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know who uses the phone, only that it’s registered to an American company. Comstock Partners, Ltd., with an address at 221 Broad Street, New York. The owner is Robert Astor.”
    Lee knew the name, of course. “Place a tag on the number. Initiate surveillance. Grade it ‘urgent.’”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Keep up the good work and I’ll see to it that you receive a transfer home by year end.”
    Afterward, Magnus Lee strode to the window. From his living room on the eightieth floor of the city’s newest and most sought-after residence, he enjoyed an unmatched view over a prosperous metropolis. Sparkling new skyscrapers, towering edifices of glass and steel, carved up the skyline, engineering marvels all. In between them stood more construction cranes than a man could count. He saw streets filled with new cars and an ocean crisscrossed with the wakes of a hundred freighters and ferries.
    Everywhere he looked, he saw the future, and the future was money.
    A last transmission.
PALANTIR.
    Lee blinked rapidly again. He thought of the years of planning, the enormous investment, the hard work. Mostly, though, he thought of himself. His rise to power could not be stopped. Not now. Not when all was so close to fruition.
    He regarded the name of the company he had written down and its owner.
Comstock Partners.
    Robert Astor.
    Lee drew a deep breath and held it inside him, seeking his center.
    He had a vision of a pebble striking a placid pond. As it sank, ripples spread outward toward the shore. Concentric circles expanding one after another.
    The pebble had struck the water.
    The ripples must not be allowed to reach the shore.

5
    “H ow’d he take it?”
    Alex kept her eyes on the dash as she buckled her seat belt. “I don’t know.”
    “He wasn’t upset?” asked Special Agent Jim Malloy. Malloy was thirty, a three-year man who’d come to the Bureau after putting in six years with the navy, first as a diver, then as a SEAL, with two deployments under his belt.
    “Oh, he’s upset. He’ll just never let you see it.” Alex checked her BlackBerry. “Anything go down while I was inside?”
    “Nada. Place is silent as the grave.”
    The “place” was 1254 Windermere Street in Inwood, Long Island, site of a surveillance operation Alex had mounted to look into the activities of a possible arms smuggler—or worse.
    “Two days,” she said. “He’s got to come back soon.”
    “Maybe he’s on vacation.”
    “He might be gone, but he ain’t on vacation. You saw the pictures. He’s got to come back sometime. And when he does, we’ll be waiting to speak with him. All right, then—
andiamo.
”
    Alex spun the car in a tight circle and pumped the accelerator to scatter some expensive Italian gravel as she left the driveway. She turned right on Further Lane toward the ocean and had the Charger doing sixty in six seconds. The estate faded from view. In the rearview, it looked like a dollhouse all lit up. Alex couldn’t get away fast enough.
    Malloy caught her looking. “You really didn’t get any of it?” he asked.
    Alex dropped her eyes from the mirror. “Of what?”
    “It. The money. Word is you didn’t take a penny in the settlement.”
    “Word is correct.”
    “Nothing?”
    “Nada.”
    “But look at it…It’s…it’s…”
    “Yes, it is a beautiful home with a beautiful view and beautiful polished gravel that he imported from a beautiful quarry in Carrara, Italy.”
    “He’s a billionaire,” protested Malloy. “No one walks away from that.”
    Alex laughed to herself. Her ex
—
the billionaire. People used the word in the same tone as
messiah.
“He’s no billionaire. Don’t believe everything you read.”
    “But close?”
    “Closer than me.”
    “And so?”
    Alex looked at Malloy. He was a new father with infant twin daughters at home. It was no wonder that money was a concern. “Don’t worry about me, Jimmy. I’m doing okay.”
    “On a buck and a quarter a year?”
    “A buck fifty.