The Prince of Risk Read online

  Alex’s office sat in a lonely corner of the building off the bullpen that housed her squad. Dr. Gail Lemon was waiting inside when she opened the door.

  “I’m surprised to see you,” said Lemon. “You’re required to take a few days off.”

  Alex continued past her to her desk. “And you’re required to have the courtesy to wait for me to arrive before barging in.”

  Lemon was the New York field office’s staff psychologist. She was petite and prim and looked as if Alex’s battering ram outweighed her by 10 pounds. “You’ve suffered a traumatic loss,” she said, with a beatific smile. “I understand you’re upset.”

  “You don’t understand squat.”

  “There’s no need to be hostile.”

  “That wasn’t hostile. You’re still standing and I don’t see any blood.”

  The smile faltered. “Now, Alex—”

  “It’s Special Agent Forza…and remind me, Dr. Lemon, do you carry a badge?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t go to the academy.”

  “And you’ve never spent a day in the field?”

  “Not exactly…but if you—”

  “Then get out of my office.”

  Lemon stood her ground, arms crossed. “Alex—I mean, Special Agent Forza—you’re required to seek help.”

  “You want me to talk to a shrink, send someone who knows what it feels like to lose three men. They were family.”

  A half-dozen people gathered by the door, drawn by her raised voice. “It’s okay, everybody,” she said, speaking over Lemon’s head. “Dr. Lemon was just heading out.”

  “Three days’ leave,” stated Lemon through gritted teeth. “Those are the rules for agent-involved shootings.”

  Alex held the door. “I have work to do.”

  Still Lemon wouldn’t leave. She turned a half-circle, taking in the barren room—the metal desk, the half-empty bookcase, the battering ram, and of course the picture on the wall. Her mouth twisted as if she’d tasted something putrid. “Something is wrong with you, Special Agent Forza. You’re a sad, hostile person. I’m going to have a word with the assistant director.”

  Alex shooed Lemon out of the room. “Make sure you say hello from me. She’s the one who gave me this job. Have a pleasant day.”

  Dr. Gail Lemon’s response was unrepeatable. The beatific smile had left the building.

  Alex shut the door and blew out a sad, hostile breath. One more word and she would have struck the woman. Her gaze shot to the photograph of J. Edgar Hoover on the wall behind her desk.

  “Father,” she said, “I promise you that I am going to catch the sons of bitches who did this to my boys. And then…”

  Alex left the last words unspoken. What she had in mind did not conform to the highest ideals of the FBI.

  21

  There was a knock on the door and a head poked around the corner. “Boss,” came a squeaky voice. “Got a sec?”

  Alex looked up from her paperwork. “Get in here, Mintz.”

  Special Agent Barry Mintz shuffled into the office. He was forty going on fourteen. Tall, gangly, with thinning red hair, trusting blue eyes, and an Adam’s apple to rival Ichabod Crane’s, Mintz was the lone holdover from her predecessor’s team at CT-26. Those who hadn’t transferred out voluntarily, she’d pushed out herself. All except Mintz. He wasn’t brash, bold, or confident, which was how she liked her agents on the threat response squad. In manner and bearing, he was the opposite. He was quiet, self-effacing, and polite. Mintz was the guy in the corner no one noticed. And yet Mintz got things done. He was a six-foot-three-inch package of administrative whup-ass. When he entered the room asking if she had “a sec,” Alex knew enough to put down whatever she was working on and pay attention.

  “Got a call from Windermere,” said Mintz. “Guys found something at the scene.”

  Alex tapped her pen impatiently. “Yeah?”

  “There’s not just machine guns under the floor,” Mintz continued. “Looks like they turned up a lot more.”

  “How much more?”

  “Don’t know. But I think he used the words ‘a fuckin’ arsenal.’”

  Alex dropped the pen. A second later she was up, throwing on her blazer, and coming around her desk. “Mind if I drive?”

  “Sure…um…do you have to?”

  “Attaboy.” Alex patted Mintz on the shoulder and led the charge to the elevators.

  She remembered that there was only one thing that she didn’t like about Mintz. On the shooting range, he qualified last among all her charges on every occasion. His nickname was Deadeye.

  In recent years, events in the Bureau’s history had come to have their own names, one- or two-word monikers that not only brought to mind the crime but somehow encapsulated the entire event: the criminal act, the investigation, and the aftereffect on the Bureau. WTC referred to the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in ’93. Oklahoma City, to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by the homegrown radicals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Waco referred to the bloody and botched standoff between the federal authorities and the Branch Davidians led by David Koresh. There was Ruby Ridge and Flight 800 and the Cole and of course 9/11. With three officers killed in the space of a few minutes, Windermere was set to join that black pantheon.

  It was this thought that filled Alex’s mind as she drove the Charger across Manhattan. She was under no illusions. Her career was history. There would be no formal reprimand. No mention of fault would be scribbled into her personnel file. Nonetheless, she was done. Within a month she would receive a transfer to a less visible and less important post. Or maybe a letter from headquarters offering early retirement, with a coyly worded suggestion that she would be wise to accept. They might even throw in free airfare to the retirees’ job fair held every January and June in D.C. But never again would she receive a promotion. Alex Forza had topped out at supervisory special agent, and all her privately held dreams of one day serving as the Bureau’s first female deputy director had been killed as dead as Jimmy Malloy.

  Still, she refused to be sad. She was allergic to self-pity. She was pissed. Somebody was going to pay.

  Windermere Street was cordoned off at both ends of the block. Alex flashed her badge to get through the line. Police vehicles clogged the street. She double-parked next to a blue-and-white and slipped her badge into an ID pocket and hung it around her neck.

  The shooting was classified as a multiple homicide. The crime scene belonged to the NYPD. Normally a detective first grade would run the scene, but the deaths of three federal agents bumped things up the chain of command. She introduced herself to the lieutenant running the show, then passed under the police tape and entered the house.

  Inside, the forensics teams were finishing up. A half-dozen men and women in white Tyvek “bunny suits” passed her on their way out. No one had cleaned up the spot where Jimmy Malloy had died, and the blood had coagulated into a crusty black pool as thick as mud. She halted, unable to keep herself from staring.

  “Um, boss.” Mintz tapped her on the shoulder.

  “Yeah, sorry.” Alex skirted the hole in the floor where Shepherd had fallen, ducking her head so no one would see her wipe away a tear. “Who’s running things for us?”

  “I am,” said Bill Barnes from the top of the stairs. “Come on up. I want to show you something.”

  Barnes was the ASAC for intel, and nominally Alex’s boss. He was a TV agent: tall, fit, a little too good-looking, hair too perfect, with a groomed mustache and twinkling brown eyes. He was wearing jeans and a white polo shirt with the New York CT logo on the breast pocket.

  Alex hustled up the stairs and shook Barnes’s hand. “Hello, Bill.”

  “Knew you’d be back,” said Barnes, not happily.

  “For once, you were right.” Alex looked over the railing. “I thought all the stuff was downstairs.”

  “We’ll take a look in a second. I think you’ll want to see this first.”

  Barnes wa
lked to the end of the corridor and gestured toward the last room on the left. Alex looked inside. Six cots sat at right angles to the wall, three to each side, in the manner of a very small dormitory. Each cot was fitted with a top sheet and a gray woolen blanket. Each was made to perfection.

  Barnes took a quarter from his pocket and bounced it on the nearest cot. The quarter rebounded and he snatched it out of the air. “Mommy doesn’t teach you how to make a bed like that.”

  “Looks like Mr. Shepherd was expecting guests.”

  “Looks that way,” agreed Barnes.

  The three FBI agents descended the stairs and made their way through the kitchen and into the garage.

  “We found a passage cut into the drywall behind a filing cabinet,” said Barnes.

  “Mintz said something about an arsenal.”

  Barnes tossed her a Maglite. “See for yourself. And keep your head down. Especially you, Deadeye.”

  Alex followed Barnes into the passage, turning on the Maglite as she entered. A set of tracks laid into the ground allowed a trolley to roll back and forth, she guessed, to facilitate moving the heavy crates. Ten steps in, the ground fell away to either side, excavated to create rectangular moats 4 feet deep, 20 feet long, and 10 feet wide. Crates stacked as neatly as in any armory—some the same olive drab as those that held the machine guns, others plain pine or painted black—filled the depressions.

  “Done an inventory?” asked Alex.

  “Preliminary,” said Barnes. “It’ll scare the shit out of you.”

  He hopped off the raised dirt path into the storage pit to his left. Light shone from the hole in the floor where the assailant had fallen onto the crates of machine guns. Alex jumped down, then turned and offered a hand to help Mintz. The three walked among the wooden boxes. The first markings read Antipersonnel Grenades.

  Oh yeah, thought Alex, she had put her foot in it.

  For the next two hours she helped Barnes, Mintz, and several members of the JTTF haul the weaponry out of the garage so it could be tagged as evidence and examined. The tally included two crates of AK-47s, count 8; two crates of 7.62mm ammunition, count 1,000 rounds; one crate of antipersonnel grenades, count 20; one crate of white phosphorus grenades, count 20; one crate of Sig Sauer 9mm pistols, count 8; and four rocket-propelled grenade launchers with sixteen grenades.

  “There’s enough here to start a war,” said Alex when they’d cleared everything out.

  “A small war,” said Barnes.

  “War doesn’t need an adjective in front of it.”

  Four unmarked crates remained to be opened. Alex slipped a crowbar under the lid of the first and pried it open. Communications equipment. Kneeling, she removed a transparent bag holding one complete multiband radio set—receiver, headset, lithium batteries, and belt pack. The items had been removed from their original packaging, assembled as a unit, and repackaged.

  “Eight sets total,” she said, handing one bag to Mintz. “I want a trace on all these items. Someone bought them somewhere. I want to know where and when.”

  By now Barnes was working on the next crate. With a crack, the wood splintered and the cover fell to the ground. “Vests,” he said, removing a navy-blue protective vest.

  “Why not?” said Alex. “They have everything else.” She picked up a vest. It carried two 4-pound plates in front and an 8-pound plate in the back. “Twenty pounds before your commo gear, your ammo, your rifle, and your helmet.”

  “Whoever wears one of these had better be in shape if he wants to keep moving for more than ten minutes,” remarked Barnes.

  “Someone who makes a bed you can bounce a quarter off.” Alex noted a slim band of white plastic peeking from a breast pocket. Deftly she slid out a folded rectangular booklet. The title on the cover read Walker’s Map of Manhattan. The numeral 1 was written in royal-blue Sharpie on the top corner. She showed it to Barnes and Mintz. “Check and see if all the vests have one of these.”

  “Roger that,” said Barnes, as one after another the maps were discovered.

  Alex looked at Mintz. “How many vests?”

  “Eight.”

  “All with maps?”

  “Yes.”

  “All numbered?”

  “Yes.”

  “So we’re looking for eight shooters,” said Barnes.

  Alex gathered the maps and read the numbers from each corner. What had been a bad day got considerably worse. “We’re not looking for eight,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” said Barnes.

  “Take a look.” Alex handed him maps numbered 1–4.

  “Yeah—so?”

  And then she handed him maps numbered 21–24. “We’re looking for twenty-four.”

  Barnes held the maps, saying nothing. Mintz winced and said, “But…”

  “Hey, boss,” shouted one of the uniformed policemen who had been helping them remove all the crates. “Found one more. Almost didn’t see it way in the back.”

  The policeman dropped the crate at Alex’s feet. It was small and slim, no more than 3 feet by 2 feet and as thick as a phone book. The markings on it were Cyrillic with numerals scattered here and there.

  Alex took up the crowbar and pried open the box. Inside was a single metal tube, drab green, looking like nothing more than a plumbing fixture. She knew better. Gripping the tube at one end, she gave a yank and it telescoped to twice its length. Lifting it to her shoulder, she unlatched the vertical sight and put her eye to the crosshairs.

  “That what I think it is?” asked Mintz, with equal measures fright and disbelief.

  Alex spun and pointed the TOW antitank weapon directly at him. “Ka-boom.”

  22

  Astor left the elevators on the sixtieth floor of the Standard Financial building to find Bradley Zarek waiting. “Bobby. Great to see you. Thanks for coming so quickly.”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” said Astor.

  “I know it’s a tough day. We’re all in shock about what happened last night. If I could have waited on this, I would have. But…” Zarek splayed his hands to show that events had overtaken them both. The market was their master. “Come on down to my office. Let’s chat.”

  Zarek was a senior vice president in the bank’s prime direct brokerage division. Prime direct was a little-known but extremely profitable branch of banking, set up to deal with very high net worth individuals, private equity firms (or “sponsors,” as they were known in the business), and hedge funds like Comstock. In effect, prime direct was a bank for other bankers and traders. When Astor needed to borrow money, he went to Zarek or one of his clones at any of the banks where Comstock did business.

  Zarek showed him into his office and shut the door. Investment banks place a premium on space, and even a big shot like Zarek commanded a glassed-in cubicle barely larger than Astor’s guest bathroom. From the memorabilia crowding the shelves and credenza, it was apparent that Zarek was one of the last Mets fans in the city. Astor picked up a worn mitt, slipped it on, and gave the pocket a few good thumps with his fist.

  “That was Tom Seaver’s,” said Zarek nervously as he sat down at his desk. “He pitched with it in the ’69 World Series.”

  “Some year.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Zarek, brightening as if he had lived it. He was chubby, average height, with a five o’clock shadow at 2 p.m. and a scrub of curly black hair. He was maybe forty years old, which meant he had been just a twinkle in his parents’ eyes when the Mets had made their miracle run. “They came from nine down in mid-August and won thirty-nine of their last fifty games to take the division. Looks like you’ve gotten yourself into the same kind of jam.”

  Astor examined the glove, then leveled his gaze at the banker. “Way I see it, we’re favorites to win the Series.”

  Zarek chuckled uncomfortably. “That’s not quite how we see it.”

  Astor took a step toward Zarek. “Oh? How do you see it?” He had no intention of making Zarek’s job easier. For years Comstock had been one of Za
rek’s best customers. When Comstock borrowed to leverage up a position, Astor could count on getting a call from Zarek and his cronies, asking much too politely if they might get a piece of the action. As a rule, Astor only accepted investments starting at $25 million (and preferably $100 million). He went further, limiting his clients to other hedge funds, sponsors, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds. But Astor knew how the game was played, and he always set aside a few scraps for Zarek and his fellow remoras.

  “Look, Bobby, we know you have a track record—”

  “That track record put your kids through elementary school.”

  Zarek smiled even more uncomfortably than he had a minute before. “And I’m grateful. But you’re a little over your skis on this one.”

  Astor punched the sacred mitt a few more times just to see Zarek wince. “Says who?”

  “No one thinks the Chinese are going to devalue. Not when they’ve been letting the yuan increase for the past five years. The RMB is up thirty-one percent since 2006.”

  RMB for renminbi.

  “So?”

  “So…” Zarek’s face creased into a single fold of disbelief. “What makes you think it’s going to change?”

  Astor slammed his balled fist into the mitt again. “Tell you what, Brad. You want, I can still let you in on the fund.”

  Zarek’s eyes widened like a virgin’s in a strip club. He rose a few inches out of his chair, only to sink back. “Not this time, Bobby. But if you’d like to tell me something you know about the currency that I can share with the loan committee…”

  Astor was hardly about to reveal his investment strategy to Bradley Zarek. Zarek was a drone—a highly paid, expensively educated, whip-smart, hardworking drone, but a drone nonetheless. Astor shot him the mitt with a little mustard on it. “Okay, Brad, let me have it. What gives?”