The Prince of Risk

by Christopher Reich

  Astor didn’t need a full-time bodyguard, but he didn’t mind having someone licensed to carry a firearm drive him around town. There was an additional upside to hiring a cop as a chauffeur. When necessary, Sullivan could drive as fast as needed, run every red light in the city, and park where his heart desired, or rather, where Astor told him to. No detective first grade, retired or otherwise, ever got a traffic violation in New York City.

  Astor turned his attention to the agenda. He opened to the month of July and began reading. It was apparent that Edward Astor kept a meticulous record of his activities. A check of the past Monday showed a 7 a.m. breakfast with the CEO of a prominent social networking company about to do its IPO, or initial public offering. At nine there was a meeting with Sloan Thomasson to review the itinerary of the Germany trip. Nine-fifteen brought “P. Evans” for an “update.” By 9:30 he was expected on the floor to ring the opening bell with a United States marine who had been awarded the Medal of Honor. And so the day continued—meeting upon meeting—until 7 p.m., when he departed.

  The days afterward had been equally busy. Edward Astor arrived before seven in the morning and never departed before seven at night. Twelve-hour days were the norm, fourteen and fifteen hours all too common. Astor saw where he’d acquired his own work habits. He was reminded of the saying apropos of those who chose a career on Wall Street: “You won’t know your children, but you’ll be best friends with your grandchildren.”

  Astor turned to the past Friday, his father’s last day in the office. The day started with a breakfast, this time with the chairman of the floor traders’ association, followed by a meeting with “P. Evans.” Astor thumbed back through the past ten days. It appeared that his father had had no fewer than twenty meetings with “P. Evans” during that time, and that didn’t count the times they’d breakfasted and lunched.

  Astor returned to the most recent Friday. At 9:15, the notation listed “Update on Special Project—P. Evans,” whatever the “special project” was. The day ended there. He noted a diagonal line drawn through all meetings scheduled after 10 a.m., along with the word canceled.

  Why? Astor wondered. Sloan Thomasson had felt certain that nothing had been bothering his father that morning. He was not sick. So what had forced Edward Astor to cancel all his appointments?

  Astor’s thumb returned to the entry for 9:15. “Update on Special Project—P. Evans.”

  He suspected that Penelope Evans might be the one to tell him.

  17

  Astor’s first call was to Penelope Evans’s home phone. After six rings, the call went to voice mail.

  “You’ve reached the home of Penelope Evans. If you’d be so kind as to leave a message, I’ll get back to you promptly. Toodles.”

  An Englishwoman. Cool, resolute, educated, with a royal’s plummy upper-class accent. A snob if ever there was one. And then the chirpy “Toodles,” Miss Evans thumbing her nose at herself and merry old England. A good sport, then.

  Astor placed the second call to her cell. Six rings and counting. As he prepared to hang up, someone picked up. He waited for a greeting, but no one spoke. “Hello?” he said.

  Silence. Astor pressed the phone to his ear, unsure if he heard a person’s rushed breathing. “Miss Evans?” He added hurriedly, “This is Robert Astor—Edward Astor’s son. Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Yes, hello. As I said, this is Robert Astor. I just left my father’s office. I was wondering if I might speak to you for a few minutes.”

  “What about?”

  “What happened in Washington last night. I was wondering if you had an idea why he might have gone down there.”

  “Why would I?” asked Penelope Evans quickly, defensively.

  Astor turned the pages of the agenda, his eye landing on Penelope Evans’s name time and time again. “Mrs. Kennedy said that you and my father worked together on a number of projects,” he replied. “I thought that he might have mentioned something to you.”

  “My work involved targeting new customers for the Exchange, updating software on our trading platforms, and writing research reports.”

  “According to her, you helped my father with everything.”

  “I did my job.”

  “She was very complimentary of your efforts,” said Astor. “Were you working together on any projects for the government?”

  “No.”

  “So you wouldn’t have an idea why he had to rush down to D.C. to see Martin Gelman and Charles Hughes?”

  “No.”

  “And you and he never worked on any project that might be considered…” Astor searched for the word. “Perilous?”

  “I already said no.” She was no longer just defensive but downright bitchy.

  Astor held his temper. It was apparent that the woman’s skill set did not include lying. There must not be a course in it at Oxford or wherever she’d gone to university. He was done with the kid gloves.

  “Listen, Miss Evans,” he began again. “Penelope…I can tell you’re upset. Scared, even. I would be, too, if my boss got himself killed trying to deliver an urgent message to the president. I know you were working closely with my father, and I know it wasn’t just targeting new clients and updating trading software. So let’s cut the song and dance, shall we? On Friday morning at nine-thirty, immediately after meeting with you to discuss some kind of special project, my father canceled all his meetings for the rest of the day and got the hell out of Dodge. Something was up. I’m asking you again, what were you working on?”

  “Why are you calling me, Mr. Astor? You haven’t been a part of your father’s life for years.”

  “Because he contacted me last night.”

  “Edward phoned you?”

  Astor paused. He wasn’t sure if it was surprise or jealousy he heard in her voice. He knew only that the tone belonged to a woman who had cared for his father.

  “For the first time in five years. I think he was in the car on the way to the White House. He knew something was wrong—that he was in some kind of danger. Anyway, he texted me. Just one word. Can you guess what it was?”

  Penelope Evans did not reply. Astor didn’t hurry her. Finally she said, “They hear everything. That’s why he went to Washington. He had to tell them.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? Palantir?”

  “Palantir’s the source. He told us about them. Of course, we suspected—at least, your father did. Edward didn’t trust anyone. He was smart.” Evans sniffed, and Astor could imagine her drawing herself up straight, gathering herself. “They’re listening now,” she went on. “They’ll have keyed on the text your father sent you. Your phone will be in their system. It was one of their acquisitions. They hear everything we say.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Astor repeated.

  “I’ve said enough, Mr. Astor. You don’t need to be any more involved in this matter than you already are.”

  “My father thought differently.” There was a pause. He could hear the woman breathing rapidly. “Please.”

  “Not over the phone.”

  “I’m free now. Where can we meet?”

  “Do you know Morse code, Mr. Astor?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “I do,” said Sullivan, who could hear the call on the speaker system. “She can spell it out and I’ll do my best.”

  A tap for a dot. A “Shh” for a dash.

  There followed an excruciating two minutes of cat and mouse with Sullivan doing his best to decipher the series of dots and dashes. “Got it,” he said afterward.

  “Sure?” asked Astor.

  “I was an Eagle Scout, wasn’t I?”

  “How quickly can you meet me?” asked Penelope Evans.

  “An hour,” said Sullivan.

  “Please hurry.”

  18

  Three seconds after Bobby Astor hung up with Penelope Evans, a transcript of the call landed in the technician’s inbox in Iceland, already translated into his native language and
ready for forwarding to his master halfway around the world. The technician did not read the transcript. He had no interest in the affairs of the men and women on whom his master spied. There were far too many people to keep up with any one.

  At last count, the satellite was programmed to intercept the communications of over 57,000 individuals. One slow evening he had perused the names listed next to the phone numbers. Some he recognized. Some he did not. But in general the names fell into two categories: government officials and corporate chieftains. There were presidents and prime ministers, senators and delegates from nearly every country on the globe, including plenty from his own. There were bankers and industrialists, chief executives of this corporation, chairmen of that. There were lawyers in Berlin and magistrates in Bulgaria. After an hour he abandoned his task. One thing was clear. Sooner or later, every influential individual in the world ended up on the list.

  The technician tapped his keyboard, forwarding the message to his master’s private mailbox. His duty done, he swiveled in his chair and gazed out the window. It was midday and the sun blazed high in the sky. Crystals embedded in the fields of pumice sparkled like diamonds on a stormy velvet sea. He considered his position, working alone in such a solitary, isolated corner of the world. He daydreamed often about achieving a higher rank, of bettering his job and earning more money. He was a young man, bright, hardworking, obedient. Anything was possible.

  The technician decided he was happy where he was. There were more important things than being influential. He did not want to end up on the list. When he talked to his girlfriend, he didn’t want anyone to be listening.

  19

  Magnus Lee, chairman of the China Investment Corporation, exited from the elevator at the twentieth floor. He checked the direction markers and set off to his right, toward offices 2050–2075. With its industrial carpeting, fluorescent lights, and wood veneer doors, it could be any corridor in any corporate office in the world. Though it was nearly midnight, a steady stream of men and women walked past. They were smartly dressed, well coiffed, purposeful of step, every bit the equal of their Western counterparts.

  As he walked, he passed beneath signs hanging from the ceiling adjacent to each office door. Written in English and Chinese, the signs read GENERAL MOTORS, IBM, MICROSOFT, EXXON. He was currently on the twentieth floor of building F-100. He was not twenty floors above the earth’s surface. He was twenty floors beneath it.

  F-100 stood for “Fortune 100.” And building F-100 was one of six interconnected structures in the sprawling subterranean complex that made up the Institute for Investment Initiative, or i3. Buildings F-200 to F-500 housed companies ranked 101 to 500. A sixth building, known only as T, was reserved for special projects and companies that possessed products, technology, or intellectual property deemed to have the highest strategic value for the state.

  The CIC was the tip of the iceberg, the portion above water, impressive to behold but benign. i3 was the remaining three-quarters of the iceberg, the enormous mass that remained below the surface, hidden from view, and possessing an infinite capacity for danger.

  Lee had founded i3 a year after taking the reins at the China Investment Corporation. It was not enough to invest in foreign companies. Investment provided an attractive monetary return, but it was the corporations that truly benefited. The infusion of capital enabled them to hire more workers, develop new products, and expand market share in their respective industries. If China was to compete, it must develop its own industry. It must make its own automobiles and airplanes, its own computers and software, its own everything. In short, it must assemble an economic and industrial infrastructure of the highest order that not only rivaled the West’s but surpassed it.

  It was a daunting task…without help.

  And so he had suggested an idea to his colleagues in the Ministry of State Security.

  Industrial espionage as a state-sponsored covert policy.

  An aggressive campaign of systematic, targeted thefts of any and all corporate knowledge, with the goal of copying, implementing, and improving said knowledge for the benefit of Chinese business.

  Five years later, Lee’s idea could be judged a success by any measure. China was able to compete with the most technologically advanced companies in America, Europe, and Japan across a wide swath of industries: automobiles, computers, microchips, even satellites and rocketry. All had made use of pirated technology to achieve their gargantuan leap forward.

  For his work, he had been awarded a commission in the People’s Liberation Army and given the rank of major general in the Intelligence Division. In a few days he would learn whether he would receive a more coveted title, that of vice premier for finance, one of ten men to serve on the Standing Committee.

  One of ten to rule more than 1 billion.

  It took Lee another minute to reach his destination. The sign above the entry to office 2062 read CISCO SYSTEMS and was printed exactly as you might find on the cover of the company’s annual report. Lee was a stickler for detail.

  Cisco Systems (No. 62), with revenues of $45 billion, was a San Jose–based manufacturer of computer hardware and software, notably routers and switches, the components that built the Internet’s backbone and speeded traffic along the information highway. It was estimated that 99 percent of all Net activity passed through at least one Cisco device.

  Lee walked past row after row of executives seated at workstations. A large overhead picture of Cisco corporate headquarters occupied one wall. The company’s name was emblazoned in large block Lucite letters on another. The room’s furnishings were identical to those found at the main Cisco campus, and each worker wore a Cisco personnel badge around his neck with a genuine neck strap. The men and women seated at their terminals were even working on projects similar to those of their counterparts in California. Some were engaged in designing new routers, others in updating existing switches, and still others in keeping up with current customer orders.

  But the Cisco Systems office in building F-100 was no official subsidiary. It was a clone or, more precisely, a parasite latched onto its host, copying its DNA project by project, department by department, division by division via a web of hacked e-mail servers, mirrored hard drives, tapped phone exchanges, and concealed surveillance devices in hardware, software, and physical plants. There was even a micro audiovisual transmitter in the chief executive’s office. All these devices gave Lee and his team access to 80 percent of the company’s daily business activity.

  “General Lee, an honor to have you with us,” said the office director. The man had a PhD from Stanford and had logged eight years working at Cisco headquarters, including two years as assistant to the chief executive. As he approached, he held out a rectangular black unit the size of a car stereo. “I wanted you to be the first to see it. The Nexus 2000. An exact copy of Cisco’s latest and most advanced router. We’ll manufacture it under our own Bluefire label and have it ready for delivery to customers six months before Cisco.”

  “Price?”

  “Twenty percent below the American model.”

  “Impressive.” Lee felt his cell phone vibrate and checked the screen. Urgent: An intercept from STS-1 in Iceland. “Would you excuse me?”

  Lee left the room and read the transcript of a conversation that had taken place minutes earlier between Robert Astor and a woman named Penelope Evans, who he quickly gathered was Edward Astor’s personal assistant. It seemed that Edward Astor had had a partner in his investigation, and now the son was intent on speaking with her.

  For a moment Lee was taken back to a day a few years earlier. Construction on the i3 complex was complete. Every month he and his team were siphoning more information from their rivals. He was at his desk when the door opened and a familiar figure entered. Lee stood at once, both thrilled and frightened.

  “Copying is no longer enough,” said the premier, the most powerful man in China. “Our policy of state-sponsored industrial espionage can take us only so far. It is not e
nough that we succeed. The West must be seen to lose.”

  Lee nodded.

  “Can you do more to help us?”

  “Yes,” said Lee. “I can.” For he had been harboring the same thoughts and had spent long hours thinking about how to help his country. And so he told the premier his plan, and the premier gave him his blessing.

  On that day Troy was born.

  Magnus Lee reread the intercept, biting his lip. It could not have come at a worse time. He had not yet revealed to anyone that Edward Astor had contacted his son about Palantir, or that there was any kind of possible breach whatsoever. And now the son was taking up his father’s crusade.

  The ripples were closing in on the shore.

  Troy was at risk.

  Lee found a quiet corner and placed a call to New York State.

  “Hello, brother,” came the strong, familiar voice.

  “Hello, Shifu,” said Lee, using the respectful title for “master.” “How quickly can you find someone for me?”

  20

  The FBI’s New York office for counterterrorism was housed on the upper floors of a red-brick building on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea. The Bureau shared space with several fashion designers, a software startup, and a law firm. Two restaurants occupied the ground floor. One belonged to a television chef famed for his bald pate and brusque manner. The other had recently received three stars in the Times and boasted a bone-in rib-eye steak priced at $135. Both eateries were beyond the reach of the dedicated men and women earning government salaries who passed by every day.

  Alex exited from the elevator on the eighth floor. She passed through the biometric security station—thumb plus six-digit personal entry code—and headed to her office. Word of the shootings had spread through the office. Friends and enemies approached to offer their sympathy. She acknowledged each without breaking stride. If she stopped for a second, she was finished. Her carefully constructed façade would crumble to the ground. She had to keep moving. Work was the disease and the cure.