After a few more deep breaths, he opened his eyes and looked at himself in the rearview mirror.

“Now go and get your future back, you son of a bitch,” he said as he put the Audi back in Drive.

The driveway that Reyland pulled into two minutes later was the only one on the shore road with wrought iron perimeter fencing and a solid gate. There must have been a hidden camera somewhere because the gate opened inward as he slowed for the call box.

The gatehouse he’d been told to park at was a whimsical fieldstone-and-glass castle-like building with a pointy Romanesque roof. Up the stairs on the cold, windy porch stood two large hard-faced security men in black overcoats who asked for his cell phone. There was another security team inside on the first floor who wanded him before he was guided to the stairs.

Up on the dimly lit second floor, it looked like an arcade at an amusement park. There were pool tables and poker tables and a foosball machine and a pop-a-shot basketball court. There was even one of those dance machine games with the floor squares that lit up.

Beyond it were the men he was there to explain himself to.

They didn’t seem like they were in the mood for any boogying, Reyland thought, taking a deep breath as he stepped over.

65

By the huge water-view window, the three old men sat side by side silently at a poker table.

The man on the left side was wiry and buzz-cut and pointy chinned and had a professorial air about him. The one farthest right was quite fat and had tortoiseshell eyeglasses.

In between them, the eclectic owner of the bayside estate gave Reyland a pleasant nod, which Reyland immediately returned.

He was small and handsome and blue-eyed and had backward-swept steel gray hair and baby-soft skin so pale and white it looked powdered.

That the pointy-chinned man and the fat man were midlist Forbes 500 billionaires would have been quite impressive had it not been for the striking ghostly blue-eyed man sitting between them.

He was from one of those old European banking families whose whispered-about wealth was so vast and unfathomable, it never showed up on any lists at all.

Without prompting, Reyland stood up as straight as his six-foot-six height would allow and delivered his full report to them. He left out nothing. He didn’t try to minimize his role.

When he was done, there was no yelling or outrage from the three highly intelligent worldly men sitting at the table. What mattered blame at this point?

Reyland stood calmly in the silence, waiting for their reply. Like a baseball manager who had put in his best pitcher yet still lost the World Series, he stood by the logic of his decisions. Given another chance, he would have done it exactly the same again.

The fat man spoke first, and when he did, his Texan’s voice was unexpectedly deep and gruff and buzzy with what linguists call vocal fry. It could have been the voice of a drill sergeant who smoked three packs a day.