The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller

by Drew Chapman

  BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, JUNE 25, 6:01 A.M.

  Garrett didn’t like Kenny Levinson the moment he saw him ambling jauntily down the steps of his Joralemon Street brownstone. Levinson was dressed in jeans and a faded Animal Collective T-shirt, with a pair of green Converse All Stars on his feet, the essence of Brooklyn well-heeled hip. But Garrett thought he looked like he was trying too hard. Garrett thought he looked like a putz.

  Chaudry had found Levinson’s address the moment Garrett realized that this time the crime would be front-loaded. The crime would spur the stock drop. And the crime, Garrett guessed, was probably murder: killing a young, handsome chief executive.

  Levinson, Garrett knew, was worth $2 billion. At twenty-nine, he was one of the five wealthiest people under thirty on the planet, with Mark Zuckerberg having just aged out of the list. Levinson was handsome, ever present in the media, effusively—and famously—in love with his gorgeous wife and young daughter, and he owned a spectacular brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. He was the whole package.

  Garrett didn’t begrudge him his success—he just didn’t want to stare it in the face.

  An NYPD cruiser from the Eighty-Fourth Precinct arrived on Levinson’s block just before Garrett and the FBI did. A pair of beat patrolmen ran up the steps and ushered a surprised—and slightly alarmed—Levinson back into this house, while Garrett, Alexis, and Agent Chaudry took up the rear. Garrett almost laughed out loud when the self-satisfied smile on Levinson’s face gave way to a grimace of fear, but Garrett reminded himself to stay on task and not be an asshole, which was never easy for him.

  Patmore stood guard out on the front stoop, watching the street, while Mitty and Celeste followed Garrett inside. Bingo had elected to stay inside the FBI sedan down the block, watching all the excitement from the backseat. He said he’d had enough for one day.

  The brownstone was just as Garrett expected: bright and airy, with a picture window looking onto the street, and modern art that Garrett didn’t recognize—or particularly like—on most walls. Levinson’s wife—clutching their infant daughter—looked panicked and just as confused as her husband, but Garrett noted that she was beautiful even in pajamas and an old T-shirt.

  “What is this about?” Levinson asked, three times in a row. The two NYPD cops ushered him away from the window. Garrett moved to the window himself, peeking out onto the street, and thought he saw, maybe just for a moment, a sliver of a shadow slip away onto Clinton Street, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “We believed there was going to be an attempt on your life,” Chaudry said. “This morning. And we didn’t want you out on the street before we could protect you.”

  Garrett watched as two more cop cars pulled up into the narrow street, completely blocking it. The police officers jumped out and took up positions on the sidewalk, on both sides of the brownstone. An unmarked car pulled up behind the police cruisers, and two men whom Garrett assumed were FBI began to prowl up and down the street.

  “He’s not going to try it now,” Garrett said, motioning to the older of the two officers standing in the living room. “You could tell your guys outside that maybe they should check the neighborhood. See if there’s anyone suspicious lurking about. That’s an idea.”

  But the NYPD cops just stared at Garrett and said nothing. They didn’t seem to like being told what to do by a civilian.

  Garrett shrugged and turned to Levinson. “Have you gotten any death threats lately?”

  “No one’s trying to kill me,” Levinson insisted. “No one’s threatened to kill me. And could we not talk about this in front of my wife and child?”

  “Ma’am, maybe we could walk you upstairs,” the younger cop said. “Do you have a back bedroom, away from windows?”

  Levinson’s wife nodded and took herself and the baby up a staircase. The younger cop followed them.

  “Cute kid,” Garrett said. “You should have more. You know, bring more joy into the world. That kinda shit.”

  “Who are you again?” Annoyance showed on Levinson’s face.

  “I’m the guy who just saved your life. I’m your guardian fucking angel.” Garrett winked at Levinson. Garrett hated winking, but knew it would make the young entrepreneur uncomfortable, which Garrett wanted. It was an itch he needed to scratch.

  Levinson scowled at Garrett and turned away.

  “How about your company’s stock?” Garrett asked. “The IPO was seven months ago.”

  “So?”

  “Anything unusual going on with it? A lot of short interest?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You didn’t notice fluctuations in the pricing? A pattern of buying or selling? Odd lots?”

  “I don’t watch the stock too closely. Money is not why I do this.”

  “You do it for the babes?” Garrett asked.

  “What is your problem?” Levinson’s perfect eyebrows flared angrily.

  “How about threats against the company? Any of those?”

  “We get complaints sometimes. From customers who aren’t satisfied.”

  “What exactly is it that your company does again?” Agent Chaudry asked.

  “We provide aggregated crowdsourcing solutions to corporate IT and strategic-planning departments,” Levinson said, as if by rote. He’d clearly given that elevator pitch more than a thousand times.

  “For that you get two billion dollars?” Chaudry asked. “I’m in the wrong business.”

  Garrett laughed.

  “We’re valued at thirty billion, actually,” Levinson said. “Two billion is my share.”

  “Right.” Garrett sighed. “Your share.” He dropped onto a plush white couch. He knew he shouldn’t be jealous of Levinson—but he just couldn’t help himself. Garrett wasn’t hurting in the money department, but Levinson seemed to float above Garrett—and his class—with an ease that sent ripples of rage coursing through Garrett’s body. Two billion dollars was a lot of fucking money. What made Levinson more deserving of that than Garrett? Or more deserving of this house? Or that wife, and that family? Garrett wanted those things—wanted them badly, maybe the happy family most of all—but he wouldn’t be admitting that anytime soon. Not out loud.

  Levinson stepped into the center of the room. “Can someone please tell me who you think is planning to kill me. And why?”

  Alexis walked out of the kitchen—Garrett thought he saw her inspecting the vast Viking range—and pointed out the window. “Someone is creating economic havoc. Tampering with the American economy. We saw that yesterday.” She pointed next at Garrett. “He saw signs of the havoc on the stock market. Ripples of buying and selling that were correlated to real-world events. Crimes. Hackings, bank runs, and shootings. Murders.”

  “And you think that I’m next?” Levinson said.

  “You were next. It’s just not going to happen now. The moment has passed.” Garrett pulled his cell phone from his pocket and checked the time. “Six thirty in the morning. The markets open in three hours.”

  “Wait, you’re saying my murder would trigger a stock plunge?”

  “In the stock of Crowd Analytics it would. You’re the founder, CEO, face of the company. You die, the company is in turmoil, the stock plummets,” Garrett said. “I’m still not sure what the stock plunge would have triggered, but your death would have started it. But we’ve protected you, so they won’t come after you. It won’t help them anymore. They’re moving on to the next phase. What I need to know is, where?”

  Levinson ran his hands through his shoulder-length hair, as if a troubling thought had just occurred to him. “There has been something.” A wave of worry crossed his face. “Our underwriting company—Goldman Sachs—said there were rumors out there—”

  Garrett suddenly picked himself off the couch. “Of a derivative? Linked to your stock?”

  “You knew that?” Levinson leaned against a white w
all, just under a bright-colored painting of garbage trucks. He looked as if he might be sick.

  “Was the rumor that the derivative would pay off if your stock dropped under a certain price?” Garrett asked forcefully, any playfulness in his voice long gone.

  Levinson nodded yes. “Under fifty-five. But I didn’t believe it. Who would put money into a derivative like that? We’ve done nothing but go up. And why would they do it?”

  Garrett moved to Levinson, to the wall he was leaning against, and got in the young entrepreneur’s face. “Kenny. Buddy,” Garrett said, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “I need to know something. The rumors. Did they say what bank the derivatives came out of?”

  Kenny Levinson closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. To Garrett, he looked immensely tired, as if the last ten minutes had aged him ten years. The glee Garrett took in that made him question his own moral bearings; he could be a nasty son of a bitch.

  “Yeah,” Levinson said. “Vanderbilt Frink.”

  MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, JUNE 25, 8:58 A.M.

  The lobby of the Vanderbilt Frink Trust and Guaranty was grand, the walls tiled with modernist frescoes, the ceilings hung with elaborate steel chandeliers. Chaudry flashed her FBI badge at the security team behind the front desk, then chattered at them out of Garrett’s earshot. The rest of the Ascendant team—Alexis, Mitty, Celeste, Bingo, and Patmore—hurried into the lobby moments later.

  “You and you,” Chaudry barked as she jogged back from the security desk, pointing at Patmore and Alexis. “Watch the side exits, on Forty-Seventh and Forty-Sixth Streets. I want military on those doors. Anyone comes outside, you stop them.” She turned to Agent Murray. “Call for backup and wait in the lobby. When agents arrive, I want them at the side exits with the military folk.” Chaudry turned to Mitty, Celeste, and Bingo. “You wait here as well, but call Murray if anyone runs. Don’t try to stop them yourselves, got it? Agent Murray is the muscle, not you.”

  Mitty nodded, a bit disappointed, but Celeste and Bingo seemed fine with their instructions. Chaudry waved at Garrett, and the two of them marched past security to the elevators. They rode silently to the tenth floor, and Garrett watched the tension play out on Chaudry’s face.

  “Stop staring at me,” she said.

  “You get to tell me what to look at?”

  “That’s right,” she grunted. “I fucking own you.”

  “When does that end?”

  “When I say so.”

  Garrett let out a low laugh. “I need to renegotiate.”

  They got out on ten and were met by an anxious-looking assistant. The assistant put her hand out, as if to stop them. “Mr. Wells is meeting with senior management and I really can’t let you—”

  Chaudry stiff-armed the assistant in the shoulder, spinning her around and bouncing her off a wall. “Fuck off,” Chaudry said, and strode past the secretary. Garrett followed, liking this more and more with every passing second. They walked to a wooden door, and Chaudry popped it open without hesitation. Garrett imagined that was what she must have been like on drug raids, and he was sorry he’d never seen her pull a gun, although this was a decent second best.

  She entered, and he followed behind her. An enormous table, thirty feet long, took up most of the middle of the room. Seated around the table were a dozen bank executives, all men, except for a lone woman, and all white, except for an Asian man sitting on the far side. Wells sat in a black Aeron chair at the head of the table, and he looked exhausted; his hair was uncombed and there were dark circles under his eyes. As Garrett gazed at the faces of the executives, he could see that they all looked worn-out, as if none of them had slept in days, maybe weeks.

  Wells popped out of his chair the moment he recognized Garrett. “You cannot come in here! Jesus fucking Christ, what is wrong with you people?” He bared his teeth like a snarling dog. “Have we not already talked?”

  Garrett grinned. He liked Wells’s anger. The wave of emotion made Garrett calmer; he liked the conflict of it. It gave him a purpose, made him choose sides.

  “There are derivatives coming out of your bank,” Garrett said, circling the table. “And they are set to make you and your shareholders incredibly poor, incredibly fast.”

  “You said that last time, and it didn’t happen. Now get the fuck out of my offices!” Wells was striding around the table to bump chests with Garrett, but Garrett dropped into an empty chair before Wells could get to him.

  “This room has a nice feel to it.” Garrett threw his feet up on the conference table. “Airy. Spacious.”

  Wells charged at Garrett, rage on his face, and reached out to grab him, but Chaudry stepped between them, her badge still clutched in her left hand.

  “You touch him and it’s interfering with a Bureau investigation,” she hissed. “Mandatory five years in federal prison. Is that what you want?”

  Wells froze. Garrett loved that; he could get used to having an FBI agent bodyguard.

  “Do you realize the current situation? The danger we face? What possible thing do you people want me to do?” Wells asked.

  “Shut down your bank. From A to Z,” Garrett said. “Every last employee, every terminal, every trade. Tell them to go home. Tell them to stop work. Shut it down. Close the doors until the moment passes.”

  Wells blinked in astonishment. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “It’s that or be known as the CEO who crashed the American economy.”

  The other executives in the room were mute, staring wide-eyed at this confrontation.

  “I can’t close down an entire bank. That’s not feasible.” Wells’s voice was at a barely controlled whisper. He loomed over Garrett, the veins on his neck popping out. “Where is this derivative from? What desk? What trader?” Wells shook his head. “You’re guessing. Asking me to shut down the bank because you have no idea of the answer to those questions.”

  Garrett watched the vicious scowl on Wells’s face, the arms pumping, the fists clenched.

  “You said there was a mole in my bank, but you’ve looked and looked, and you can’t find him. You have no idea who it might be. You want me to take the fall for you. You want Vandy frozen up to help you, but you don’t really give a shit about me or my bank, or all the people who work there. You’re just flailing because you don’t know what’s going on.”

  Garrett pulled out his phone, checking the time. “It’s nine eighteen. Markets open in twelve minutes.”

  Wells jabbed a finger in Garrett’s face. “There’s no mole in my bank because there couldn’t be a mole in my bank. We’re too solid, too careful, and I know everything that’s going on in this building. Every last goddamned thing!” Wells said those last words with a victorious finality, as if saying them made them true and put the entire argument to rest.

  Garrett took a long breath, then reached out and gently moved Wells’s pointing finger away from his face. “And that is the answer,” Garrett said, dragging his feet off the conference table and pulling himself out of the chair to face Wells. The bank CEO was bigger than Garrett, with broad shoulders and thick arms, and Garrett, for just one brief second, imagined head-butting him to the floor. Then he remembered that the last time he had head-butted someone, he’d ended up fracturing his own skull. “You know everything, control it all. You are the all-powerful CEO. Master of the universe. You’re the only one who could protect a mole.”

  Wells stood silently, and Garrett could almost see the light blinking on in the older man’s brain.

  “So either the mole inside Vandy is in your office, or it’s you.”

  VANDERBILT FRINK, JUNE 25, 9:25 A.M.

  Jeffrey Thomason could remember the exact moment his disgust overwhelmed his obsession with the finance industry. He was an assistant on the desk of a Vanderbilt derivatives trader—a cruel, self-centered middle-aged man whose every other word seemed to be motherfucker—a
nd Thomason had been told, for the fourth time in two hours, to get the trader another coffee from the Starbucks in the building’s lobby. Thomason got a call on his cell phone while waiting in line for the coffee. His mother told him that his father had had a stroke and was in the hospital, but Thomason could only stay on the phone for a minute, because late-delivered coffee would be viewed as a termination offense, just like talking on a cell phone during work hours.

  But when he handed his boss the coffee, seven minutes later, the derivatives trader didn’t even bother to taste it; he uncapped the cup and tossed the coffee into Thomason’s face, screaming at him in front of the entire trading floor for letting his coffee go cold. But the coffee wasn’t cold; it scalded, and Thomason had to sprint to the bathroom and run cold water over his chin and neck to keep his skin from blistering.

  He should have quit right then. Just walked out the door. But he needed the money, needed the job, and quite honestly, he didn’t have the balls to leave. Some part of him still wanted to succeed at Vandy. But the ember of rage and humiliation had been lit, and every minute of every day it grew hotter.

  His father didn’t die. He was released from the hospital a week later. Thomason became more compliant, more subservient, faster and smarter. He got a raise—albeit a small one—and was transferred first to a VP’s desk, and then all the way to the top, to Robert Andrew Wells Jr.’s desk on the thirty-first floor. In the two years it took him to get there, Thomason plotted his revenge. He mapped out ways to attack the company, steal from Vandy, ruin the traders on the floor. He concocted schemes and plans, but he could never quite figure out how to pull them off.

  Until Ilya Markov appeared in his life.

  The meeting had been online, on the darknet. It hadn’t been entirely serendipitous, because Thomason had been searching for someone like Markov for more than a year, someone who would provide Thomason with the expertise and the planning, but also with the courage to actually follow through on his ideas. They felt each other out, each probing the motivations of the other, until Thomason felt fairly certain that Markov was the real deal. He’d never seen Markov or talked to him on the phone; he didn’t even know Markov’s real name until a few weeks ago. But he picked up that Markov was smart, brilliant even, and that he was capable of doing real damage: to the traders, to Vandy, maybe even to the world at large.