The Prince of Risk

by Christopher Reich

  “Time will tell. We’re standing behind the position.”

  “And the Chinese announcement?”

  “Posturing ahead of the election this Friday.”

  “Can one election change so much?”

  “Absolutely. The new members elected to the Standing Committee will signal which direction the country is heading in.”

  “And you think they will backtrack on their promises to your government?”

  “They don’t have a choice. It’s hard enough to govern a country of a billion and a half people when the economy is booming. Right now the economy’s in the tank. The Chinese prize stability above all else. You do the math.”

  “Tell me, Bobby, are they still building too many motorcycles?”

  Astor chuckled. During their first meeting, three months earlier, he’d told Reventlow a story that illustrated the economic quandary the Chinese found themselves in. There was a government-owned motorcycle factory in Dalian that turned out two hundred beautiful bikes a day. The motorcycles were picture-perfect knockoffs of Harley-Davidsons but at half the price, and for years they’d sold like hotcakes to countries such as Malaysia, Mexico, and Brazil. But as the yuan grew stronger and the wages of the skilled Chinese workers who assembled them also increased, the motorcycles grew more and more expensive. Clients in expanding nations were price-sensitive. Sales faltered. Soon the factory was turning out two hundred bikes a day but selling only one hundred fifty. The unsold bikes quickly piled up in the freight yard. The government was faced with a dilemma. It could either cut production and fire 30 percent of the workers or continue manufacturing motorcycles that no one wanted to buy. The first alternative would result in the layoff of a thousand workers, a steep decline in the local economy, and certain unrest. The second alternative would result in contented employees, growing losses for the company, and eventual bankruptcy. The Chinese, being ever nimble and ever frightened at calling a spade a spade, chose a third course. It continued making the motorcycles, then created a new company to purchase the motorcycles, take them apart, and sell the metal as scrap. Problem solved. Or at least put off to another day.

  To Astor’s mind, that day was today.

  “Yes, Septimus,” he replied. “I believe they are.”

  “Then there is hope,” said Septimus Reventlow. “What can I do for you?”

  “Show your faith.”

  “Let’s see how the market closes. I need to talk to my family members before I make a decision. Shall we continue this discussion tomorrow?”

  Astor knew better than to push. A commitment from Reventlow to invest the $300 million he’d promised would go a long way toward meeting a margin call and restoring the marketplace’s faith in the firm. “That will be fine.”

  Astor hung up and started toward the door, only to walk into Marv Shank.

  “You’re not leaving, Bobby. Not today.”

  “Marv, please.”

  “I know that your dad is important to you, but Comstock is more important.”

  “There’s nothing I can do to fix the position,” said Astor. “Unless you want me to start liquidating the fund right now.”

  “Our guys need to know you’re here. A captain doesn’t abandon a sinking ship.”

  “This isn’t the Titanic.”

  “Right now it feels like it.” Shank shut the door. “Here’s how it is, Bobby. I’m forty-one. Everything I’ve earned is in that fund. I don’t have a cattle ranch in Wyoming or an apartment building in Chelsea or a freakin’ French masterpiece, and if I did I wouldn’t cart the thing around Manhattan as if I were carrying a six-pack of Bud Light. I’ve got fifteen years of blood, sweat, and tears with you. Fifteen years working seven to seven inside this glass tower. I know it’s my fault that I forgot to grab a wife on the way up. It’s always just been about work for me. You’re my friend, Bobby. Pretty much my only one. I’m asking you. Stay.”

  Astor put his hands on Shank’s shoulders. “Here’s how it is, Marv. You’re my friend, too. But you’re not my father. And about all the other stuff—the ranch, the apartment—pretty much everything I have is pledged to the firm. We go under, I go under. You can write your ticket at any other firm on the street. Me, I’m fish food.”

  Shank didn’t budge. “That isn’t good enough. There are people you can call. Chips you can cash in.”

  “I’ll see what I can do if and when the time comes. Now come on, out of the way.”

  Still Shank didn’t move. “What about your father’s estate?”

  The pounding in Astor’s head intensified. “Excuse me?”

  “Your old man was loaded. He sold his company for a billion ten years back, and that’s not counting how much he earned before. You’re his only heir, right? I mean, your mom’s dead. You don’t have any brothers or sisters. Who else was he going to leave it to? Call his attorneys. Ask them to read the will immediately. They can pledge something. I know a banker who’ll front you the dough.”

  Calm down, Astor told himself. He’s just scared. He has no idea what he’s saying. “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  Astor looked away, hoping his anger would recede. When he spoke, it was in a whisper. “Don’t ever tell me what I can or can’t do. I’m leaving now. And Marv…don’t ever bring up my father again.”

  47

  Michael Grillo did not like to be kept waiting. The time was ten past nine. He stood beneath the awning of a deli at the corner of 61st and Third Avenue, enjoying the shade. He had a rule about this kind of thing: never smoke more than three cigarettes while waiting for a contact. Staying in one place too long put you in jeopardy of being spotted. Just as dangerous, it signaled desperation to your contact. Grillo dropped cigarette number two and ground it beneath his heel.

  He gazed up the block to the corner of 62nd Street, his eyes focusing on the entry to a steel pier and glass office building. His contact worked on the tenth floor of the building, behind a door bearing the words Johnson, Higby, and Mather, Attorneys at Law. His contact was not a lawyer. The names on the door were a front. His contact was a twenty-five-year man with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations, and the offices of Johnson, Higby, and Mather housed an Agency collections office engaged in the analysis of foreign intelligence.

  Grillo checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes. He felt for his Shermans. Instead, he took out his phone and looked at his e-mail. Nothing new had arrived since his contact at the credit bureau had put him onto Edward Astor’s scent an hour before.

  “Astor has a credit score of seven sixty-one,” the contact had reported.

  “Won’t do him much good now,” said Grillo. “Just tell me what cards he carried.”

  “Visa, MasterCard, American Express, the usual. Pays off his balance every month.”

  “His salary is listed at five million a year. He can afford it. Just forward me the card numbers.”

  After receiving the information, Grillo phoned the credit card companies, specifically the individuals who headed the companies’ antifraud departments. As with the nation’s phone carriers, he had spent considerable time and effort cultivating contacts. Unauthorized sharing of customer records was a felonious offense punishable by hefty fines and prison time. His approaches were made in person and with discretion. On occasion he’d been forced to call on a person’s patriotism, meaning that he’d misrepresented himself as an agent for a United States government law enforcement agency. If his requests were denied he had alternate means at his disposal, namely a crafty, cunning, and completely amoral band of hackers based in Shanghai. But they were a last resort, and not to be trusted.

  Copies of Edward Astor’s charges began landing in Grillo’s secure servers soon afterward. By noon he would possess a comprehensive record of all charges the late CEO of the New York Stock Exchange had made over the past ninety days. Grillo was interested not in what he had purchased but in studying the location of his charges to track Astor’s movements.

  Grillo
’s phone rumbled in his pocket. He looked at the caller ID and answered. “That was quick.”

  “You told me to impress you,” said the female executive at the nation’s largest phone carrier. “Check your mail. Just sent over his last three months of calls, including correspondents’ names and addresses.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Prove it.”

  Grillo brought up the message on his screen as they spoke. It was apparent that Edward Astor had spent an enormous amount of time on the phone. Page after page was filled with numbers and the names of the individuals or corporations to whom the numbers were registered. He scrolled to the last entries, detailing calls made to and from Edward Astor’s phone on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He recognized a few names as belonging to well-known corporate supremos. His eye fixed immediately on a call placed to Edward Astor on Friday morning at 9:18. Duration, seventeen seconds. The caller had no name and no address. To Grillo’s eye, that meant the call had probably been made from a throwaway, a cell phone purchased from any corner vendor with a prepaid number of minutes. It might even be from Palantir.

  “I don’t suppose the usual will do,” he said.

  “I don’t suppose it will.”

  “Double, then.”

  “Deal.”

  Grillo hung up. He accessed his banking app and transferred $10,000 from his work fund to the woman’s numbered account at a discreet Dutch bank in the Cayman Islands. He sent a copy to a secure address he’d set up for Bobby Astor.

  Grillo fished out his third Sherman. As he flicked the Zippo and brought the flame toward the cigarette, he saw his contact emerge from the building. He replaced the unlit cigarette in its box, entered the deli, and headed to the refrigerated foods section in the rear. A minute later a portly, bald African-American dressed in khakis, button-down shirt, and club tie sidled up next to him.

  “America’s greatest hope,” said Grillo.

  “Fuckin’ A,” said Jeb Washburn. “Bring it.”

  “There is such a thing as dry cleaning.”

  “I appreciate that coming from a man who’s wearing my annual salary. Those Ferragamos you got on?”

  “You noticed.”

  “I noticed they run six bills in the Bloomingdale’s shoe department.”

  “That’s why I left our government’s service.”

  Washburn picked up a package of sliced ham and pretended to look for the sell-by date. “You better be careful, or you’re not going to be around to enjoy those fancy Eyetalian loafers, Mr. Grill-O. You’re barking up some very dangerous trees.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  Washburn put down the ham. “About Palantir? A little and that’s already too much. Let’s get out of here. I don’t like being penned in like this.”

  Grillo and Washburn left the deli and headed down 61st. Foot traffic was light, and the steady stream of cars passing enabled them to speak without fear of being overheard.

  “Like I said,” Washburn began, “I only know a little, and that’s all I want to know. Don’t suppose you want to tell me what this is about?”

  Grillo shook his head.

  “Fair enough,” said Washburn. “All right then, here it is. Palantir’s some kind of far-out software platform that collects information from about a trillion sources off the Internet and analyzes it for possible threat scenarios.”

  “Sounds like a straightforward data-collection tool.”

  “Nothing straightforward about it. It started as one of the crazy-assed projects financed by DARPA, but at some point the government lost control of it.”

  DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. “Did DARPA cut the funding?”

  “On the contrary. They wanted to double-down. It was better than anything they expected.”

  “Better?”

  “More powerful. It was too good at what it did.”

  “And that is?”

  “Predict future events. A real-life Eight Ball. You remember that thing you shake and wait for the answer?” Washburn stopped and pulled Grillo into a doorway. “It was Afghanistan that did it. Palantir’s mandate was to upload and integrate all our intel over there and see if it could tell us what was going to happen. We’re talking everything from combat after-action reports to local police chiefs’ threat assessments, provincial reconstruction team reports, Agency intel—everything. Palantir just vacuumed everything up.”

  “And?”

  “It worked,” said Washburn. “That was the problem.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It started predicting when and where attacks would take place, the probability of Afghan troops rebelling against us, transport choke points. It was too much.”

  Grillo had served a ten-month tour in the AfPak theater as a company commander with the Fifth Marines. Hellmand Province. It had been a bloody summer. “We could have used something like that.”

  “Don’t you see, man? Palantir wasn’t just looking at today and tomorrow. It was looking at next month, next year—and it told us we were going to lose. That did not go over well at the Pentagon. No siree, Bob. The four-stars over in Virginia were not keen on a top-secret, multimillion-dollar experimental software platform that predicted that the United States of America didn’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell of winning that conflict. They had serious blood and treasure invested.”

  “But you said DARPA wanted to double-down.”

  “Sure, DARPA did. They’re a bunch of mad scientists. Not a soldier in the lot. It was the men with the scrambled eggs on their covers who wanted to shut it down.”

  “What happened?”

  “That was the end. Goodbye, Palantir. Whoever created Palantir disappeared. Went off the grid.”

  “And that’s it? No one’s heard from him since?”

  “You expecting him to make contact after we dumped him?” Washburn gave him a look. “Sounds like you’ve been talking to him more recently than we have.”

  Grillo pulled a grimace. It meant “No comment.”

  Washburn gave him a thump on the shoulder. “I’m outta here. Any of my bosses see me talking to a rich-ass boy like yourself, they’ll think I’m pulling an Aldrich Ames.”

  “In this case, I’d say it’s the opposite. You’re helping the good guys.”

  “Good guys?” said Washburn. “Who are they?”

  “You know who they are.”

  “Maybe I do. You’re one of ’em, Grill-O. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  The two men reached the corner of Fifth Avenue and stopped before crossing, allowing the pedestrians to stream around them.

  “Look, Jeb, my client would like to thank you for your services.”

  “No way,” said Washburn in horror. “I do this for God and country.”

  “Maybe I’ll buy you a pair of shoes. Ferragamos.”

  “Buy my wife a pair. Size seven. Don’t ask me how I know.”

  “You got it, Jeb.”

  Washburn turned and looked Grillo in the eye. “You still smokin’ those nasty cigarettes?”

  “Shermans? Yeah. Want one?”

  “Hell, no. Just wondering why a smart, suave motherfucker like you wants to kill himself.” Washburn laughed. “Cigarettes ain’t bad enough, now you go asking about Palantir. Tell you something for free, Grill-O. Your days are numbered.”

  48

  The CH-53 Super Stallion carrying the eight members of Team Three approached the Tamondo oil rig from the south and touched down on the landing platform at 8:20 local time. The rig was a hive of activity. The night crew had four hours remaining on their shift, and the roustabouts and roughnecks could be seen scrambling among the rig’s catwalks, tending to the giant drill that turned twenty-four hours a day, bringing heavy crude to the surface. Nearly half of the sixty-five-man shift worked in confined environs deep inside the rig, where temperatures routinely hit 100 degrees and the mechanical noise was deafening. Only a few people noted the helicopter’s arrival, and they were quick to t
urn their heads and quicker to forget that the bird had ever arrived. Word had spread about a group of visitors inbound from Mexico. Word said to keep your eyes closed and your mouth shut. None of the crew had a problem with that. Roughnecks knew how to follow orders.

  The members of Team Three jumped onto the deck. A supervisor in a hard hat and sunglasses led them to a private dining room adjacent to the chow hall. A regal spread awaited. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, fresh fruit, baked goods, and a variety of juices filled the buffet table. The mercenaries loaded their plates and ate quickly and without comment. They had been given instructions, too. Eat. Get in. Get out. And shut the hell up.

  Thirty minutes after touching down, they returned to the landing platform and boarded the refueled helicopter. At two minutes past nine the helicopter took off and banked north toward the coast of the United States of America. At no point had anyone checked their travel documents, though technically they had arrived from a foreign country. Nor had anyone made an official notation of their presence. For all intents and purposes, Team Three had never set foot on the Tamondo rig.

  Two hours later, the CH-53 landed at the Noble Energy compound in Houma, Louisiana. Team Three hit the tarmac and walked to a waiting van. Again, no travel documents were checked. No customs officials were present. What was the point? To watching eyes, the team was just another crew happy to be back on dry land after their two-week stint at sea.

  Team Three was on American soil.

  49

  “Where we headed?” asked John Sullivan.

  “Cherry Hill.” Settling into the backseat, Astor caught Sullivan’s look of surprise. “You heard me. And step on it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sullivan navigated north to Delancey Street and crossed the East River on the Williamsburg Bridge before merging onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. At 10:15, traffic was light, and the vehicle made good time driving north, reaching I-495 in just fifteen minutes.

  “Got your wheatgrass if you’re interested,” said Sullivan when the ride had smoothed.