Beaufoy started the engine. “Gott mit uns.”
85
Magnus Lee studied his collection of neckties. He needed something elegant yet modest. A tie that would suit a future member of the Standing Committee of the People’s Republic of China. Blue, not black. God forbid red. He took a step to his right and ran a thumb across his navy ties. He selected a midnight-blue Dior and held it against his white shirt. Perfect.
Lee finished dressing and walked into his bedroom. His manservant waited on his knees, ready to apply a coat of polish to his shoes. John Lobb. Custom made in London. A future vice premier had to look the part. The Chinese people did not want their leaders dressed like peasants.
Lee took the elevator to the lobby. His chauffeur held open the door to the Mercedes and Lee slipped into the back seat. Traffic on Dongguan Avenue was light, and he arrived at the Peninsula Beijing, 3 miles from his home, in forty minutes. In the Huang Ting Restaurant, he was shown to a favored table. The premier arrived soon after. The men ate an expansive dinner of dim sum, shark’s fin soup, fresh grouper, and Peking duck, followed by a plate of fresh fruit and snifters of Hennessy cognac.
“Word from New York?” the premier asked finally, his cheeks reddened by the spirits.
“Any minute,” said Lee.
“If all goes well, you will be on the Standing Committee tomorrow, Vice Premier Lee.”
“I have every confidence that Troy will succeed.”
The premier wiped his mouth, suppressing a mean smile. “It’s not enough that we succeed,” he whispered. “The West must fail.”
Lee nodded.
The premier held his arm as the men descended the stairs to their separate automobiles. A photographer from the Beijing Times took their picture. In a few hours, it would be posted on the newspaper’s website. Tomorrow morning it would appear on the front page of every paper across the land. Word would spread that his election was assured. Magnus Lee, vice premier of finance. The yuan would drop like a stone. His investment with Bobby Astor would bear fruit and he would repay Elder Chen.
It was all so close now.
Lee checked his watch.
Any minute.
86
Thirty minutes before the opening, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was a scene of ordered pandemonium. The floor was spread over three cavernous high-ceilinged rooms covering a total of 40,000 square feet, with electronic trading posts situated in a rambling fashion like bumpers on a pinball machine. A balcony encircling the floor provided tight quarters for media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and others that maintained mini broadcast studios and kept reporters on call from dawn to dusk. Overlooking it all was the terrace where dignitaries stood to ring the opening bell.
Alex stood restlessly at one of the two main entries to the floor, from which she could see outside the building to Exchange Place and the old headquarters of J. P. Morgan across the street. “Mintz,” she said into her lapel microphone. “Come back.”
To protect against the bad guys listening in, she’d demanded access to a military bandwidth reserved for national emergencies. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was the best they could do at a moment’s notice.
“All clear,” said Mintz, his voice plumped with pride at his newfound status. He was no longer Deadeye in jest. He was the real thing.
Alex checked in with her agents who were patrolling the streets surrounding the Exchange. None had sighted any of the mercenaries whose dossiers she had found in James Salt’s home, or numbers 1 to 23, as she thought of them.
She’d read Palantir’s report and passed it on to Janet McVeigh, along with all she’d learned from Michael Grillo. From there the information had traveled to the police commissioner, the mayor’s office, and of course FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. There was no question that the New York Stock Exchange was the target. The mayor was adamant in his wish that the Exchange remain open for business as usual. The law enforcement authorities agreed, though their reasons had nothing to do with pride, and everything to do with tactics.
It was also decided not to publicly broadcast the nature of the threat. A plan was fielded to block off all vehicular traffic in a 1-square-mile radius of the Exchange building. That, too, was vetoed. Alex pointed out that it was probable that a secondary target had been chosen and mapped out. The idea of an attack against a department store, a government building, or, God forbid, a school by so many heavily armed, battle-hardened mercenaries was too terrible to contemplate.
There was really only one choice, and that was to capture the terrorists. To achieve this, two hundred policemen and FBI agents, most from the local Joint Terrorism Task Force, had been called in, briefed, and assigned a sector to patrol. All wore plain clothes. They were dressed as Wall Street traders, secretaries, tourists, and city workers. All had been provided with photographs of the mercenaries. The last order was the most important: no one was to engage a suspect until being given the green light from Alex. The only visible sign of the beefed-up security was an additional Hercules brigade positioned at the corner of Wall and Broad, but this was hardly out of the ordinary. The New York Stock Exchange was a hard target in the best of times.