The Prince of Risk (17 page)

T
he Pilatus P-3 landed at sunrise.

At Matamoros Airport on the southernmost tip of the Texas border with Mexico, the temperature on the ground was a balmy 88 degrees. Three black Chevrolet Suburbans waited on the tarmac. The members of Team One deplaned and were at once overcome by the scent of mesquite and yucca. Requiring no instruction, they divided themselves into groups and climbed into the vehicles.

The convoy left the airport by a restricted gate at the east end of the field, one mile from the main terminal, and traveled north on Highway 101 until reaching the Zona Industrial, a swath of warehouses and factories situated a stone’s throw from the American border. Matamoros was a center of
maquiladora
manufacturing, and the Zona Industrial was home to many of the world’s most famous corporations, including General Electric, Walmart, and Sony, to name a few.

In the cars, the six men and two women were given breakfasts high in carbohydrates, energy drinks, and snacks to sustain them in the hours ahead. The next leg of their journey would not be as comfortable. Most busied themselves as they ate, studying maps, memorizing radio frequencies, mentally repeating the tasks they would be asked to perform during the coming crucible. All were professionals, and they knew how to use the time remaining to them wisely.

After thirty minutes the vehicles pulled up to a gate at the rear of an unmarked warehouse as large as two football fields laid end to end. The gate rolled back on its tracks and the vehicles entered a loading zone running the breadth of the building. They drove past three eighteen-wheelers lined up at the docks, bays open, an army of men and machines filling each with pallets of finished goods bound for export to the United States.

A fourth rig sat alone at the far end of the loading zone. The three SUVs parked beside it. The team members climbed out and stretched their legs. Several recognized the name of a large American chain of supermarkets painted on the side:
Pecos Supermarkets
. Atop the cabin was a refrigeration unit designed to chill the truck’s interior to 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The rig was a meat hauler used to transport freshly slaughtered beef and poultry from industrial farms in northern Mexico to stores in the United States.

At 7 a.m., a lean, mustachioed Mexican wearing a white straw Stetson and mirrored aviators emerged from the factory. The leader of Team One was expecting him. The two men shook hands but did not exchange names.

“You have something for me?” asked the Mexican.

The leader of Team One was blond and compact and tanned. He had served for ten years in the South African Army, where he’d earned the nickname Skinner. He handed the Mexican a plastic freezer bag containing the passports used to pass through Mexican immigration control. From here on out, no one would carry any form of identification, false or otherwise.

“Eight. All accounted for.”

“Excelente,”
said the Mexican.

The Mexican led the members of Team One to a dressing room adjacent to the loading platform. To one side hung row upon row of jumpsuits; to the other, fur-lined parkas. Gloves were piled into a rack in one corner. Insulated boots occupied another. The men and women moved from one garment to the next, selecting those that fit. They emerged ten minutes later looking as if they were bound for the Arctic Circle.

The Mexican accompanied them into the rig. A concealed door at the rear of the cargo area opened into a narrow compartment. There was no room to sit. The team filed in and took their places shoulder-to-shoulder. The Mexican closed the door. A short time later, the refrigeration unit rattled into operation. The compartment grew colder. Frost crusted eyebrows and eyelashes.

The manifest called for the rig to haul five tons of beef carcasses to a meat processing plant in Harlingen, Texas. Loading began promptly at seven-thirty and ended one hour later. The truck left the Zona Industrial at 9 a.m. The stop at the border was short and uneventful. The supermarket chain was too large to be suspected of smuggling illegal immigrants. A company such as that did not break the law.

At 10 a.m., the truck arrived at the meat processing plant. The team waited patiently, shivering in the cold. No one complained. They were earning too much money to let a chill bother them. Unloading the carcasses was a slow affair. It was not until one in the afternoon that the rig was emptied and the Mexican with the white Stetson and mirror aviators opened the door.

“Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos.”

Team One had arrived on American soil.

A
stor left home at 5 a.m. The office was 3 miles away. It was too early to wake Sully, and he didn’t want to drive the Ferrari or the Benz or even the Ford Fusion. For that matter, he didn’t want to get into anything with a motor. A brisk anonymous walk was his safest option. He took the stairs to the ground floor and said good morning to Don the doorman, who was eyeing him with suspicion, as if trying to figure out which Mr. Astor it was this time: the serious model of the last year or so, cordial, polite, in bed at eleven and up at five, or the ungoverned model of yore, back to his boozy, licentious ways.

“You waiting on Mr. Sullivan?”

“I’m walking it today.”

Don motioned at the rectangular package wrapped in thick brown paper that Astor carried under his left arm. “Sure you don’t need a radio car? That looks kind of heavy.”

“I think I can handle it.”

Outside, the morning was cool and crisp. Astor hesitated at the curb, looking up and down for anything suspicious. He stopped after a few seconds. He wouldn’t be able to spot a hit man if one walked up to him with a gun in his hand. He set out nervously, but his anxieties left him after a few blocks. The sun crested the horizon and its soft rays cleansed all they touched: the cobblestones fronting the corner café, the grime-encrusted grille protecting the liquor store across the street, even the brick walls layered with graffiti. All were colored shiny and new and radiated the promise that was the city’s greatest strength.

He headed south on Tenth Avenue for a few blocks before cutting over to Washington and making his way through SoHo and the Village. He had donned his usual outfit: navy suit, white shirt, lace-ups, with a necktie tucked into his pocket for emergencies. There was a good chance it would see some use today. He looked at every street corner, the familiar storefronts and restaurants, with a kind eye. He knew he’d been granted a second lease on life, maybe even a reprieve. At some point he’d come to believe that things happened for a reason. He wasn’t sure if there was a purpose to life, and if there was, what his might be. He was not so presumptuous as to guess why these things happened or to assume that a higher power was involved. He just knew in some inchoate but unshakeable way that life gave you signs and it was up to you to spot them and, more important, to act on them.

And so he knew that there was a reason he had not stepped straight into the elevator shaft and fallen to his death. He did not believe the reason was that he could go right back to work and continue devoting his energies to making as much money as possible. There was a bigger reason, and that reason was to find out what had happened to his father.

Astor kept it as simple as that. It wasn’t exactly a road-to-Damascus moment, but whatever—he wasn’t a saint. Just thinking about it made him uncomfortable.

Astor happened to glance up at a street sign.

Church Street.

“Coincidence,” he said aloud.

He kept walking.

“What are you doing here so early?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

“We’re in it deep and stinky, boss.”

Marv Shank peered from his desk. It was just past six and already his shirt was rumpled, his necktie askew, his cheeks dark with stubble that had eluded his razor.
If I look half as bad as that,
thought Astor,
we are in trouble.

“Come on down to my office. We’ll see how we can get our boots clear of this.”

“They’re still going to smell.”

Astor put his hand on Shank’s shoulder as they walked the length of the office. “Ye of little faith.”

The trading floor was deserted. A stuttering fluorescent bulb lit the room, giving it the melancholy, abandoned feel of a ballroom after the fest. In an hour, thirty of the smartest men and women on the planet would be patrolling the area, people of seething ambition and robust intellect, plotting strategies, marshaling facts, placing bets on the most efficient marketplace in human history, filling the room with enough energy to light the island of Manhattan and the other boroughs of New York. For now, though, it was just the two of them up against it.

Inside his office, Astor switched on the light and set the package down against the side of his desk.

“What’s that you got?” asked Shank.

“That?” Astor settled into his chair, swiveling to study his price screens. “Insurance.”

Shank picked up the package, felt the edges, then set it back down. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yup.”

“And you just put it in your car and carried it here?”

“Actually, I walked it over. Didn’t want to wake Sully so early. We had a rough day yesterday.”

Shank turned paler than he’d been a minute before. “You walked it over?”

“It’s only three miles from my place to here. Who’s going to hassle me at five in the morning? Lots of people out and about that early. Safest time of day.”

“Yeah, I saw some of them loitering by the bridge, having their morning constitutional on my way in. Real safe.”

“No worries. I run that route all the time.”

“Now I’m feeling better. For a second there, I thought I was working with a raving lunatic.”

Astor considered this. “Not raving.” He squinted to read the numerals on the screen. “So what you got?”

“Same as yesterday. Rock-steady at 6.175.”

“So we’re looking at a six-hundred-million-dollar margin call at closing if this sticks. What do we have in the till?”

“After the fifty we wired to Zarek yesterday?”

“After that.”

“Comstock Astor has another thirty free. The rest is in equities.”

“Only thirty? Who allowed me to commit forty percent of the fund to one position?”

“That would be you, sir.”

Astor stood. “Loans from banks are out. No one is going to give us a cent until we get our head above water. That leaves two options.”

“Reventlow?”

“Or someone else smart enough to realize that our bet is correct and that sometime in the next seventy-two hours, when our man is elected to the Standing Committee, the yuan will start to lose value like air from a punctured tire and they will stand to make a heap of money.”

“That investor would also have to be smart enough to believe that you, a New Yorker whose entire personal knowledge of China comes from a six-month visit when you were twenty years old, knows more about the economic policies to be enacted than a ranking government official who just got off the tube promising that his country would continue to allow its currency to appreciate versus the dollar.”

“Precisely.”

Shank ran a hand over his mouth, a poor bid to conceal his skepticism. “What’s the second option?”

“You know what it is.”

Shank’s eyes had never been darker. “The Hindenburg.”

“Liquidate the fund. Sell off everything we have in Comstock Astor. Pay the margin call.”

“Shutter the firm.”

Astor nodded. “Who entrusts their money to a man who just lost two billion dollars?”

“I’m not coming up with too many names.” Shank sniffed and pointed at the rectangular package. “How much?”

“Not enough.”

“Anything else?”

“The house in the Hamptons. Cabin in Aspen. Cattle ranch in Wyoming.”

“I’ll buy the Ferrari from you.”

“Thanks, Marv. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Even if it added up to four hundred million—which it doesn’t—we couldn’t get the cash anywhere near in time. You know the rules. Twenty-four hours to pay up after the margin call is issued.”

“You can get ’em to stretch it?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it would be all over the Street like wildfire.”

“So we’re looking at option one.”

Astor saw a light go on at the far end of the trading floor. He stepped out of his office in time to see a small, ratlike figure scurry down the corridor.

“What is it?” asked Shank.

“Ivan. I need to speak to him.” Astor came back into the office. “Oh, and Marv. Set up a meeting with the China team at eight.”

“Those guys usually don’t get in till later.”

“Eight. I have to leave right after.”

Shank shrank back, his brow furrowed in disbelief. “Not again. I told you to keep out of it.”

“It’s not your call.”

“You’re damn right it’s my call. You have no business deserting the office today. And for what? To go on some wild-goose chase. Get real. If you don’t contact Alex and tell her about this, I’m going to.”

Astor had a fistful of Shank’s shirt and tie before he knew it. “You’re not going to contact anyone. Do you understand?”

Shank blinked madly, his hands raised, unsure of what had just happened, what his best friend was doing. “What the hell?”

Astor released him. He was surprised at his action, but he did not regret it. “Hey, Marv…”

“Yeah?”

“Mind your own business.”

“I
van. I need you for a second.”

“Everything all right? None of the platforms are off?” Dr. Ivan Davidoff jumped from his desk and began scanning the array of monitors and screens that made up his office.

“Everything’s fine,” said Astor. “Relax. Unless of course, you’ve come up with a way to make the numbers only go up.”

Ivan looked at him nervously, as if the thought had crossed his mind. “No…not yet.”

Ivan was thin and pale with a three-day stubble, a shaved head, and dark eyes that looked as if he’d just gotten 30,000 volts. He had a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York and had spent three or four years out west at Apple doing cutting-edge stuff he still refused to talk about. It was the stress that had done him in. Ivan wasn’t built for fifteen-hour days and the relentless, deadline-driven world of Silicon Valley. He was built to design and oversee the sophisticated trading platforms that powered Comstock’s daily business and to work in a quiet, orderly environment that he could control.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions. Just stuff for my own curiosity.”

“What about?”

Astor closed the door and pulled a chair up to Ivan’s desk. “I’m not sure how to put it. I guess about controlling things. Like at my home. I can turn the lights on and off by voice command. And I can program the heat and air conditioning and the TV through my phone.”

“That’s old technology. Very simple. If you’d like, I can explain.”

Astor stopped him before he could get started. “Not necessary. Just listen to what I have to say.”

Calmly and with as much objectivity as he could muster, he related the events of the past evening, leaving out a few salient details—for example, how he’d fallen into the elevator shaft and nearly been killed. Ivan took in the information blankly, registering no surprise even when Astor explained how the elevator doors had opened without the elevator’s being there.

“The first part is simple,” said Ivan. “Someone hacked your phone, accessed your voice mail and manipulated the data, then resent it to you.”

“How can they do that?”

“Depends. You ever leave your phone anyplace that people can get it without you looking?”

“My office, maybe. Home. But I always keep it close. Why?”

“Someone could have cloned it. Takes about ten seconds.”

“What’s that—cloning?”

“Copy your SIM card. Get all the information from it. Numbers, contacts, texts, and passwords. Or they could have installed spyware. I can check. Give me your phone.”

“Actually, I don’t have it.”

“You leave it in your office?”

“I crushed it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Last night. With a hammer. I was kind of pissed off.”

Ivan looked at him with a newfound respect. “They can access it other ways,” he went on. “Get into your voice mail. Or through social engineering, you know, contacting someone at your phone company and convincing that person to give them the passwords for your accounts or to reset everything to factory defaults. You’d be surprised how many people at those big carriers are on the take.”

Astor thought about Mike Grillo and his contacts at those very same big carriers. Point taken. “And the elevator? I mean, you can’t tell an elevator what to do.”

“Why not? A computer controls it. You control the computer.”

“But it’s inside the building. I mean, who would know how to reach it?”

Ivan smiled and began rocking in his chair, and Astor could practically read his mind.
Welcome to my world, homey.

“Nothing is inside anything,” said Ivan. “Elevators are like computers themselves. They have software that tells them how fast to go up and how fast to go down. How long to keep a door open and how quickly to close it. But someone has to be able to control the elevator itself, and that someone is probably not always on the premises.”

“How do they do that?”

“By connecting the elevator to a remote operating platform that is hooked up to the Net. The platform probably controls everything in the building: heat, security, lights. Hack the platform and you can take control of the elevator. For the elevator doors to open without the elevator’s actually being there, someone had to break into the platform and issue an override command.”

“So it’s possible?”

“For an outsider with little knowledge of the system, it would be very, very difficult,” said Ivan. “But if he worked for the elevator manufacturer, easy-peasy.”

“Thanks, Ivan. That should cover it.”

“You sure I can’t help you with something else?”

“You’ve been more than helpful.”

Astor left the office and headed across the trading floor. Halfway there, he stopped. A thought came to him, as clean and white-hot as a bolt of lightning.

Page 23. Sonichi annual report. The Sonichi Express 2122.

Whoever wanted to hurt Astor didn’t work for the company.

He owned it.

Astor slammed the door to his office and turned on the whiteboard.

“Memo. Private equity investors in Evans’s companies.”

The names of the private equity companies that had invested in those firms whose annual reports he’d found at Penelope Evans’s home appeared on the board. One by one, he called up their websites and scrolled through the contents until he found a list of companies the equity firms had invested in, past and present. He was not sure what he was looking for. He was only hoping that if there was a pattern, he could sniff it out and make sense of it.

“Watersmark.”

Astor paid particular attention to the sponsor that had been involved with the Sonichi Corporation. He noted that Watersmark had purchased Sonichi seven years earlier and taken it private for $6 billion. There was no mention about how Watersmark had restructured Sonichi, only that Sonichi had recently achieved record earnings and was set to go public again in the fourth quarter of the present year. Watersmark could count on making a hefty profit. Chalk up one for the good guys.

The other companies in Watersmark’s portfolio included Pecos, a large supermarket chain based in Texas and with operations in the southwestern United States; Silicon Solutions, a microelectronics company out of Canada; and a mining company in Australia.

Astor tried to imagine a connection between them. What might an industrial engineering firm whose smallest division manufactured elevators have in common with a supermarket chain or a mining company or a maker of specialized microchips? He could think of nothing. Nor could he link them to the bigger question: How might products manufactured by any of these companies allow someone to take control of an automobile?

Astor dug out the sheet of blue stationery from his father’s home that he’d found at Penelope Evans’s. Cassandra99. Still the word meant nothing.

She was there with my father, thought Astor. In our home. A home I swore never to set foot in again.

The answer was in Oyster Bay.

“Boss, the China boys are ready.” Marv Shank stood in the doorway, coffee in one hand, daily breakfast burrito in the other. “You good?”

“Be right there,” said Astor.

Whether he was good or not was another question entirely.