Absolute Risk (19 page)

W
here are we going?” Gage asked Batkoun Benaroun as he gunned the six cylinders of his Citroën around the rising curves of the Marseilles hills. He sped through the oncoming flow of commuter traffic like a salmon swimming upstream, and with the same driven instinct.

“I’m not allowed to say until we get there,” Benaroun said.

“Isn’t this a little silly?”

“Of course, it’s like dancing the rumba without music or watching
The Man in the Iron Mask
without sound.” Benaroun glanced over and smiled. “In any case, we’ve come to the point in the program where we’ll have to supply our own lyrics.” He pointed ahead to where the road rose between banks of apartment buildings. “All they found up here was the car Hennessy had rented. Nothing else.”

Benaroun reached into his glove compartment and handed Gage a map. Looking at it, it wasn’t difficult for Gage to guess their location. The port was to the north behind them. The Mediterranean to the west. And the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, overlooking the city, was high in front of them and now coming into view atop a limestone cliff.

They worked their way through the winding streets west of the church until the road forked, one prong heading toward the entrance, the other around the back. They then made a final ascent, and Benaroun drove to the base of the hill on the west side of the church, where it bordered a residential area composed of one-story bungalows and multistory apartments.

Just after he turned onto a narrow dead end street, Benaroun gestured toward the backs of the wall-to-wall hillside homes whose balconies on their far sides faced the sea a mile away.

“He parked just by that yellow one with the green shutters,” Benaroun said. “In front of the door.”

“You mean his car was discovered there,” Gage said.

Benaroun’s face reddened. “Sorry. I went a little beyond the evidence.”

He then made a three-point U-turn and pulled to the curb across from a spreading stand of aloe cactus and olive trees and bushes growing from patches of earth and from cracks in the hillside rock.

The sun that met them as they stepped from the car seemed to Gage to cast pure white light, hard and stark, that made the pastels of the houses and reds and blacks and blues of the cars on the street seem less like overlaid coloring and more like the things themselves.

Gage walked twenty-five yards to the end of the street. He stopped and looked west through a gap between the houses toward the Frioul archipelago a mile offshore. He could just make out the Chateau d’If, France’s Alcatraz, on the smallest of the four islands. It was where the French government once imprisoned political and religious dissenters. Despite the actual suffering inflicted there that Gage had read about in school, the castle-shaped structure now existed in the public imagination only as the setting for the fictional
Count of Monte Cristo.
He wondered whether Hennessy, too, had hesitated at this spot and saw Ibrahim and himself in the fictional mirror of a wrongful prosecution and a struggle for justice and redemption.

Gage continued a little farther, past the end of the pavement and onto a dirt trail. He walked another thirty yards to where he could overlook the port—and realized that Benaroun had not at all gone beyond the evidence.

Standing in this place with the city glowing gemlike below, even without binoculars Hennessy could’ve made out the north end of the grass meridian at the head of the port and the backdrop of buildings that framed it. With binoculars, the limousine procession would have passed before him like a line of ants under a magnifying glass.

Gage heard Benaroun’s footsteps come to a stop next to him.

“Is this where he was watching from?” Benaroun asked.

“No,” Gage said, staring down at the city.

Benaroun turned toward Gage and squinted up at him. “I don’t understand.”

Gage directed his thumb over his shoulder. “Hennessy wouldn’t have parked back there and then walked all this way. There was no reason to. He’d have parked where the pavement ended.” He thought of Hennessy’s wife and her smile when she mentioned her husband’s investigative techniques. “His FBI training would’ve insisted on it. He would’ve parked as close as he could to where he was headed and then faced the car in the direction he wanted to go when he left.” He smiled at Benaroun. “Just like you did.”

Gage turned and pointed up at the basilica, then drew a line with his finger from the gleaming golden statue of the Madonna and Child at the top and down to where Hennessy’s car had been parked and then back up again.

“He must’ve been a mountain goat,” Benaroun said. “Even if he wanted to park down here for some reason, there are stairs close by.” Benaroun made a curving motion to the right with his hand, indicating the far side of the hill. “Those would’ve been easier. Or he could’ve walked back down the main road until he reached the fork and then back up again to the front of the church.”

“It’s likely that he did just that,” Gage said, enacting in his mind what Hennessy might have been thinking. “I suspect that he was concerned about surveillance. He’d do some evasive driving through town to get here, then pretend to be a tourist. Take the stairs and mix in with the crowd. And if he became convinced that they’d caught up with him, he could slip into the shadows and work his way down the hillside.”

Gage pointed up at the church. “How about drive me up to the top and I’ll make my way back down. You come back here and search a strip along the bottom of the hill, maybe ten meters wide. See if you can find anything.”

Gage’s cell phone rang as they walked back to the car.

“I need the snakehead after all,” Faith said.

Gage didn’t express the relief he felt.

“You ready to come out?”

“I need to stay a little longer. It’s for the students and Ayi Zhao’s son and daughter-in-law.”

Benaroun cast him a puzzled look, and Gage mouthed Faith’s name.

“How soon?”

“Two days. Assuming Wo-li agrees to it.” “You mean the rebels are trading exile for information?”

“And Wo-li is deciding how much to give them. For him it looks like a long-term solution to what may be a short-term problem. If he spills everything and the rebellion fails, he’ll have torpedoed his future. The government will have to arrest him and will probably have to execute him as an example.”

“At least this way,” Gage said, “he saves his life, and once he’s out of the country he can find a way to catch up with wherever his offshore cash is hidden.”

“As much as she hates to do it, that’s the pitch his mother is giving him.”

“I’ll call Mark Fong and give him your number.”

“Won’t he want some money?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Gage said, then thought for a moment. “Make sure you gather up whatever identity documents Wo-li and his wife have and any extra passport pictures. Mark may need to fudge up some papers to get them across the borders.”

Gage called Fong after he and Benaroun had gotten back into the car.

“We’ll settle up afterward,” Fong said.

“How soon—”

“My cousin in Chongqing will rent a big van and arrive there tomorrow, me the day after. We’ll collect the students first”—Fong laughed—“and then the criminals.”

Gage then understood why Fong wasn’t worried about payment. Either Wo-li and his wife would direct their offshore banker to wire the fee into Fong’s account, or he’d make sure that they’d never make it out of China.

“If you have to leave them somewhere along the road,” Gage said, “then leave them, but make sure the kids get out.”

“Of course.”

Gage disconnected and slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Benaroun grinned at Gage as he turned the ignition.

“Exile?” Benaroun said. “Like the Dalai Lama?”

“Not exactly.”

“And you trust this snakehead? The name certainly doesn’t inspire it.” Benaroun smiled. “I think I’d have more confidence in something a little more marsupial.”

“The situation calls for someone cold-blooded,” Gage said, “and I know of no one colder.”

A
s Gage climbed the steps from the east parking lot to the entrance of the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, he was certain that Hennessy had ascended them with a stronger feeling of expectation than he did. Gage even suspected that he might be wasting his time, for he recognized that he was following a chain of possibilities and probabilities, no stronger than its weakest hypothetical link.

Even more, Gage wasn’t sure that he’d come to understand Hennessy any better for having retraced his route. But he had to do it. And he knew Benaroun had to do it. Despite his claims that his relegation to financial investigations was an anti-Semitic gesture by the commissioner, his compulsive, methodical persistence made him a perfect choice for that kind of work, and for this kind, too.

Without articulating the need, they both understood that neither one of them was willing to suffer the lingering thought that the Marseilles police had missed something. And Gage was already certain that the detectives had misunderstood why Hennessy had parked on the street below.

Gage attached himself to the trailing end of a German tour group as he passed through the wrought-iron front gates and ascended the zigzagging steps to the terrace. He stayed with them as they walked the low-walled perimeter. The angle of view toward the port was now more extreme and the entire meridian was visible.

Gage followed the group up another level, checked the perspective, and then walked back down and out through the gate.

A footpath to his left led away from the concrete walkway. He followed it along the arched walls at the base of the church, his view of the city curtained and shadowed by oaks, pines, and brush. He soon emerged into daylight and worked his way over a limestone bluff until he could see the yellow house next to which Hennessy had parked his car.

Gage glanced up at the golden Madonna statue, concluding it would’ve been the most visible landmark at night, then picked his way farther, in between aloe and evergreen bushes, until he was in a direct line between it and the car. But a few steps down showed him that a direct line didn’t mean a direct route.

The shortest distance between where Gage stood and the car was a long drop off a slick boulder. He worked his way first down to its right, then back to the top and down to its left, looking for some sign that Hennessy had passed on either side: a pen, a scrap of paper—anything.

But he found nothing.

From there, Gage headed down through a tunnel of brush and trees until he emerged into a clearing. He looked up at the Madonna and found that he was off course by thirty feet. He imagined that Hennessy, descending in the darkness down the angled slope, had drifted in the same direction.

Gage heard rocks tumble, a landslide of dirt and stones, Benaroun yelping, and then,
“Merde. Merde. Merde.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.

“You okay?” Gage yelled down.

“I got a damn aloe thorn in my ass. How do you think I am?”

“You need help?”

“I’ll survive.”

Gage worked his way back toward the direct line, sidestepping down the incline until the hill flattened just behind the trees and the plants that lined the street. He searched back and forth along them, inspecting between the rocks and along the rough ground, then gave up and stepped into the street.

Benaroun was grinning and leaning back against his car wearing a wrinkled, mud-smeared overcoat, arms folded over his chest.

“I like your new wardrobe,” Gage said, as he walked up.

“It’s not mine exactly,” Benaroun said. “But since I punctured my butt getting it, I could make a claim. Anyway, the man who owned it is not coming back to get it.”

“How do you figure?”

“I figure because you were right.” Benaroun pointed up the hill, seeming to enjoy the clowning. “It was jammed into a bush about twenty feet up.”

“What does that have to do with us?”

“Hennessy must’ve taken it off trying to change his appearance.”

“What?” Gage’s eyes narrowed at the coat. “Are you sure—”

“It’s got an American mobile phone and a little leather notebook with the initials MH on it.”

Benaroun unfolded his arms and reached out to hand the items to Gage.

As Gage accepted them, his mind jumped back past Benaroun’s conclusion to Hennessy falling coatless over the cliff, then jumped forward to the present.

“He only would’ve changed his appearance,” Gage said, “if he thought someone had spotted him.”

Gage scanned the street and rooftops and the hillside looking for surveillance. He found none. Or at least nothing obvious. He pointed at the car.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gage said.

Benaroun cast him a puzzled look. “You don’t want to look for more? ”

“Not now.” Gage pointed at the driver’s seat. “Let’s go. I don’t want to get trapped.”

Benaroun started the engine even before his door was closed. A black Mercedes squealed around the corner. Its momentum and the driver’s overcompensating yank on the steering wheel carried it in a sweeping curve from one side of the street to the other. Benaroun punched the accelerator and shot through the gap, then hung a hard right and rocketed down the hill.

Benaroun glanced over as he cut through an alley toward a boulevard leading to the center of the city, and asked, “How did you know? ”

“I didn’t.” Gage pointed at the overcoat. “That thing told me that whoever killed Hennessy wasn’t done with him yet.”

I
s that everything?” Old Cat asked, standing next to the table in the Meinhard storage room, hands locked on his waist. Neither Wo-li nor Mu-rong looked up from where they sat across from each other. They just nodded.

Between them lay bank records, spreadsheets, and notes that Jian-jun had retrieved from a safe anchored to the foundation in the basement of their mansion. Down the hallway and in the remaining buildings on the Meinhard property, workers were questioning other government officials and party members and factory managers—each now confessing who paid them, how much money, by what routes—not pleading for their lives, but truth-telling for them.

Faith glanced up from her notes. She didn’t believe that Wo-li and Mu-rong had disclosed everything, and the expression on Old Cat’s face told her that he didn’t believe they had either.

But she did believe something else: If what they had admitted to so far was confirmed by their records, every

U.S. corporation that had invested in Sichuan Province could be convicted of violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the U.S. and their officers convicted of bribery in China. She imagined the business elite of the Western world, men and women dressed in suits and handcuffs, lined up in front of courthouses in London, New York, Paris, Bonn, and Beijing and taken in bus caravans to prisons.

She flipped back through the pages, the mass of names and amounts. Two hundred million from RAID Technologies. A hundred million from Spectrum. A hundred million from Meinhard. Payments made to officials from Beijing to Chengdu and into accounts and shell companies from Hong Kong to the Bahamas to Zurich, to front companies in every world capital and in every offshore haven.

A shudder of dread shook through her. In the intensity of the last hours, her mind hadn’t broken free from the immediacy to realize that thousands of officials and company officers would kill to suppress what lay on the table and what was contained in her notes. Like the odor of the stale food on the table and the old sweat stained into their clothes and the generator oil soaked into the concrete floor, she’d been too enveloped in it. Now she could see that the trails starting from these records would eventually implicate the entire Chinese government and its corporate elite.

Her eyes fell on her notes about RAID and she knew what Graham would’ve done next: followed the RAID money back to its Hong Kong account, then out to all the other Chinese officials they’d kicked money up and down to.

A fist rapped on the door.

Old Cat grabbed the documents, dropped them into a cardboard box at his feet, and folded the lid closed.

The man he’d whispered to before the start of the people’s court hearing entered. He fixed his eyes first on Wo-li, then on Mu-rong. Finally he looked up at Old Cat.

“Have they cooperated? “ the man asked.

Old Cat nodded. “But we’ll need another forty-eight hours to examine their documents to verify what they’ve told us.”

Wo-li and Mu-rong both slumped as though to say they couldn’t endure another two days of questioning.

Unless it was an act, Faith thought, they didn’t seem to realize that Old Cat had just told them that he’d decided to let them escape.

“Tell the people to return to their homes,” Old Cat said. “There’s nothing for them to do until we call them back for the trial.”

Mu-rong’s hands flew to her face. Moments later, sobs emerged from behind them.

Old Cat’s arm shot out and he backhanded her. Her head snapped to the side.

“Shut up,” Old Cat said. “The time to cry was when the hospital collapsed.”

Faith pushed herself to her feet. Old Cat turned toward her, facing away from the man, a slight shake of the head telling her that though the violence was real, it was a performance to convince the audience of one standing at the door that justice would be done.

Mu-rong’s sobbing stopped.

Faith sat down and lowered her head, acting as though she’d been reprimanded and as though she feared that he’d slap her next.

Old Cat looked back at the man, then said, “Go.”

The man nodded and turned away.

“Wait,” Old Cat said, “let me have your gun.”

The man turned back and handed Old Cat the semiautomatic that was stuck between his belt and pants.

“One more outburst like that,” Old Cat said, “and I may finish her off myself.”

Faith tensed. The words hadn’t sounded at all like a performance.