Absolute Risk (13 page)

G
rayed by the swirling low clouds edging the Mediterranean, the hotels and casinos of Monaco and Monte Carlo that Gage observed out of the plane window appeared to have turned in on themselves. The thin breakwaters defining the harbors seemed to lie like broken picture frames on the water and the yachts in their slips seemed like discarded toys.

The cities soon gave way to coast roads and tiled mansions, and then to rocky shores separated by points and peninsulas, until the plane descended over Nice and the tires bucked on the runway.

As Gage emerged from the arrivals hall, Batkoun Benaroun climbed out of his car in the “Kiss and Fly” short-term parking lot across the traffic lane from the terminal. He pointed at the sign over the lot entrance, then held his palm toward Gage.

“Don’t take it literally,” Benaroun said, his angular North African face rounding into a smile. “My wife wouldn’t understand.” “After forty years of marriage,” Gage said, smiling back, “I suspect she’s done more than her share of understanding.” He reached out and shook Benaroun’s hand. “Thanks for meeting me.”

“No problem. There were a few things I wanted to talk to you about anyway, and I’d been thinking that it would be better that we did it in person.”

Benaroun opened the trunk of his Citroën sedan, and Gage slid in his Rollaboard.

“What happened to the little Fiat?” Gage asked.

“My back couldn’t take the jolting anymore so I gave it to my nephew.”

He pointed at the passenger door, then climbed in on the driver’s side.

“His father was no more thrilled with that than with Tabari following me into the Police Nationale. My brother the great rabbi has always found it a little embarrassing that I was a cop. Even becoming an actual detective didn’t make up for it. He prefers Maigret and Poirot”—Benaroun flashed another smile—“even Clouseau.”

A gendarme vested in fluorescent green walked by the car and glanced inside. His eyes locked on Benaroun’s face, and then frowned like he’d sniffed into a wineglass only to discover that it contained vinegar.

Benaroun waited until the guard passed by, then turned the ignition and said in a grim whisper to himself, “Fascist.” He glanced at Gage. “His ancestors were still counting on their fingers and toes while mine were inventing calculus, and this idiot makes himself out to be the fortress of French civilization standing against the swarms of brown people.” He slapped the steering wheel. “Who else will they get to shovel their shit?”

Benaroun stared ahead for a moment, then shook his head, backed out of his space, and drove toward the exit.

Gage watched him hand the attendant three euros for parking beyond the five-minute limit, and then said, “You sound like you’re being squeezed every which way.”

He didn’t need to articulate which ways they were: An Algerian-Jew. A failing economy that led the white ancestral French to turn on the immigrants, no matter how many generations earlier their families had arrived. And brown-skinned young men, less striking back against a defined target than just flailing with bricks.

“It’s like living in a vise,” Benaroun said as he waited for the gate arm to rise. “I’m not sure it’s been this bad since the German occupation. Just different uniforms. These Muslim kids rioting in Marseilles are burning Jewish businesses, not realizing that the French hate Jews just as much as they hate the kids.”

Benaroun glanced over his shoulder at the gendarme watching them drive out of the lot.

“I’ll bet his grandfather was a Nazi collaborator,” Benaroun said, then he looked over at Gage. “You know the real reason I spent my career in fraud and money laundering investigations?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because most of the commissioners believe that Jews are good with money. Even Algerian ones. And shrewd and devious enough to understand the financial criminal’s mind.”

“You seem to be getting bitter in your old age,” Gage said.

“It’s not bitterness. It’s realism. We’re internally colonized. All the colored minorities are, whatever their shade.” He emitted a sarcastic laugh. “Maybe God should add some bleach to the floodwaters in Paris to decolorize the city.”

Benaroun fell silent, then gave Gage a puckish look.

“Sixty-six isn’t old,” Benaroun said, then he reached for the beginnings of a wattle under his jaw. “Appearances notwithstanding.”

As they drove west along the freeway away from the center of Nice and toward Benaroun’s foothill home, he pointed toward the storm front that had just crested the bluff.

“God may not want us all white,” Benaroun said, “but he sure wants us all wet.”

By the time they’d turned north and headed into the suburb of Cagnes-sur-Mer, a curtain of rain had closed against the hillside. It looked to Gage as though they could drive through it and emerge on the other side, but as they traveled the curved roads they found more of the same, the weather seeming as heavy and solid as the brick house in front of which they pulled to a stop.

Benaroun turned off the ignition, but left the wipers on and squinted up through the windshield, trying to see past the splattering rain.

“Let’s wait a minute,” Benaroun said. “Maybe we’ll get a break long enough to run to the door.”

Benaroun settled back in his seat and looked at Gage.

“I saw something on the news,” Benaroun said. “Is the whole U.S. really going to come to a standstill to recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Manton Roberts sounded like an Islamic imam calling everyone to prayer. Scary as hell.”

Gage shrugged. “We’ll see, but I suspect that Americans’ sense of rugged independence will limit the turnout. The real implication of his filling his mega-church with twenty thousand people every Sunday is that the surrounding ten million didn’t show up. I suspect it will be the same with National Pledge Day.”

“I don’t know,” Benaroun said. “Just watching the announcement on the news almost brought the whole of France to a stop. The English word ‘hysteria’ is what we call a collective noun in French, and it makes us nervous.”

A gust of wind drove the rain hard against the side of the car, then there was a moment of quiet. Benaroun raised a finger. He waited for a few seconds after a second gust swept over them, and then said, “Let’s go.”

By the time they’d grabbed Gage’s Rollaboard from the trunk, the rain hit again and they ran through it toward the door thirty feet across the courtyard. It swung open as their shoes hit the slate porch, and Gage followed Benaroun past his nephew and into the foyer.

“Bonjour, Mr. Gage,” Tabari said, swinging the door closed and handing Gage a towel. “My uncle suffers from the delusion that he can time the rain.”

“He did pretty well,” Gage said, drying off his hair. “It’s not his fault if I’ve slowed a step or two.”

“Come on,” Benaroun said, heading off toward the kitchen. “Let’s get a drink. Since he got promoted to detective in the Police Judiciaire he’s become a know-it-all.”

Tabari grabbed Gage’s arm as he turned to follow, then whispered, “Has he told you exactly what he wants to talk to you about? ”

Gage shook his head.

“Talk to me before you encourage him to pursue his theory about the platinum smuggling from South Africa. I think he’s going way beyond what Transparency Watch wants or needs. He may have the brain of a thirty-year-old, but he doesn’t have the body of one, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”

W
hat do you mean, you don’t know where Gage is?”

Edward Wycovsky stood in front of Kenyon Arndt’s desk, glaring down, his hands locked on to his suspenders. His vulturelike head was unmoving and his black eyes unblinking.

Arndt knew that a few weeks earlier he would’ve risen to his feet in fear and then humbled himself as if before a high priest or lesser god. But not now—for he’d discovered that the spreading stain of crime and death had made them equals.

“Didn’t you hear what I asked you?” Wycovsky said, his forefinger now aimed down at Arndt like he was a dog who’d soiled the carpet.

No, that wasn’t it, Arndt thought. He knew they’d never be equals, for he’d never have the kind of power in the law firm that Wycovsky possessed. Rather it had been their positions relative to the dead body of Tony Gilbert that had established them in a new orbit and would hold them there despite their differing weights and densities. And he had a little red badge of courage on his forehead to prove it.

Arndt fixed his eyes on Wycovsky’s rigid face and tight jaw.

“Your people let Gage get away,” Arndt said. “And without Gilbert around to tell him how to do it, I’m not sure Davey Hicks—”

“Who?”

“Davey Hicks, his number one helper, can do it alone. He seems to be all thug and no brains.” “What about Abrams?”

Arndt made a dismissive shrug. “Where can he go? He’s one of the most watched men in America. All you have to do is call the Federal Reserve press office to find out where he is and where he’s going.”

“I don’t need the sarcasm. Our clients have a lot at stake in this.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that since I don’t have a clue who they are.”

And Arndt didn’t care. It was merely out-of-focus background to his immediate need.

“And it’ll stay that way,” Wycovsky said.

“But I do have a thought.” Arndt pointed at the computer monitor on his desk. “The local media is saying that police in Albany haven’t been able to reconstruct Gilbert’s movements on the night of his murder.” He paused for a moment of setup. “But we can. And Gage’s movements, too.”

Wycovsky’s eyes narrowed. “And? ”

“The link between Gage and Gilbert is a bounty hunter named Strubb.”

Arndt reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out a DVD. He leaned down and inserted it into his computer drive, and then angled the monitor so Wycovsky could see it.

“This is a security camera video of Gage and Strubb and a kid Strubb hired. They’re walking from the garage into the lobby of the Adirondack Plaza Hotel a few hours before Gilbert was killed.”

A gray-scale image of the reception desk appeared on the screen, along with an expanse of carpet and a semicircle formed by a sofa and two wing chairs. Seconds later, the three came into view.

“That’s Gage in the middle,” Arndt said. “Strubb is the guy behind him.”

“Why are they so close together?”

“They’ve got Gage in handcuffs. After they searched his room for documents that Hennessy’s wife supposedly had given him, Strubb went to meet with Gilbert at a leather bar—”

Wycovsky squinted at Arndt. “Gilbert? Gilbert was a queer? ”

“No. Strubb is. Hard-core. Black harnesses, chaps, biker hats, and studs. Gilbert had some kind of fetish that made him want to hire these guys. Sort of a master and slave thing, without the sex.”

“How did you—”

“Davey Hicks. He’s one, too. He put together the pieces of what happened. He heard that Gage pushed Strubb around and threatened to put him back in prison if he didn’t make Gilbert lay off. Strubb leaned on Gilbert. He refused and then Strubb and two other guys took him for a ride, and things got out of hand.”

Wycovsky smirked. “I saw the news, they killed him.”

“But they did a few things to him first.” Arndt jerked his thumb upward. He smiled to himself as Wycovsky winced. He imagined his boss’s butt cheeks clenching.

“Hicks is certain that the details of what they did to Gilbert can be deduced from the autopsy report,” Arndt said, “but the police haven’t released it to the press.”

Wycovsky didn’t respond for a few moments. He just stood there, frowning.

Arndt suspected that Wycovsky was watching his imagination play out the nightmare of the attack. Arndt wished he had some sort of mental probe so he could determine whether Wycovsky’s fantasy of what had happened was a product of his personal terrors or was instead a form of wish fulfillment. It wasn’t hard for Arndt to imagine Wycovsky wanting to do physically what he did psychologically to the junior members of the firm.

“I may have underestimated you,” Wycovsky finally said.

Arndt smiled as if in satisfaction, but said to himself,
Not in the way you think.

“Whenever we need to take Gage out of the game,” Arndt said, “we’ll just finger him for Gilbert’s murder. It won’t stick in the end.” He grinned at his wordplay. “But he’ll be out of our client’s way for a while.”

A
persistent, rhythmic thumping and the rattle of the front door against the loose frame drew Faith out of the shadows of sleep into a predawn gray. By the time she’d climbed out of bed and made it into the front room, Jian-jun had opened it. Standing across the threshold from him was a young woman wearing a military surplus coat. A battered scooter was parked behind her on the bare yard, the motor silent, but the headlight glowing into the haze.

The woman whispered two sentences, then fell silent as her eyes widened at the sight of Faith, who wondered whether her surprise was provoked by the fact that this white ghost standing in the darkness hadn’t fled like the rest of the Westerners had done in the days after the earthquake.

Jian-jun turned around, following the woman’s gaze.

“What is it?” Faith asked.

Jian-jun pointed back over his shoulder.

“She says that a couple of the rebels have found where I hid my parents. But out of respect for my grandmother, they haven’t turned them over to the mob.”

Jian-jun walked over to where Ayi Zhao was still asleep on a cot and sat down next to her. He touched her on the shoulder. Her eyelids fluttered, then she looked up. He told her what had happened as he helped her to her feet.

Faith gestured for the woman to come inside.

Jian-jun introduced her in Mandarin only as Xiao Mei, Little Mei, and Faith only as “the anthropologist.”

Faith knew the unspoken question behind Little Mei’s eyes, for she’d heard versions of it throughout her career: for what was an anthropologist, but a spy in plain sight, a psychoanalyst of families and of relationships and of culture using obscure methods to discern the function behind the structure and the living reality behind the camouflage of appearances—at best to objectify people, and at worst, to strip them naked.

Little Mei’s blank expression and averted gaze seemed to Faith to be those of a sister or girlfriend who suspected she’d been discussed in therapy and whose secrets had been exposed and dissected—

Except today those secrets were political and the consequence of exposure wasn’t shame or embarrassment, but death.

They all understood that there’d be no time to argue filial piety to a mob. Appearances would be everything.

“I’ll show myself,” Ayi Zhao said, then looked from the woman to her grandson. “That will give the children time to escape.”

Jian-jun shook his head. “The army may view your arrival as a provocation. We can’t take the chance that they’ll use it as an excuse to intervene.”

Ayi Zhao raised her palm toward Jian-jun. “They don’t need an excuse. Their orders come from Beijing and the issues now are bigger than the symbolism of an old lady.” She pointed down toward the city. “Tell them I’m coming.”

Faith looked back and forth between Little Mei and Jian-jun, then gestured with her hand through the open door toward the scooter and said, “Go. I’ll find a car to bring her down.”

Jian-jun grabbed his jacket and then said to Ayi Zhao, “They’re in the backup generator room of the burned out Meinhard electronics factory.”

He turned to Faith. “It’s on the western edge of the city in the economic development zone.”

Faith’s body jerked sideways as the house jolted in an aftershock. She grabbed a chair back to steady herself. The scooter fell over. A glass next to the sink toppled and shattered.

As Jian-jun reached an arm around Ayi Zhao’s shoulders, he and Little Mei stared at each other, trading end-of-the-world looks.

In their anguished gaze, Faith saw that she was a Christian, too. Maybe an evangelical, and this was her secret.

The quake had half the force of the last one, and Faith’s internal calculator, calibrated by a lifetime in San Francisco, told her it was either a small aftershock nearby or a huge one far away.

Faith thought of the Three Gorges Dam, fearing that it had given way as the cracking and crumbling schools and hospitals of Chengdu had. But she said nothing, for she knew that they were all thinking the same thing, and they understood that if it had given way, it was too late for fear, or for hope.

“Most of the mob has moved back to the center of the city,” Jian-jun said to Faith. “But be careful. Don’t show yourselves until you get to the factory. I’ll come out to meet you.”

Jian-jun led Little Mei outside and then straightened up the scooter. He sat forward on the elongated seat and she climbed on behind him.

Faith walked to the door and looked past them and toward the valley, wondering what would greet them when they arrived.

The motor rattled, then engaged, shaking the bike. Exhaust belched from the tailpipe as he gunned it to keep it from stalling, then the cloud swirled in the air and grayed the rising sun.

Faith blocked the glare with her hand and squinted at the city. Smoke no longer drifted up from yesterday’s smoldering factories in the industrial clusters, but still billowed from the mile-diameter tire pile adjacent to the solid waste incineration plant. She knew that it would burn for months and suspected that the mob, now choking on its fumes, had come to regret having chosen arson as a form of protest. In the pollution that now blanketed the countryside, they had spread the scourge they had fought to contain.

Jian-jun leaned toward the handlebars, pushed the bike off its stand, and accelerated down the dirt street toward the center of town and then beyond it to the highway on the other side.

Ayi Zhao walked up next to Faith and looked up at her.

“You don’t need to do this,” Ayi Zhao said. “I can find a way down on my own.”

“We can protect each other,” Faith said. “Because of you, no one will harm me. And because of me, the army and police will see that the world is watching and perhaps will leave you alone.”

Faith thought for a moment. It struck her that the best way to shield Ayi Zhao from the army might be to recruit them to help.

“Is there an herbalist up here that you can trust?” Faith asked. “Maybe he can put something together to raise your blood pressure and make you look like you have a fever. Then we can ask the garrison to take you to the People’s Hospital. They won’t want you to die on their watch.”

Ayi Zhao nodded. “I can do it myself. All I need is ephedra, ginseng, and ginger. We can get those at the vegetable market.” She paused and then asked, “Do you have any cold pills? They always make my heart beat faster.”

“I think so,” Faith said, reaching out her hand and gripping Ayi Zhao’s shoulder. “Just be careful not to overdo it.”