The Prince of Risk

4

Two thousand miles to the northeast, the sun was rising on a desolate, windswept plain guarded on three sides by the youngest mountains on the planet. Heather and scrub rose in scattered stands. Vapor from sulfur hot springs seeped into the air. It was a land that time had forgotten. The region was known as Aska and it lay in the center of the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland.

Until a year ago, Aska had been the exclusive domain of ecotourists and wilderness enthusiasts. Visitors to the island flocked to the famed Ring of Fire, the scenic road that skirted the country’s dramatic coastline. Locals preferred the southern coast, where temperatures could be counted on to be a few degrees warmer than inland. With the nearest road a three-day walk, only the hardiest men and women ventured so far into the island’s interior.

All that changed when an international investment group purchased a 200-square-kilometer tract in the region and announced its intention to build an upscale eco-resort. Pictures of the planned resort were printed in the Morgunbladid, the nation’s oldest newspaper. Opposition was vocal and immediate. Icelanders had a long history of distrusting foreigners. It was not the resort itself they minded. It was what lay below it. Ceding valuable gas and mineral rights to a group whose allegiance was unknown would be imprudent at best.

More immediate concerns won the day. The global banking crisis of 2008 had devastated Iceland’s economy, wiping out the country’s banks and saddling its citizens with a whopping debt of 60,000 euros per person. A project that would inject hard currency into the economy was a godsend. Prudence be damned.

Questions about the investors’ origins were answered perfunctorily. The group was domiciled in the Cayman Islands and maintained executive offices in New York and Singapore. The primary shareholders were impressively capitalized corporations with lofty-sounding names like Excelsior Holdings and Sterling Partners. The sole executive to visit the island was a tall, dark-haired man named Magnus Lee.

Lee was a mystery from the start. From afar, he appeared Asian. He had an Asian’s black hair and a certain nimbleness about his step. But there was nothing Asian about his size and the breadth of his shoulders. Close up, one couldn’t help but stare at his blue eyes, which one smitten woman likened to her country’s glaciers. He spoke English like the Queen, and was heard speaking the czar’s Russian to a fishing executive from St. Petersburg. Talk about his nationality was short-lived. Icelanders knew a gentleman when they saw one. Most important, he had money. Barrels and barrels of money.

One year later, the first phase of the resort was complete. A road had been built. Grounds had been cleared. A billboard showing a color representation of the finished structures held pride of place atop a rise of the razor-sharp pumice. An iron fence topped with concertina wire encircled the building site. Yet of the hotel itself there was no sign. Inside the fence was only a single low-slung, windowless concrete edifice. And next to it (and far more impressive) a freestanding satellite dish.

Construction would end there.

Mr. Magnus Lee did not intend to build an upscale resort, eco or otherwise. He had purchased the land to listen. From the remote plains of Aska, he could maintain the clearest contact with a network of surveillance satellites positioned in geosynchronous orbit above the Northern Hemisphere.

At 3:07 local time, a chime had sounded on the console of the lone technician working at the site. The chime indicated an intercept of a communications device under surveillance and graded urgent. In this instance, the device was a cellular phone. The number appeared on the screen, followed by its designation, Target Alpha. Procedure required the technician to notify his master at once.

“Target Alpha made a transmission.”

Halfway around the world, Magnus Lee answered at once. “A call?”

“No, sir. A text.”

“Go on.”

“It was a single word. We might have pulled down jibberish.”

“What was it?”

“Palantir.” The technician enunciated each syllable as if it were its own word. Pal-an-teer.

Lee blinked several times in rapid succession. He always did when he received disturbing news. “I see. And who was the recipient?”

“We don’t know who uses the phone, only that it’s registered to an American company. Comstock Partners, Ltd., with an address at 221 Broad Street, New York. The owner is Robert Astor.”

Lee knew the name, of course. “Place a tag on the number. Initiate surveillance. Grade it ‘urgent.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep up the good work and I’ll see to it that you receive a transfer home by year end.”

Afterward, Magnus Lee strode to the window. From his living room on the eightieth floor of the city’s newest and most sought-after residence, he enjoyed an unmatched view over a prosperous metropolis. Sparkling new skyscrapers, towering edifices of glass and steel, carved up the skyline, engineering marvels all. In between them stood more construction cranes than a man could count. He saw streets filled with new cars and an ocean crisscrossed with the wakes of a hundred freighters and ferries.

Everywhere he looked, he saw the future, and the future was money.

A last transmission.

PALANTIR.

Lee blinked rapidly again. He thought of the years of planning, the enormous investment, the hard work. Mostly, though, he thought of himself. His rise to power could not be stopped. Not now. Not when all was so close to fruition.

He regarded the name of the company he had written down and its owner.

Comstock Partners.

Robert Astor.

Lee drew a deep breath and held it inside him, seeking his center.

He had a vision of a pebble striking a placid pond. As it sank, ripples spread outward toward the shore. Concentric circles expanding one after another.

The pebble had struck the water.

The ripples must not be allowed to reach the shore.