The Prince of Risk (25 page)

T
he operations center was as busy as Grand Central during morning rush. Forming the Joint Terrorism Task Force, over thirty law enforcement agencies kept representatives in the FBI’s New York counterterrorism office. Normally their varied duties combined to keep nearly all of them out of the office at any one time. Not today. As Barry Mintz hurried across the room, he counted off agents from police, fire, DEA, ATF, Port Authority, parks and wildlife, nuclear regulatory, and everything in between.

Alex wanted an investigation. She got one.

“Mintz. Hold up.”

Mintz stopped a foot shy of being clear of the room. “Hi, Bill.”

Bill Barnes was in his media best: blue suit, white shirt, red tie with the American flag prominently displayed. “Where you been?”

“Out running down some more info on Luc Lambert.”

“Who? Oh, Shepherd. That’s right. I forgot his real name for a second. Who you talk to?”

“The Agency.”

Barnes shook his head. “Take forever.”

“Had to try.”

“’Course you did.” Barnes tucked a file beneath his arm and took up position a bad breath away. “What’s Alex up to?”

“Guess she’s at home. Resting.”

“I’ve tried her phone a bunch of times. Keeps going to voice mail. She won’t answer my texts, either.”

“She’s probably sleeping.”

Barnes raised an eyebrow. “We talking about the same Alex?” He leaned closer, as if they were two buddies sharing a secret. “Come on, Mintz. You can tell me. What’s she doing? No way she’s at home sleeping. What’s that Alex is always saying? She’ll sleep when she’s dead?”

Mintz met his gaze and winced, hating to say what he was about to say. “Between you and me, she’s not doing so hot. Losing Malloy knocked the wind out of her sails. I think she needed a couple drinks.”

Barnes smiled cruelly. “Figures. She talks a good game with that crazy picture of Hoover and the battering ram on the floor, but in the end she’s still a woman. I knew she’d buckle.” He chuckled. “Maybe you should take her some chicken soup.”

“I’m sure she’ll be okay,” said Mintz. “Anything new here?”

“Got a lead on those AKs. Shipped originally to China, then exported to their great ally, Venezuela. No idea how they got here.” A call came in on Barnes’s phone. He gave Mintz a thumbs-up. “Good talking, Bar. Keep up the fine work. Don’t count on Langley. Bunch of hard-ons.” He began his conversation, then stopped abruptly. “If you do talk to Alex, tell her I phoned London. They’re checking up on those firms right away. Should have an answer by Friday. Monday latest.”

Mintz gave a thumbs-up in return and continued toward his desk, making sure to close the door to Alex’s office before he sat down so he wouldn’t have to work with J. Edgar Hoover’s damning gaze aimed at his shoulders. Barnes was right about the picture. It was weird.

The phone rang. It was Alex’s line. “Mintz speaking.”

“I’m looking for SSA Forza.”

“She’s not in right now. Can I help?”

“Am I speaking to Barry Mintz, tall, red-haired geek? Couldn’t get laid if he was starring in a porn movie?”

Mintz slumped. “That would be me.”

“It’s Neil Donovan. How the hell are you?”

Mintz bucked up. Donovan had run the Bureau’s organized crime unit out of 26 Federal Plaza as well as heading up the SWAT team before leaving a year ago. He was a bona fide stud and everything Mintz aspired to be. “I thought you retired.”

“Me? Never. I’m in Mexico now. Running intel ops down here. Dangerous as all get-out, but damned interesting all the same. You got a sec?”

“Sure thing.”

“I got a call I thought I should pass along to you guys. I already communicated with headquarters, but I wanted to get it into your hands stat. Might be something, might be nothing. Got a pen?”

“Shoot.”

“One of my contacts at Juárez Airport touched base last night. Said he had some interesting folks passing through passport control. About twenty or so men and women arriving from South America, all of them carrying brand-new Portuguese passports.”

“Portuguese? You’re sure?”

“Dead sure. Apparently they were young, fit, and a couple were real tough guys. Funny thing was that none of them were speaking Portuguese.”

“No? What, then?”

“English. But not American English. Foreigners’ English. Not only that, these guys were met at the gate by two big shots. One was a general in the Federales and the other some kind of spook from the DFS, the Mexican security service. Real scary types. Anyway, they were crowing about the group being a team of athletes.”

“Athletes,” repeated Mintz, writing down Donovan’s words verbatim. “From Portugal.”

“Small problem, though,” Donovan went on. “None of the passports had an entry visa for Venezuela or any kind of stamps. We’re talking virgin travel docs. My guy’s a smart guy. He takes notice and memorizes a couple of the passport numbers. I ran them through the Portuguese embassy down our way. Turns out the passports were stolen from the consulate in Macao a month ago.”

“Macao…near Hong Kong?”

“Former Portuguese colony, now a gambling mecca. That’s the one.”

Mintz read his notes, then asked, “Did your guy get an exact count on the number of passengers with these stolen passports?”

“Think so—let me check. Yeah, he did. Twenty-three.”

Mintz grabbed his inventory of equipment seized at Windermere. Halfway down the list was an item, “New York City Maps 18–24.” Scratch Luc Lambert. “Twenty-three. You sure on that?”

“Yeah.”

“And where exactly did they fly in from?”

“Air Mexicana Flight 388 from Caracas.”

Mintz underlined the name of the city. Then he wrote one word next to it:
Venezuela.

O
ne last shot.

Jack Steinmetz, owner of the Steinmetz Fund, with over $30 billion under management, billionaire ten times over, poster boy for Wall Street excess, lived in the famed San Remo Apartments on Central Park West. His place in the city was one of his smaller residences. Four floors and 15,000 square feet overlooking the park. The elevator opened. Steinmetz stood waiting, arms open, smile on his face. Sixty, trim, and tanned, he looked like everyone’s favorite uncle. Looks were deceiving. Jack Steinmetz, or Jack the Ripper, as he preferred to be called, was not a nice man, and he had four failed marriages, five kids in rehab or recovery, and six former business partners, all of whom were engaged in litigation against him, to prove it.

“Bobby, it’s been too long.”

“Jack, good to see you.”

Steinmetz drew him close for an embrace as if they were long-lost brothers. “Tough times. Sorry about the bad news.”

“It’s all right. My father and I weren’t close.”

“I wasn’t talking about your father. I meant your fund. Word on the street is that you’re going belly-up. Yeah, and about your father—just imagine I said all the usual things. Condolences, sorry, whatever. What the hell happened, anyway?”

“I know about as much as the next guy. The investigation is ongoing.”

“I’d thought you’d have a direct line to the scene, what with Alice being an agent.”

“Alex.”

“Whatever. She’s a good-looking piece, ain’t she? Wouldn’t have minded a little of that myself. You’re divorced, right? I’m not stepping on any toes. I’m getting a little sick of Miss Russia. Had to leave her up in Jackson Hole with Sumner and Larry. Give her a chance to find the next meal ticket.”

Astor ignored Steinmetz’s comments. He’d been the same loudmouth twenty years ago when Astor was starting out and Steinmetz was being feted in the press as “king of the LBO.”

“It’s not Alex’s show,” Astor said, nonplussed. “The Bureau’s serious about keeping things locked down.”

“TV says the car went berserk, like that thing Hasselhoff used to drive—”

“KITT.”

“That’s the one. Me, I think it was the driver. The Secret Service guy went postal.” Steinmetz laughed at his joke. “Well, it’s not all bad. Maybe we’ll get a Fed chair who knows what he’s doing. Charlie Hughes had his head so far up his ass he could tickle his tonsils. Always calling for higher capital requirements. The problem isn’t too much leverage, it’s not enough. I used to put down three billion and buy a company for thirty. Now I need to pump in eight or nine up front. I don’t have to tell you what that does for returns. Of course, I’m not hanging it out there in the wind like you.”

“It’s worked so far.”

“Yeah?” said Steinmetz, thrusting his chin out. “That why you’re here? Tell me how rosy things are at Comstock. Paint me a nice little picture.”

“You were happy enough with how your other investments turned out.”

“Past history. Made it. Spent it. Now I’m looking to make more. Don’t ask me to thank you for doing your job.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Astor walked behind Steinmetz into the living room. A two-story floor-to-ceiling window looked over Central Park. The waning light gilded the trees with a warm orange glow. Stare at it long enough and it would hypnotize you.
Everything’s all right. Everything’s all right.
Astor looked away.

He’d been here once before. The occasion was Jack Steinmetz’s fiftieth birthday, and he and his Russian wife had turned the place into a re-creation of Studio 54 during its heyday in the late 1970s, complete with a white horse parading down the stairs. That was ten years back, but Astor still had a hard time erasing the image of Steinmetz wearing silver lamé pants, a silk shirt unbuttoned to his navel, and a gold coke spoon around his neck.

“Hear about my latest deal? Vodka?” Steinmetz sauntered to his bar and selected a strangely shaped bottle holding a clear liquid. “It’s Lenin,” he said, catching Astor’s curious glance. “They took the cast from his face in Red Square. I bought the distillery last month. Fifty million lock, stock, and barrel. Forget those other ones from France and Sweden. Real vodka should be Russian. Try it. Goes down like water.”

“No, thanks,” said Bobby. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Suit yourself.” Steinmetz made a show of pulling back his sleeve and checking the time. His gold wristwatch was as large as a deep-sea diver’s helmet. “Okay, Astor, enough of this bullshitting. Spit it out.”

“We’re facing a margin call on the flagship fund. We’re short yuan. The market moved against us.”

“You’re short yuan?” gasped Steinmetz, spraying a little vodka in Astor’s face. “And here I was, all these years thinking you were one of the smart ones. The deputy trade minister stood up on TV last night and confirmed his country’s policy of allowing the currency to appreciate.”

“We think it’s going the other way.”

“
You think
. And you want me to bail you out so you can hang on and see if you’re right.”

“I want to give you the chance to get in at a good price.”

“Bargain basement, no doubt. And?”

“And what?”

“And what’s the kicker? You expect me to get in line with the rest of the schmendricks you already conned?”

“I can’t give you any preferential treatment. That’s illegal.”

“Now that we have it on record that you’re an honest businessman, let’s talk turkey. What are you looking for?”

“Three hundred.”

“That it?”

“Lock, stock, and barrel.”

“Forget it. I’m not interested in your fund. Too risky. You do get points, however, for having the balls to put it to me like you did. You got big ones, that’s for sure. Tell you what—I’ll loan you the money if it can be secured by your other funds.”

“Fair enough,” said Astor. “I can give you six percent for ninety days.”

“Come again? I thought you said six percent.”

“Six for ninety. That’s twenty-four percent annualized.”

“I can do the math, thank you. Here’s what I’m thinking. Ten percent for thirty days.”

“Thirty million for a month. That’s a hundred and twenty percent annualized.”

“What do you care? You’re the genius who’s going to make a fortune when the Chinese surprise the entire world and decide to depreciate the yuan.”

Astor smiled to himself. Loan-sharking was alive and well and operating in plain daylight on Central Park West. “Can you have the funds in my account by three tomorrow?”

“I can have them there at nine in the morning.”

Astor extended a hand. “Deal.”

Steinmetz regarded him. He smiled cagily, and Astor thought,
I knew this was too easy.
“One more thing. I’d like you to ask nice.”

“I just did.”

Steinmetz knocked back the rest of the vodka. “You call that nice? I’m thinking you take a knee.”

“Pardon?”

“Hit the carpet.” Steinmetz teetered, and Astor realized that he was drunk.

“That’s enough, Jack. Do we have a deal or don’t we?”

“Actually, two knees. I want to see you grovel.”

“Be serious.”

Steinmetz threw his hands on Astor’s shoulders and tried to force him down. “Grovel.”

Astor hit him. He didn’t know where the fist came from, but his knuckles ached and Steinmetz lay sprawled on his couch, blood trickling from his mouth.

“That’s assault,” sputtered Steinmetz, struggling to get to his feet.

“Actually, it’s battery. Arrest me.”

Steinmetz came at him and Astor chucked him aside, sending the older man toppling onto a coffee table. Astor bent down to help him up, but Steinmetz refused his help. “Where you going to go now? I was giving you a bargain. You’re toast, Astor. Hear me? Toast.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Astor.
French fried, with maple syrup.

He left before he decided to hit Steinmetz again.

C
lick.

Mike Grillo stood across the street from the office building on Third Avenue, his eyes on the revolving doors. It was eight o’clock. The evening exodus was long over. Men and women trickled out intermittently alone and in pairs. Grillo marked each departure with a flip of the Zippo’s cover.

Click.

He considered himself a reasonable man. He knew the world was a complicated place. Rarely was an issue black or white. Too often, gray was the palette of choice. He realized that everyone, himself included, had to make bargains from time to time. Compromises. Settlements not entirely to their liking. Still, there were a few lines he didn’t cross. He did not steal from clients. He did not engage in activities that might cause harm to come to a person. He did not lie to his friends. So when one of his friends lied to him, he was upset. He wanted to put that person’s head through a plate-glass window.

Click.

A shadow approached the revolving door. Even through the tinted glass, he recognized the shambling gait, the air of world-weary fatigue. A moment later, an African-American man wearing a rumpled blazer, khaki pants, and crappy loafers emerged from the building and walked north. Grillo dropped the Zippo into his pocket and checked his watch. Eight-oh-three. He couldn’t fault his friend for shortchanging the American taxpayer.

Grillo set off up the sidewalk, following from across the street. The man turned west on 70th Street. The light was with Grillo and he crossed, walking faster now. The sidewalk was crowded. He saw his moment.

“Hello, Jeb,” he said when he reached the man’s shoulder. “Funny running into you again.”

Jeb Washburn barely turned his head to answer. “You smooth, Grill-O. Didn’t see you coming for a sec.”

“You should know that I’ve got a piece on you right now. A little PPK aimed right at your kidney. It’s got one of those Czech silencers we used to use. Don’t work for shit, but in this traffic, it’ll do.” Grillo nudged him with the barrel.

“Guess you’re serious.”

“You didn’t tell me he contacted you.”

“You didn’t ask. You asked if I knew who he was. The answer is still no.”

It was there in the file Grillo had received from the phone company, as plain as day. The list of calls placed to and from the phone Palantir had used to contact Edward Astor showed that Palantir had spoken with Jeb Washburn on six occasions between June 10 and June 30.

“I’m waiting.”

“He called in June to say that he had something for us. Proof about a cyberattack to be initiated by a foreign power against our national infrastructure. At first he was all over the place. Could be against the power grid, air traffic control, the Net. Then he narrowed it down to the financial infrastructure. Even so, he was vague. Wouldn’t name the country involved or the place. Didn’t have a firm date. The only thing he knew for sure was that the financial industry was the target. There was something else.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He said it was a game changer.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ask him. Whatever, it can’t be good.”

“So what’d you do?”

“What I was trained to do. I evaluated the intake and passed it up the chain of command.”

“And that’s it? Didn’t talk to him again? Done?”

Washburn shook his head slowly, as if bemused. “Grill-O, this is way above your pay grade.”

“I’m private sector now, bro. I don’t have a pay grade. That’s why I can afford my seven-hundred-dollar Italian loafers and you’re wearing resoled Weejuns. By the way, are you the preppiest black man on the planet?”

“In my blood. What can I say?” Washburn gave him a smile.

Grillo didn’t bite. “Ever meet with him in person?”

“Negative. Last contact I had was end of June. He wanted a paycheck before he’d play ball. Said something about DARPA still owing him for work he did a few years back.”

“So DARPA must have his name.”

“If they do, they didn’t say. Wouldn’t even admit they’d ever heard of the software program.”

“One of those, eh?”

“One of those.”

“And so you gave his number to the NSA to see if they could track him down.”

“They looking for him, too?” Washburn curled his mouth in distaste. “Figures.”

“The NSA put a Code Black priority on his number on June eleventh.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. That’s the problem with the intelligence business in this country. Right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Except in this case there are more like a hundred hands. All of ’em are looking for something to do and no one wants to say jack about it.”

“And you give me your word you didn’t know the NSA was trying to track him down?”

Washburn shook his head. “As you recall, our shop is not allowed to operate on home soil. If we do get info about something going down, we pass it along to the proper domestic agency.”

“Just what is it you do these days?”

“Threat mitigation. You were on offense. Me, I play defense. You got something you want to pass along to me, Grill-O? For example, just why in the world you are so interested in Palantir? And don’t give me that client confidentiality crap. We are way beyond that.”

“Palantir contacted Edward Astor in early July. I’m guessing that whoever you passed the information along to declined to pay him for his services. Anyway, Astor wasn’t so cheap. He probably saw himself as a patriot endeavoring to do some good for his country. The way I see it, Palantir delivered the goods last Friday. Astor left work early and headed to midtown, I’m guessing to meet with Palantir. He went home, digested the material, and—”

“And set up the meet with Hughes and Gellman?” Washburn suggested.

“Not right away. First he contacted a company in Reston. Britium. Looks like he paid the place a visit.”

“Britium, eh? Never heard of it.”

“My guess is that he had to check out whether Palantir was on the money before taking the whole thing upstairs.”

“It appears he was.”

“Yes, it does.”

Washburn’s eyes dropped to Grillo’s jacket. “You going to put away that gun now?”

“Someone’s killing off anyone with an interest in Palantir. I’d rather play it safe.”

Washburn laughed gently. “You’re safe with me, Grill-O. We’re all after the same thing.”

“Not exactly. I’m only being paid to find him. Interdiction, arrest, sanction—all the messy shit is up to you.”

“You got something to take us all another step down the road?”

There it was. The offer of the deal Grillo had been working toward. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

“Couple things,” he said. “My client spoke to Palantir today. Apparently whatever he was warning everyone about is set to go down soon. He was cagey, wouldn’t give any details. Sounds like he has a real hard-on for the government. I can give you his Skype address and a number he used to call Edward Astor Friday morning. Give the information to your friends, have them put it in their magic box and shake it around a little. If they’re as good as they’re always bragging, we should have a name, address, Social Security number, and favorite brand of condom.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Washburn.

“Screw your best. Just get me an answer.”

Washburn buttoned his jacket. “Say, Mike, that’s not really a gun in your pocket, is it?”

Grillo withdrew his hand, his fingers shaped in the form of a pistol. “Bang.”

Washburn shook his head. “Been behind a desk way too long.”