A week before Christmas, the village of East Hampton was festooned with lights and decorations. The shops in town alternated between the family-owned institutions, meat markets, candy stores, and coffeehouses that had been there for decades, and the newer entrants to the area, like J.Crew, Burberry, Tiffany’s, and Starbucks, that came with the ubiquitous wealth. Less than a mile beyond the small village, he took a right onto Egypt Lane, then a left on Further Lane. A mile ahead were the stone pillars to his estate. He took a right at the big elm tree, through the unmarked stone pillars. He’d removed the small sign that said
EAGLE ROCK
, the name given to the estate when it was built in 1908 by one of Henry Clay Frick’s sons. He’d found it pretentious.
At the push of a button on the dashboard, the black steel of the large gate swung inward and he pulled the Aston Martin down the long driveway that led to his seaside mansion. Fortuna had bought the house a week before his twenty-eighth birthday. At the time, it had cost him $18 million. He knew he’d make a lot more money in his career; the cost hadn’t even raised his eyebrows.
The driveway bent left, then straightened and dipped along a sleek and thin path of pebble stone, bordered on each side by the monotony of white slat horse fence. The driveway went for nearly a quarter mile, descending toward the water past tennis courts, the pool house, and pool, now covered. The house itself was a stunning shingle-style mansion that rambled along Long Island Sound’s blue-watered edge, surrounded by wide manicured lawns, sculpted boxwoods, and beech trees, all now blanketed in snow.
Fortuna climbed out of the car and walked to the front door. As he stepped onto the slate steps, the door opened.
“Good evening, Alex,” a woman said. Celia Rosemont, Fortuna’s caretaker at the estate, was a plain-looking woman, in her fifties, neatly attired in a gray sweater. “How was your trip?”
“Good,” he lied, presenting his usual calm and confident exterior. “How are you?”
“Great. Can I get you something?”
“Yes. A glass of wine. Open a bottle of Silver Oak, please. I don’t care what year.”
“Are you hungry? Can I have Jessica make you something?”
“Yes. Surprise me. No seafood though. Maybe a steak, pasta, whatever. I’ll be in my office.”
Fortuna walked through the entrance hall, through the living room, into a small door in the back of the room. Inside, a fireplace in the center of the back wall glowed with orange flames. Above the white marble mantel hung a Picasso oil of two boys playing with a ball. To the left, a large tan, custom-made sofa and two chairs surrounded a table with magazines laid neatly out on top of it. To the right, a large mahogany table sat to the side. On top of the table, a large flat computer screen stood, the only object, other than a keyboard, atop the big table.
Fortuna walked to the desk and sat down. He opened the cabinet behind the chair and turned on the computer.
Entering a series of passwords in a succession of screens gained him entry into a highly secure network.
He spent the next half hour looking at the performance of the three hedge funds, Kallivar, PBX, and Passwood-Regent. All showed similar growth in net asset value, as he expected they would. Each suffered losses in the investments in KKB and Anson Energy. Those losses, in total, amounted to approximately $660 million. But those were the only losses in a two-day period of unbelievable financial performance.
All told, in two days, at least on paper, Fortuna’s three hedge funds had created more than $17 billion in new wealth. Fortuna now controlled nearly $27 billion in assets. And values would likely climb higher as the smoke cleared and tensions dissipated.
Of course the government would ultimately come to question the suspicious trades and accumulation of wealth, but for the moment, they had their hands full, investigating the attacks. Soon, they’d have much more to worry about. And by the time they focused on Fortuna, he’d be gone.
Next, Fortuna skimmed media coverage of the funeral of Nicholas Anson, then coverage of the destruction of Savage Island Project and Capitana. According to the pundits, Al-Qaeda took top honors as suspect of choice.
Celia entered the office and placed a wineglass down in front of him. “Jessica is whipping up steak au poivre.”
“Great.” Fortuna took a sip from the wineglass.
“Would you like a salad?”
“Please.” He didn’t look up from the screen.
Celia walked to the door to leave. “You received a phone call,” she said, turning around.
Fortuna’s back stiffened. “Oh?”
“He said it was urgent. Wouldn’t leave his name. He was a bit abrupt, actually. Said you would know who it was.”
“Got it.”
As soon as Celia left, Alex picked up his phone. There were two phone lines to the estate; the main phone line, which was used throughout the house, and a single phone with a separate line and an expensive array of tap detection and encrypting technology, which was the one he now used. He dialed the same number he’d tried five times in the past four hours.
“Yeah,” the voice said.
“Where have you been?” said Fortuna. “Is it done?”
“No. He got away.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Fortuna said angrily. “So now the government has him?”
“No. Andreas killed the people I sent, then he ran. Cali police gave chase but lost him near the airport, and they couldn’t find him there. No one knows where he is. He’s disappeared.”
“Tell me, then,” said Fortuna between clenched teeth, “how do you propose to find him now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t
know
?”
“We have problems on two fronts now. We have this fucking guy, who may or may not know something which could trace back to us. And
now we have the very real possibility that interagency will start looking for its leak. Someone will know immediately that the group is compromised. There is no other explanation. We were the only ones who knew about the rendezvous in Cali.”
“How many people are we talking about?’
“I don’t know. Ten, twelve maybe.”
“Bloody fuck, Vic. Who’d you send in there, a bunch of retards?”
“I had an hour to put the operation together. They were from a group I’ve used before, no problems. I’m hanging way the hell out on a limb. I’m cutting it very close to the bone here. This is just the kind of thing that’ll get me caught. That will get
us
caught.”
“Meaning?”
“I used people connected with my group, guys we’ve hired on jobs before. Do you realize how easily this could come back to bite me?”
“I assume you covered your tracks.”
“If they run a textbook mole hunt, looking at finances, phone docs, that sort of thing, I’m fine. I’ve run more mole hunts than I care to remember. But this is serious shit. After 9/11, Capitana’s got people fired up. I mean, where are you going next with this, Alex? What’s the next target? If this gets any more dangerous, I would not be at all surprised if every member of interagency is interrogated. I’d recommend it if I saw this happen the way it went down. A shot of one of these new synthetics our pharma squad has developed and I’d be telling them everything.”
“Who would run it?”
“FBI. It’s their lead. Our best hope is that they’re distracted right now. But that’s wishful thinking.”
“So what the fuck do you suggest we do?”
“Me? I’m going to run. I need to get out of here.”
“You can’t run,” Fortuna said. “You know that. I need someone inside there telling me how close they’re getting to me. I was clear from day one. That’s why you’re getting so much goddamn money. You’re the canary in my coal mine.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, Alex. But
think.
If they catch me, they catch you. Pay me the rest of my money and I’ll disappear for good, guaranteed. You can keep doing whatever you have planned. They’re not close
to finding you at this point, not within a hundred miles. Hell, they think Saudi Arabia’s behind it.”
“You are not running, Vic. That’s not our deal. You get paid on completion. You want the other forty million, you protect me while I finish the job. And if you do run, I will still complete the job, and then I will find you. When I do, you will learn what real torture is all about. None of that pussy-shit CIA crap. I’ll have you flown to Crimea. I’m talking Stone Age, prebiblical kind of shit; chains, fire. You get my point?”
Fortuna was standing now, the anger coursing through him. He turned toward the large stone fireplace and hurled his wineglass into the fire, where it shattered against the back of the hearth.
Buck was silent.
“I’ll call you in a few hours,” said Fortuna. “And you better answer this time.”
“I want more money, Alex.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“That wasn’t our deal.”
“I’m changing the deal. You were supposed to kill this guy out at sea. Things have changed. I’m at
great
risk here. You want me to hang around, be your eyes and ears, the price just doubled.”
“Doubled?”
“You heard me. A hundred million. That means ninety million more you owe me.”
“Fine,” said Fortuna. “But only upon completion.”
“No. I want more. Twenty-five million, immediately.”
“You greedy fuck. I’ll wire you five million dollars tomorrow morning. That’s it. Get back to your precious little interagency. If someone starts talking about a mole, deny, deny, deny. Then kill whoever it is that suspects something.”
“Brilliant, Alex.”
Fortuna hung up. As he ended the conversation, a knock came at the door. In Celia’s hands was a dinner tray, which she set down on top of the mahogany table.
“I’ll ring you when I’m done. Smells delicious.”
He cut into the steak. It was red and slightly warm in the center, but charred on the outside, just as he liked it. He took a few bites. Not surprisingly, he found his appetite had dissipated.
Fortuna went upstairs to the master suite. On the walls hung a stunning series of paintings by Ellsworth Kelly, large canvases with geometric squares of color, paintings he loved dearly, the first serious art he’d ever purchased. Now he barely noticed them.
“Andreas.” He said the name out loud. It left a bitter taste in his mouth. He opened the top drawer of his dresser and removed a silver box. Inside, he pulled a small silver spoon and scooped a gumdrop-size pile of cocaine and sniffed it into his right nostril. He did it again, this time in his left nostril. The burn calmed him, channeled the anger back into confidence.
He changed his shirt, putting on a striped button-down and a dark blue sweater. He brushed his teeth, then walked back downstairs. He took his overcoat out of the front closet and put it on.
Celia stepped out of the kitchen.
“I’m going out. No need to stay up.”
“Have a good night,” she said.
He drove through East Hampton and back out to Route 27. In Southampton, he took a turn onto Gin Lane and drove until he came to a set of large granite pillars that were illuminated with red and green lights. He turned into the driveway. The pebble lane stretched for as far as he could see, down into the distance toward the water. As he came closer to the big house, each side of the driveway was lined with cars.
The annual Christmas party thrown by the Manhattan art dealer Johnny Caravelle was in full swing. Fortuna drove down to the large circle in front of the house. The house itself was a sweeping stone mansion that perched at the edge of the ocean, built in the 1890s by Conrad Seipp, the founder of the Seipp Brewing company. In the middle of the circle, a large fountain streamed with water. Atop the fountain, a small conifer stood outside the arc of cascading water, decorated in white lights and colored Christmas bulbs.
Fortuna opened the door and left the car running for the valet.
“Evening, Mr. Fortuna.”
“Hi. Merry Christmas,” said Fortuna.
“Merry Christmas to you, sir.”
Fortuna walked in through the big front doors. Inside, the large center hallway was brightly lit. A Christmas tree stood more than twenty feet high, decorated with lights, flowers, bulbs, and figurines. Beneath, box after box of presents filled the space at the base of the tree. To the side of the great entrance hall, a fireplace five feet tall roared with flames. The room itself was crowded with people, most of whom Fortuna recognized: prominent financiers, members of the media establishment, CEOs from the corporate world, a few celebrities from TV, internationally celebrated artists, a movie star or two, several well-known athletes, heavily decorated wives, and a smorgasbord of young beauties, models galore.
Fortuna handed his overcoat to the maid and walked into the party. He circled through the rooms glancing at the guests, saying hello to those he knew. Music played from a Steinway in the corner; a woman in a long black dress played Christmas songs. As always, women turned their heads as he walked by. Fortuna liked to meet their gazes with blank stares; he’d gotten so used to the sensation of being looked at by members of the opposite sex it didn’t even cause him to think twice when a beautiful woman stared at him, or came up to talk to him, gave him her phone number, or even openly propositioned him.