“To Septimus Reventlow’s account?”
“Exactly. Technically, we stand in default of our agreements at the close yesterday. All our positions were frozen at the prevailing rate.”
“The rate at which we go under?”
“That’s correct.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“It’s done. We don’t do business with terrorists.”
“But…” Shank shook his head, searching for words. Finally, he sighed and gave up. Even he couldn’t disagree with Astor.
“Sell at the open to cover what we owe. Talk to Mandy Price. See what she thinks.”
“What’s going to happen to Reventlow’s money?”
“Nothing for the moment. First the government needs to get proof against him. So far, there’s only my word he’s involved in this whole thing.”
“Show ’em your hand,” said Shank, incensed.
“I don’t think that will count for much a year from now when this thing finally gets to a court of law. And anyway, Reventlow’s gone. He probably hopped a jet as soon as he figured out that his brother didn’t make it. I give you even money no one sees him again.”
“So tomorrow the yuan falls through the floor, we should be up two billion, we should be the toast of the town, but instead Comstock is broke, I lose my shirt, and Septimus Reventlow just gets to walk away.”
“Pretty much. Unless the government presses charges against him or his family office, and we both know that isn’t going to happen.”
Early that morning, Astor, Alex, and Shank had been ushered into an office at 26 Federal Plaza and given a sharp talking-to by the director of the FBI himself. No word of Magnus Lee’s or Septimus Reventlow’s involvement in the affair could be allowed to get out, now or ever. Palantir’s report was on the president’s desk. A special meeting of the National Security Council was scheduled for later in the day. Were word of China’s involvement in Charles Hughes’s and Martin Gelman’s deaths to leak, the diplomatic repercussions could be unthinkable. The assassination of government officials counted as a casus belli. The hawks on Capitol Hill would be calling for war.
“Fuck me,” said Shank, throwing up his arms, turning and leaving the office.
Astor watched through his window as his friend moved up and down the trading floor, screaming out sell orders, scowling, berating anyone who dared ask him a single question. He was a creature of the Street. Marv Shank would live and die on the floor.
Astor called Alex. “Anything?”
“Nada.”
“You think they gave up?”
“Not a chance.”
“But Reventlow knows we’re on to them.”
“Does he? I’m not sure. And if he does, I don’t know if it matters.”
Astor turned and walked to the east-facing window, looking down toward Broadway and Wall Street. “So did you think about it?”
“What?”
“You know…us.”
“I don’t go out with men who chew their nails,” said Alex.
“Very funny.”
“Hold on for a sec.” Alex’s voice hardened, and her worried tone sent a chill down Astor’s spine.
“What is it?” he asked.
There was no answer, and Astor asked again.
“They’re here,” said Alex.
The line went dead.
Astor put his hand to the window, his eyes finding the Exchange building.
It was happening now.
89
Two more bad guys were identified approaching up New Street from the south.
And another two after that, coming down Liberty.
One on Broadway.
Alex’s earpiece bristled with reports from her agents. A template of the suspected bad guys quickly emerged. Baggy shirts. Baseball caps. Sunglasses. A few carrying athletic bags. She passed the description along and told everyone to be ready to take down their man on her order.
Ten had been spotted. Then twelve. But time was running out. The mercenaries were getting too close to the Exchange. At any moment they could open fire.
Alex walked outside. Well over two hundred people crowded the streets bordering the Exchange and sat on the stairs of Federal Hall. It would take only one machine gun to wreak havoc. She spotted Deadeye Mintz, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, sitting behind the statue of George Washington at the entry to Federal Hall.
A voice in her earpiece. Another sighting took the number to fourteen. Alex made her decision. “Move in,” she said. “Take ’em down.”
All around the Exchange, undercover FBI agents and policemen converged on their targets. Groups of three, four, and five officers swarmed each assailant. Alex was watching a violent flash mob in reverse. Instead of standing apart from the crowd, the bad guys disappeared from it, thrown to the pavement, hands pulled behind their backs and cuffed. Those law enforcement agents not tracking a suspect rushed among the bewildered pedestrians, seeking out the nine remaining assailants.
Alex ran to the security checkpoint at the corner of Broad and Wall. She eyed a woman looking much too calm in the melee erupting all around her.
Baggy shirt. Check.
Cap. Check.
Sunglasses. Check.
Athletic bag. Check.
The woman’s hands delved into the bag.
Alex leaped the barricade and drew her Glock, advancing on the woman. “Freeze. Let me see your hands.”
In an instant three other agents surrounded the suspect. The woman raised her hands high. Alex ripped the bag off her shoulder. Inside was a submachine gun. The other agents pushed the woman to the ground and cuffed her.
The first gunshot sounded.
Alex turned to see where it had come from and saw a man running toward Broadway. He carried a submachine gun in one hand. And then he was down, shot by one of three policemen almost before the welter of gunshots exploded.
“I’m hit,” a man shouted.
Alex saw one of her agents clutching his leg. A policeman ran to his side and administered aid.
“Give me a count,” she said.
“Ten down.”
Alex returned to Exchange Place. She turned the corner to the main entrance as a woman screamed. A blond man held the woman to his chest and pointed a pistol at her head. A dozen officers surrounded him in seconds. Alex approached him, her pistol at her side.
“Your move,” she said.
The blond mercenary looked around him. He was young and handsome, by all accounts someone who had the world before him. He smiled sadly, realizing that he was hopelessly outnumbered. He put the pistol beneath his chin. “Ah, fuck it.”
It wasn’t the Exchange.
Astor stood at the window of his office looking down toward the Stock Exchange. From his aerie sixty stories above the ground, all looked calm, peaceful, and orderly. It didn’t make sense. Magnus Lee’s and Septimus Reventlow’s strategy was to buy a controlling interest in a company, place a man inside, and use the Empire Platform to see into and, when needed, control its operations. An outright Mumbai-style attack on the Stock Exchange might shut down trading for a few days, even sow doubt in investors’ minds about the invincibility of the United States, but it would do nothing to enable Lee and his brother to gain control over the entire trading system. And yet Palantir and Astor’s father had been sure that their target was the Exchange. This belief was reinforced by the CIC’s last investment, in Matronix, the company that manufactured the servers and hardware recently installed to run the New York Stock Exchange’s trading platform.
A line from Palantir’s report was stuck in his mind: “…and though there is no question about the depth and extent of the penetration of critical national systems, the aggressor cannot use TEP to trigger a modal system-wide default until a source code is introduced.”
TEP, for The Empire Platform.
But an outright physical assault wasn’t enough.
Astor looked at his television. It was 9:30 a.m., and he watched as the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange was rung by United States Navy Master Chief Ron Blackburn, a member of SEAL Team Six and the nation’s most recent recipient of the Medal of Honor. Accompanying him on the dais were his wife and child, as well as the man who had replaced Edward Astor as CEO of the NYSE. After an initial surge of energy, the floor grew quiet. Each year fewer and fewer men and women were required to supervise the trades. More and more of the work was done by computers.