Absolute Risk (24 page)

W
atching water evaporate,” Gage answered Milton Abrams. His call had come in as Gage was washing his dinner dishes.

“You’re being a little cryptic,” Abrams said.

Gage crooked the phone between his neck and shoulder and dried his hands.

“I have to be for a while,” Gage said. “Is Viz around?”

“He’s in the kitchen cooking chili for lunch. You want to talk to him?”

“Just tell him I’ll call him in half a minute.”

Gage disconnected, then retrieved his encrypted cell phone from his jacket pocket.

Viz answered the first ring.

“How’s Abrams behaving?” Gage asked.

“His sex life seems to be suffering, but otherwise he’s okay.”

“Anybody show up to take Anthony Gilbert’s place?”

“Seems so. One of his gofers has taken over. Davey Hicks. He has a New York PI license, but only subcontracts for others. I learned from a guy I worked with in the DEA who’s now gone private that Hicks is a nose-to-the-ground grunt. Cash up front. No questions asked. Fired from NYPD three years ago for shooting a suspect in the back.”

“How good is he at surveillance?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ve only been going to public places so I haven’t needed to try to evade him.”

“With Gilbert out of the way, this is probably his big break.” Gage thought for a moment. “But that may depend on who hired him. It’s likely that it was Gilbert, but we don’t know for certain. He could’ve been hired by Abrams’s wife, trying to find out who he was sleeping with. The fact that she’s not talking to him doesn’t mean that she’s not watching him.”

Gage heard Abrams’s voice in the background.

“Let me talk to him,” Gage said.

“Here,” Viz said to Abrams.

“Why the Dick Tracy phone? “ Abrams asked.

“My calls are being intercepted. It could be at this end or as they pass through switching stations in the States. And Faith’s are being intercepted at her end by the PLA. She’s been helping the leader of the Chengdu uprising expose corruption in the area.”

“The one the press is calling Old Cat? “

“The PLA is using him to let a hundred thorns bloom.”

“Now it makes sense,” Abrams said. “I get it.”

“Now what makes sense?”

“I got a call from CIA Director Casher yesterday. He’d also called the vice president and the secretary of state saying we may want to respond to the big Chinese media blitz at the Davos World Economic Forum this week, accusing the U.S. of trying to undermine their economy. He’s calling it their Whine, with a ‘wh,’ and Dine Strategy.”

Gage now wondered whether it was the CIA that was intercepting Faith’s calls and if they’d gotten on to her because they’d been listening in on him. He stared out of the kitchen window at telephone and power lines illuminated by a streetlight and swaying in the breeze, and imagined the air around him crisscrossed with signals, some intersecting, some dodging and bending and fighting off attacks.

“I don’t think it’s entirely whine,” Gage said. “We’ve gathered almost enough information to get the CEOs of RAID and Spectrum and a dozen others indicted for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and I suspect the CIA has filled in the empty boxes on our flowchart.”

“With the underlying threat that we better make some trade concessions or they’ll start painting bull’s-eyes on all of the corporate heads in the U.S.”

“And Europe.”

“If they start naming names and banks and accounts and amounts,” Abrams said, “the Hong Kong stock market will crash the next morning, followed by the rest of the exchanges one time zone at a time.”

“I take it that Casher didn’t mention that part.”

“No. He just said to stand by for an update.”

“Why was he talking to Wallace instead of the president?”

“I wondered the same thing, then I saw on the news that today is the president’s annual physical. After that he’ll be exercising with schoolkids and then giving a speech announcing a new commission on obesity.” Abrams snorted. “If I was him I’d worry more about our gorging on debt rather than our gorging on fried chicken.”

Gage didn’t respond. He wasn’t in the mood for either an economic tirade or sarcasm, not with Batkoun Benaroun lying in a Marseilles hospital with a bullet lodged next to his spine, the latest in a trail of casualties that might lead to Abrams’s doorstep.

Might
lead.

Now Gage wasn’t so certain. He looked through the kitchen door at the dining room table. Only then did he hear the hum of the heater and the hair dryer.

“Let me call you back,” Gage said. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Are you any closer to finding Ibrahim?” Abrams asked.

“That’s what I’m in the middle of.”

“You’re being cryptic again.”

“Let’s keep it that way, at least until I’ve found him.”

Gage disconnected and walked over and inspected Hennessy’s notebook. The narrow opening had widened as the surrounding sheets had dried. He retrieved tweezers from the bathroom and tilted the top edge of the notebook toward the lamp next to the table and reached into the space and tugged at the square of paper. He felt it pull free from the opposite side, then he worked it back and forth up the gap. First a white glossy border appeared, the gray of concrete, then the black of leather shoes and laces, then the brown of socks and cuffs, the slacks splotched with water or—

The photograph slipped free of its sheath. It was blood.

Gage stared at the mutilated body. Its arms bound with wire that cut into the skin. Its shirt torn exposing a chest pocked with burns. The slacks pulled down to its knees. But the face was untouched, eyes dulled with death, mouth open as if he’d died with a last gasp.

Gage opened the MIT brochure that he’d gotten from

Goldie Goldstein and matched the portrait of Ibrahim to the face in the photo.

It was him. There could be no doubt.

A newspaper lay next to the body. The
International Herald Tribune.
The photo on the cover showed the French president greeting the world’s central bankers in Marseilles on the day before Abrams was to meet Hennessy.

The message was clear. Hennessy couldn’t have missed it. There was no need for words, for an explanation, or an accusation, or a threat.

In his pursuit of Ibrahim, Hennessy had forced someone’s hand, and they’d used it to torture Ibrahim to death and then aimed the photograph like a sickle to slash at the fragile membrane that had shielded Hennessy from the abyss.

T
abari waited in the hallway of Hospital St. Joseph’s ICU with his uncle’s retired colleagues while Gage entered the room alone. Even in the semidarkness, the sterility shocked him, offended him. The unforgiving stainless steel. The disposable plastics. The starched sheets. The cool air. The caustic stink of disinfectant. The mechanical clicks and beeps—each of them—all of them—belied not only the broken body of a man who’d tried to do good in an evil world, but the tragedy of a wife’s grief and the distress of a rabbi sitting outside, head in hands, whose God had failed him.

Benaroun’s hands lay folded on his chest. His legs, unmoving. His head turned and his eyes blinked at the sound of Gage setting down a chair close to the bed. Benaroun glanced at the remote to raise the bed and Gage eased him up from a flat to an angled position. Benaroun then raised a forefinger and pointed it toward his feet. Gage leaned over and followed its trajectory.

Benaroun’s big toe moved.

Gage felt his chest fill and moisture come to his eyes. He grabbed Benaroun’s shoulder and squeezed.

“First a toe,” Benaroun whispered, “then someday a foot … and then someday a leg.”

Gage’s eyes closed and the tension of the last twenty-four hours seemed to sigh out of him.

A slight smile met his gaze when he opened them again.

“You shouldn’t worry so much,” Benaroun said, his voice now a little stronger. “Bad for the heart.”

“It was as much guilt as worry,” Gage said.

“You have nothing to feel guilty about.” Benaroun licked his lips. Gage dipped an oral swab in a cup of water and then wet them. “They were after me, not you.”

Gage pulled the airplane registration numbers out of his jacket pocket and held them up for Benaroun to see.

Benaroun nodded.

“They’re owned by a Chinese company,” Gage said. “But I don’t know what that means.”

“I do. The Chinese got mining concessions from the South Africa president—“

“For smuggling out the platinum for him.”

Benaroun nodded. “And gold, manganese, and vanadium. He kept the Russians out and gave it all to China.”

“And no money trail back to him.”

“He plans to leave the platinum in Swiss vaults until the Chinese drive up the price.”

“How did you—“

“The promise of the money was enough and my informant in the”—Benaroun glanced toward the closed door—“in the South African Secret Service. He called me and then sent the numbers.”

“You sure it was the money that persuaded him?”

Benaroun stared past Gage for a few seconds, then looked back and said, “I don’t know.” He yawned and his eyes closed. He shook his head and opened them again. “Maybe patriotism. The last flight in brought Chinese saboteurs to shut down the mines.”

Gage turned at the sound of a light knock on the door. A nurse entered, followed by Tabari.

“I think that’s enough for now,” she said, coming to a stop next to Gage. “There will be time later to catch up with friends.”

Benaroun’s face flushed. “But I need—“

“Rest. You need rest.” She adjusted Benaroun’s pillow, then looked at Gage and asked, “Can you return later? “

Gage rose to his feet and glanced at his watch as though he intended to suggest a time. But he knew that he wouldn’t be coming back. His flight to New York was leaving in two hours.

A siren wailed outside, its blare muted by the double-paned windows and heavy drapes.

When Gage looked back at Benaroun, he found that the exertion of his protest had drained him and he’d fallen asleep.

Gage noticed that he’d been holding his breath. He released it. At least now he wouldn’t have to lie to his friend.

W
here is he?” Gage asked as he stepped into Viz’s rented SUV next to the curb at John F. Kennedy Airport. “He should be on his way back to a Fed Governors meeting in D.C. I recruited a retired FBI friend who does executive security to stay with him.”

Viz handed Gage a new cell phone. “This will probably be good for a day or two until the bad guys catch on to it.” He then pointed at the leather attaché case on Gage’s lap. “That have the stuff?”

Gage nodded. “I didn’t try the SIM or memory cards. I was afraid there might still be moisture inside.” “No problem. I’ll take care of it.” Viz turned the ignition. His headlights reflected off the limousine in front of them and enveloped it in swirling snow as if in a globe.

“What about the rest?” Viz asked as he merged into the passing traffic.

“A lot of his notebook was pulped by soaking in water, so I wasn’t able to recover much, and what I did find is so cryptic that I don’t know what to make of it. Parts of it read like the stream-of-consciousness rambling of those homeless guys who hang out in public libraries scribbling in spiral notebooks. And flowcharts, or at least pieces of them.”

Gage turned on an overhead light, and then opened the briefcase and removed a sheet of paper.

“I tried to piece them together, but there was only one box common to all.” Gage tapped it with his finger. “RGF.”

“Relative Growth Funds.”

“I assume so.”

Viz glanced over as Gage held up one of the flowcharts he’d recovered.

“And HI is Hani Ibrahim?”

“It was always in the biggest letters and always framed by an input box as though he was the mastermind behind Relative Growth Funds. But if Abrams is right, that Ibrahim’s theories were just beautiful nonsense, it can’t be true. No one could build an investment strategy on them.”

Viz smiled. “He gave me that speech a few times. Hell, I didn’t know what the uncertainty principle was, or entanglement, or fractals. I’m not sure Abrams even noticed that I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.” Viz laughed. “I understood what he said about it being impossible to predict the unpredictable only because I learned what a tautology was when I took sociology.”

“I take it he got a little excited.”

“How’d you guess?”

“Because Abrams knows that Ibrahim’s argument wasn’t just a word game, playing with definitions. Ibrahim’s argument was that what people have always considered to be unpredictable isn’t.”

“You mean that it’s predictable that I’ll get a raise once we get back to San Francisco.”

It was Gage’s turn to smile. “That depends on whether you can lead me to Davey Hicks.”

Viz looked at his watch. “That’s easy. In a couple of minutes, right after Abrams climbs out of his limousine in front of his apartment building, Hicks will drive into Central Park, pull off the road, and hide his car in a thicket. After that, he’ll layer-up like an Eskimo and sneak in among some evergreens and relieve the lookout he’s had sitting there all day—does that mean I get my raise? “

“Probably.”

“Why’s he so important?”

“I found his name in Hennessy’s notebook. Along with Anthony Gilbert’s.”

Viz’s head snapped toward Gage. “You mean Hennessy knew they were on to him? “

“But I don’t know whether he acted on the knowledge.”

Viz pointed at the flowchart. “What about the rest of the acronyms? “

“I can’t even guess what HA, CU and G12 are,” Gage said. “I think INV stands for investors and the lines are transfers of money, but I can’t be sure of that.”

Gage reached into his attaché for another sheet.

“The words and phrases I found scattered among the pages, like bond derivative and strike date, were intermingled with nonsense telephone numbers and ramblings and self-accusations like ‘I’m an idiot’ or ‘I had it backward’ or ‘financial Armageddon,’ as if every time he learned something it made him doubt himself. And some were just crazy. There was half a page devoted to the sound of a motorcycle engine:
buffeta-buffeta-buffeta.”

“Sounds like he’s a Honda man,” Viz said. “A Harley-Davidson guy would’ve written
potato-potato-potato.”

“We’ll never find out.”

Gage turned off the overhead lamp and stared past the slow sweeping windshield wipers and through wisping snowfall at the New York skyline advancing toward them, the city lights haloed by moisture and reflecting off low clouds. He then took out his laptop to check his e-mail. The one he had been waiting for had finally arrived. He decrypted it and then read it to himself.

A new message arrived in his office e-mail folder. It was from Alex Z.

“I don’t get it,” Gage said. “The only telephone numbers I found in Hennessy’s notebook are either disconnected or a fax number.” Gage stared at the numbers. “Unless they were coded a second time. But by only one or two digits. Something Hennessy could figure out in his head.”

Gage sent an encrypted e-mail back:

He then did a search on the Three Gorges University Web site, then sent an e-mail back to Faith.

Gage closed his laptop, then pointed his thumb over his shoulder.

“What do you think? Anyone behind us?”

Viz shook his head. “Can’t tell, but it doesn’t make any difference. I’ll lose them once I get into Manhattan.” He looked over. “That’s where you want to go, right? After Hicks?”

“I’m thinking, maybe not. If we corner Hicks and then he runs to whoever hired him, they’ll be ready for us. I’m thinking we go after somebody who’s got nobody to run to.”

“And that means?”

“Shake whoever may be tailing us, and head north.”