The Prince of Risk (15 page)

M
ichael Grillo sat at his customary table at the rear of Balthazar, the French brasserie in SoHo that did double duty as his private office. It was 9 p.m. and the joint was packed. The appetizing scents of roast chicken and French onion soup drifted from the kitchen. Grillo sipped his Campari and soda and reread the message he’d received earlier from Bobby Astor giving Edward Astor’s mobile phone number as well as his Social Security number. Taking a pencil from his coat, he transferred both to a notepad. For a man of Grillo’s talent, the two were more than enough information to unlock a trove of personal information, information he hoped would shed light on Astor’s activities and help his client discover who or what Palantir was and how it had played a role in Edward Astor’s death.

Grillo sent the message to his personal server. Immediately afterward, he deleted it from his phone. He knew about the vulnerability of cellular technology. He made his living exploiting it. Below the two numbers he wrote the word
Palantir.
The name was familiar, though he wasn’t sure why, or where he might have heard it before. His instinct told him to be wary. Grillo paid his instinct close mind. It had kept him alive through three wars.

His first call was to the private number of a highly placed executive at the nation’s largest phone carrier. A woman answered on the second ring. “Hello, Mike.”

“Hello yourself. Got a sec?”

“For you, always.”

Grillo smiled his prim, menacing, gambler’s smile. “Have a pen?”

He read off Edward Astor’s cell number and the woman asked him to hold. She returned to the line thirty seconds later. Grillo could tell that she had moved to a quieter location, and when she spoke the warmth had bled from her voice. “You know whose number this is?”

“I do.”

“The FBI already called.”

“They’re upping their game.” Grillo kept his eyes on the door. A gaggle of tourists—he guessed Spanish by their coloring and dress—entered and approached the maitre d’. “Is it yours?” he asked, meaning did the number belong to the carrier?

“It’s ours.”

“If it makes any difference, I’m working with the family.”

“I’ll sleep more soundly tonight.”

“I’m pleased.”

“How far back do you need?”

“Two billing cycles. Sixty days should do the trick. I’m most interested in the last week. Calls to and from. If you can get names and addresses, it would help.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

A rough-looking man stood outside the restaurant peering through the plate-glass window. Six feet, jeans, black T, chiseled arms. Grillo took out his lighter and flicked the cover open and closed. It was a stainless silver Zippo. He’d carried it into battle on three continents, and his father had carried it before him in Korea.

“If you can give me a head start,” he suggested, “I’d appreciate it.”

“That’s a big if.”

“It carries four zeroes.”

“I’m sure your client can afford it.”

“Impress me.” Grillo hung up. The hard type with the black T-shirt was coming through the front door. A little girl with pigtails held his hand. He picked her up and asked a waitress for a restroom. Grillo put away the lighter. It came to him what he’d heard about Palantir. Something about a firm that did security work for the NSA. Cutting-edge stuff.

Well, thought Grillo, it had to be. Everyone acknowledged that the National Security Agency was pretty much the smartest guy in the room. Twenty thousand souls locked away inside a compound in the rolling hills outside of Washington, D.C., scouring the world’s communications traffic for any and all things sinister and threatening to the security of the United States of America and its allies. On the record, the NSA admitted to pulling down twenty petabytes of raw data a day from the world’s digital traffic: phones, Internet, satellites, all of it. That was enough information to fill the Library of Congress a hundred times. The NSA was as secret as secret got. Doing security work for it was like being a bodyguard for the marines.

He looked at the word on his notepad.

Palantir.

Bobby Astor had no business putting his nose into this kind of stuff.

Grillo walked outside and smoked a cigarette. The night was hot and sticky, but he kept his jacket on. He disliked walking around in shirtsleeves and a necktie. A uniform was a uniform. Ten years back it was cammies and combat boots. These days it was Tom Ford and Ferragamos. For the first time in a long while, he wasn’t sure which was more dangerous.

Inside the brasserie, the staff had wiped down his table and refilled the coffee. He sat, careful to adjust his trousers and jacket. His next call was to a small but respected credit advisory bureau. He read off Edward Astor’s Social Security number and requested a list of all credit cards in Astor’s name. His contact promised an answer by tomorrow afternoon. Grillo told him he wanted it by noon and hung up.

The daily specials were pot-au-feu, grilled trout, and cuisses de grenouille.

“The usual,” he told the server. “And remember,
bleu
.”

“Bien sûr, monsieur.”

Grillo started playing with his Zippo again. It was all coming back now. He remembered the man who’d mentioned the name. The recollection did little to boost his spirits. A man from the murkiest depths of the secret world.

The server arrived with Grillo’s steak.
“Voilà. Votre steak frites.”

“Bleu?”
Grillo asked with friendly disbelief.

“Comme vous l’aimez.”

Grillo cut into the steak. The center was dark red, essentially untouched by heat.

“Eh bien?”
asked the waiter.

“Parfait,”
said Grillo.

Content, the server bowed and left.

Grillo cut himself a piece of meat. Strangely, he could not bring himself to take a bite. He had lost his appetite.

A
stor needed a drink.

He needed a drink to get over his father’s death. He needed a drink to deal with the meltdown of the position. He needed a drink to soothe his conscience for failing to report Penelope Evans’s death. Mostly he needed a drink because he needed a drink. Having a drink meant he was in control. When he put the glass to his lips and let the liquor flow into his mouth and down his throat and felt the wonderful, healing warmth spread through his limbs, the first joyous step to oblivion, he knew that he, Robert Astor, was in charge, and the world was no longer a threatening place, and if everyone would please just give him a little time, if they would just back off and chill, he would fix everything.

“Lights.”

Astor stepped off the elevator directly into the foyer of his home as the overhead lights came to life. His primary residence in the city was a two-level penthouse on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea, just across the street from the High Line and no more than a mile from Alex’s office. He walked into the kitchen and selected a bottle of mineral water and a large lime from the refrigerator. He cut the lime and dropped it into a highball glass, then poured the mineral water. The glass had to be stout and heavy, the lime fresh, and the mineral water carbonated and with a dash of salt. Those were the rules. He grasped the glass in his fist, took a long sip, and the craving vanished.

He was safe.

Astor gazed across the living room. Not 20 feet away stood a fully stocked bar. He could see it now, the bottles of Stolichnaya and Bulleit and Grey Goose and all the others glittering like forbidden treasure. The bar was his jailkeeper. He had made himself a promise a year ago, when Alex had confronted him and threatened to bar him from seeing Katie. If he ever cracked a bottle, he would go away. He would do his time at a facility. His colleagues would know and the Street would know. Alex would know and Katie would know. And finally, he would know.

Astor lugged his satchel upstairs and set it on the floor of his bedroom.

“Music,” he said. “Sinatra.
In the Wee Small Hours.
”

A moment later the rich, melancholy horns of the Nelson Riddle Orchestra drifted from the concealed speakers.

Astor took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. The house was wired top to bottom. Lights, climate control, appliances, entertainment system, security: all could be controlled by voice or remotely, either from the Net or from his phone.

“Softer.”

Sinatra began singing “Mood Indigo.” Astor dug the annual reports he’d taken from Penelope Evans’s home out of the satchel, then kicked off his chukka boots and lay down on his bed, arranging the pillows to ensure he sat up straight. Windows made up two of the walls, and he looked across the Hudson River toward the lights of northern New Jersey.

“Air conditioning. Sixty-eight degrees.”

Astor began with the journal titled
Information Technology Today
that he’d found on Evans’s bed.

Our configurable software frameworks extend connectivity, integration, and interoperability to the millions of devices deployed in the market today and empower manufacturers to develop intelligent equipment systems and smart devices that enable collaboration and communication between the enterprise and edge assets. Our platforms allow for building and managing complex monitoring, control, and automation solutions, including applications for building control, facility management, industrial automation, medical equipment, physical security, energy information systems, telecommunications, smart homes, M2M, and smart services.

Penelope Evans had been the executive assistant to the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, and as far as Astor knew, “managing complex monitoring, control, and automation solutions” was not in her purview. Nor could he find any connection between such a technology and his father’s murder. Edward Astor had sought out the counsel of the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the secretary of the treasury, not the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Again he keyed on the mention of the firm leading the drive in this field. The company, Britium, based in Reston, Virginia, was in talks with two private equity firms for an imminent sale. The firms were named Watersmark and Oak Leaf Ventures.

Astor shifted his attention to the annual reports. He set the stack beside him on the bed and divided them into two piles, one for the firms that had recently been taken public and one for the firms that were no longer publicly traded. He began with the publicly traded firms.

Silicon Solutions was a Palo Alto–based designer and manufacturer of routers and servers that formed the core of the Internet backbone.

“Net. Google. Silicon Solutions.”

A flat-screen monitor rose out of the credenza facing the bed. The screen came to life, showing the Google home page. The company name appeared in the search bar. A blink and a list of relevant pages appeared. He spent a few minutes reading articles about the company, then continued on to the next company in the pile. As he worked, he made notes, analyzing the companies by industry, revenue, country, and currency.

There was a large provider of IT services, including data storage and Internet service providers. There was a company that designed and built machines that fabricated microchips. To round out the high-tech sector, there was a manufacturer of microchips, too.

There was a French company that built and launched communications satellites and a Japanese multinational corporation that built high-speed rail systems and the trains that ran on them as well as elevators, electronic security systems, and home electronics. There was a renowned American engineering company that was the world leader in building power plants, both nuclear- and coal-fueled. There was an Australian mining corporation with operations in twenty countries around the world, from India to Iceland. And a large supermarket chain named Pecos active in the southwestern United States.

An hour later Astor had educated himself about all seven companies that had warranted Penelope Evans’s attention. The result was a picture-perfect risk-diversified portfolio. He could find nothing to link them to one another, nothing that suggested the slightest impropriety. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Penelope Evans’s research into these diverse firms was simply part of her normal assignments. Maybe these companies had nothing to do with his father’s death.

Or maybe not.

Astor grabbed the report for Silicon Solutions and started rereading it. There had to be a connection between the firms, as disparate as they appeared. There was a reason Penelope Evans was studying the reports even after his father had been killed. Somewhere inside these pages was a clue, and he was determined to find it. He turned to the financial statements. A footnote to the balance sheet stated that the company had been owned by a private equity firm. Britium, the company mentioned in the
ITT
article, was also the object of attention from a private equity firm.

Astor scrambled to a sitting position and combed through the reports again. Each firm, he noted, had had dealings with a sponsor at some point in its corporate history. Either the company had been purchased by a sponsor and subsequently taken public, or it was currently a publicly traded company soon to be taken private.

“Memo,” he said aloud.

A blank page appeared on the screen. Astor read the names of the nine private equity firms involved. All were known and respected. He counted acquaintances at all of them. But the pattern he sought eluded him. Only one of the firms was listed in more than one transaction.

“Save. Send to office.”

Astor felt vexed. He knew that the presence of the private equity firms in all the companies’ histories was no coincidence, but the trail ended there.

He picked up the reports and articles and carried them to his desk. He stared out across the river. He was tired, overanxious, and frightened. He imagined the police technicians lifting an immaculate set of his fingerprints from Penelope Evans’s door. Sooner or later they would make a match and he would be called on the carpet and asked to explain what he had been doing at Evans’s house. He had no worries about being falsely accused. Not in the long run. He did not own a gun. He could prove he was not present at the time of death. (Sullivan was his alibi.) He had no motive. It was the short run that posed a problem. Today and tomorrow and the day after, days crucial to Comstock’s survival. Besides, as John Maynard Keynes had said, in the long run he’d be dead.

“Bloomberg. Foreign exchange cross rates. Yuan–dollar.”

Astor stepped in front of the screen. The rate was stable at 6.175. The position was still underwater. Snatching a notepad, he listed investors he might approach to shore up his fund if he received a margin call at the end of business the next day. He stopped after four names. It was not a promising beginning.

He threw the notepad onto his desk. It missed and landed in the trash can.
Touchdown, Astor.
As he bent to pick it up, he inadvertently knocked a few of the annual reports to the floor. Something fell from the pages and floated to the carpet. It was a piece of sky-blue stationery with a navy border. Two words printed in copperplate ran across the top:
Cherry Hill.

Astor carefully replaced the annual reports before picking up the paper. Cherry Hill was the name of the family estate in Oyster Bay, his boyhood home. Someone had written on it—a woman’s feminine, looping script.

Cassandra99

Before he could study it more closely, the phone rang. The caller’s name and number appeared on the screen. “Donald Costanza. Doorman.”

“Phone,” he said. Then: “Yeah, Don, what is it?”

“There’s a problem with your car. Can you come downstairs and take a look?”

“What? The Ferrari? Are you kidding me? It’s after eleven.”

“There’s a problem with your car. Can you come downstairs and take a look?”

“I heard you the first time. Be right there.”

Astor hustled downstairs and dug a keychain with a black stallion rampant on a yellow background out of the key drawer. The car in question was a 1972 Ferrari Daytona. The last time he’d checked, it was valued at just over $7 million. He did not drive it frequently in the city.

“Elevator.”

Astor walked to the entry alcove and waited. If Don the doorman was calling at this time of night about the Ferrari, it meant that something bad had happened. Astor housed the car in a separate bay and kept it covered with an apron 24/7. He had no idea how any harm might have come to it. Unless…

Visions of Don the doorman taking the $7 million machine out for a joyride, hurtling down the scarred, potholed streets of Manhattan, filled his mind. He thought of the pummeling given to the rebuilt Koni shocks, the wear and tear on the tires, the damage to the undercarriage.

The elevator arrived.

Astor stepped inside.

But the elevator was not there.

Astor stared into the bottomless shaft. One foot dangled in the abyss as his momentum propelled him forward. Frantically he threw his arms out. He twisted, looking for something, anything, to grab hold of. His hand skidded off the wall. The other flailed at empty space.

And then he saw the cable hanging in the darkness.

He lunged, and caught it with both hands.

He swung back and forth, quickly coming to a halt. He tried to wrap a foot around the cable, but the tension was too strong. The cable did not bend. He slipped a few inches. A ladder ran up the wall. He kicked a leg out. His heel struck a rung. Notching his toes beneath it, he pulled himself closer until he could grasp the ladder with his hands.

The door to his apartment closed.

Darkness.

Astor let go of the cable and took hold of the ladder. Below, a faint light shone through the roof of the elevator, stationary on the ground floor. Somewhere in the shaft a machine engaged. It was the pleasant, efficient whir of the elevator rising. He looked past his feet and saw the tiny light coming toward him, growing larger, brighter.

He tilted his head back. The dark was impenetrable. The shaft ended at the sixth floor. He did not think there was room for him and the elevator. His only hope was to jump on top of the rising elevator and pray that he would not be crushed.

The elevator drew closer. It no longer sounded pleasant or efficient. To Astor’s ears, the elevator sounded like a table saw. He was stuck. He could only wait.

The elevator approached. He could see it clearly now. As it came near, he extended a foot, threw himself onto the roof, and made himself as flat as possible. The car continued to rise, and he felt the cold cement of the shaft around him. The light from inside the elevator illuminated the top of the shaft. Four feet became three…

The elevator stopped.

Astor found the handle for the emergency exit and forced it upward. The hatch opened grudgingly. He maneuvered around the elevator’s roof, finally slipping his feet through the opening and lowering himself into the elevator. He pushed the Door Open button and stepped back inside his home.

He stood still for a moment. His knees shook. His breath came in gasps. The elevator door closed. He staggered and threw a hand against the wall for support. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal. He stood upright and walked into the kitchen.

He needed a drink.