The Prince of Risk by Christopher Reich

Author:Christopher Reich [Reich, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Retail, Suspense, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780385535069
Google: 8tRRLwEACAAJ
Amazon: 0385535066
Barnesnoble: 0385535066
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2013-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

47

Michael Grillo did not like to be kept waiting. The time was ten past nine. He stood beneath the awning of a deli at the corner of 61st and Third Avenue, enjoying the shade. He had a rule about this kind of thing: never smoke more than three cigarettes while waiting for a contact. Staying in one place too long put you in jeopardy of being spotted. Just as dangerous, it signaled desperation to your contact. Grillo dropped cigarette number two and ground it beneath his heel.

He gazed up the block to the corner of 62nd Street, his eyes focusing on the entry to a steel pier and glass office building. His contact worked on the tenth floor of the building, behind a door bearing the words Johnson, Higby, and Mather, Attorneys at Law. His contact was not a lawyer. The names on the door were a front. His contact was a twenty-five-year man with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations, and the offices of Johnson, Higby, and Mather housed an Agency collections office engaged in the analysis of foreign intelligence.

Grillo checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes. He felt for his Shermans. Instead, he took out his phone and looked at his e-mail. Nothing new had arrived since his contact at the credit bureau had put him onto Edward Astor’s scent an hour before.

“Astor has a credit score of seven sixty-one,” the contact had reported.

“Won’t do him much good now,” said Grillo. “Just tell me what cards he carried.”

“Visa, MasterCard, American Express, the usual. Pays off his balance every month.”

“His salary is listed at five million a year. He can afford it. Just forward me the card numbers.”

After receiving the information, Grillo phoned the credit card companies, specifically the individuals who headed the companies’ antifraud departments. As with the nation’s phone carriers, he had spent considerable time and effort cultivating contacts. Unauthorized sharing of customer records was a felonious offense punishable by hefty fines and prison time. His approaches were made in person and with discretion. On occasion he’d been forced to call on a person’s patriotism, meaning that he’d misrepresented himself as an agent for a United States government law enforcement agency. If his requests were denied he had alternate means at his disposal, namely a crafty, cunning, and completely amoral band of hackers based in Shanghai. But they were a last resort, and not to be trusted.

Copies of Edward Astor’s charges began landing in Grillo’s secure servers soon afterward. By noon he would possess a comprehensive record of all charges the late CEO of the New York Stock Exchange had made over the past ninety days. Grillo was interested not in what he had purchased but in studying the location of his charges to track Astor’s movements.

Grillo’s phone rumbled in his pocket. He looked at the caller ID and answered. “That was quick.”

“You told me to impress you,” said the female executive at the nation’s largest phone carrier. “Check your mail. Just sent over his last three months of calls, including correspondents’ names and addresses.

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