The Prince of Risk A Novel(68)
At eleven o’clock the truck pulled out of the hangar and left company grounds. It required two hours’ driving to reach the border crossing in Buffalo, where the truck was waved through after a cursory check of its manifest. The driver had been making the run for fifteen years and knew the inspector personally. They traded comments about last night’s baseball game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees. To the inspector’s chagrin, the Yankees had won on a ninth-inning home run blast by A-Rod. The inspector tore off his copy of the manifest without casting so much as a look and handed the remaining sheets back to the driver. The exchange was over, start to finish, in forty-five seconds.
Forty-five seconds after that, the Silicon Solutions truck crossed the border into the Empire State.
Team Two was on American soil.
46
The madness began minutes after Astor ended his call with Magnus Lee.
“Bobby, it’s Jay Cantrell.”
Jay Cantrell ran the prime direct division at another of Comstock’s lenders. He was Texas royalty, scion of an oil baron who owned half of Houston. Cantrell had lived in New York for thirty years, but his twang was still as strong as the day he arrived.
“I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.”
“Wish it was. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that if the rates hold, we’re looking at a margin call of one hundred fifty million this afternoon.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I know you are,” said Cantrell. “And I know we don’t have to worry about Comstock one little bit.”
“You don’t, Jay. The dollar’s going to rally versus the yuan.”
Cantrell cleared his throat, and when he spoke his twang had lost some of that down-home sweetness. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant, Jay.”
“And?”
“I’ll talk to you after the close.”
“Now hold on a sec there, Bobby,” said Cantrell, one good ole boy to another. “A buck fifty’s a nice pile of change. I’d like to be able to give my boys a heads-up that everything’s hunky-dory down your way.”
“Couldn’t be better, Jay. And I thank you for asking.”
“So I can tell ’em—”
“You can tell ’em that I’ll speak with you after the close.”
Astor hung up. His eyes had been glued to the monitor for the length of the conversation, checking the slightest fluctuations in the position. Every tick up or down of a hundredth of a cent translated into a gain or loss of millions of dollars. With every tick, he felt a vein in his temple throb.
A second later his phone rang again. “Sam Bloch on line one,” said his assistant.
Bloch was another lender, one of the two people at the clambake on Sunday night whom Astor had counted as a friend. Bloch was old-school. They had always kept one rule between them: no bullshit.
“Yeah, Sam.”
“You fucked up, Bobby.”
“Give me some time.”
“You’ve got six hours till the close. And twenty-four after that to make good.”
“What are we out to you?”
“Couple hundred. You got it?”
“Let me check my pockets.”
“No one’s in the mood to laugh today, buddy. This is real. No sign the rates are softening. I saw that press conference last night, too. You’re not the only one sweating this. What the hell were you thinking?”
Astor grimaced. Win big or lose big, it was the same question. Only the tone differed. Admiration or condemnation. Right now, he was damned if he had an answer. “I’ll talk to you after the close, Sam.”
“I can’t be your rabbi on this one. Rules are rules. Lots of people are watching. You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I know how it is. And Sam…thanks.” Astor hung up.
The pain in his temple increased.
The phone rang again. “Who is it now?” he asked his assistant.
“Adam Weinstein from the Times.”
Weinstein wrote the “Deal of the Day” column for the paper. He was Wall Street’s Hedda Hopper, and just about as warm and fuzzy, with a reputation for breaking the big story. Astor couldn’t trust himself to dish out the requisite bullshit this morning. Telling a newspaper the truth was like handing the hangman a rope. Astor had no illusions. Weinstein was an executioner. Astor knew just the person to shut him down. “Give him to Marv.”
Another light was blinking. Astor ignored it. Instead, he called Sully and asked him to bring the car around to the front of the building. He placed one last call. “Get me Septimus Reventlow.”
“One second.”