Free The Icarus Prediction: Betting it all has its price by RD Gupta Page A

have been conspicuous by their absence.”
    Jarrod leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “This is a disturbing trend.”
    “Trend?” asked Sergei.
    He took a deep breath and began. “I took your advice and went to the Bridgemount last night. Ran into a couple of William’s bridge-playing buddies who said he’d missed the last couple of rubbers or whatever the hell you call those things.”
    “Well, in itself that is not particularly significant.”
    “My view as well. But then I took a walk down the pier to have a look at the Valkyrie . I happen to arrive just as the new owners are walking down the gang plank.”
    “New owners?” Gwen was slack-jawed.
    Jarrod nodded. “A couple named Portmann. He sells half the sausage consumed on the East Coast. Seems he and the Missus are going to take their new toy on a world cruise.”
    “William Blackenford selling the Valkyrie ?” Gwen was incredulous. “He’d rather sell his firstborn.”
    “And did I mention he threw in the Pissarro with the deal? All in, it was ninety-seven million.”
    Stunned silence.
    “But I saved the best for last. I’m headed back to the car when the executive director of the Bridgemount intercepts me and asks if he could have a ‘private word’ with me. Felt like I was going to the woodshed, the prick.”
    “So what did that prick want?” asked Gwen.
    “Seems Blackenford Capital is arrears on its dues to the Bridgemount—to the tune of 850K.”
    “Now we have trend, a bad one” replied Sergei.
    “How so?”
    He opened his portfolio, extracted a few pages, and then placed them in front of Jarrod.
    The younger man scanned the header. “This is an e-mail from Arcadia Property Management to Don Pippin, our esteemed controller.”
    Sergei nodded.
    “How the hell did you get this?”
    Sergei shrugged.
    “You hacked it?” Jarrod said. “As in you hacked into our e-mail servers?”
    Sergei remained silent, but there was the tiniest hint of a smile as he raised his eyebrows.
    Jarrod was incredulous. “That’s impossible. That system was constructed by a bunch of NSA alumni with that quadruple independent, redundant, something-something firewall and intrusion prevention they swore up and down was absolutely impregnable.”
    Sergei shrugged again. “I break NSA stuff before.”
    Jarrod stared at the Russian. “So in your former life you were reading State Department cables?”
    “Da. Quite boring for the most part, I must say. But I digress. The e-mail you read, please.”
    Jarrod put his nose down, and Gwen watched as his ears turned red while he read the e-mail aloud. “We have to advise you, Mr. Pippin, that if lease payments are not brought current within thirty days we will be forced to commence eviction procedures against Blackenford Capital!” Jarrod put the pages down. His head was spinning. “So that’s why Pippin was so flushed yesterday. He’d just been chewed a new one by the landlord.”
    No one spoke for a few seconds in apparent befuddlement, then Sergei said, “The firm make over 100 million last month. The Valkyrie sell for 97 million. That over 200 million.”
    “Yet we can’t pay the rent, our club dues, or the partners.”
    Jarrod felt like the earth was opening up to swallow him.
    “So that would explain William’s behavior yesterday,” offered Gwen.
    “The question is, what trigger this?” said Sergei. “How do you 200 million dollars lose?”
    “That is the sixty-four-dollar question,” replied Jarrod. “Or maybe the six-hundred-forty-million-dollar question.”
    There was silence among them until Sergei finally asked, “What you going to do?”
    Jarrod took a deep breath. “Well, I can continue on in a fool’s paradise until the landlord padlocks the office, or I can go confront William and find out what the hell is going on.”
    Sergei nodded. “I know what you will do.”
    Then he and Gwen rose to leave. On their way out, Jarrod closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his