The Prince of Risk

57

“Did you find him?”

Astor slammed the door closed and slid across the back seat.

“He’s waiting now.”

“And you didn’t use your phone?”

“I found the last pay phone in the city and said exactly what you told me.”

“All right. Floor it. I have to be at Central Park West at seven.”

Sullivan put the Audi into gear and started the drive uptown.

Astor leaned his face against the window, watching the city go by. He was thinking about Septimus Reventlow and wondering what kind of game he was playing. It was understandable that he might want to put more money into the fund yesterday…but today? Shank had been right when he’d called Astor a crazy man. And what to make of Reventlow’s tepid attempt to purchase a share of the firm? Maybe the man had better contacts in China than he did. Time would tell. Anyhow, Astor wasn’t planning on waiting until tomorrow at three to line up the funds he needed.

The Audi hit a pothole, jolting Astor and sending a twinge of pain through his arm. The anesthetic had worn off an hour ago and the wound ached intensely. He felt for the bottle of pain relievers in his pocket. Vicodin. Strong stuff. He dropped it back into his pocket. Instead, he used the pain to focus his attention on his current predicament.

Astor was not one for deep thought. He did not hold with Frost and the “life unexamined” nonsense. Or was it Socrates? Another fault of his truncated education. He preferred to read military histories and biographies of generals and decorated soldiers. He knew that a good general leads from the front. He liked to think that he lived from the front, with his eyes locked on the horizon. Yet if there was ever a time to stop the tanks, to take a long look back and ask how he had gotten here, this was it.

It seemed like yesterday that he was turning the keys in the door of his first office, at 21st and Madison, in some leftover space he leased from First Boston, and taking his first step up the ladder. He had no lofty goals, either monetary or social. He never once said, “I want to make a million dollars a year” or “ten million,” or “I want to be worth one hundred million by the time I’m forty.” He simply went to work each day at the appointed hour and dedicated himself to his job, which meant analyzing annual reports, watching the market, and picking stocks better than the next guy. The secret came in the repetition of this cycle, day in, day out, year in and year out, without fail. Was he ever the best at picking stocks? Of course not. But on some days he was better than average, and when you added those days together they were enough to enable him to rise to the top of his profession.

It had been so much simpler in the beginning. No possessions. No family. No money. There was just the job. But as the years passed, all that changed. He married. He had a child. He hired employees. He earned money. He hired more employees. He earned more money. He bought a home. His name appeared in the paper. He began to have status and he enjoyed it.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Until voilà! One day, here he was. He was the same Bobby Astor who’d started his business on a wing and a prayer and the fifty grand he’d made at poker tables around the city. Yet there was no denying he’d grown into someone different. Someone bigger. Someone more substantial. It was as if success, responsibility, fatherhood, and philanthropy had fused to create a new Bobby Astor, and that Bobby Astor demanded a larger physical portion of the world. He’d started out a gecko and grown into Godzilla. And goddammit, he liked it. He liked it a lot. No apology necessary.

And then came the descent.

The estrangement from his father.

The separation from Alex, and then the divorce.

And now the bet on the yuan.

From the heights of Olympus to the edge of the abyss. What had taken twenty years to create, he stood to lose within twenty-four hours.

Astor looked in the mirror. Fighting eyes glared back.