A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF KATHERINE NEVILLE

The Eight

“With alchemical skill, Neville blends modern romance, historical fiction, and medieval mystery … and comes up with gold.” —People

“A fascinating piece of entertainment that manages to be both vibrant and cerebral. … Few will find it resistible.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Daring, original, and moving, [The Eight] seems destined to become a cult classic.” —Publishers Weekly

“Readers thrilled by The Da Vinci Code will relish the multilayered secrets of The Eight.” —Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club

“A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark.” —The Washington Post Book World

“The female counterpart to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose … impossible to put down.” —Boston Herald

A Calculated Risk

A New York Times Notable Book

“Never a dull moment, and [Neville] makes it all the more plausible because of her intimate knowledge of how international banking works. … [Her] book churns up wave after wave of excitement.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Great fun … [A] lean, taut thriller.” —San Jose Mercury News

The Magic Circle

“Filled with intrigue … Neville keeps the novel moving at a fast pace.” —The Denver Post

“[A] racing-across-the-globe, one-step-ahead-of-the-bad-guys treasure hunt.” —Detroit Free Press

A Calculated Risk

A Novel

Katherine Neville

“If you give me time, I’ll make my fortune.”

—Jay Gould

“I shall be rich.”

—Jay Cooke

“I’m bound to be rich! BOUND TO BE RICH!”

—John D. Rockefeller

“Oh, I’m rich! I’m rich!”

—Andrew Carnegie

PART 1

FRANKFURT, GERMANY

JUNE 1815

In a shabby office overlooking the Judengasse, a pale young man sat alone, watching the sun rise. He had been awake all night, and stacked before him were many cups containing the thick residue of bitter Turkish coffee. The ashes of a fire lay cold in the grate, but to light another fire seemed to him an unwarranted expense. He was a thrifty man.

The room was painfully bare, containing only a few chairs and a splintered desk. Against one wall was the small hearth, and opposite it a dirty window overlooking the street. Near the window stood a wooden structure that nearly covered the wall. It resembled a bookcase, but was divided into large cubbyholes, each with a doorlike flap of woven straw. All these doors stood open.

The only objects of value in the room were the rich chartreuse Moroccan-leather chair in which the man was seated, and the gold pocket watch that lay open before him on the desk. Both were well-worn. They, and the house in the Judengasse, were his father’s bequest, and he would keep them always.

The Judengasse was the street where Jews were permitted to live and to eke out an existence as best they could. For many, that meant their changing and lending money. At this hour of the morning the street was still quiet, for the hawkers were not yet abroad. Soon the moneylenders would bring tables out into the street, and over the doors of their houses they would string up the brightly colored banners that proclaimed their business. In a few hours, the street would be filled with color and with the clamor of men trading gold.

The young man sat in silence, and as the sun rose he leaned forward to light his thin Turkish cigarette with a tallow candle. A small gray dove alighted on the ledge outside the open window. The bird cocked its head from side to side, adjusting its vision to the dim light. The man sat without moving, but in his blue eyes there was a strange gleam, as if a dark coal were being blown alive. It was a frightening look, one which many had cause to wish to forget.

The bird paused only a moment, then fluttered to one of the cubbyholes in the large structure near the window. It hopped through the opening, and the straw flap snapped shut behind it.

The man finished his cigarette and drained the dregs of his coffee. He picked up the gold watch. It was five-seventeen. He crossed the room and opened the door of the cage. Placing his hand carefully inside, he gently stroked the bird until it was calm; then, closing his hand over the creature, he took it from the cage.

Around the bird’s leg was a small oiled-paper band that he carefully removed. On the paper, a single word was printed: Ghent.

Ghent was a week’s hard ride from Frankfurt, and the countryside between was littered with the remnants of armies searching for one another through the forests of the Ardennes. But five days after he departed Frankfurt, the pale young man, weary and mud-spattered, hitched his horse to a polished brass ring outside a house in Ghent.

The house was dark, and he let himself in with a key so as not to disturb the household. An old woman appeared on the landing in nightclothes, a candle in one hand. He spoke to her in German.

“Have Fritz take my horse around to the stable. After that, I wish to see him in the study.”

Moonlight poured through the expansive mullioned windows of the study. Cut-glass decanters filled with liquor gleamed dully on the mahogany sideboard. Bunches of fresh-cut hollyhocks and gladiolus were arranged in deep vases, adorning the hand-rubbed marquetry tables placed about the room. A massive, carved pendulum clock stood beside the entry, and velvet-covered sofas were clustered near the marble fireplace. This room—so unlike the one he’d recently departed in Frankfurt—was kept immaculately, in constant anticipation of the owner’s possible arrival.

He crossed to the windows, from which he had a perfect view of the townhouse opposite his own. The two houses were separated only by a small grape arbor. Both the parlor and drawing room of his neighbor faced the study where