The Icarus Prediction: Betting it all has its price (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

New York City

Seven Days Until Options Expiration

As the ferry pulled out of the dock and headed for Staten Island, Jarrod Stryker watched the skyline fall behind. In times of high stress, he sometimes rode the vessel to clear his mind with the sea air.

He was absolutely numb, overwhelmed by events. He could play the postmortem game into the next millennium, but it wouldn’t matter a whit. If the Russian FSB didn’t see the destruction of their pipeline coming, then a lowly energy trader on another continent had little chance. Even so, 500 million on his call had gone up in smoke. He had plucked defeat out of the jaws of victory and now was absolutely pancaked. He leaned on the rail and gazed at the receding skyline. Should he accept defeat and walk away? But there was no walking away. The SEC would soon be knocking at his door and the feds shortly thereafter unless could find a way out of this godforsaken nightmare.

As he looked out on the black water, the emotion started to ebb, and he began to analyze the picture realistically and methodically. Simply put, to get oil prices down over the next seven days, Shamil Basayev had to be quickly found and neutralized by an often slow-motion Georgian government and the Baku pipeline secured. If that could be done, along with some serious PR around the fact the Saudi Kurais field was coming back online, then perhaps the markets would realize they overreacted to the Russian pipeline damage and prices would drop. Basically, Jarrod would have to be the luckiest trader on the face of the earth and perhaps in the history of the stock market.

As he stood, he buried his tired head in his hands. His mind swirled. The synapses in his brain feverishly attempted to construct any logical path toward a solution. He felt a buzz in his pocket signifying a text had arrived. Jarrod pulled out his phone to see a flurry of texts from Sergei.

Boss, support came back, they are also still trying to fully debug what Icarus is recommending.

They indicate it looks like the mumbo jumbo Icarus means that we have to hope a government neutralizes the situation

Basically they have to capture the terrorists before they blow up more pipeline, that will make oil prices go down.

Jarrod absorbed the message and then responded:

Well, that is not going to happen in the short term. A foreign government is going to take months, if not years to get this under control. We are doomed. There has to be a way out of this.

Jarrod took a pause and thought to himself as something wasn’t quite right. The 58% probability that Icarus provided still didn’t make sense. How on earth could Icarus think there was such a high probability that this trade could be salvaged in any way shape or form in
any scenario
? Everything about this trade was now out of his control. He was helpless.

He reburied his head in his hands…all seemed to go silent, his brain converged towards flat lining…and then it happened.

“
Icarus, you crazy son of a bitch
!” he blurted out loud as he did a full 360 in place. Jarrod didn’t even notice the Japanese tourist family next to him, who swiftly relocated themselves while still managing to take a few selfies to capture a photo op with a bat-shit crazy New Yorker. Jarrod was so enthralled in this epiphany that he didn’t bother to apologize. Instead he continued to visualize the possibilities and stayed on the ferry for the return trip, going over the idea in his mind multiple times. The plan was so simple in concept, but the execution would be complex. In fact, calling it complex was a gross understatement; the plan was
absolutely insane
. He thought about texting Sergei, but quickly dialed him instead.

“
Sergei
.
This is crazy… Icarus is not expecting a foreign government to neutralize the terrorists
.
It wants
me
to do it.
ME
. That is the intervention. Icarus knows my background and contacts. It knows my history with the agency. It sounds ridiculous, and it is but this is the most logical path to success in a sea of certain failure.”

There was a bit of silence on the line. Well except for what seemed like furious typing on a keyboard on the other side.

“Sergei, You still there?”

Finally, a response.

“
Boss, I do some debugging and I think you may be right. But you not the James Bond and I would like if you not die.”

Jarrod knew he had no time to waste if he was going to plan the unthinkable.

“Sergei, I’ll brief you on next steps tomorrow, I’m going to need your help. Ok, bye.”

Jarrod heard something that sounded like a string of Russian expletives from Sergei as he hung up.

As the vessel neared the dock, he pulled out his cell, scrolled to the number of Hank Garvin, captain of the company Gulfstream, and pushed the button.

After small talk, he told the pilot, “Need you to make the bird ready, and we may be out of country for a while.”

“Roger that, but I’m slated to fly Sheila Madsen to Miami tomorrow morning on some deal she’s chasing.”

“She can fly commercial. This takes priority. I speak for William on this.”

“I heard he was in a coma at Mount Sinai,” Hank probed.

“He is. That’s why I have to speak for him.”

“I’ll take my cue from you. Where we headed? Back to Louisiana?”

“That’s a little hard to say right now. But prep flight plans for Tbilisi, Georgia.”

Garvin inquired, “I’ve heard of some small towns in Georgia but this is one I haven’t heard of.”

Jarrod responded “Not that Georgia, the one on the other side of the globe…Near Russia.”

Garvin whistled. “Ah, That’ll be a long haul.”

“With maybe a stop on the way.”

“And where would that be?”

“Not sure at the moment. As soon as I know, you’ll know.”

“Roger that.”

The ferry docked and he made his way to a cab for a ride to his apartment. Once inside, he grabbed a Lone Star from the fridge and went into his study to fire up the computer. He opened a drawer on his desk and extracted an old address book with e-mail addresses from his former life that never made their way into his phone. He found the one he was seeking and contemplated it for several minutes. Then he brought up his personal e-mail account—the one he rarely used, but kept active for off-camera communications, using encryption even the NSA couldn’t break.

He composed the brief epistle, stared at it for a full minute, then took a deep breath and sent it.

Now it was time to pack, toss down another Lone Star, and try to see if sleep would come.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Herzliya, Israel

In the shirtsleeve and open-collared world of Israeli politics and business, Arnaud de Rothchild favored double-breasted suits from his tailor in Milan, along with tasteful accessories. Even now, as he sat at his desk in the headquarters building, he was wearing a starched Turnbull & Asser shirt and a Burberry tie even though the Baume & Mercier watch on his wrist read 3:37
am
.

An archaeologist by training, de Rothchild could look elegant even at a dusty dig when he wore a safari jacket and leaned on a shovel with a fashionable élan. His doctoral dissertation had been on the Jewish rebellion in 70 AD, and the historical picture that had emerged from the artifacts dug up at the hilltop fortress of Masada. There, the surviving Jewish zealots had made their last stand against the Romans and chose to take their own lives rather than surrender to Emperor Vespasian’s legions.

Sitting at his desk, de Rothchild was inspecting Vespasian’s countenance now as he held a
sestertius
—an ancient Roman coin—under a fluorescent magnifying glass with a pair of rubber-tipped forceps. On the obverse side of the
sestertius,
Vespasian’s dour and forbidding profile was struck—as befitting a Roman Emperor—while on the reverse side the words “INDAEA CAPTA” were stamped, meaning “Judea Conquered.”

In his capacity as director of Israel’s Institute for Intelligence & Special Operations—better known as the Mossad, or simply “the Office”—de Rothchild had a growing sense of dread that history was on its way to repeating itself.

Perhaps it was his training in reconstructing the original appearance of a dig site from artifacts recovered. (Indeed, he had been one of the early pioneers in using computer graphics and modeling to reconstruct archaeological sites.) Then again, maybe it was his natural talents and instincts. In any case, he could identify strands of information and relationships where no one else saw them. In so doing, the real threat would emerge and the Mossad’s triggermen would be let off the leash—neutralizing a threat preemptively.

The truth was that while the Mossad had ample Quick Draw McGraw triggermen, they had serious holes in their capacity to conduct analysis of intel. And despite the Mossad’s reputation as a vaunted spy operation, this lack of analysis had led to some colossal blunders, like the time Mossad agents were dispatched over Europe to execute the cadre of Black September terrorists who’d killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. One of the “targets” turned out to be a totally innocent Moroccan waiter in the Norwegian village of Lillehammer, who was shot dead on the street in front of his pregnant Norwegian wife. (The Mossad hit team was scooped up the next day by Norwegian authorities when they went to turn in their hired car. They’d wanted to save a day’s rental.)

Finally, the demands from the Mossad on de Rothchild became too frequent, his results too high caliber, and his soul too blue and white. He reluctantly walked away from the Department of Antiquities and into Mossad’s headquarters in Herzliya on a permanent basis.

There he developed a reputation as the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove, a trenchant executive who cultivated relationships within the Knesset as well as with people in the military and industry. In the testosterone-laced halls of the Herzliya headquarters north of Tel Aviv, he wasn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with the military types who were only too eager to undertake the next “special op.”

De Rothchild knew that special ops had to be undertaken sparingly. That the results had to be justifiable—over and above the blowback that usually accompanied an assassination. And then there was the “Medusa Principle.” For every Arab or Palestinian they killed, ten more would rise up to take their place.

On his watch, he’d forced the Mossad to deal with reality, as opposed to a political predisposition, a refreshing view that the current government intended to employ. The only drawback was that the reality Israel now faced was more chilling than even the zealots of Masada encountered. It was not an exaggeration to say the country’s existence was genuinely in the balance, and it all weighed on de Rothchild’s shoulders. That is why he took great solace in these tiny respites when he could revert to his archaeological self, and it was the one condition he’d stipulated in taking the position was he could decorate his office with some artifacts from the National Museum, like the small Vespasian coin he was inspecting now. For a few moments, he was transported back to his beloved world of scholarship.

Then the intercom buzzed with the voice of his sentry saying, “Your appointment has arrived.”

Reluctantly, de Rothchild put the coin back into its slipcover and turned off the magnifying light. “Send him in.”

The director had long since sent his secretary home, and one of his “minders” occupied her desk now. He absolutely detested the idea of bodyguards, but it came with the territory. And although the hour was nearing 4:00
am
, somebody had to fetch the coffee. Sleep had become an alien concept to him, and he was starting to wonder if he was capable of it any longer.

The door opened and Eli Manon entered as the minder looked in.

“Good evening or morning, Eli. Thank you for coming from Ankara on such short notice.”

Eli Manon nodded. “At your service, Director. It isn’t often I enjoy the comfort of a private jet.”

“Time is of the essence. You’ll be back on your way shortly. But in the meantime, may I offer you some coffee?”

“I was hoping the owner of the Rothchild vineyard might be able to offer something a bit stronger.”

The director smiled and said to his minder, “Two bourbons. Doubles. On the rocks.”

The minder disappeared and the director motioned to the divan in the living area of his office, saying, “What I have to tell you will need a stronger anesthetic than a Merlot could provide.”

Curious, Manon sat on the divan as de Rothchild took the neighboring leather chair. The drinks were deposited and the door closed. Without a toast, both men took a hearty swallow.

“So, tell me, Eli—how is this pipeline business being received in Ankara?”

Manon was to the point. “With great frustration and apprehension. Just before I went wheels-up, I met with the chief of their antiterrorism division.”

“Bulent Koksol?”

Manon nodded. “That’s him.”

“Bit of an oaf, if I recall your dispatches correctly.”

Manon was gratified that someone read his dispatches. “Quite. He sees his career going south if the pipeline is attacked on Turkish soil, and he reached out for any help I could offer.”

“That is timely. What is your assessment of the Turks’ ability to deal with the likes of Basayev?”

“Slim,” replied Manon. “Their whole secret police and intel apparatus is calibrated to suppress the Kurds. They have no real capability for anything that falls outside of that envelope.”

“So the likelihood of Basayev succeeding on Turkish soil is quite high.”

“Yes. I informed Koksol that we stand ready to assist because the petroleum from that pipeline is vital to Israel’s economy. One thing he can provide is resources to move quickly if the threat is identified.”

The director pulled on his drink and said, “I see. And this Koksol trusts you?”

“In a professional sense, yes. We’ve known each other about seven years, and we’ve had occasion to help each other out from time to time.”

De Rothchild nodded, then set down his drink and looked squarely at Manon. “Eli, I just spent a long evening with the prime minister. A very long evening. I will not mince words. At this moment our nation faces a situation that is both grave and delicate, a situation where I will need all of your considerable abilities brought to bear.”

For the next hour and ten minutes, Eli Manon listened to his superior in stunned silence. Then he took his leave and went downstairs to enter the staff car that would whisk him to the airstrip and the waiting Learjet. On the way, the driver looked in his rearview mirror and saw that his passenger’s face was an ashen white.