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.’”