CHAPTER 4

Noah stopped in the middle of the main hallway and stood there for a while, his head full of unfinished thoughts and that troubling fogginess you feel only when you’ve forgotten where you’re going, and why.

That meeting was still going on, but without him. His father had called a break and passed him a note with a list of phone numbers and a few bullet points of instructions‑ one last errand to perform before he could leave for the weekend. These were apparently VIPs to be invited for the after‑ hours portion of the presentation, provided the first part had gone as hoped. Evidently it had.

This task he’d been given had started out strange, and then one by one the calls had only gotten stranger.

There were no names, only numbers. Each of the calls was answered before the second ring, not by a service but by a personal assistant. Every one of those phones was professionally attended after business hours on a Friday night, and probably twenty‑ four hours a day by the sound of it. That seemed oddly extravagant, but maybe it wasn’t so unusual considering the circles in which his father was known to travel.

There’d been audible indications of a scrambler during at least four of the brief conversations, and some sort of voice‑ alteration gizmo on one of them. Everyone had seemed extremely wary of revealing any information about the identity of the person associated with each number, but the last one hadn’t been quite careful enough.

Noah had caught a last name spoken in the background during this final call. It was a Manhattan number, a 212 area code, and the name he’d heard was an uncommon one. He’d also seen it in the newspaper earlier in the day. That call had been to the private line of the most likely nominee for the next U. S. Treasury secretary, assuming the election went as forecast.

This man was also the current president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve. He and twenty or so others of comparable status were apparently now dropping everything and coming here, bound for a conference room where Noah’s father was waiting with the previous attendees.

He walked to the southeast corner suite and keyed himself into the private kitchen used to prepare his father’s meals on those days he was in town. The room was all tile and polished granite and stainless steel, larger than most of the executive offices and equipped for Arthur Gardner’s personal chef.

Noah flipped on the blower over the range, lit the cooktop in back, and followed the final instruction on his list of things to do.

Destroy this paper; be certain to watch it burn.

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