Fortuna lied about his nationality on the application, telling the board
he was French, rather than Lebanese. Of course he had false documentation to support this. He also submitted letters, authentic letters, written by no fewer than three U.S. senators, to all of whom he’d contributed a great deal of money to over the years. At the time of his application, he was dating a Hearst heiress, Samantha Biddle Hearst. Her phone call to her great-grandmother, Mia, or “Mummsy” as the grandchildren called her, who was chairwoman of the co-op board, hadn’t hurt.
The penthouse contained six bedroom suites in all, nine bathrooms, a gymnasium, a media room, a large dining room with a ballroom attached to it, a massive living room, five working fireplaces, a beautiful kitchen, and a stunning roof deck with a large garden, enclosed tennis court, and a small, kidney-shaped swimming pool and hot tub. The views, especially at the front of the apartment, on Fifth Avenue, were magnificent: Central Park, the Met, and to the left the lights of midtown.
“Your father called,” said Karim.
Fortuna turned and looked at Karim for a moment. “I thought he was away.”
“Not Mohammed. Aswan. From Broumana. Your
real
father.”
“Aswan?” he whispered.
“Yes.” He handed Fortuna a piece of paper. “There are two numbers you must dial,” said Karim. “Use the London switch. Call from your office. Close the door.”
“Yes, yes.”
“You can’t speak for more than sixty seconds.”
Fortuna gave Karim a look. “I know.”
He hurried out of the living room and down the hall to his bedroom. Through the bedroom, he stepped through another door. He turned on the lights to his small office. He closed the door behind him, then flipped another switch, which made a low clicking noise. This device scrambled any eavesdropping devices that might be pointed at the room. He sat at the desk and opened a drawer. He picked up the phone on the desk and dialed a number.
The phone rang several times before a strange buzzing tone clicked in. When this happened, Fortuna dialed another set of numbers. In a minute, the phone rang again. This time, a voice picked up.
“Alexander?”
“Father?”
“Yes, son. How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“Old, Alexander.”
“We have to talk quickly.”
“Yes, yes,” said his father. “I called to praise you. You’ve done excellent work.”
“Thank you.”
“They tell me it was you who planned it all.”
“Yes, it was.”
“You’ve struck a deep blow, son.”
“I know.”
“Can you send something to our friends? The ones in the tenements?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll wire something. It’ll be more than they’ve ever seen.”
“Good. We need them making noise. Also, our other friends, in the hills.”
“Yes, them too. Are all the accounts the same?”
“I’ll ask them to get a message to Karim if anything has changed.”
“Right, good.”
“We need them making noise, deflecting blame, so that you can stab the knife into the heart of the beast.”
“Yes, I know. We’re getting closer, Father.”
“What’s next?”
“The next few days will be severe, truly severe. It will change everything. Watch the news; you’ll see, we’re only days away.”
“When that’s done, perhaps you can rejoin me. Before I die.”
“I’d like that. How is Mattie?”
“She’s married now. She just had a daughter, a girl. Her name is Alexandria, after you. Nebbie is now my right hand. He says hello.”
“Good-bye, Father.”
Fortuna hung up the phone. He closed his eyes and leaned forward, rubbing them with his right hand. He felt tears well up, but he fought
them. He returned to his bedroom and walked into the spacious bathroom. He tried to keep from crying. He walked to the mirror and looked at himself.
“Don’t lose your focus,” he whispered to himself. “You’re so close.”
Too close,
he often thought.
Fortuna looked around him, at the expansive marble bathroom, the massive stone-tiled shower, the Jacuzzi, the window that framed the broad expanse of Central Park below, its elms and maples dotted with white snow. For as much as he hated America, as much as the acid flowed in his veins, the instinct to harm his adopted country, this venom mingled with regret, a sense of loss; for no matter how much he hated her, America had
made
him, made possible so much of what he had, the vast wealth, the selection of beautiful women, the houses, everything. America had formed him into what he was.
Speaking to his father, then thinking about this . . . it was almost too much. The pressure between the two colliding forces caused him to feel physically ill. He bent over, clutching his chest, knelt on the ground, overwhelmed by an alien surge of anxiety. Uncertainty.
“Stop,” he said out loud to no one. “Stand up. It’s time.”
He went back to the mirror. Slowly, he let his anger transform itself into focus. He reached down and turned the water on, then splashed his face several times. Whatever epiphany had occurred, whatever moment of regret, realization, or loss of will, was gone now. Before him stood once again the hardened animal he’d become; Fortuna, son of Aswan, blade of Allah.
He walked through the bedroom and opened the door.
Karim stood in the hallway. He had a serious expression on his face.
“What is it?”
“Your cell rang. It was Laurent.”
“Yes?”
“Something’s wrong.”
Fortuna walked back into his office. He closed the door behind him.
He dialed a number. He knew it by heart.
“Yes,” the voice said.
“What happened?”
“Something’s wrong, I’m afraid.”
“What? Speak.”
“It went badly on the rig.”
“Badly? The rig is gone, isn’t it?
Isn’t
it?”
“Yes, sir. But someone fought back. He killed all of our men.”
“What do you mean all of our men?
“You heard me. He killed them all.”
Fortuna hesitated. “Esco?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“The helicopter came into Cali as planned. But Esco wasn’t on board. Only the pilot and a stranger. He shot one of the men on the rooftop of the building.”
“What did he look like?”
“They said he was bearded, long hair, Caucasian. American.”
“It sounds like the one in charge of the rig—Andreas. Was it him?”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“They were supposed to leave him on the seafloor,” said Fortuna.
“Yes.”
“Well, then they fucked up. Where is he now?”
“He’s in Cali. This only just happened. The chopper crashed into a building. They shot him after the chopper landed. They think they hit him. But—”
“He’s gotten
away
?” Fortuna could scarcely believe what he was hearing.
“They’re tracking him. He was bleeding badly. But, yes. They’re still chasing him. He killed three more men.”
“For fuck’s sake. Do you realize what Esco
knew
?”
“Yes,” Laurent said once again.
“You listen to me. You’re to fix this. End it. We have no idea how much Andreas might have learned. Esco knew the targets. Esco knew everything. We trained together. If he got anything out of Esco we—” Fortuna didn’t care to finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
“I’m nearly out of men, Alexander.”
“Do it anyway. Call me when it’s done.”
Fortuna hung up and dialed a different number.
“Yes,” the voice said.
“Where are you?” asked Fortuna. “Can you talk?”
“No, I can’t
talk,
” said the voice. “What is it? Be quick.”
“One of the survivors,” said Fortuna. “He could be a problem.”
“I know. Andreas. He just made contact.”
Fortuna closed his eyes. “How much did he know?”
“He knew the name of the explosive. I don’t know what else, specifically.”
“He could know more.”
“They’re extracting him inside the hour.”
“That can’t happen. You have to take him out, Victor. My men are all dead.”
Vic Buck chuckled humorlessly. “Just take him out, right? You gotta be kidding. I’m standing in an office two doors down from the head of counterterrorism. Now I’m supposed to hunt down your problem? Fuck that.”
“He could know enough to find me,” Fortuna said evenly. “If he finds me, he finds you.”
Buck’s voice turned savage. “Watch it. Don’t forget what I do for a living. I won’t be threatened. I could just as easily remove
you.
”
“If suicide’s your taste, you could try,” said Fortuna. “But that would also leave you fifty million dollars poorer.”
“Funny.”
“If they extract him, you’ll be in the gallows within a week,” continued Fortuna. “And I’ll be dead. We both know the situation. We need to do something.”
Predictably, the promise of more money—obscene money to a government official like Vic Buck—worked.
“I’ll do what I can,” said Buck. “If your fucking
martyrs
had just done their job at the rig—”
Fortuna let out a long-held breath as Vic Buck, director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service, hung up the phone.
Fortuna stood up and opened the door to his office, walked through his bedroom, along the long hallway, past the kitchen, into the media room, and sat in a big leather chair. He turned on the plasma.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Karim asked.
“Yes. Anything. Pizza.”
Fortuna flipped through the channels until he came to Fox News. On the hundred-inch screen, a male reporter stood in front of KKB’s headquarters building on Fifty-ninth Street.
. . . the terrible news has sent shock waves through the energy industry. Ted Marks, apparently still clinging to life in a Denver hospital while Nick Anson along with Anson’s wife, Annie, just days after announcing the historic merger of the two large energy concerns, burned to death last night in a fire at Marks’s ski house in Aspen. . . .
Marks alive was another disappointment in a mission that had started so well. But the CEO’s survival did not compare to the threat of a living, breathing Dewey Andreas. Quickly, Fortuna clicked through all of the news channels. Nothing yet, other than the fire in Aspen. Not a word about Capitana or Savage Island.
He walked to the kitchen.
“Have we heard from Mahmoud?” Fortuna asked, urgency in his voice.
“Nothing,” said Karim.
“They say Marks is still alive. If they captured Mahmoud—”
“Let’s be patient, Alex.”
Fortuna went to his bedroom and put on Lycra running shorts, a blue T-shirt and a pair of running shoes. In the gym, he climbed onto the treadmill, set the timer for forty-five minutes, and started running.
His body felt good, strong, no pain. After twenty minutes, he’d run four miles. He was running his usual 5:00 pace. During his junior year at Princeton, he’d run a 4:20 mile. He looked down at the timing split on the treadmill. He pushed in the setting for 4:30. Four and a half miles into his run, he began pacing at a 4:30 mile. He felt the pain in his legs first, then his head. His legs moved furiously and the sweat poured down his forehead.
He grimaced as the first minute passed. He worried he might fall off the back of the treadmill but he kept pushing. Soon the second minute passed, then the third. In front of him, in the mirror, he saw his own reflection for a brief moment. He looked slightly crazed, out of control, not exactly the same form he had in college. Still, how many thirty-six-year-old men could run a 4:30 mile? He crossed the four-minute mark. The pain now occupied every fiber in his body. His mind, which had carried him this far, began to abandon him, telling him to hit the red Stop button on the console. Something deeper spurred him on. He counted the final seconds as the distance meter clicked toward the mile mark. At 4:29, he completed the mile. Fortuna reached forward and pressed the down arrow, slowing the treadmill. He reset the meter at a 5:30 pace. He would run another five miles at a more relaxed pace.
But as he ran, he could only think of Esco. As much as he tried to put it out of his mind, he could not. The first time he had met Esco was a decade ago. Esco, thirty years old at the time, had just quit his job as a teacher in Calcutta. They met on the Crimea Peninsula, at the Hezbollah training camps his father had arranged to send him to. They had shared a tent together for more than a year, before he started at Wharton. It was at Crimea they learned how to plan, to build the cell, to fight, to kill. He recalled Esco’s hearty laugh, his calm demeanor, and engineer’s mind.
Fortuna tried to use the pain of the run—in his head, his lungs, his legs—to blot out the anger he now felt, and the sadness at the loss of his friend. Finally, he found a way to stem the emotion that welled up inside of him for his brother in arms. It was fury, plain and simple, a deep, abiding rage that coursed up into his body as it built. The fury overtook him as he ran, even faster now, sprinting all-out on the machine, the red rage crystallizing into a single word:
Andreas.