The Prince of Risk

50

Astor broke out of his reverie, his attention caught by a flash in the mirror. Warily he walked to the window behind him. He looked outside and saw nothing. And yet he sensed something. A presence. He opened the door to the terrace, stepped outside, and walked the length of the deck, unsure what he was looking for. Below, in the gravel drive, Sully stood by the car, taking a call.

“Sully, you see anything out here?”

John Sullivan lowered the phone. “Like what?”

Astor looked to either direction. It had been a bird, he decided. Something that had landed on the railing and flown away. “Forget it.”

“Find anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t take too long. I don’t like this.”

Astor reentered the bedroom, taking in everything with an investigator’s eye. It was immaculate and showed no sign of a rushed departure. He guessed that Penelope Evans had stayed behind when his father traveled to Washington, D.C., and that she had cleaned up after him.

He walked into the bathroom. It, too, was neat and orderly. Shaving cream, aftershave, and deodorant were missing from the medicine cabinet. It had been an overnight trip. On the top shelf were prescriptions for Lipitor and Viagra. Astor smiled. Dad was getting some.

Astor entered the closet. One wall was taken up by suits. Dark gray, light gray, gray pinstripes, gray Prince de Galles, summer weight, winter weight…but gray. He turned, expecting to find the opposite wall similarly racked with clothing. Instead he found himself looking at dozens of framed photographs, laminated articles, and mementos running from floor to ceiling. It was the trophy wall Astor had never given himself. There were photos of Bobby as a preteen, playing baseball and football, and older, skiing in Colorado and the Alps, and of Bobby in high school at the beach in Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons. There were plenty of more recent photographs, too, nearly all of him arm-in-arm with Alex or playing with Katie.

And then there were the articles, taken from numerous newspapers and magazines, chronicling his rise to the top. Astor smiled, seeing the front-page piece from the Wall Street Journal with the stipple-pen portrait that made him look like a leering zealot. There was even a framed invitation from his first clambake, which his father had neither attended nor acknowledged.

Everything about him.

Astor felt his throat tighten. Confusion and comprehension battled. He stared at his life in pictures, and he knew, maybe for the first time, that his father had loved him.

Astor turned away. It was too much. A distraction. Emotion merited no place today.

A dresser stood at the far end of the closet. He opened the top drawer. A polished wooden box with the word Beretta engraved on a corner sat on the jumble of socks. The name jarred him back to reality. He set the box on the dresser and flipped open the lid. A stainless steel pistol lay cradled on a bed of black velvet inside. It was a 9mm with a tapered snout and a crosshatched grip. He freed the pistol. It was heavier than he expected, and he noted that the magazine was in and the safety was on. Sully had taught him more than he ever wanted to know about firearms. He racked the slide. A copper-nosed round lay in the chamber.

Ready to fire.

Astor regarded the pistol. His father had been a fire-breathing liberal and no friend of the NRA. Imagining him with a gun was like picturing Mother Teresa brandishing an M-16. There was only one reason for him to possess any kind of weapon. Edward Astor was frightened for his life.

Astor slipped the pistol into his belt. If his father had needed a weapon, so did he. And Penelope Evans? Nothing could have protected her against an assailant so stealthy he could get within an inch of her in broad daylight without her knowing.

Astor left the bedroom. If he were to find answers, he would find them in his father’s office.

The monk leaped the railing, retreated across the roof, and slid down the drainpipe to the back porch. A check around the corner confirmed that the driver remained next to the car. Astor called out from the second floor, asking if the driver had seen anything. The driver responded that he had not. The monk heard Astor cross the terrace, then retrace his steps and reenter the bedroom. Content in his knowledge that Astor was on the second floor and confident that he had not been seen, the monk used a penknife to jimmy a kitchen window and climbed inside the house. A block of cooking knives sat on the counter. He selected a short, slim instrument, ideal for jabbing. Despite its size, the knife had heft. He swung it back and forth, gaining a feel for it. He ran his tongue delicately across the blade and tasted blood. The knife would do.

He left the kitchen and climbed the back stairs. He emerged in a dark, narrow corridor. To his left, the stairs continued up another flight. He walked to the door and gripped the knob firmly. He turned it slowly, feeling the metal components brush against one another, begging to squeak. The knob reached its apex and he opened the door a sliver. He was standing at the rear corner of a landing running around the perimeter of the two-story foyer. Diagonally across the open foyer, the door to the bedroom where the monk had seen Astor stood ajar. The monk placed a hand on the floor. A vibration reached his fingers. One footstep. Another. Slow. Measured. The sound of a man searching intently, without hurry. He saw no shadows in the bedroom. Instinct told him to wait.

The tempo of the footsteps increased. A shadow approached the open doorway. Astor emerged from the bedroom and disappeared down the hall. The monk sprang from his hiding place and glided across the landing, using Astor’s footsteps to conceal his own. He gained the hall and peered around the corner in time to see Astor enter a room at its far end.

The monk paused. He heard a chair scoot across the floor. There was the sound of papers being examined, objects being moved from one place to another, then a soft but definite thud, indicating that Astor had sat down.

The monk advanced down the corridor with patience. He held the knife in front of him, his wrist pronated so the blade faced up, in the killing position.

The noises from within the room grew louder. The clack of a keyboard told him that Astor was at a computer. The monk slowed, allowing his victim a moment to be drawn deeper into his research. There was no risk of his stopping Older Brother’s plan. Anything Astor learned in the next few minutes, he would keep to himself forever.

The monk peered around the doorway. Astor was seated in front of the computer, engrossed in his research. The monk entered the office. He walked with excruciating calm, closing the distance to his victim. He noted something change on the computer screen. There was the sound of a dial tone. A black box opened.

“Who are you?” asked a man’s voice.

The warrior monk froze.

He made the decision not to attack but to listen.

Astor reached a hand inside the top drawer of his father’s desk. The sepia envelope was where it had been twenty-seven years ago. He removed it gingerly and slipped Feodor Itzhak Yastrovic’s immigration papers onto the desk. His past no longer frightened him. What was in a name, anyway? Astor or Yastrovic? Episcopalian or Jew? The ease with which his family slipped between the two showed how little weight a label carried. If his name stood for anything, it was honesty, integrity, and success. If Comstock failed, he would tarnish all those words.

Astor replaced the document in the envelope and set it on the desk, laying the pistol on top. Next to the computer rested the stationery and the fountain pen Penelope Evans had used to write Cassandra99. A Hermès scarf lay draped over a chair nearby. On the table next to it stood a glass vase filled with a summer bouquet, the flowers still fresh. Yet something was missing. There hadn’t always been a vase full of flowers on the table. Astor remembered there being a pair of crystal decanters filled with amber liquid in that place. He thought back to his father’s bedroom. He hadn’t seen any liquor there either, yet his father had always kept something close by for a late-night drink.

She’d done it, he realized. She’d broken the old bastard of his habit. Edward Astor had died a teetotaler.

Astor hit Return and the screen lit up. He pulled down the bar for Recent Items. The first application listed was Skype, the Internet phone service. He clicked on the sky-blue icon to launch the program. Astor selected History from the menu. Edward Astor and Penelope Evans had called a single person repeatedly over the past several days.

Cassandra99

Astor opened the correspondent’s details. Snatching the fountain pen, he noted the web address: Cassandra99@donetsk.ru.

Ru for Russia.

The last call had been placed on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Astor moved the cursor to the Connect icon and clicked. A window opened at the center of the monitor, but it was black. No one was visible. A second smaller window displayed his own face, captured by the camera embedded in the computer frame. He looked drawn and tired.

“Who are you?” asked a male voice.

Friend or foe? Astor had no time to deliberate. “Robert Astor. Who are you?”

The man ignored the question. “What do you want?”

“I’m sure you know.”

“I know that you’re Edward Astor’s son. That doesn’t explain your presence at his home.”

“My father texted me a message before he was killed. I believe it had something to do with the reason for his meeting with Gelman and Hughes that night.”

“What did he text you?”

“I need to know who you are first.”

“I’m the person who alerted your father to the problem in the first place.”

“Look,” said Astor, “I’m tired of talking in circles. If you’re not going to tell me your name, at least tell me what this is all about.”

But again the man refused to answer. “What did your father text you?”

“One word. Palantir. I told Penelope Evans, and she seemed to know what I was talking about. Now she’s dead.”

“So you spoke with Penelope?”

“Briefly. She wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone. She said that they were listening and that they knew everything I did.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Not at first.”

“And now?”

“Yes.”

“What changed your mind?”

“When I learned that she had been working with my father, I contacted her to see if we might meet. She told me to come to her house. She asked me to hurry. The only way anyone could have known I was going there was to have hacked my phone and used it as a microphone to listen in on my conversation. I didn’t know that was possible until last night.”

“What convinced you?”

Astor explained about the doctored voice mail luring him to his garage and his near fall into the elevator shaft. “If they could do that, they could easily use my phone as a mike.”

“They’re getting desperate. An incursion like that will leave tracks a mile long. It must be happening soon.”

White noise mottled the screen.

“Is that them?” asked Astor.

“They’re trying to listen even now.” The voice had lost its natural timbre. It sounded robotic, the words strangely modulated.

“What’s happening soon?” demanded Astor. “Who are they? Why did they kill my father?” He had too many questions, and Cassandra99 offered too few answers.

“They killed your father because he knew. I’d venture to say the same about Penelope Evans. I told her to leave. I’m not responsible for her death, too.”

“She was packing a suitcase. She was waiting to speak with me.”

“I told her to leave this alone. I’m telling you the same. It’s too big for you. Do as I say. Leave the premises now and forget anything your father told you.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I won’t be responsible for you, too.”

“I’m a big boy,” said Astor. “I can look after myself. Tell me why Penelope Evans was looking into Silicon Solutions and Britium.” Astor listed the names of the other companies whose reports he’d discovered at Evans’s home.

“It’s too late, Mr. Astor. No one will listen to you anyway.”

“But you know?”

“That’s my job.”

“Who killed my father? What are they planning?”

It was then that Astor saw the reflection in the monitor.

A man was standing three feet behind him.

“Go home, Mr. Astor,” the voice on the computer went on. “You were brave to check on Miss Evans and braver to come to your father’s house after the attempt on your life. If you want to live, leave now, go back to work, and forget about this matter entirely.”

The man in the reflection came closer. It was him, Astor knew. It was the phantom who had killed Penelope Evans. Astor willed himself not to look over his shoulder. To look was to die.

“You can’t just let it happen,” he said. “I’m his son. I deserve to know.”

“Oh, you’ll know soon enough. We all will.”

“But-”

A door slammed inside the house. Footsteps pounded up the stairs, echoing through the foyer.

“Bobby!” shouted a female voice. “You in there? It’s me.”