“Why was your father interested in the Flash Crash? Did you know of any safeguards taken to protect the Exchange? Tell me again which companies your father suspected of being infiltrated. Wasn’t he interested in other companies?”
And here Reventlow threw out five or six names, and Astor knew that he was interested in only one of them, so he made himself commit them all to memory.
“Who is this Michael Grillo?”
They had finally arrived at the subject he knew he must lie about.
“A corporate investigator.”
“Why did you hire him?”
“I work with him all the time. He was helping me gather information on a rival fund that I suspected was poaching clients.”
“You’re lying.”
“Ask him. Ask Grillo.”
“That’s the thing. We can’t find him. Tell us what Grillo knows.”
“Nothing. He isn’t involved in this.”
The shoot shot forth.
It was more pain than he had known. More than the first foray beneath his fingernail. This time the shoot probed more deeply into the flesh, finding a fresh bed of nerves to upset. Reventlow repeated his question, but Astor didn’t stray from his story. He had found a new source of strength. It came from his private storehouse of terrible memories. He saw himself standing at his parents’ bed at Cherry Hill, and he recalled the terror he knew as he anticipated the black belt’s first blow. The boy had survived. And so the man would survive, too.
The shoot dug in.
No noise. Not a whimper. When pain consumed you, it lost its ability to frighten. It became a new reality, and a known reality could be endured.
“How can we find Grillo?”
Every minute he delayed was a minute Mike Grillo gained. He would find Palantir, and when he did, he would make him talk. Grillo didn’t need a sharpened bamboo shoot.
“I had his number on my other phone,” said Astor. “I called him. I don’t know where he lives.”
“Where is Grillo?”
“I told you, he’s not involved in this. You’re wasting your time.”
Astor closed his eyes, readying himself for the agony. But the bamboo shoot did not come.
After a moment he looked around and saw Reventlow studying a phone. It was Astor’s phone. “Ha!” he said, a surprised outburst. “His name is Paul Lawrence Tiernan. Palantir. Clever.” He looked up. “It seems Mr. Grillo has done our work for us. He writes that he has found Palantir and is in possession of the report he prepared for your father. He’d like to know where to meet so he can turn it over to you.” Reventlow pondered the matter. “I think he should stay put. After all, you do want to meet the man who was working with your father, don’t you, Bobby? I would.”
Astor said nothing. It was done, then. Game over.
Reventlow texted back a message, then spoke to Daniel in Chinese. The monk stood and walked to the door. Reventlow patted Astor on the shoulder. “We shouldn’t be long. When we get back, we’ll put an end to this charade.”
Reventlow and Daniel left.
Astor dropped his head. His hand was a mess and hurt too much to contemplate. He stood, walked to the garage door, and put his ear against the wood. He heard a car start and drive away. He tried the other door. Locked. He waited a few minutes, expecting one of them to return. A little time passed. No one came.
They were gone.
Astor looked around the garage. At the lawn mower, the rake, the trash barrels. At the cinder-block walls. He noted that the door had been ripped off its rail and that wood blocks nailed it shut. He had an hour, maybe a little more, to free himself.
81
“LaGuardia air traffic control is denying us permission to land,” reported the captain of the Gulfstream G4 to Alex. “The wind across the runway is gusting to sixty knots.”
“I have an agent waiting for me on the tarmac.”
“I don’t care if the president of the United States is waiting for you. A gust hits this plane when we’re about to touch down and it will flip us over like a tiddlywink.”
Alex squeezed herself in between the pilot and the copilot. “You heard what’s going on,” she said. “This is a matter of national security. We are hours away from an attack on the city. Put us down.”
The captain consulted with the copilot. “Get strapped in. We’re going to have to go in like a Zero at Midway. I hope you’re used to hard landings.”
Alex hurried to her seat and pulled the safety belt tight against her stomach. A minute later the nose dipped, then dipped some more. Her bag slipped from beneath her chair and slid the length of the cabin. She didn’t think of retrieving it. The plane hit an air pocket and bounced noisily. She gripped the armrests harder.
“Oh, Father,” she said to herself, “help me through this.”
She wasn’t sure whether she was praying to Hoover or to the Lord above.
And then the plane began to rock and roll.
Barry Mintz stood on the tarmac at the base of the stairs. More than ever he looked like a rumpled teenager, all gangly limbs and a head of red hair standing on end in the driving wind.
Alex walked past without acknowledging him. She kneeled to kiss the runway, rose, walked 10 feet away, and vomited.
“A little rough coming in,” said the pilot, standing with arms crossed in the doorframe.
“She okay?” asked Mintz.
“She’ll be fine. She’s one tough customer.”
“Tell me about it,” said Mintz.
The clouds that had threatened since early evening rolled overhead, dark and ominous. A few drops of rain fell. Alex returned, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. Screw it. The suit was still soiled with Salt’s blood and she was fresh out of hankies. A little puke wouldn’t hurt. A man from Customs and Border Protection stood nearby. Passport formalities were handled quickly. Alex accepted her passport back and turned to Mintz.
“Good news, please.” It was an order.
“We got him,” said Mintz. “The South Africans pinged Beaufoy’s phone to a home in Darien. We rousted the real estate agent out of bed. He leased the residence to a foreign gentleman from Singapore who paid with a cashier’s check for a three-month period. Same MO as at Windermere.”
“Name on the lease?”
“An alias. We ran it and got nothing.”
Alex picked up her bag and started toward the car. “Call SWAT and the local police. Tell Jan McVeigh.”
“Um, Alex…hold it. You’re not even supposed to be working the case. Bill Barnes is already out there. He’s leading the SWAT team in. He said he’s going to be breacher.”
“Are you in contact with him?”
“He sent a two-man probe team. They have ten heat signatures inside the house.”
“Any sightings?”
“Not sure.”
Alex considered this. Her motion sickness had disappeared the moment she puked, but now a new, more troubling nausea threatened to take its place. “Are you telling me that there are ten bad guys inside the safe house fourteen hours after Salt called Beaufoy to give him a heads-up that I was on the trail? No chance.”
The door to Mintz’s Ford opened. A portly, disheveled man with a five o’clock shadow got out. “Hey, Alex, long time.”
“Marv,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“We can’t find Bobby. He isn’t answering his phone. He’s not at home. I’m worried that something’s happened to him. You know-what with his looking into his father’s death. I called looking for you and got put in touch with Special Agent Mintz.”
“Mintz, did he ever go see Jan?”
“Negative.”
Alex checked her own phone and saw that Bobby hadn’t called back. He never failed to return a message promptly. “Where was he last?”
“He left the office at three to visit a client named Septimus Reventlow at 49th and Park,” said Shank. “Reventlow says the meeting was over quickly and Bobby left a little after four.”
“Who is this Reventlow?”