The Prince of Risk (31 page)

B
uilding Six.

Zero hour.

Magnus Lee hurried along the corridor on the fifteenth floor (belowground) of the secret installation. There were no company signs hanging from the ceiling. There was only one room, and it was designated with a
T,
for
Troy.
Two guards stood outside. Seeing Lee, they snapped to attention. Their reward was a perfunctory nod and a grunt.

Lee entered the operations center. Only four men were present. They sat side by side in front of computers and monitors. Each man held advanced degrees in computer science, mathematics, and statistics. They were the best of the best, the smartest of the smart, spotted by watchers at the country’s finest universities and snatched away to work on behalf of their people. There was no greater honor. They had other skills, too, and these skills were not taught at universities. They were the nation’s best hackers, and therefore the world’s.

Lee sat down in a chair at the rear of the room. There was a word for people who possessed the ability to do so much with so little. That word was
super-empowered.
Lee liked the sound of it. Of course, it helped if you had the might and the resources of an entire country behind you.

A digital clock broadcast the time in minutes and seconds on one wall. Less than eighteen hours remained before the key was inserted. A giant screen covered the wall facing him.

Lee watched as a simulation of the attack was broadcast. The first target had never been a subject of debate. As Troy had come into being and Lee and his assistants at Watersmark and Oak Leaf and all the other sponsors had begun to acquire stakes in so many companies across so many industries, it was always clear that the U.S. financial system would be their mark. In no other area did the Americans hold such a vast superiority to China. China’s heavy industry was the equal of America’s, as was its energy sector, its computer sector, its transportation, and soon even its military. But as a financial center, China lagged far behind. Daily, the world followed the fluctuations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ, even the VIX, with bated breath. No one gave two hoots about the Shanghai Exchange. Shanghai was a second-rate market, fit for gamblers who burned joss and said a prayer while closing their eyes and throwing a dart at the stocks page.

It was not enough for China to succeed—America must fail.

And so tomorrow, when the key was inserted and the door finally opened, America would fail.

First to fall would be the New York Stock Exchange, or more specifically, its proprietary trading platform. The Flash Crash had been a taste of the chaos to come. For years i3 had been secretly decrypting the trading strategies employed by America’s most important investment banks. All were clients of the Exchange. All traded hundreds of millions of shares each day. Lee would use this knowledge to corrupt these strategies. Once the firewall was breached, a virus would infect the Exchange’s trading software, causing a wholesale meltdown the likes of which had never been seen.

An order to buy a thousand shares would read as an order to buy a hundred thousand. An order to sell fifty thousand shares at $40 would read as fifty thousand at $35. The discrepancy would trigger complex program trading orders to buy or sell hundreds of thousands of shares at a time. Perplexed, the software would no longer know how to match proper buy and sell orders. Order imbalances would multiply. The Dow Jones index would fall five thousand points in minutes, and when the Exchange’s built-in circuit breakers failed to arrest the decline, the index would fall further, until trading would be shut down altogether. London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, and Tokyo would follow. No trading platform was safe. For all the exchanges were interconnected. Once the virus infected one, it would naturally seek out another and another. Pandemonium would ensue.

From the Exchange, the virus would seek out the giant data centers where records of every trade and transaction completed were stored on state-of-the-art servers. The New York Stock Exchange had recently built a new, ultrasecure facility in Mahwah, New Jersey, but it kept backups in Ohio and England. What crippled Mahwah would cripple Ohio and London. All would be compromised in seconds. Data would be erased wholesale. Efforts to reconstruct an accurate financial picture
ante cyberbellum
would be met and neutralized.

That was only the beginning.

From the data centers, the virus would travel to clients of the Exchange themselves. To banks, insurance companies, trading houses, credit card companies, and then to their clients. Everywhere, the virus would seek out data and destroy it.

The permutations were endless. For the virus was written to move continually upstream. To use the first target to find the second, and so on ad infinitum.

All would know that the crash was the result of an error in the trading platform. No matter. Trust would be compromised. Billions of dollars lost. Within hours, all commerce would cease. Economic Armageddon would ensue.

Still, it would not be enough.

On top of all this would be the physical attack. The ordinary citizen did not understand cyberwar. A computer virus was not tangible. It was a concept, ethereal by nature. It meant nothing.

Ordinary citizens needed blood and guts and bombs and rubble to know they were under attack. They needed to see the faces of the dead, the anguish of the survivors, the rage of the violated, and the tears of orphans. They needed to feel unsafe, insecure and at risk.

They needed to feel in danger.

Only then would they understand.

9/11 was a good beginning, but it did not go far enough. Stock prices plummeted. The Exchange closed for a week. But when it reopened trading continued as if nothing had happened. America was bruised, but came back stronger than ever. Tomorrow, China would land the decisive blow and complete the mission to dethrone the United States as the financial and economic capital of the world.

It was not enough for China to succeed—America must fail.

All this Magnus Lee saw played upon the screens in front of him. Step by step, victim by victim, country by country.

And when the virus had done its worst and all seemed lost, Lee himself would call the American president. He would volunteer China’s services to locate the virus, kill it, and restore the lost financial records. For no one had a safer, more secure, more stable platform than the Chinese. No one had foreseen such an attack and taken preemptive measures. No one had guessed its adversaries’ motives, means, and methods.

No one except the Chinese.

America’s “old friend.”

There would be no calls for the yuan to be revalued. If the Chinese preferred a weak yuan to bolster their export sector, they were welcome to it. If Chinese-made products resembled those of their American competitors a bit too much, nothing would be said. If a breach of a defense contractor’s most sophisticated weapons systems was traced to a Chinese computer, the discussion would be made behind doors and without acrimony.

America knew how to be grateful.

The attack wasn’t about bringing down America permanently.

It was about control.

A
stor knew Reventlow was lying. Everything would not turn out fine. He and his brother, Magnus Lee, would not put this behind them. All who knew about the CIC and its plan to exercise control over key components of the country’s financial and national security infrastructure had to be eliminated. There would be no handshake and promise to keep it all a secret. Astor possessed information vital to his nation’s defense; in fact, every bit as vital as the pictures from on high showing Soviet missiles being installed on Cuban soil in 1962. As Reventlow had said, why wipe out a city when you can control an entire country without anyone’s even knowing it?

Astor called his CFO and told her to expect an incoming wire any minute and to call each of Comstock’s lenders and inform them that Comstock would meet its margin call. He handed over the papers for Reventlow to sign, then replaced them in his briefcase.

“Are we done?”

“For now. But don’t be in a hurry to leave. I can’t let you go just yet.”

“I need to get back to the office. My lawyers are expecting me.”

“I’m sure they will celebrate their reprieve just fine without you. I’m afraid I do need to ask you some more questions. It’s important for us to learn how much you know about our affairs. My brother told me you were speaking with someone on your father’s computer who was involved in his investigation. Does Cassandra99 ring a bell?”

“That was Palantir. He might have helped my father earlier, but he refused to help me.”

“I wish I could believe you. We also have a record of your call to a Michael Grillo, a corporate investigator. We weren’t able to listen to his calls, so we must rely on you to tell us what you were discussing.”

“It had nothing to do with this. Grillo does other work for my company.” Astor picked up his briefcase and turned to leave. Standing in the doorway was the man from Cherry Hill. The warrior monk. Alex had said she was sure she had shot him, but he appeared to be in good health.

“May I introduce my brother Daniel,” said Reventlow. “He’s going to escort you to a private spot where we all can chat.”

“Hello, Mr. Astor,” said Daniel, his English unaccented, essentially an American’s.

“Hello,” said Astor. “And by the way, my arm’s fine.”

During the entire meeting, Astor had felt his father’s Beretta pressing against his spine. He measured the distance between him and the monk as 15 feet. Four long strides, to be sure. “All right,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”

Septimus Reventlow rose and offered his hand. Astor regarded it, the man’s insincere smile, his patrician demeanor, as a grotesquerie. He extended his hand as if to shake, then drew the pistol from his belt. Before he could bring it to bear, a blow paralyzed his wrist. Daniel, the warrior monk, stood inches away, holding the pistol by the barrel. “Very slow.”

Astor dropped his briefcase and clutched his hand. It hurt badly. “Yeah,” he said. “Looks that way.”

Reventlow came around the desk, picked up the briefcase, and handed it to Astor. “If you make a sound on the way downstairs, he will kill you,” he said. “No one will see him crush your larynx. My advice is to cooperate. And one more thing. If I might have your phone…”

Astor regarded Daniel, and handed Reventlow the phone he’d purchased earlier in the day.

“The FBI,” said Reventlow, reading the last text. “Shall I call them to cancel on your behalf?” He gave Astor an avuncular pat on the shoulder. “We’ll have lots to talk about.”

“After you,” said Daniel.

Astor walked with him to the elevator. They descended to the ground floor and passed through the turnstiles. Crossing the lobby, he spotted Sully double-parked at the curb. It was a little after four, and the lobby was busy but not crowded. Daniel walked at his side. Three officers manned the security desk. Two were fat and uninterested, the third trim and alert.

Astor saw a chance. “Which way?”

“Straight ahead,” said Daniel.

It was the answer Astor wanted to hear. “You have a car waiting?”

“I’ll show you when we get outside.”

Astor passed through the door. A uniformed policeman stood immediately to his right. The sidewalk was bustling. A horn blared. Astor looked at the Sprinter and caught Sully’s eye.

It was now or never.

“Hey!” shouted Astor, wanting to draw the cop’s attention. He dropped the briefcase and ran. “Sully!”

Astor dodged the pedestrians, weaving this way and that. Sully saw him coming and opened the rear door. Astor jumped inside and slammed it shut. He had made it. “Get out of here. Floor it.”

Astor threw himself into the recliner, grasping the armrests in anticipation of accelerating. The car stayed where it was. “Sully. What are you doing? Go!”

John Sullivan did not start the ignition. The side door opened. Daniel climbed in and placed the briefcase on the floor, then closed the door behind him. He looked at Astor, then toward the driver’s seat. “Thank you for waiting, Mr. Sullivan.”

Astor leaned forward. “Sully, what’s going on?”

John Sullivan turned in his chair and fixed Astor with a vengeful gaze. “No way I’m letting you fuck up my retirement.”

And with that he turned around, put the Sprinter into drive, and joined the late afternoon traffic.

M
arv Shank announced the news of Reventlow’s investment in Comstock on the trading floor. As one, every man and woman present rose and cheered.

“The boss did it,” he said, shaking with pride. “He saved our asses.”

Shank walked the length of the desk, shaking hands and exchanging high fives. After a few minutes he retreated to his office and called Astor. There was no answer. He texted, “U da man! Troops over the moon. Comstock lives to fight another day!”

He kept the phone in his hand, waiting for a reply. Astor was always quick to respond to good news. There was no answer, but he had little time to think about it. His phone began ringing, and it didn’t stop for an hour. First there were the lending institutions, which wanted to thank Astor but settled for Shank in his place.

“Never doubted you for a second,” said Brad Zarek from Standard Financial. “Now that we’re all square, the credit committee would like to increase your line of credit. Bobby mentioned another hundred million the other day. It’s yours for the asking. And at Libor plus a quarter. Of course we’ll beat any competitive bid.”

Shank was tempted to hang up. For once he erred on the side of diplomacy, thanking Zarek as nicely as he knew how, which basically meant he didn’t tell him to go screw himself.

Following the banks came the journalists. There were calls from the
New York Times,
the
Wall Street Journal,
even
Der Spiegel.
The only thing better than a big shot getting his ass handed to him was a miracle recovery.

By six the office was pretty much deserted. The last-minute miracle had sent even the die-hard grinds to the local watering holes to toast Bobby Astor. Shank walked to Astor’s office and peered inside. He checked his phone again, even though he knew that Bobby hadn’t replied to his call or his text. Shank decided he must be tied up at the FBI. He called Sully, but Sully didn’t answer either.

A quiver of unease passed through his body. He felt certain something was wrong.

“Marv, good night. Turn off the lights on your way out.” It was Mandy Price, the chief financial officer. He saw that she was wearing her running clothes, probably off for a quick 10-miler to celebrate. Maniac.

Shank smiled and waved. “Good night. We live to fight another day!”

He stood like that for another minute, gazing around the empty office. He made a slow tour from front to back, taking his time, reminiscing about deals done, about trading strategies that had worked and those that hadn’t, about the pile of money he’d made. He ended where he had started, standing in the middle of the trading floor. He didn’t think he’d ever seen it so quiet.

He looked at his watch and wondered what to do.

He had nowhere to go.