The Prince of Risk

71

“Hello, Marv.”

Astor poked his head out of the elevator and peered around the landing. “Marv?”

He saw no one. For once, Shank wasn’t there to greet him.

Astor entered his office. The trading floor was surprisingly quiet. No one glanced up as he passed the desk. Even Longfellow and Goodchild had their faces buried in their computer screens. The calm disturbed him. It was like the silence before an execution. He reached his office and looked inside. No Shank there, either. Conference room one was packed with lawyers. They were sharply dressed, straight-backed, and disciplined to look at. He recognized Frank Arcano from Skadden, who would be leading the charge to grant him more time to meet the margin requirements. They were the good lawyers.

Conference room two was packed with more lawyers. They wore baggy suits and had their neckties undone and shaggy haircuts. He didn’t recognize any of them and he knew they hailed from the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the body that regulated foreign currency transactions. They were the bad lawyers.

He craned his head toward conference room three. He half expected to see a camera crew from CNBC setting up camp and the Money Honey herself getting made up in preparation for an interview with the latest victim of Wall Street hubris. Enter Robert Astor. Thankfully, conference room three was empty.

Astor retraced his steps toward the reception desk. He knocked at the CFO’s door, then opened it. The boss didn’t require an invitation. Marv Shank sat across the desk from Mandy Price.

“Look who decided to come to his own funeral,” said Shank.

“Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Astor pulled up a chair. “What have we got?”

“Per your instructions, we’re liquidating all equities in Comstock Astor showing a profit,” said Price. “So far we’ve sold a hundred million.”

“That’s a start.”

“We have another five hundred million in equities that are more or less where we bought them.”

“And the rest?”

“Losers.”

“At the moment,” said Astor.

“That’s all that matters today,” said Shank.

Astor buried his head in his hands. “The goddamned position.”

“And our contact?”

“Lee? He says wait till Friday.”

“There’s still Reventlow,” said Shank. “You call him?”

“The ball’s in his court.”

Shank looked at Astor with disgust. He started to speak, then settled for shaking his head and sighing.

The clock on the wall read 2:40. Astor was not optimistic.

He returned to his office. He sat down and darkened the blinds. His arm ached. He opened his drawer and took out the bottle of painkillers his doctor had prescribed. He shook one loose, then thought better of it, if only because he needed to have his wits about him.

Closing his eyes, he once more ran through everything he knew about his father’s special project.

In early July, Edward Astor was tipped to some type of imminent plot by Palantir. The plot involved at least seven companies that were now or had been owned by a private equity firm. Each company was a client of Britium’s and used the Empire Platform to manage its products. The industries included computers, software, satellites, engineering, and energy.

Astor concluded that it was their common tie to Britium that had most frightened his father and that his visit to Britium’s CEO was for the sole purpose of confirming or disproving Palantir’s accusations. He further concluded that since his father had inquired about whether Britium was in place before July 2011-the time of the Flash Crash-he had viewed Empire as responsible. Astor’s own experience with the elevator in his home testified to the fact that Empire was vulnerable to hacking. If systems controlling the New York Stock Exchange and his own home could be hacked, then so could any other system that relied on the Empire Platform, including the FBI’s and the CIA’s. No wonder his father had convinced Charles Hughes and Martin Gelman to join him in waking the president.

According to Palantir, “They were getting desperate.”

“And so?” Astor said aloud. “Who are ‘they’? What in the world are they planning?”

Astor was sure he possessed all the information he needed to find the answer, yet he felt as far away from understanding the forces he was up against as when he had first decided to look into his father’s cryptic message.

He stood too quickly, knocking his arm against the desk. He clutched his injured limb, grimacing until the pain subsided.

Who?

Astor spun to face the computer. He brought up Google and typed every relevant keyword he could think of into the query bar. First he listed the seven companies whose annual reports he had found in Penelope Evans’s house. To those he added the names of the five private equity firms. Finally he wrote, “Britium.” He hit Return.

He had an answer in.0025 seconds.

The first link was to an article titled “Watersmark Welcomes New Investor.” Astor read on. “Watersmark LLC, the New York-based private equity firm, today announced the sale of a thirty percent stake in the firm to the China Investment Corporation for three billion dollars. Watersmark chairman Duncan Newman stated, ‘We welcome CIC’s participation and look forward to working with them to make exciting investments in the future.’ Newman added that several of the Chinese sovereign wealth fund’s executives would take up residence in Watersmark’s New York office to gain firsthand experience of the private equity business and to offer a Pacific perspective.”

The China Investment Corporation. It couldn’t be.

And then Astor read the last line and the floor dropped from the gallows. “CIC Chairman Magnus Lee commented, ‘Of course, our participation is limited to a minority interest, but we hope to learn very much from our American business partners.’”

Magnus Lee. His special contact. The man whose advice he had summoned to place the biggest investment in his firm’s history.

Astor blinked, not quite believing his eyes-maybe not wanting to believe them. He stood, his feet as heavy as if they were embedded in concrete.

Lee was the connection.

Lee was the man behind his father’s death.

Astor forced himself back to his desk. He landed in his chair with a thud.

The next link read, “Oak Leaf Ventures Sells Twenty-five Percent Stake in Firm to China Investment Corporation.” It went on to say that the CIC would send three of its executives to Oak Leaf’s offices in Chicago. Again Magnus Lee was quoted as being “thrilled” with the investment while pointing out that CIC’s participation would be strictly as a silent partner.

Lies. Lies. More lies.

For ten minutes Astor continued reading link after link.

The China Investment Corporation had invested billions of dollars in each of the private equity firms involved with the corporations his father had been investigating. Lee always made the point that the investments were passive, but in every case the CIC had placed a few executives at the private equity firms as “executives in training.”

Read “spies.”

Astor remembered the Asian man with the keen blue eyes who had tried to kill him yesterday. Eyes the color of Magnus Lee’s.

Astor pulled up Watersmark’s web page. He searched under its list of executives and was not surprised to find a familiar name: “Herbert Hong. PhD Stanford, MIT…born in China.” Hong was one of the CIC execs implanted in Watersmark, who had then gone on to work at Britium.

Suddenly it was clear to him. The CIC used its power as a minority partner in Watersmark and Oak Leaf and all the others to gain influence over certain key companies in the funds’ portfolios-companies involved in critical sectors of the nation’s economy: computers, energy, satellites, missiles. But to what end?

Control.

Until now, Lee’s actions-and by extension his country’s-had been hidden behind the cloak of everyday corporate activity. But Astor knew that time was coming to an end. Lee was no longer content to spy. He had something else in mind. Something terrible was brewing. His father had had knowledge of it and it had cost him his life. Palantir knew it, too.

“They’re getting desperate.”

Lee himself had told him to wait until Friday.

Whatever it was, it was happening now.

Astor took out his phone to call Alex. He’d gone as far as he could. He felt no satisfaction from his efforts, only horror. It was up to the FBI. As he dialed, his secretary’s voice came over the speaker. “Call for you, Bobby. Septimus Reventlow.”

Astor looked at the clock. It was one minute before three. One and a half hours until the funds to meet the margin call were due. One and a half hours to bankruptcy.

Astor hung up the cell and picked up the landline.

“Hello, Septimus.”