At the temple they had taught him the way of the fist and the staff and, later, of more exotic instruments: nunchakus, swords, pikes, and lances. In countless shows and exhibitions, he had thrilled audiences with his mastery of them all. No one moved more quickly, more elegantly, more forcefully. But exhibitions were not enough. The warrior monk had wished to put his skills to more practical use.
It had started when he was sixteen and his blood ran hot for the first time. He would leave the temple at midnight. Even then, he walked so quietly the master could not hear him. He would roam the hills and pass through surrounding villages. He would peer into homes until he found a suitable choice, inevitably a girl, young, innocent, unsuspecting. He would enter and stand beside her. He would wait until his heartbeat matched her own and he knew serenity.
He was invisible.
He was silent.
He was death.
The warrior monk stared at the home. Fingers that could crush a larynx caressed the knife’s handle. It would be so easy. They would not know he was among them until it was too late.
It was not to be.
Above all, he was an obedient brother.
The warrior monk called 911.
“Hello,” he said, in an English an American would swear was his own. “I’m walking my dog and I saw some men breaking into the house at 1133 Elm.”
He hung up before they could ask his name.
Five minutes later, he heard the sirens approaching.
He turned and retraced his path up the hill through the birch trees. He walked as he had been taught so many years before. His feet touched the leaves but left no track.
He did not make a sound.
He floated.
27
Astor stepped over Penelope Evans and leaned onto the bed to pick up the magazine.
“Hey!” shouted Sullivan. “What did I say about not touching anything? Use a handkerchief, or better yet, just leave things be.”
Astor pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to retrieve the magazine. Information Technology Today was not exactly what he figured a thirty-five-year-old woman read in her spare time. The magazine lay open to an article titled “Next-Generation Solutions for Connecting Devices.” The first paragraph discussed a company in Reston, Virginia, called Britium. It began, “This cutting-edge software has fundamentally changed the way devices and systems connect, integrate, and interoperate with each other and the enterprise.” It got worse from there. He skimmed the remaining pages with an eye toward one word: Palantir. He put down the magazine disappointed.
A stack of paperbacks was piled high on the night table. Most were crime fiction by best-selling authors. The books confirmed his first thought. She did not read Information Technology Today for fun.
Astor poked his head into the bathroom. He saw nothing of interest and retreated through the bedroom and turned into the hall. He found Penelope Evans’s office on the opposite side of the corridor. Thick curtains stifled the daylight. A lamp burned on the desk, illuminating a raft of papers. In the room, it was still night.
Astor approached the desk cautiously, keeping in mind Sullivan’s admonition not to touch anything. He had never been arrested, but as a registered representative of the New York Stock Exchange and a principal of the National Association of Security Dealers, his fingerprints were on file and easily retrievable. Again he wrapped his fingers before thumbing through the stacks. There were articles downloaded from a variety of newspapers and periodicals, the subjects ranging from the latest batch of Silicon Valley startups to the growing influence of sovereign wealth funds on Wall Street to local concern over the sale of a chunk of Icelandic soil to foreign buyers.
Iceland?
Astor sorted through a stack of annual reports perched on the corner of the desk. The first few came from high-tech companies listed on the NASDAQ. There was a manufacturer of silicon wafers, a provider of routers and switches—something that would be classified as “Net infrastructure”—and an aerospace company involved in the manufacture and launch of communications satellites. He thumbed through the first few pages of each. Again he was unable to find any mention of Palantir. Nor did he find anything that struck him as sinister or alarming, or that in any way might be related to his father’s murder. In fact, the reports had nothing in common except the fact that they all concerned newly listed companies, the oldest having gone public a year earlier.
Thinking this might be the thread, he checked to see if all shared a common underwriter. They did not. A dozen different banks had participated in bringing the companies to market. He knew the underwriters to be upstanding firms.
Astor continued checking the annual reports, if less studiously. The emphasis was on technology, but there were more traditional industries as well, and these companies were not exclusively American. There was a South African mining company, an Australian maker of heavy equipment—tractors, trucks, backhoes, and the like—and a well-known German manufacturer of electronic components, primarily high-fidelity audio and communications equipment. It was only as he replaced these that he noted that the reports dated back several years. The most recent came from 2008.