The Prince of Risk (9 page)

T
hree seconds after Bobby Astor hung up with Penelope Evans, a transcript of the call landed in the technician’s inbox in Iceland, already translated into his native language and ready for forwarding to his master halfway around the world. The technician did not read the transcript. He had no interest in the affairs of the men and women on whom his master spied. There were far too many people to keep up with any one.

At last count, the satellite was programmed to intercept the communications of over 57,000 individuals. One slow evening he had perused the names listed next to the phone numbers. Some he recognized. Some he did not. But in general the names fell into two categories: government officials and corporate chieftains. There were presidents and prime ministers, senators and delegates from nearly every country on the globe, including plenty from his own. There were bankers and industrialists, chief executives of this corporation, chairmen of that. There were lawyers in Berlin and magistrates in Bulgaria. After an hour he abandoned his task. One thing was clear. Sooner or later, every influential individual in the world ended up on the list.

The technician tapped his keyboard, forwarding the message to his master’s private mailbox. His duty done, he swiveled in his chair and gazed out the window. It was midday and the sun blazed high in the sky. Crystals embedded in the fields of pumice sparkled like diamonds on a stormy velvet sea. He considered his position, working alone in such a solitary, isolated corner of the world. He daydreamed often about achieving a higher rank, of bettering his job and earning more money. He was a young man, bright, hardworking, obedient. Anything was possible.

The technician decided he was happy where he was. There were more important things than being influential. He did not want to end up on the list. When he talked to his girlfriend, he didn’t want anyone to be listening.

M
agnus Lee, chairman of the China Investment Corporation, exited from the elevator at the twentieth floor. He checked the direction markers and set off to his right, toward offices 2050–2075. With its industrial carpeting, fluorescent lights, and wood veneer doors, it could be any corridor in any corporate office in the world. Though it was nearly midnight, a steady stream of men and women walked past. They were smartly dressed, well coiffed, purposeful of step, every bit the equal of their Western counterparts.

As he walked, he passed beneath signs hanging from the ceiling adjacent to each office door. Written in English and Chinese, the signs read
GENERAL MOTORS, IBM, MICROSOFT, EXXON
. He was currently on the twentieth floor of building F-100. He was not twenty floors above the earth’s surface. He was twenty floors beneath it.

F-100 stood for “Fortune 100.” And building F-100 was one of six interconnected structures in the sprawling subterranean complex that made up the Institute for Investment Initiative, or i3. Buildings F-200 to F-500 housed companies ranked 101 to 500. A sixth building, known only as T, was reserved for special projects and companies that possessed products, technology, or intellectual property deemed to have the highest strategic value for the state.

The CIC was the tip of the iceberg, the portion above water, impressive to behold but benign. i3 was the remaining three-quarters of the iceberg, the enormous mass that remained below the surface, hidden from view, and possessing an infinite capacity for danger.

Lee had founded i3 a year after taking the reins at the China Investment Corporation. It was not enough to invest in foreign companies. Investment provided an attractive monetary return, but it was the corporations that truly benefited. The infusion of capital enabled them to hire more workers, develop new products, and expand market share in their respective industries. If China was to compete, it must develop its own industry. It must make its own automobiles and airplanes, its own computers and software, its own everything. In short, it must assemble an economic and industrial infrastructure of the highest order that not only rivaled the West’s but surpassed it.

It was a daunting task…
without help
.

And so he had suggested an idea to his colleagues in the Ministry of State Security.

Industrial espionage as a state-sponsored covert policy.

An aggressive campaign of systematic, targeted thefts of any and all corporate knowledge, with the goal of copying, implementing, and improving said knowledge for the benefit of Chinese business.

Five years later, Lee’s idea could be judged a success by any measure. China was able to compete with the most technologically advanced companies in America, Europe, and Japan across a wide swath of industries: automobiles, computers, microchips, even satellites and rocketry. All had made use of pirated technology to achieve their gargantuan leap forward.

For his work, he had been awarded a commission in the People’s Liberation Army and given the rank of major general in the Intelligence Division. In a few days he would learn whether he would receive a more coveted title, that of vice premier for finance, one of ten men to serve on the Standing Committee.

One of ten to rule more than 1 billion.

It took Lee another minute to reach his destination. The sign above the entry to office 2062 read
CISCO SYSTEMS
and was printed exactly as you might find on the cover of the company’s annual report. Lee was a stickler for detail.

Cisco Systems (No. 62), with revenues of $45 billion, was a San Jose–based manufacturer of computer hardware and software, notably routers and switches, the components that built the Internet’s backbone and speeded traffic along the information highway. It was estimated that 99 percent of all Net activity passed through at least one Cisco device.

Lee walked past row after row of executives seated at workstations. A large overhead picture of Cisco corporate headquarters occupied one wall. The company’s name was emblazoned in large block Lucite letters on another. The room’s furnishings were identical to those found at the main Cisco campus, and each worker wore a Cisco personnel badge around his neck with a genuine neck strap. The men and women seated at their terminals were even working on projects similar to those of their counterparts in California. Some were engaged in designing new routers, others in updating existing switches, and still others in keeping up with current customer orders.

But the Cisco Systems office in building F-100 was no official subsidiary. It was a clone or, more precisely, a parasite latched onto its host, copying its DNA project by project, department by department, division by division via a web of hacked e-mail servers, mirrored hard drives, tapped phone exchanges, and concealed surveillance devices in hardware, software, and physical plants. There was even a micro audiovisual transmitter in the chief executive’s office. All these devices gave Lee and his team access to 80 percent of the company’s daily business activity.

“General Lee, an honor to have you with us,” said the office director. The man had a PhD from Stanford and had logged eight years working at Cisco headquarters, including two years as assistant to the chief executive. As he approached, he held out a rectangular black unit the size of a car stereo. “I wanted you to be the first to see it. The Nexus 2000. An exact copy of Cisco’s latest and most advanced router. We’ll manufacture it under our own Bluefire label and have it ready for delivery to customers six months before Cisco.”

“Price?”

“Twenty percent below the American model.”

“Impressive.” Lee felt his cell phone vibrate and checked the screen.
Urgent: An intercept from STS-1 in Iceland.
“Would you excuse me?”

Lee left the room and read the transcript of a conversation that had taken place minutes earlier between Robert Astor and a woman named Penelope Evans, who he quickly gathered was Edward Astor’s personal assistant. It seemed that Edward Astor had had a partner in his investigation, and now the son was intent on speaking with her.

For a moment Lee was taken back to a day a few years earlier. Construction on the i3 complex was complete. Every month he and his team were siphoning more information from their rivals. He was at his desk when the door opened and a familiar figure entered. Lee stood at once, both thrilled and frightened.

“Copying is no longer enough,” said the premier, the most powerful man in China. “Our policy of state-sponsored industrial espionage can take us only so far. It is not enough that we succeed. The West must be seen to lose.”

Lee nodded.

“Can you do more to help us?”

“Yes,” said Lee. “I can.” For he had been harboring the same thoughts and had spent long hours thinking about how to help his country. And so he told the premier his plan, and the premier gave him his blessing.

On that day Troy was born.

Magnus Lee reread the intercept, biting his lip. It could not have come at a worse time. He had not yet revealed to anyone that Edward Astor had contacted his son about Palantir, or that there was any kind of possible breach whatsoever. And now the son was taking up his father’s crusade.

The ripples were closing in on the shore.

Troy was at risk.

Lee found a quiet corner and placed a call to New York State.

“Hello, brother,” came the strong, familiar voice.

“Hello, Shifu,” said Lee, using the respectful title for “master.” “How quickly can you find someone for me?”

T
he FBI’s New York office for counterterrorism was housed on the upper floors of a red-brick building on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea. The Bureau shared space with several fashion designers, a software startup, and a law firm. Two restaurants occupied the ground floor. One belonged to a television chef famed for his bald pate and brusque manner. The other had recently received three stars in the
Times
and boasted a bone-in rib-eye steak priced at $135. Both eateries were beyond the reach of the dedicated men and women earning government salaries who passed by every day.

Alex exited from the elevator on the eighth floor. She passed through the biometric security station—thumb plus six-digit personal entry code—and headed to her office. Word of the shootings had spread through the office. Friends and enemies approached to offer their sympathy. She acknowledged each without breaking stride. If she stopped for a second, she was finished. Her carefully constructed façade would crumble to the ground. She had to keep moving. Work was the disease and the cure.

Alex’s office sat in a lonely corner of the building off the bullpen that housed her squad. Dr. Gail Lemon was waiting inside when she opened the door.

“I’m surprised to see you,” said Lemon. “You’re required to take a few days off.”

Alex continued past her to her desk. “And you’re required to have the courtesy to wait for me to arrive before barging in.”

Lemon was the New York field office’s staff psychologist. She was petite and prim and looked as if Alex’s battering ram outweighed her by 10 pounds. “You’ve suffered a traumatic loss,” she said, with a beatific smile. “I understand you’re upset.”

“You don’t understand squat.”

“There’s no need to be hostile.”

“That wasn’t hostile. You’re still standing and I don’t see any blood.”

The smile faltered. “Now, Alex—”

“It’s Special Agent Forza…and remind me, Dr. Lemon, do you carry a badge?”

“Of course not. I didn’t go to the academy.”

“And you’ve never spent a day in the field?”

“Not exactly…but if you—”

“Then get out of my office.”

Lemon stood her ground, arms crossed. “Alex—I mean, Special Agent Forza—you’re required to seek help.”

“You want me to talk to a shrink, send someone who knows what it feels like to lose three men. They were family.”

A half-dozen people gathered by the door, drawn by her raised voice. “It’s okay, everybody,” she said, speaking over Lemon’s head. “Dr. Lemon was just heading out.”

“Three days’ leave,” stated Lemon through gritted teeth. “Those are the rules for agent-involved shootings.”

Alex held the door. “I have work to do.”

Still Lemon wouldn’t leave. She turned a half-circle, taking in the barren room—the metal desk, the half-empty bookcase, the battering ram, and of course the picture on the wall. Her mouth twisted as if she’d tasted something putrid. “Something is wrong with you, Special Agent Forza. You’re a sad, hostile person. I’m going to have a word with the assistant director.”

Alex shooed Lemon out of the room. “Make sure you say hello from me. She’s the one who gave me this job. Have a pleasant day.”

Dr. Gail Lemon’s response was unrepeatable. The beatific smile had left the building.

Alex shut the door and blew out a sad, hostile breath. One more word and she would have struck the woman. Her gaze shot to the photograph of J. Edgar Hoover on the wall behind her desk.

“Father,” she said, “I promise you that I am going to catch the sons of bitches who did this to my boys. And then…”

Alex left the last words unspoken. What she had in mind did not conform to the highest ideals of the FBI.

T
here was a knock on the door and a head poked around the corner. “Boss,” came a squeaky voice. “Got a sec?”

Alex looked up from her paperwork. “Get in here, Mintz.”

Special Agent Barry Mintz shuffled into the office. He was forty going on fourteen. Tall, gangly, with thinning red hair, trusting blue eyes, and an Adam’s apple to rival Ichabod Crane’s, Mintz was the lone holdover from her predecessor’s team at CT-26. Those who hadn’t transferred out voluntarily, she’d pushed out herself. All except Mintz. He wasn’t brash, bold, or confident, which was how she liked her agents on the threat response squad. In manner and bearing, he was the opposite. He was quiet, self-effacing, and polite. Mintz was the guy in the corner no one noticed. And yet Mintz got things done. He was a six-foot-three-inch package of administrative whup-ass. When he entered the room asking if she had “a sec,” Alex knew enough to put down whatever she was working on and pay attention.

“Got a call from Windermere,” said Mintz. “Guys found something at the scene.”

Alex tapped her pen impatiently. “Yeah?”

“There’s not just machine guns under the floor,” Mintz continued. “Looks like they turned up a lot more.”

“How much more?”

“Don’t know. But I think he used the words ‘a fuckin’ arsenal.’”

Alex dropped the pen. A second later she was up, throwing on her blazer, and coming around her desk. “Mind if I drive?”

“Sure…um…do you have to?”

“Attaboy.” Alex patted Mintz on the shoulder and led the charge to the elevators.

She remembered that there was only one thing that she didn’t like about Mintz. On the shooting range, he qualified last among all her charges on every occasion. His nickname was Deadeye.

In recent years, events in the Bureau’s history had come to have their own names, one- or two-word monikers that not only brought to mind the crime but somehow encapsulated the entire event: the criminal act, the investigation, and the aftereffect on the Bureau. WTC referred to the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in ’93. Oklahoma City, to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by the homegrown radicals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Waco referred to the bloody and botched standoff between the federal authorities and the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh. There was Ruby Ridge and Flight 800 and the
Cole
and of course 9/11. With three officers killed in the space of a few minutes, Windermere was set to join that black pantheon.

It was this thought that filled Alex’s mind as she drove the Charger across Manhattan. She was under no illusions. Her career was history. There would be no formal reprimand. No mention of fault would be scribbled into her personnel file. Nonetheless, she was done. Within a month she would receive a transfer to a less visible and less important post. Or maybe a letter from headquarters offering early retirement, with a coyly worded suggestion that she would be wise to accept. They might even throw in free airfare to the retirees’ job fair held every January and June in D.C. But never again would she receive a promotion. Alex Forza had topped out at supervisory special agent, and all her privately held dreams of one day serving as the Bureau’s first female deputy director had been killed as dead as Jimmy Malloy.

Still, she refused to be sad. She was allergic to self-pity. She was pissed. Somebody was going to pay.

Windermere Street was cordoned off at both ends of the block. Alex flashed her badge to get through the line. Police vehicles clogged the street. She double-parked next to a blue-and-white and slipped her badge into an ID pocket and hung it around her neck.

The shooting was classified as a multiple homicide. The crime scene belonged to the NYPD. Normally a detective first grade would run the scene, but the deaths of three federal agents bumped things up the chain of command. She introduced herself to the lieutenant running the show, then passed under the police tape and entered the house.

Inside, the forensics teams were finishing up. A half-dozen men and women in white Tyvek “bunny suits” passed her on their way out. No one had cleaned up the spot where Jimmy Malloy had died, and the blood had coagulated into a crusty black pool as thick as mud. She halted, unable to keep herself from staring.

“Um, boss.” Mintz tapped her on the shoulder.

“Yeah, sorry.” Alex skirted the hole in the floor where Shepherd had fallen, ducking her head so no one would see her wipe away a tear. “Who’s running things for us?”

“I am,” said Bill Barnes from the top of the stairs. “Come on up. I want to show you something.”

Barnes was the ASAC for intel, and nominally Alex’s boss. He was a TV agent: tall, fit, a little too good-looking, hair too perfect, with a groomed mustache and twinkling brown eyes. He was wearing jeans and a white polo shirt with the New York CT logo on the breast pocket.

Alex hustled up the stairs and shook Barnes’s hand. “Hello, Bill.”

“Knew you’d be back,” said Barnes, not happily.

“For once, you were right.” Alex looked over the railing. “I thought all the stuff was downstairs.”

“We’ll take a look in a second. I think you’ll want to see this first.”

Barnes walked to the end of the corridor and gestured toward the last room on the left. Alex looked inside. Six cots sat at right angles to the wall, three to each side, in the manner of a very small dormitory. Each cot was fitted with a top sheet and a gray woolen blanket. Each was made to perfection.

Barnes took a quarter from his pocket and bounced it on the nearest cot. The quarter rebounded and he snatched it out of the air. “Mommy doesn’t teach you how to make a bed like that.”

“Looks like Mr. Shepherd was expecting guests.”

“Looks that way,” agreed Barnes.

The three FBI agents descended the stairs and made their way through the kitchen and into the garage.

“We found a passage cut into the drywall behind a filing cabinet,” said Barnes.

“Mintz said something about an arsenal.”

Barnes tossed her a Maglite. “See for yourself. And keep your head down. Especially you, Deadeye.”

Alex followed Barnes into the passage, turning on the Maglite as she entered. A set of tracks laid into the ground allowed a trolley to roll back and forth, she guessed, to facilitate moving the heavy crates. Ten steps in, the ground fell away to either side, excavated to create rectangular moats 4 feet deep, 20 feet long, and 10 feet wide. Crates stacked as neatly as in any armory—some the same olive drab as those that held the machine guns, others plain pine or painted black—filled the depressions.

“Done an inventory?” asked Alex.

“Preliminary,” said Barnes. “It’ll scare the shit out of you.”

He hopped off the raised dirt path into the storage pit to his left. Light shone from the hole in the floor where the assailant had fallen onto the crates of machine guns. Alex jumped down, then turned and offered a hand to help Mintz. The three walked among the wooden boxes. The first markings read
Antipersonnel Grenades.

Oh yeah, thought Alex, she had put her foot in it.

For the next two hours she helped Barnes, Mintz, and several members of the JTTF haul the weaponry out of the garage so it could be tagged as evidence and examined. The tally included two crates of AK-47s, count 8; two crates of 7.62mm ammunition, count 1,000 rounds; one crate of antipersonnel grenades, count 20; one crate of white phosphorus grenades, count 20; one crate of Sig Sauer 9mm pistols, count 8; and four rocket-propelled grenade launchers with sixteen grenades.

“There’s enough here to start a war,” said Alex when they’d cleared everything out.

“A small war,” said Barnes.

“War doesn’t need an adjective in front of it.”

Four unmarked crates remained to be opened. Alex slipped a crowbar under the lid of the first and pried it open. Communications equipment. Kneeling, she removed a transparent bag holding one complete multiband radio set—receiver, headset, lithium batteries, and belt pack. The items had been removed from their original packaging, assembled as a unit, and repackaged.

“Eight sets total,” she said, handing one bag to Mintz. “I want a trace on all these items. Someone bought them somewhere. I want to know where and when.”

By now Barnes was working on the next crate. With a crack, the wood splintered and the cover fell to the ground. “Vests,” he said, removing a navy-blue protective vest.

“Why not?” said Alex. “They have everything else.” She picked up a vest. It carried two 4-pound plates in front and an 8-pound plate in the back. “Twenty pounds before your commo gear, your ammo, your rifle, and your helmet.”

“Whoever wears one of these had better be in shape if he wants to keep moving for more than ten minutes,” remarked Barnes.

“Someone who makes a bed you can bounce a quarter off.” Alex noted a slim band of white plastic peeking from a breast pocket. Deftly she slid out a folded rectangular booklet. The title on the cover read
Walker’s Map of Manhattan.
The numeral 1 was written in royal-blue Sharpie on the top corner. She showed it to Barnes and Mintz. “Check and see if all the vests have one of these.”

“Roger that,” said Barnes, as one after another the maps were discovered.

Alex looked at Mintz. “How many vests?”

“Eight.”

“All with maps?”

“Yes.”

“All numbered?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re looking for eight shooters,” said Barnes.

Alex gathered the maps and read the numbers from each corner. What had been a bad day got considerably worse. “We’re not looking for eight,” she said.

“What do you mean?” said Barnes.

“Take a look.” Alex handed him maps numbered 1–4.

“Yeah—so?”

And then she handed him maps numbered 21–24. “We’re looking for twenty-four.”

Barnes held the maps, saying nothing. Mintz winced and said, “But…”

“Hey, boss,” shouted one of the uniformed policemen who had been helping them remove all the crates. “Found one more. Almost didn’t see it way in the back.”

The policeman dropped the crate at Alex’s feet. It was small and slim, no more than 3 feet by 2 feet and as thick as a phone book. The markings on it were Cyrillic with numerals scattered here and there.

Alex took up the crowbar and pried open the box. Inside was a single metal tube, drab green, looking like nothing more than a plumbing fixture. She knew better. Gripping the tube at one end, she gave a yank and it telescoped to twice its length. Lifting it to her shoulder, she unlatched the vertical sight and put her eye to the crosshairs.

“That what I think it is?” asked Mintz, with equal measures fright and disbelief.

Alex spun and pointed the TOW antitank weapon directly at him. “Ka-boom.”