Richard Castle: Storm Front

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.

The MonEx 4000 had, in the last few years, become the preferred platform of the serious international trader, replacing a variety of lesser competitors. Faster and more versatile than its rivals, it provided access to all major markets, currencies, and commodities, seamlessly integrating them into one interface. Its operations were baffling to anyone unfamiliar with the bizarre language of the marketplace — its screen would appear to be something like hieroglyphics to a layman — but a seasoned trader could work it like a maestro.

Whitely Cracker made it sing better than most. He was legendary among fellow traders for his ability to keep up with a myriad of complex deals simultaneously. In the worldwide community of MonEx 4000 users, many of whom only knew each other virtually, Whitely’s virtuosity had earned him the nickname “the great white shark” — because he was always moving and always hungry.

This day was no different. Within a half hour of the opening of North American markets, he had already made twelve million dollars’ worth of transactions, and he was just getting warmed up. He had just pulled the trigger on a 1.1-million-dollar purchase of cattle futures — he would sell them long before they matured four months from now, because Lord knows there wasn’t space in the decompression center for that many cows — when the MonEx 4000’s instant messaging function flashed on the top of his screen.

It was from a trader in Berlin to whom Whitely had just made an offer.

Selling short again, White?

Whitely’s handsome face assumed a slight grin. His fingers flew.

Just hedging some bets elsewhere. Looking to shore up some significant gains. You know how it is.

The top of the screen stayed static for a moment, then a new message appeared.

Ah, the great white strikes again.

Whitely studied this for a moment, weighed the benefits of prodding the guy a little bit, and decided there could be no harm. He was offering the Berliner what would appear to be a solid deal. The guy would be a fool not to take it.

Don’t worry. You’re not my tuna today. Just a small mackerel. Maybe even a minnow.

Whitely enjoyed this, the jocularity of bantering traders. He liked the money, too. But the real benefit was, simply, the deal itself. He was an unabashed deal junkie. Buy low, sell high. Un-earth an undervalued asset, snap it up. Discover an overvalued asset, sell it short. Big margins. Small margins. Didn’t matter. The deal was his drug. Whether he made millions, thousands, or mere hundreds was immaterial. As long as it was a win. The high was incomparable. When he was trading, he was even more engrossed than he was when he played his video games. The hours just slipped by. The outside world barely mattered when he was trading.

He certainly didn’t notice that his every move — and every trade — was being captured by three tiny cameras that had been hidden behind his desk: one in the bookcase, one in a picture frame, one in the liquor cabinet.

Each had a perfect view of every trade he offered and accepted. Each relayed its crisp, high-definition video feed to an office on the eighty-third floor.

On the other side of his desk, and littered in numerous spots throughout those six thousand square feet, there were more cameras and bugs. It helped that Whitely preferred such lavish furnishings: It made for more hiding places. His home in Chappaqua, his various cars, anywhere he regularly went — even his health club — were festooned with them. There was nothing he did, no conversation he had, that wasn’t being monitored by a person well trained in the ways of killing.

Whitely was oblivious to it all, just as he was oblivious for the first three minutes Theodore Sniff spent lurking in his doorway midway through the morning. Sniff had been Prime Resource Investment Group’s accountant since its inception. He did not have his boss’s charm, and certainly lacked his good looks: Sniff was short, fat, and balding, the Holy Trinity of datelessness. His clothes, which seemed to wrinkle faster than ought to have been scientifically possible, never fit right. By the end of his long days at the office, his body odor tended to overpower whatever deodorant he chose. Even with a salary that should have made him plenty attractive to the opposite sex — or at least a certain opportunistic subset of it — Sniff hadn’t been laid in years.

His lone gift was for accounting. And there, he was genius, capable of keeping a veritable Domesday Book’s worth of accounts and ledgers at his command. Whitely leaned heavily on this ability because, in truth, he couldn’t really be bothered to oversee these things himself. Whitely took pride in his instincts as a trader, instincts that had built an empire. He could feel changes in the marketplace coming the way the Native Americans of yore could feel the ground trembling from buffalo. But keeping up with the books? Boring. Melissa told him he should make more of an effort. He told her that’s what Sniff was for.

Cracker was so loath to pay attention to the bottom line, he even tended to overlook when Sniff was in the room. For Whitely, a man ordinarily so attuned to his staff, ignoring Sniff was like a congenital condition. There was seemingly nothing he could do to stop it. The accountant was entering his fourth minute of standing in the doorway before he finally coughed softly into his hand. Whitely did not look up from his screen. Sniff rattled the change in his pocket. Nothing. Sniff cleared his throat, this time louder. Still nothing. Finally, he spoke.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sniff said. “But it’s important.”

“Not now, Teddy,” Whitely said. Whitely always called him Teddy. Whitely used the name affectionately; he thought it brought the men closer. Sniff never had the courage to tell his boss he abhorred it.

“Sir, I…”

“Teddy,” Whitely said sharply, without taking his eyes off his screen. “I’m trading.”

Sniff turned his back and slinked off.

The camera in the far corner caught his dejected look as he departed.

LANGLEY, Virginia

Derrick Storm was a Ford man.

Maybe that didn’t seem like a very sexy choice for a secret operative. Maybe, in a nod to the great James Bond, he should have gone with an Aston Martin, or a Lamborghini, or, heck, even just a Beemer.

But, no. Derrick Storm liked his Fords. He was an American spy, after all. And an American spy ought to have an American ride. Besides, he liked how they handled. He liked the familiarity of the instrument panel. He liked knowing that he had good old Michigan-made muscle at his command. When he was a teenager, his first car had been a non-operating ’87 Thunderbird he bought off a buddy for five hundred dollars of lawn-mowing money and nursed back to glorious health. He drove the car all through high school and college. That had been enough to hook him. He had driven Fords ever since.

And, in truth, they were a much more practical choice for a man of his profession. Tool around in a Bentley just once and everyone notices you. Drive the exact same route every day in a Ford Focus and you might as well be invisible.

He kept Fords stashed near airports in many of his favorite cities. In New York, for example, he had recently purchased a new Mustang, a Shelby GT500 with a supercharged aluminum-block V8 — a spirited revival of an American classic. In Miami, he kicked it old school, going with a ’66 T-Bird convertible, with the 390-cubic-inch, 315-horsepower V8. In Denver, he had an Explorer Sport, good for climbing mountain passes on the way to ski slopes.