a curtain and looked down into the forecourt. A strapping blond man stood next to the passenger door of the Dodge. Like her, he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Astor recognized him as one of her “young lions,” the name she gave to her stable of capable, motivated, exclusively male subordinates.

  “All this went down on the White House lawn?” he said, returning his attention to his ex-wife. The mood between them had swung back to its old bluff and battery-acid self.

  “It’s going to be a big one,” said Alex.

  Astor could see the spark in his wife’s eye, that ember of excitement that only her job could provide. Two years after they’d separated, and a full ten months since their divorce had been finalized, it still upset him. “If I were you, I’d get on a plane to D.C. first thing,” he said. “Take the G4. I’ll call and get it fueled up, see that a crew’s there in an hour.”

  “It’s not my case.”

  “Might want to put in for a transfer. There’re going to be a lot of headlines for whoever heads this thing up. Could be your chance to get to D.C. I know how much you want that deputy director’s slot.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I’m just saying,” Astor went on. “Your career cost us our marriage. Might as well get your money’s worth.”

  “This from a man who didn’t set foot inside his house before nine on weeknights and didn’t bother coming home at all on weekends.”

  “Look what it got us.”

  Alex approached, her face an inch from his. The spark in her eye was still there, but it was caused by anger, not excitement. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m looking. Not a whole helluva lot, from where I stand.”

  She pushed past him and left the study. Astor followed her down the stairs. “What were you doing out here anyway? You said my father was killed an hour ago. No way you could have made it out from the city that fast.”

  Alex stopped at the front door. “Let me know when the funeral is. Katie and I would like to pay our respects.”

  Astor looked at her attire again—the jeans, the T-shirt, the hair pulled back. He observed that she was wearing her work boots, too. He had his answer.

  “Hey,” he called. “Be careful.”

  But Alex was already in the driver’s seat, slamming the door.

  3

  Outside, Astor snaked through the crush of guests to the bar. “Vodka,” he said to the bartender. “Make it a double.”

  “Any brand in mind?”

  “The kind that’s eighty proof.”

  The bartender filled a glass with ice, poured in a few fingers of vodka, then placed the bottle next to it. Astor picked up the glass and walked toward the guest villa. Several people approached to congratulate him on the dive. He ignored them. He was done talking for the night.

  Inside the guest villa, he changed back into his clothes. He picked up his phone and saw that it was already filling with voice mail. First was a text message from a number he didn’t recognize. Astor was careful about his privacy. He gave his number only to friends whose own numbers he catalogued. The text was from a local area code. Something about the number rang a bell. He opened the message.

  One word.

  PALANTIR.

  It meant nothing to him.

  The message had arrived at 11:07, more than an hour earlier. He placed his thumb on the Delete key, then changed his mind. Alex had said that his father had died around eleven. He called the number. After seven rings, the call went to voice mail.

  A smoky, bourbon-aged baritone spoke. He had not heard the voice in five years. Even so, it took only a syllable to make the hair on his arms stand to attention and send a current of undistilled dread from head to toe.

  “You’ve reached Edward Astor. Leave a message.”

  Astor picked up the glass of vodka, walked to the pool, and poured it in.

  “Hey!” he shouted as he jumped onto the diving board and walked to the end. “Everyone, listen up.”

  No one paid him any attention. He stuck his pinkie and index finger into his mouth and whistled. The music skidded to a halt. The guests turned his way.

  “Party’s over.”

  4

  Two thousand miles to the northeast, the sun was rising on a desolate, windswept plain guarded on three sides by the youngest mountains on the planet. Heather and scrub rose in scattered stands. Vapor from sulfur hot springs seeped into the air. It was a land that time had forgotten. The region was known as Aska and it lay in the center of the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland.

  Until a year ago, Aska had been the exclusive domain of ecotourists and wilderness enthusiasts. Visitors to the island flocked to the famed Ring of Fire, the scenic road that skirted the country’s dramatic coastline. Locals preferred the southern coast, where temperatures could be counted on to be a few degrees warmer than inland. With the nearest road a three-day walk, only the hardiest men and women ventured so far into the island’s interior.

  All that changed when an international investment group purchased a 200-square-kilometer tract in the region and announced its intention to build an upscale eco-resort. Pictures of the planned resort were printed in the Morgunbladid, the nation’s oldest newspaper. Opposition was vocal and immediate. Icelanders had a long history of distrusting foreigners. It was not the resort itself they minded. It was what lay below it. Ceding valuable gas and mineral rights to a group whose allegiance was unknown would be imprudent at best.

  More immediate concerns won the day. The global banking crisis of 2008 had devastated Iceland’s economy, wiping out the country’s banks and saddling its citizens with a whopping debt of 60,000 euros per person. A project that would inject hard currency into the economy was a godsend. Prudence be damned.

  Questions about the investors’ origins were answered perfunctorily. The group was domiciled in the Cayman Islands and maintained executive offices in New York and Singapore. The primary shareholders were impressively capitalized corporations with lofty-sounding names like Excelsior Holdings and Sterling Partners. The sole executive to visit the island was a tall, dark-haired man named Magnus Lee.

  Lee was a mystery from the start. From afar, he appeared Asian. He had an Asian’s black hair and a certain nimbleness about his step. But there was nothing Asian about his size and the breadth of his shoulders. Close up, one couldn’t help but stare at his blue eyes, which one smitten woman likened to her country’s glaciers. He spoke English like the Queen, and was heard speaking the czar’s Russian to a fishing executive from St. Petersburg. Talk about his nationality was short-lived. Icelanders knew a gentleman when they saw one. Most important, he had money. Barrels and barrels of money.

  One year later, the first phase of the resort was complete. A road had been built. Grounds had been cleared. A billboard showing a color representation of the finished structures held pride of place atop a rise of the razor-sharp pumice. An iron fence topped with concertina wire encircled the building site. Yet of the hotel itself there was no sign. Inside the fence was only a single low-slung, windowless concrete edifice. And next to it (and far more impressive) a freestanding satellite dish.

  Construction would end there.

  Mr. Magnus Lee did not intend to build an upscale resort, eco or otherwise. He had purchased the land to listen. From the remote plains of Aska, he could maintain the clearest contact with a network of surveillance satellites positioned in geosynchronous orbit above the Northern Hemisphere.

  At 3:07 local time, a chime had sounded on the console of the lone technician working at the site. The chime indicated
an intercept of a communications device under surveillance and graded urgent. In this instance, the device was a cellular phone. The number appeared on the screen, followed by its designation, Target Alpha. Procedure required the technician to notify his master at once.

  “Target Alpha made a transmission.”

  Halfway around the world, Magnus Lee answered at once. “A call?”

  “No, sir. A text.”

  “Go on.”

  “It was a single word. We might have pulled down jibberish.”

  “What was it?”

  “Palantir.” The technician enunciated each syllable as if it were its own word. Pal-an-teer.

  Lee blinked several times in rapid succession. He always did when he received disturbing news. “I see. And who was the recipient?”

  “We don’t know who uses the phone, only that it’s registered to an American company. Comstock Partners, Ltd., with an address at 221 Broad Street, New York. The owner is Robert Astor.”

  Lee knew the name, of course. “Place a tag on the number. Initiate surveillance. Grade it ‘urgent.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Keep up the good work and I’ll see to it that you receive a transfer home by year end.”

  Afterward, Magnus Lee strode to the window. From his living room on the eightieth floor of the city’s newest and most sought-after residence, he enjoyed an unmatched view over a prosperous metropolis. Sparkling new skyscrapers, towering edifices of glass and steel, carved up the skyline, engineering marvels all. In between them stood more construction cranes than a man could count. He saw streets filled with new cars and an ocean crisscrossed with the wakes of a hundred freighters and ferries.

  Everywhere he looked, he saw the future, and the future was money.

  A last transmission.

  PALANTIR.

  Lee blinked rapidly again. He thought of the years of planning, the enormous investment, the hard work. Mostly, though, he thought of himself. His rise to power could not be stopped. Not now. Not when all was so close to fruition.

  He regarded the name of the company he had written down and its owner.

  Comstock Partners.

  Robert Astor.

  Lee drew a deep breath and held it inside him, seeking his center.

  He had a vision of a pebble striking a placid pond. As it sank, ripples spread outward toward the shore. Concentric circles expanding one after another.

  The pebble had struck the water.

  The ripples must not be allowed to reach the shore.

  5

  “How’d he take it?”

  Alex kept her eyes on the dash as she buckled her seat belt. “I don’t know.”

  “He wasn’t upset?” asked Special Agent Jim Malloy. Malloy was thirty, a three-year man who’d come to the Bureau after putting in six years with the navy, first as a diver, then as a SEAL, with two deployments under his belt.

  “Oh, he’s upset. He’ll just never let you see it.” Alex checked her BlackBerry. “Anything go down while I was inside?”

  “Nada. Place is silent as the grave.”

  The “place” was 1254 Windermere Street in Inwood, Long Island, site of a surveillance operation Alex had mounted to look into the activities of a possible arms smuggler—or worse.

  “Two days,” she said. “He’s got to come back soon.”

  “Maybe he’s on vacation.”

  “He might be gone, but he ain’t on vacation. You saw the pictures. He’s got to come back sometime. And when he does, we’ll be waiting to speak with him. All right, then—andiamo.”

  Alex spun the car in a tight circle and pumped the accelerator to scatter some expensive Italian gravel as she left the driveway. She turned right on Further Lane toward the ocean and had the Charger doing sixty in six seconds. The estate faded from view. In the rearview, it looked like a dollhouse all lit up. Alex couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Malloy caught her looking. “You really didn’t get any of it?” he asked.

  Alex dropped her eyes from the mirror. “Of what?”

  “It. The money. Word is you didn’t take a penny in the settlement.”

  “Word is correct.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nada.”

  “But look at it…It’s…it’s…”

  “Yes, it is a beautiful home with a beautiful view and beautiful polished gravel that he imported from a beautiful quarry in Carrara, Italy.”

  “He’s a billionaire,” protested Malloy. “No one walks away from that.”

  Alex laughed to herself. Her ex—the billionaire. People used the word in the same tone as messiah. “He’s no billionaire. Don’t believe everything you read.”

  “But close?”

  “Closer than me.”

  “And so?”

  Alex looked at Malloy. He was a new father with infant twin daughters at home. It was no wonder that money was a concern. “Don’t worry about me, Jimmy. I’m doing okay.”

  “On a buck and a quarter a year?”

  “A buck fifty. I’m an SSA now.”

  “That and a dime will buy you a double latte. It’s Manhattan.”

  “He takes care of Katie. School, sports, vacations, all of it. The apartment in the city’s in her name.”

  “Still…how could you let that go?”

  “Easy. I don’t want anything to do with him. Don’t you see? I take a cent of his money, I’m still Mrs. Robert Astor. That’s over, Jimmy. I’m Supervisory Special Agent Alex Forza.”

  “That’s an expensive name.”

  “Worth every fuckin’ penny.”

  Malloy laughed, but she could see that he didn’t get it. Money. Alex hated everything about it. Extending an arm, she activated the GPS and looked at the directions to Inwood. “Forty minutes. I say we make it in thirty.”

  Malloy grasped the armrest. “Shit.”

  “Twenty-nine minutes, forty seconds,” said Alex later as she guided the Dodge off the Long Island Expressway and onto the broad, potholed boulevards of Inwood.

  In the passenger seat, Malloy had turned an interesting shade of green. “Must be a record.”

  “Thought you SEALs were used to this kind of thing.”

  “I didn’t like the helo flights either,” said Malloy. “But at least I could take Dramamine.”

  “Fresh out.”

  Alex drove up Atlantic Avenue and turned onto Windermere Street, slowing as she approached the rendezvous point. It was a street of single-family clapboard houses. Waist-high chain-link fences enclosed front and back yards. She lowered the window. The bracing scent of fresh salt air was gone, replaced by those of jet fuel and brackish water. Inwood was a shithole and it had the smell to go with it. She pulled to the curb behind a van parked a block up.

  The time was 12:50. She waited, letting the engine tick down, her eyes running up and down the road. No late-night dog walkers. Sparse traffic. A few lights burned in upstairs windows. Except for a police siren a few streets over, the neighborhood was asleep.

  She left the car, walked to the van, and knocked twice on the window. “And so?” she asked when it had rolled down.

  “Nothing,” said the driver. “I’m telling you the guy has flown the coop.”

  “Maybe,” she said. She thought of the picture. Of the olive green crate with the yellow markings and the foreign alphabet. She thought of what was inside.

  “What do you want to do?” asked the driver.

  “We wait,” she said.

  6

  Monday morning traffic was a bitch.

  Bobby Astor surveyed the line in front of him and shook his head. The Hamptons were done. Ten years ago, he could zip out to the house on a Friday afternoon without breaking a sweat and leave early Monday morning to be back in the office by eight. No more. Fridays worked fine, but the return leg was a bear. This morning was a perfect example. After a straight shot out of Amagansett, past Southampton, and across Long Island, he’d been stuck on the far side of the East River, circling, for t
wenty minutes.

  “How much longer they keeping us in the pattern?” he asked.

  “We’re next in line. Just waiting for the pad to clear.”

  Astor loosened his shoulder harness. It was a gorgeous day, with blue sky as far as the eye could see. Looking south, he enjoyed a clear view to Atlantic City. Through the Perspex canopy of the Aérospatiale AS350 “Squirrel,” he counted four helicopters circling the Downtown Manhattan Heliport.

  Astor shot a glance at the tablet in his lap displaying a summary of world financial markets. Europe was off 2 percent on fears that the incident in Washington had been a terrorist attack. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng had dropped 4 percent before rebounding. China had its own problems, and the deaths of three American financial luminaries would have no effect, either positively or negatively, on them. Futures on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 were sharply lower.

  Astor brought up a list of his open positions. One column tallied his profits and losses, the sum total shown in bold numerals at the bottom. The figure was black, but not by much. His eye fixed on a single symbol. Next to it stood the nominal value of his investment: $2,000,000,000. It represented a bet on the value of a currency. All summer the number had not fluctuated more than half a percent up or down. The currency had steadfastly guarded its value against the dollar.

  Sometime in the next few days, all that was going to change.

  Astor slipped the tablet into the satchel at his side. Away to the west, he watched a chopper lift from the pad and head up the East River. He was thinking how his father had hated helicopters and how he had refused to join him for the flight into the city even when they had been getting along. It wasn’t the helicopter so much as that his son owned one, and that he’d defied Graham and Dodd’s every precept to earn it. There was no wrath like that of a value investor scorned.