While Epstein’s official headquarters were in Manhattan, this was the true nerve center. From here, the abnorm ran his massive financial empire, not only the development of New Canaan, but the management of thousands of patents, investments, and research projects, the total net worth of which was impossible to calculate. Money at that level was not something that could be counted; it was dynamic, a living thing that swelled and shrank and consumed the money of others, companies buying companies buying companies for fifty iterations.
The top of every building bristled with satellite dishes and security systems, among them batteries of surface-to-air missiles. Defensive, supposedly, and squeaked through on a congressional exemption that must have cost billions. Cooper remembered a plan he’d seen for a coordinated missile launch targeting the compound: expected physical efficacy of 27 percent in an initial barrage, but casualties projected at only 16 percent, less than 5 percent upper managerial.
There were no doubt plans for a nuclear option as well. One thing the DAR had was plans.
“You okay?” Shannon maneuvered the electric car they’d rented into a parking spot in a row of identical vehicles. “You’ve been quiet.”
“The glider,” he lied. “Still getting my ground legs back.”
She turned off the engine. “There’s something you should know. I got us in by dropping John’s name.”
“John?” he said. “Oh. John Smith. Hmm. Will that make him friendly?” Epstein openly and frequently disassociated himself from the terrorist movements, all of them. He had to; any link to someone like John Smith and the loopholes that kept the Holdfast safe would close swiftly and tightly. The DAR assumed that there must be some back-channel connection, but they’d never been able to find evidence of one.
“I don’t know. Publically, Epstein is a pretty vocal critic. But John has a lot of friends here. Using his name was the only way I knew to get a meeting.”
“So what’s their relationship?”
“I don’t really know. John respects Epstein, but I think he feels they’re playing different roles. Some people compare them to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.”
“Lousy parallel. Dr. King fought for equality and integration, not building a separate empire, and Malcolm X may have advocated black rights by any means necessary, but he didn’t run a terror network that blew up buildings.”
“I don’t want to argue about it.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “But I’m not going to pretend to be with Smith.”
“You shouldn’t. I wouldn’t lie to him at all, if I were you.”
“Not much point,” he said. “I can’t ask him for help if I don’t tell him why I need it.” Tough tightrope to walk. You have to convince a man who has everything to lose by admitting a connection to John Smith to do just that. All without telling him too much. He forced a cocksure grin. “Thanks for this. For keeping your end.”
“Yeah. Well, we had a deal.” She opened the car door. “Come on. Let’s go meet a billionaire.”
The grounds were deserted, and given the sun blasting down from the big blue sky, he wasn’t surprised. The complex had more than twenty buildings—twenty-two, if he remembered correctly—but the one they entered was at the center. It didn’t look like much, none of the grand corporate styling he would have expected in Chicago or DC. Though taller than the rest, it was the same featureless solar glass. Of course. Solar glass bounces the sun’s heat, transforms it to energy. Marble is heavy and needs to be shipped in. And ornate carvings are nostalgia.
Old-world thinking.
The lawyer was one of the older people Cooper had seen in the last days. Early fifties, with close-cropped silver hair and hand-tailored suit, he radiated a two-grand-an-hour vibe. “Mr. and Mrs. Cappello. I’m Robert Kobb. If you’ll come with me?” He spun without waiting for an answer.
The lobby was a bright atrium with one wall dedicated to a thirty-foot tri-d screen running CNN in stunningly crisp resolution—Epstein held a 30 percent stake in Time Warner—and they’d barely set foot in it when the man met them. Cooper had expected to be kept waiting for hours if they got in at all. Apparently John Smith’s name carried a lot of weight here. Was the billionaire in league with the terrorist? If so, the situation was worse than anyone had dared believe.
“How was your trip in?”