Astor slammed the front door behind him. As he ran to the car, he realized that he had dropped the handkerchief somewhere inside the house. He climbed into the passenger seat as Sullivan started the engine. In a burst of acceleration, the Audi crested the driveway and turned onto the street. Astor twisted in his seat to look over his shoulder. He caught sight of the first police car, but only for a second. The next, the Audi slid around a curve, and an army of trees blocked the road behind them from view. He remained in that position, watching, waiting, expecting at any moment to see the police car round the bend, lights blazing, siren going full-force. No one followed.
Astor put on the safety belt. He sat still, gazing straight ahead, saying nothing as he played back the last seconds in the house: the rushed theft of the annual reports, the mad scramble down the stairs and out the front door. He did not know where he’d dropped the handkerchief.
Sullivan looked shaken. “Take my word, Bobby. We did the smart thing.”
Astor didn’t respond. It wasn’t the handkerchief that bothered him. It was plain and white and lacking any monogram. It was something else. Something worse.
“What is it, kid? What’s wrong?” asked Sullivan, patting his leg in a fatherly manner. “Had enough of playing cop for one day?”
Astor looked away. In his mind’s eye, he was replaying the moment when, in his hurry to leave the house, he’d placed his bare left hand flat against the inside of Penelope Evans’s front door.
He could still feel the door’s smooth texture beneath his fingertips.
28
Alex stood with her back against the front door of her apartment. She didn’t want to be here. She had work to do.
She entered the kitchen and threw her jacket over the back of a chair. She ran a hand over her forehead and cheeks. Her fingers came away veneered with dirt and grime. She needed a shower and sleep. Janet McVeigh was right. She couldn’t perform at the top of her game as she was. But first she needed a drink.
Alex opened the fridge. In contrast to the stuffed refrigerator at Windermere, her own was sadly understocked. There was milk and juice and Katie’s energy drinks, plenty of condiments, and some cheese and yogurt, but not much to make a meal with. With a twinge of guilt, she recalled the platters of leftover spaghetti, lasagna, and veal, the neatly wrapped trays of cannolis, the brimming bowls of antipasto that occupied every inch of her mother’s refrigerator. True, her family owned a trattoria in Little Italy. It made sense that there was always lots of food. But being an FBI agent didn’t absolve her of the responsibility to feed her daughter.
Alex took a bottle of chardonnay off the shelf and poured a glass. She took a sip, then crossed to the sink and dumped the rest out. She was in no mood for ice-cold, slightly sour wine. She walked into the dining room, knelt to open the liquor cabinet, and selected a bottle of Patrón. She poured three fingers into a highball glass and drank it all. The tequila carved a blazing path to the pit of her stomach. She walked into the living room and made a slow, loving examination of the framed photographs that decorated the shelves. Pictures of summer vacations and Christmas holidays, of school pageants and family birthdays. Pictures of dogs and cats and the longest-living goldfish in Christendom. Pictures and more pictures. All of them just smoke and mirrors to disguise the truth that Mom hadn’t been around.
Alex poured herself another shot of tequila, this one smaller, and wandered down the hall to Katie’s room. The door was open and she entered. As usual, the room was in perfect order. The bed was nicely made, throw pillows arranged just so. The desk was clear. There wasn’t a drawer that wasn’t pushed all the way in. Alex wondered if it was normal for a teenager to be so neat or if it might represent some failing on her own part.
With a sigh, she sat down on the bed. She looked at the old cat clock on the wall, watching the eyes go back and forth ticking the seconds. Nostalgia filled her. The clock had belonged to her as a child and had held a similar place in her bedroom. She stood and noticed a piece of her daughter’s stationery on the night table.
A note.
Hi Mom,
I appreciate you letting me go to the lake. Ali and I can take care of ourselves. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m so sad about Grandpa Edward, but I’d be sadder just staying and hearing everyone tell me how sorry they are. I’m more worried about you. Try and do something for yourself while I’m gone. Go see a movie or even a show to take your mind off things. (Daddy always gets the best tickets—maybe you and he could go together. He might need cheering up, too.) Just don’t work all the time. Gotham will survive a day or two without you. And please, please, please tell me if you hear anything about what really happened to Grandpa Edward.
We’ll all be okay.
Love you tons,
K
Alex reread the note, then folded it and held it tightly in her hand. She was crying. A reflex made her peer over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching.
Her Katie, the strong one. She was a straight-A student, president of Model UN, and captain of the field hockey team at her high school. She made curfew without fail, and despite her sometimes snotty attitude toward her mother, she was never less than a polite, well-mannered, respectful young lady to others.
Her relationship with her grandfather had been loving, if distant. The two had been close when Katie was a little girl, but the demands of his job combined with the equally strenuous demands of being a teenage girl in New York City conspired to limit their contact to the usual holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter—and even then, one or the other was often away. Over time, he had slowly drifted out of their lives.
Alex went to the window. The view was to the southeast, and the sun shot darts off the Chrysler Building’s steel carapace. She put her hand to the glass. It was warm and comforting. She thought of Malloy and Mara. She would visit the families when she could. But not now. She couldn’t grieve yet. She was too close to it. Too fragile. She could feel a fissure forming inside her. She couldn’t allow it to split open. Not yet. There was too much to do. She could not allow emotion to interrupt her work.
She left the bedroom and headed to her own room. The guest bedroom merited a glance along the way. Bobby had slept there for two years before the divorce. The marriage had ended the day he left their bedroom. It seemed so obvious now.
Inside her bathroom, she undressed, throwing her blouse and slacks into the dry-cleaning pile. She started the shower while her mind continued on its tour of her failings. Wife, mother, and now, the role she would never admit to anyone else that she held most dear, FBI agent.
Windermere had been her fault. Malloy’s death her fault. Mara’s death, too, and DiRienzo’s. Time and again she ran over her preparations for the job. She had followed procedure to the letter, but procedure wasn’t enough. It never was. Instinct won the day and she’d failed to obey her own. Never again.
Two days on the bricks.
The idea angered Alex, and as she stepped into the shower and let the hot water wash over her, her anger hardened into resolve.
Two days on the bricks.
Not a chance.
She had failed as a wife. She was a lousy mother. The job was all she had left.
She already knew her next move, and the next move was tonight.
29
Astor walked tiredly down the street toward Battery Park. A hot, humid breeze skipped off the East River, snapping his cheeks. The wind smelled oily and foul, and he hated it, hated the day, hated his predicament. He checked over his shoulder and watched as Sully drove away. At some point on the ride back into town, he had told the former detective about his gaffe inside Evans’s home.
“It’ll take ’em a day to dust the place for prints and another day to start feeding what they got into the system,” Sullivan had explained. “And that’s with all the heat this case is going to get, and believe you me, it will get plenty. The FBI will be out there and so will the Secret Service. They’ll go slow and methodical. Even so, I wouldn’
t bank on them IDing you. Who knows how many people visited that house? There could be a hundred different prints on that door. All depends on what they’re able to lift. This is real life, not some TV show. You’re lucky if you get one perfect print.”
“I put my hand flat on the door,” said Astor.
“We already established you’re a numskull. Let’s not belabor the point.”
“How long before we know?” Astor had asked.
“You got forty-eight hours until you have to start worrying,” said Sullivan. “Then it’s a crapshoot. You feelin’ lucky?”
Astor kept his answer to himself.
That was an hour ago.
He had forty-seven to go.
Assured of his privacy, Astor jogged across the pavement, loosening a button on his shirt as he cursed the heat. He’d told Sullivan he needed some space, a little time to think things through. There were some things best kept private.
Reaching Battery Park, he continued to the tourist telescopes. He paused, looking up and down for a lean, compact man, always impeccably dressed. There was no one who matched the description. Astor glanced at his watch, then stepped closer to the railing.
“Hey.”
A hand tapped him on the shoulder, and Astor jumped out of his shoes.
“Take it easy,” said the sandpaper voice.
Astor spun and looked into Michael Grillo’s wizened brown eyes. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“I told you I’d meet you here.”
“I expected you in front of me. Not sneaking up on me like a…a…”
“A spook?” Grillo tightened his lips, which was what passed for a smile. “Habit. Too many years making sure I saw people before they saw me.”
Astor shook Grillo’s hand. “Good to see you, Mike.”
“Likewise.” Michael Grillo was small and leathery, a retired jockey in a $3,000 suit. His hair was gray and close-cropped, his skin taut, craggy, tanned a permanent brown by the sun of hellholes the world over. He had the usual résumé: Army Ranger, Delta Force, tours in Iraq (both wars) and Afghanistan. He also had a Wharton MBA. That was not so usual. He called himself a “corporate security analyst.” No company. Just a crisp linen-stock business card with a single phone number, a promise of utmost secrecy, and an unrivaled skill set he brought from his former profession. Mike Grillo got things done. Astor knew better than to ask how, but the size of his fees suggested some shadowy dealings. Shadowy, as in dark black.
“You look like shit,” said Grillo.
“Tough day.”
Grillo took this in. He was a man who knew when to ask questions and when not to. “This about your dad?”
“Good guess.”
Grillo lit a slim black cigarette. He was the last man in Manhattan to smoke Nat Sherman 100s. “What can I do for you?”
“Palantir.”
“What’s that?”
“Let’s walk.” Astor headed north out of the park. He went over what had happened the night before in Washington, sharing the message he’d received from his father and his belief that the word was a clue about who was responsible for the attack. “My father was working on a secret project at the Exchange,” he added, handing over the stolen agenda. “It’s all here. See for yourself.”
Astor didn’t go into what had transpired at Penelope Evans’s home in Greenwich. Grillo was an employee, not a friend. Astor was quick to draw that line, though there was more to it than that. Sharing that information would make Grillo an accessory. Grillo wouldn’t want that.
They crossed State Street and walked up Broadway. Grillo, an expert in all matters security, was unable to envision any scenario that would engender a Secret Service agent driving his vehicle onto the South Lawn. Astor brought up Sloan Thomasson’s suggestion that the driver had forfeited control of his vehicle. Grillo scoffed at the idea, then seemed to take it more seriously. “Forfeited how?” he asked. “You mean like someone else was driving the car for him?”
“Something like that,” said Astor. “I don’t know. Just spitballing here.”
“I think we need to take a step back,” said Grillo. “It’s not what happened on the lawn. It’s what happened before. You said he texted you a minute before he was killed?”
“Yeah.”
“That means he had an idea something bad was going to happen. He knew they were onto him—whoever ‘they’ are. We have to find out what those three big shots were going to tell the president.”
The men stopped at Trinity Church.
“That word…Palantir,” said Grillo. “Might ring a bell. When do you need something?”
“Yesterday.”
“I need some information about your pop: phones, credit cards, Social Security number.”
“How soon?”
“Yesterday.”
Astor shook hands with Grillo. “I’ll e-mail you what I have.”
“Do that.”
30
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was located in a six-story government building on the corner of First Avenue and 30th Street adjacent to NYU Langone Medical Center, where Alex had given birth to Katie and, in the years after, had recovered from two miscarriages. She parked in the red zone across the street, throwing her law enforcement shield on the dashboard.
Inside the building, the air conditioning was fighting a losing battle against the heat of the day. Alex crossed to the security desk, upset that the morgue assistant hadn’t come up to meet her as promised. She badged the young woman and waited as she called down to the body shop—the refrigerated storage locker where corpses were kept pending autopsy or burial. The morgue assistant appeared five minutes later. He was a short, bearded, unattractive man, slovenly in appearance as well as in manners.
“NYPD was already here,” he said as he led her to the elevator and they descended to the basement. “Got prints, DNA, took some pics—the whole nine yards.”
“I got the memo,” said Alex. “I still need to see the body.”
The attendant opened the door to the storage room and walked in ahead of her. Alex waited as he located the body and transferred it to an examining table. “Take your time,” he said. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Alex approached the table without hesitation. A Catholic childhood and its attendant visitations and open-casket funerals had robbed her of any fear of the dead. Her job had done the rest. She stood over the assailant, Randall Shepherd, true name unknown. The body had been washed. Hours in refrigeration had turned it the complexion of a fish belly.
Three entry wounds decorated the torso. Two were spaced an inch apart just above the liver. The third defined an immaculate circle directly above his heart. Alex shot 40-caliber hollow-points designed to explode on impact and spend their energy within inches of entering a body. In layman’s terms, they went in small and came out big, and in between wreaked havoc on bone, arteries, and organs.
The hatred provoked by the sight of this lifeless, inert form astounded her. A will to violence rose up inside her. She dug her fingers into the seams of her pants to stop herself from striking the body. Death wasn’t enough. He deserved worse.
Three hits and thirteen misses.
If one of those misses had struck him earlier, Mara and DiRienzo might still be alive. The thought would haunt her for a long time. Alex released her grip on her slacks. She was not angry at Shepherd. She was angry at herself.
But she hadn’t come to the morgue to critique her marksmanship. She had come to confirm her hunch that the assailant was a professional soldier. It was not simply the perfect barracks corners on the beds. It was how Shepherd had handled his weapon. How he had fired in crisp three-shot bursts. How he had kept his cool under fire, holding his position and concentrating first on one target and then on another. She had no doubt that the assailant had been in a gun battle before, more likely more than once.
Alex had come because soldiers have tattoos.
At first glance she spotted three. A Samoan war band around the
left arm and a series of tribal stripes running up the shoulder. The design was standard and told her nothing about the shooter. A second tattoo was more promising. Below the shoulder on the right arm, a striking cobra was inked, and below it the Roman numerals III.III.V and the words Vincere aut Mori, which she took to be Latin for “Conquer or Die.”
Alex snapped a photograph of the tattoo with her phone.
A third tattoo, on his right breast, showed an inverted isosceles triangle inside which a small, comical black owl sat staring straight ahead. A parachute filled the space behind the owl. In one corner was a red 10. In another, a green 2 REP. A single Latin word was written along the exterior of each of the triangle’s legs: Legio. Patria. Nostra. She knew the tattoo signified membership in a military organization. The question was which one.
Again she took a picture.
On a hunch, she lifted the right arm. She saw it at once and some small part of her felt assuaged. There on the fleshy underside of his torso were the letters AB.
AB for the soldier’s blood group.
Not just a soldier, she told herself. A commando.
And most probably a mercenary.
31
A gentle breeze rustled the palms surrounding Simón Bolívar International Airport in Caracas, Venezuela. It was dusk and the thermometer registered a mild 75 degrees. A veil of mist decorated the crown of the El Ávila, the mountain that divided the city and stood as an imposing guard to the airport’s west.
Inside the terminal, 110 passengers crowded the waiting area at Gate 16, anxious to board Mexicana Flight 388 with service to Mexico City. Departure had been delayed two hours owing to a cell of thunderstorms passing to the north. Children pressed their faces to the glass, eager to spot a bolt of lightning streaking across the sky. They returned to their parents disappointed. The sky was cloudless. Not one of them had seen so much as the spark from a firefly. Parents shook their heads. Faulty weather forecasts were the least of Venezuela’s problems.
The Prince of Risk Page 13