“And why is that?”
“Because a high-profile Swiss banker was killed in Zurich yesterday,” Jones said, then hit Storm with the hammer: “There are pictures of the killer on their way to us. He’s been described as having an eye patch. And the banker was missing six fingernails.”
Storm reflexively stiffened. That killer — with that M.O. — could only mean one thing: Gregor Volkov was back.
“But he’s dead,” Storm growled.
“Yeah, well, so were you.”
“Who is he working for this time?”
“We’re not a hundred percent sure,” Jones said. “But my people have picked up some talk on the street that a Chinese agent may be involved.”
“Okay. I’ll take my briefing now if you’re ready.”
“No, not over the phone,” Jones said. “We need you to come back to the cubby for that.”
The cubby was Jones’s tongue-in-cheek name for the small fiefdom he had carved out of the National Clandestine Service.
“I’ll be on the next plane,” Storm said.
“Great. I’ll have a car meet you at the airport. Just let me know what flight you’ll be on.”
“No way,” Storm said. “You know that’s not the way I operate.”
Storm could practically hear Jones rubbing his buzz-cut head. “I wish you could be a little more transparent with me, Storm.”
“Forget it,” Storm said, then repeated the mantra he had delivered many times before: “Transparency gets you killed.”
CHAPTER 4
NEW YORK, New York
oaring high above lower Manhattan, Marlowe Tower was a ninety-two-story monument to American economic might, a glistening glass menagerie that housed some of the country’s fiercest financial animals. In New York’s hypercompetitive commercial real estate market, merely the name — Marlowe Tower — had come to represent status, to the point where neighboring properties bolstered their reputations by describing themselves as “Near Marlowe.”
Marlowe Tower was a place where wealthy capitalists went to grow their already large stake in the world. After parking their expensive imported cars at nearby garages, they entered at street level through the air lock created by the polished brass revolving doors, wearing their hand-crafted leather shoes and custom-tailored silk suits, each determined to make his fortune, whether it was his first, his second, or some subsequent iteration thereof.
G. Whitely Cracker V joined them in their battle each day. But to say he was merely one of them did not do him justice. The fact was, he was the best of them. His Maserati (or Lexus, or Jaguar, or whatever he chose to drive that day) was just a little faster. His shoes were just a little finer. His suits fit just a little better.
And his executive suite on the eighty-seventh floor made him the envy of all who entered. It was six thousand square feet — an absurd bounty in a building where office space went for $125 a square foot — and it included such necessities as a coffee bar, a workout area, and a multimedia center, along with luxuries like a full-time massage therapist, a vintage video game arcade, and a feng shui–themed “decompression center” with a floor-to-ceiling waterfall.
As the CEO and chief proprietor of Prime Resource Investment Group LLC, Whitely Cracker had won this palace of prestige the new old-fashioned way. He’d earned it — by taking an already huge pile of family money, then leveraging it to make even more.
Whitely Cracker was the scion of one of New York’s wealthiest families — the Westchester Crackers, not the Suffolk Crackers — and could trace the origin of his name to 1857, with the birth of his great-great-grandfather.
The first in the line had actually gone by his given name, Graham. This, naturally, was before the National Biscuit Company came on the scene and popularized the slightly sweetened rectangular whole wheat food product. Graham W. Cracker had been a visionary who had made a fortune by luring Chinese workers across the Pacific to build railroads for substandard wages. That Graham Cracker gave his son, Graham W. Cracker Jr., seed money that he used to create a textiles conglomerate.
This set the pattern honored by all the Graham Crackers who followed: Each made his riches in his own area, then helped set up his son to make money in an industry befitting his generation.
Graham W. Cracker III struck it rich with oil refineries. G. W. Cracker IV — the popularity of the aforementioned Nabisco product had necessitated the use of initials — had been in plastics. And in keeping with the modern times, G. Whitely Cracker V, who used his middle name so no one confused him with his father, had become a hedge fund manager.
Yet while all this wealth and success might make them seem detestable, the fact was people couldn’t help but like a guy named Graham Cracker. And G. Whitely Cracker was no exception. At forty, he was still trim and boyishly handsome, with but a few wisps of gray hair beginning to blend in with his ash-blond coiffure. He smiled easily, laughed appropriately at every joke, and shook hands like he meant it.
He coupled this effortless charm with a gift for remembering names and a warmth in his relations, whether personal or professional. He was self-deprecating, openly admitting that his wife, Melissa — who was adored in social circles — was much smarter than him. And in a world full of philanderers, he was unerringly faithful to her.
He was also endlessly generous to his employees, whom he treated like family. He was a friend to nearly every major charity in New York, lavishing each with a six-figure check annually and seven-figure gifts when any of them found themselves in a pinch. And if ever he was panhandled by an indigent, he kept a ready supply of sandwich shop coupons — nonrefundable and nontransferrable, so they couldn’t swap the handout for booze.
It was this last trait that led to one glossy magazine deeming him the “Nicest Guy in New York.”
Everyone, it seemed, liked Whitely Cracker.
Which made it all the more confounding that he was being stalked by a trained killer.
Whitely Cracker was, naturally, unaware of this as he drove in from Chappaqua. He had kissed Melissa at 5:25 A.M. that Monday, put on his favorite driving cap and driving gloves, the ones that made him feel like a badass, climbed into his vintage V12 Jaguar XJS, because he was in a Jaguar kind of mood that day, and made the drive to Marlowe Tower, tailed several car-lengths back by an unassuming white panel van.
That Whitely was a creature of habit made him surpassingly easy to stalk. He liked to be at his office by 6:30 A.M. at the latest, to get a good head start on his day. This was not unusual among the kind of people who populated Marlowe Tower, some of whom passive-aggressively competed with one another to see who could be the first to push through the brass doors each day. The current winner clocked in shortly after four each morning. Whitely Cracker had no patience for such foolishness. What was the point of being absurdly wealthy if you couldn’t set your own schedule?
By 7 A.M., he had dispatched a few small items that had built up overnight from markets in Asia and Europe, beaten back his accountant, the always-nervous Theodore Sniff, and retreated to his in-office arcade. Every super-rich guy needed some eccentricities, and classic video games were Whitely’s. They soothed him, he said, but also focused his brain. He claimed to have invented one of his most lucrative derivatives while battering Don Flamenco in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.
On this morning, he made sure Ms. Pac-Man was well fed. He burnished Zelda’s legend for a little while. Then he switched to Pitfall!, where he amassed a small pretend fortune by swinging on ropes and avoiding ravenous alligators — oblivious that he had a real predator’s eyes on him, albeit electronically, the whole time.
When he had finally satisfied his pixel-based urges, it was nine-fifteen, which meant it was time to turn his attention to his actual fortune. He left the arcade, smiling and waving at the employees he passed on the way, and returned to his office, where he settled in front of his MonEx 4000 terminal. He entered his password, the one that only he knew, and it came to life.