Alex stopped at the front door. “Let me know when the funeral is. Katie and I would like to pay our respects.”
Astor looked at her attire again—the jeans, the T-shirt, the hair pulled back. He observed that she was wearing her work boots, too. He had his answer.
“Hey,” he called. “Be careful.”
But Alex was already in the driver’s seat, slamming the door.
3
Outside, Astor snaked through the crush of guests to the bar. “Vodka,” he said to the bartender. “Make it a double.”
“Any brand in mind?”
“The kind that’s eighty proof.”
The bartender filled a glass with ice, poured in a few fingers of vodka, then placed the bottle next to it. Astor picked up the glass and walked toward the guest villa. Several people approached to congratulate him on the dive. He ignored them. He was done talking for the night.
Inside the guest villa, he changed back into his clothes. He picked up his phone and saw that it was already filling with voice mail. First was a text message from a number he didn’t recognize. Astor was careful about his privacy. He gave his number only to friends whose own numbers he catalogued. The text was from a local area code. Something about the number rang a bell. He opened the message.
One word.
PALANTIR.
It meant nothing to him.
The message had arrived at 11:07, more than an hour earlier. He placed his thumb on the Delete key, then changed his mind. Alex had said that his father had died around eleven. He called the number. After seven rings, the call went to voice mail.
A smoky, bourbon-aged baritone spoke. He had not heard the voice in five years. Even so, it took only a syllable to make the hair on his arms stand to attention and send a current of undistilled dread from head to toe.
“You’ve reached Edward Astor. Leave a message.”
Astor picked up the glass of vodka, walked to the pool, and poured it in.
“Hey!” he shouted as he jumped onto the diving board and walked to the end. “Everyone, listen up.”
No one paid him any attention. He stuck his pinkie and index finger into his mouth and whistled. The music skidded to a halt. The guests turned his way.
“Party’s over.”
4
Two thousand miles to the northeast, the sun was rising on a desolate, windswept plain guarded on three sides by the youngest mountains on the planet. Heather and scrub rose in scattered stands. Vapor from sulfur hot springs seeped into the air. It was a land that time had forgotten. The region was known as Aska and it lay in the center of the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland.
Until a year ago, Aska had been the exclusive domain of ecotourists and wilderness enthusiasts. Visitors to the island flocked to the famed Ring of Fire, the scenic road that skirted the country’s dramatic coastline. Locals preferred the southern coast, where temperatures could be counted on to be a few degrees warmer than inland. With the nearest road a three-day walk, only the hardiest men and women ventured so far into the island’s interior.
All that changed when an international investment group purchased a 200-square-kilometer tract in the region and announced its intention to build an upscale eco-resort. Pictures of the planned resort were printed in the Morgunbladid, the nation’s oldest newspaper. Opposition was vocal and immediate. Icelanders had a long history of distrusting foreigners. It was not the resort itself they minded. It was what lay below it. Ceding valuable gas and mineral rights to a group whose allegiance was unknown would be imprudent at best.
More immediate concerns won the day. The global banking crisis of 2008 had devastated Iceland’s economy, wiping out the country’s banks and saddling its citizens with a whopping debt of 60,000 euros per person. A project that would inject hard currency into the economy was a godsend. Prudence be damned.
Questions about the investors’ origins were answered perfunctorily. The group was domiciled in the Cayman Islands and maintained executive offices in New York and Singapore. The primary shareholders were impressively capitalized corporations with lofty-sounding names like Excelsior Holdings and Sterling Partners. The sole executive to visit the island was a tall, dark-haired man named Magnus Lee.
Lee was a mystery from the start. From afar, he appeared Asian. He had an Asian’s black hair and a certain nimbleness about his step. But there was nothing Asian about his size and the breadth of his shoulders. Close up, one couldn’t help but stare at his blue eyes, which one smitten woman likened to her country’s glaciers. He spoke English like the Queen, and was heard speaking the czar’s Russian to a fishing executive from St. Petersburg. Talk about his nationality was short-lived. Icelanders knew a gentleman when they saw one. Most important, he had money. Barrels and barrels of money.