The Prince of Risk A Novel(4)

“All of them…dead?”

“Yes.”

Astor considered this, the enormity of the event dawning on him. “Let me get this right. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, the treasury secretary, and the head of the New York Stock Exchange were traveling together at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night to see the president. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

Astor opened a cabinet in the bookshelf that housed a television and searched for the remote. “The markets must be going apeshit.”

Alex grabbed his arm. “What are you doing? Who cares about the markets?”

“He would have.”

“You’re not him.”

“If there’s more to it, I need to know. My god, the president must be in his bunker in Maryland by now.”

“Bobby!”

“Okay. You win.” Astor put down the remote. He had people working for him who were better placed to respond to a crisis like this. If anything happened to materially affect the firm, they’d let him know.



“I cared for him,” she said.

“I know you did,” he said, not unkindly.

“So I take it you never reached out?”

“It was up to him.”

“How does that matter now?”

“Edward Astor died tonight, and I’m sorry for that. But my father passed away a long time ago.”

Alex shook her head. “But it was just business. A stupid argument about money.”

“No, Alex. It was never about business.” That had been the excuse. A business disagreement was the easiest scapegoat. Astor wanted to say more. He wanted to say that he’d picked up the phone a thousand times to call and put it right back down. That she might know Edward Astor as a kind and respectful father-in-law, as the affectionate grandfather to their daughter, but she didn’t know him as he did. If she asked him right then, he’d tell her.

But Alex shrugged and looked away. She walked to the window and straightened her shoulders, and when she turned around, the woman he’d married was gone. The beast that was the Federal Bureau of Investigation had retaken control of her. “You’ll receive a formal notification any minute,” she said. “You can call the Secret Service to fill you in. They can provide you with more information. I have to go.”

Astor stepped closer to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Allie, stop. Come on. What do you want? Tears? You know how it was between us.”

She knocked his hand away. “Don’t call me that. You don’t have the right.”

“Come on,” he said. “It’s me.”

“We’re divorced. Get that through your head. I came here as a courtesy. Nothing more.”

“Just doing your job, right?” Astor peeled back a curtain and looked down into the forecourt. A strapping blond man stood next to the passenger door of the Dodge. Like her, he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Astor recognized him as one of her “young lions,” the name she gave to her stable of capable, motivated, exclusively male subordinates.



“All this went down on the White House lawn?” he said, returning his attention to his ex-wife. The mood between them had swung back to its old bluff and battery-acid self.

“It’s going to be a big one,” said Alex.

Astor could see the spark in his wife’s eye, that ember of excitement that only her job could provide. Two years after they’d separated, and a full ten months since their divorce had been finalized, it still upset him. “If I were you, I’d get on a plane to D.C. first thing,” he said. “Take the G4. I’ll call and get it fueled up, see that a crew’s there in an hour.”

“It’s not my case.”

“Might want to put in for a transfer. There’re going to be a lot of headlines for whoever heads this thing up. Could be your chance to get to D.C. I know how much you want that deputy director’s slot.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I’m just saying,” Astor went on. “Your career cost us our marriage. Might as well get your money’s worth.”

“This from a man who didn’t set foot inside his house before nine on weeknights and didn’t bother coming home at all on weekends.”

“Look what it got us.”

Alex approached, her face an inch from his. The spark in her eye was still there, but it was caused by anger, not excitement. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m looking. Not a whole helluva lot, from where I stand.”

She pushed past him and left the study. Astor followed her down the stairs. “What were you doing out here anyway? You said my father was killed an hour ago. No way you could have made it out from the city that fast.”