Absolute Risk (25 page)

W
hy isn’t Strubb hiding out?” Viz wondered aloud as he pulled to the curb across the street and half a block away from the Jupiter Club at the edge of downtown Albany.

“Because if the police could’ve made him for the murder of Gilbert,” Gage said, “they would’ve already.”

Viz looked over at Gage. “I hope his apartment manager didn’t drop a dime on us and tell him we came looking for him.”

Gage stared ahead at the broken neon sign tacked to the brick façade of the bar, the J burned out and “upiter” flashing in red.

“He probably didn’t,” Gage said. “There’s too many people coming by looking for Strubb—probation officers and parole agents and cops—that he doesn’t bother anymore.”

Two leather-chapped men walked into the recessed entrance. Muted light flooded the shadow as they opened the door and was eclipsed as it swung closed behind them.

Opening the SUV door, Gage said, “I’ll go around to the back of the building just in case he tries to slip out that way.” He stepped down in the slush mounding up from the street and over the curb and then looked back into the cab. “On second thought, if you’re getting a raise, maybe you should be the one to chill your bones out here instead of me.”

“That’s fine with me. I’d rather do that than what you have in mind for me.” Viz smiled. “If he doesn’t come out of there in the next half hour, you’re gonna want me to go inside and dance with somebody.”

“Shoot,” Gage said, smiling back. “I was going to make that a surprise.”

Viz reached into his jacket and pulled out Hennessy’s SIM and memory card, then said, “I’ll try to do some work on these while we’re waiting.”

Gage closed the door, made his way down the sidewalk, turned left at a corner store, and then looped around to the alley. The far streetlight backlit two men smoking next to a dumpster by the rear door to the Jupiter Club. They stamped their feet as they smoked, their wool-capped heads clouded in gray swirls. Even in puff jackets they seemed too thin to be Strubb, and although wearing motorcycle boots, they seemed too short. One after the other, they flicked their cigarettes in high arcs like single streams of fireworks that exploded when they hit the rear wall of the building across the alley.

Just after the men reentered the bar, Gage angled to the other side, then worked his way along the trash cans and delivery trucks until he obtained a straight-on view of the back door through the muck-splattered passenger and driver’s windows of a cargo van.

A man came out alone, lit up, and then reached for his cell phone and made a call.

“Hey. It’s me … I’m out in the back. It’s dead as dead can be except for Eddie.” The man laughed. “He thinks he’s gonna hook up with Strubb and Pike, but there’s no fucking way that’s gonna happen … That’s what I told him.” The man laughed again. “Three-way Eddie will be going it alone tonight … No, his phone got turned off. You want to talk to him? … I’ll get him.”

The man opened the back door and yelled inside.

“Strubb. My buddy wants to talk to you.”

Strubb filled the doorway ten seconds later. He held a beer bottle in one hand and a pool cue in the other. He traded the cue for the phone and stepped outside.

“Who’s this?” Strubb asked, then listened for a few seconds. “Yeah, I’m kinda between jobs. The last one went sour so I’m not working with Davey no more. Guy’s an asshole. Stiffed me. He shows up here again, I’m gonna kick his butt back to NYC … Sure. What’s the gig? … Yeah. I can do that … I’m good. Only had one beer. Pick me up out front in ten minutes.”

Gage reached for his cell phone as soon as the door closed behind Strubb.

“He’ll be coming out in a couple of minutes,” Gage told Viz. “Waiting for someone to pick him up. Blue jacket. Jeans. Work boots. The voice recorder is cued up to the right spot. Come up on him from the east. Soon as you reach him, I’ll head in from the west.”

Gage worked his way back to the corner market and waited until Strubb appeared. He watched Viz step out of the SUV, and then stroll up the block and stop next to Strubb. Viz set himself so that Strubb’s back would be facing Gage as he walked up.

Ten feet away, Gage heard his own voice on the recorder:

No reason to get yourself kicked in the head for something I’ll find out anyway.
Then Strubb’s.

Gilbert. Tony Gilbert. Works out of New York City.
Strubb backed away from Viz. Then Gage’s voice again.

This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to tell Gilbert and his pals to stay away from me.

Strubb spun and took a step. He jerked to a stop when he spotted Gage, who grabbed his jacket front and took him down to the sidewalk. Viz locked down Strubb’s legs before he could start kicking, then Gage froze him with a wrist lock and they pulled him to his feet.

“Say anything and I’ll break your arm,” Gage said to Strubb, and then looked at his watch and said to Viz, “His pal will be here in a minute or two.”

Gage and Viz marched Strubb across the street and down the block to the SUV. Viz frisked him, then they waited in its shadow as a pickup truck pulled to a stop in front of the bar. It waited a minute, then the driver honked twice, then leaned on the horn for a long one. Finally the driver walked inside the bar. He came out thirty seconds later.

Gage pulled up on Strubb’s arm, a reminder.

The driver looked up and down the street, braced his hands on his waist, then kicked at the slush and climbed back into the cab of the truck and drove off.

Gage watched him fishtail around the corner, then pushed Strubb against a storefront.

Gage wasn’t too worried about traffic passing by. The storefronts along the blocks heading toward downtown were empty except for yellowing “Going Out of Business” signs and dusty counters. And the bungalows and apartments in the opposite direction were more boards than windows, more bare wood than paint, and more cracks than concrete covering the driveways. It was a neighborhood that commuters sped through during the day and in which night drivers feared stoplights that set them up for carjackers. It was also one in which curious residents had learned not to stay curious for long.

“Remember what you said to me last time?” Gage asked.

“Fucking asshole,” Strubb answered over his shoulder, his cheek pressed against the glass. “What did I say to you?”

“You said just stay cool. If everything checks out, we’ll be on our way in a couple of minutes. We’ll just call it no harm, no foul.”

“And I was pissing blood for a week.”

Gage pressed against Strubb’s ribs. Strubb winced.

“Good,” Gage said. “It’ll be easy to hit the same spot again.”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“I want to know who hired Anthony Gilbert.”

“How the fuck should I know? I told him what you said and he paid me off and we went our separate ways.”

“You went your separate ways all right, but you left Gilbert laying dead in a dumpster.”

Strubb rocked his face against the glass, trying to shake his head. “It wasn’t me. It was some guys from the bar. He was calling us fags and stuff and they went after him.”

Gage looked over toward Viz and asked, “You think this and the recording is good enough for a murder conspiracy conviction?”

“People have gotten themselves into a bunk on death row for less,” Viz said. “But then again, I’m not a lawyer.”

Gage heard a car slow down in the slush behind them. Viz crossed the sidewalk to the curb and flashed his old DEA ID. The car sped away.

“Let me paint a picture,” Gage said. “You don’t need to say anything until I get to the end, and then you can fill in the blank.”

Strubb shrugged.

“You and some guys took Gilbert somewhere,” Gage said. “Gilbert has no way to fight back except by trying to threaten you. But what’s he got to threaten you with? “

Strubb turned his head toward Gage. “That’s not—“

Gage pushed his head back. “I told you it’s fill-in-the-blank, not question-and-answer.”

Strubb nodded.

“All Gilbert’s got to threaten you with is somebody bigger than him. Somebody he’d be terrified of if he was you.”

Strubb nodded again.

“So Gilbert says: You lay a hand on me and my boss is gonna hunt you down and blow your head off. And you ask: Who’s your boss? And Gilbert says …”

Gage twisted Strubb’s wrist and yanked up on his arm.

“Wycovsky. Shit, man. Ease up. He said the guy’s name was Wycovsky.”

Strubb pushed himself up on his toes to relieve the pressure on his wrist and elbow.

“I didn’t know who that was and I didn’t stay around to ask him neither. I swear.”

Gage eased up in the arm, then said. “Did you find out later? “

“Yeah. I went through Gilbert’s cell phone. Wycovsky’s at a law firm in the city. Him and another guy named Arndt.”

“That’s it?” Gage said. “He just threatened you with a lawyer?” Gage forced a laugh. “Like he was going to sue you?”

“Not Wycovsky, dumb ass. Whoever hired him. Gilbert said they had a lot of reach. World-fucking-wide. And no, he didn’t say who that was. I don’t think he even knew. People say shit when they’re scared.”

“Like you?”

“I’ve met tougher guys than you.” “I’m not surprised,” Gage said. “Where’s the phone now?”

“After I found out what those guys did to Gilbert, I tossed it in the Hudson.”

Gage released Strubb’s wrist and turned him around.

“I tell you what I’m going to do,” Gage said. “I’m releasing you on your good behavior. Kind of like on parole.” Gage smiled. “You know how that works. You behave and we’ve got no problem. You misbehave, and I’ll yank the leash and deliver you and the recording to Albany homicide.”

“What good behavior?”

“Keeping your mouth shut.” Gage looked hard at Strubb. “Can you do that?” Strubb shrugged.

Gage glanced at Viz. “I’ve got to get back to New York. Can you take him down to the police sta—“

“Okay. I’ll keep my damn mouth shut.”

Gage stepped aside and pointed toward the Jupiter Club. “Why don’t you go back inside and play with your friends.”

V
ice President Cooper Wallace rose from his chair at his kitchen table as CIA Director Casher entered, then shook his hand and directed him to sit across from him.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Wallace said. “I’ve always found it easier to do my hard thinking in here.”

Casher had often seen print and television advertisements of the iconic black-and-white photograph of Wallace and his father talking over Spectrum business at their kitchen table in Topeka in the 1970s, but until this moment he thought it had been only a marketing gimmick.

Casher set his briefcase on the floor and sat down.

“What can I get you?” Wallace asked.

Casher pointed at a half-full pot of coffee on the granite counter next to the sink. “That’s fine.”

Wallace poured him a cup and took his seat.

“Before we start,” Wallace said, “I want to thank you for our discussion last week. It’s rare that anyone in Washington wants to talk about what events mean, except in a narrow partisan sense of which party gains and which party loses.”

Casher watched Wallace’s eyes go blank for a moment. He recognized that in recent days Wallace had put himself on trial and found himself guilty of the same offense. His role in both presidential campaigns had been to engage the enemy party in sniping skirmishes away from the central fronts of health care, terrorism, and economic uncertainty.

Wallace blinked, then looked at Casher and said, “We talk policy and implementation, then end up finding ourselves in a political or military or economic wilderness and don’t know how we got there.”

He needs a confessor,
Casher thought,
someone to guide him through the psychological rebirth he seems to be undergoing.
The problem was that Casher could see only two possible outcomes from the experience, and both were nightmares. The first was that Wallace would be paralyzed like a college freshman by the glare of a sudden confrontation with too many questions and possibilities. The second was that he’d choose Reverend Manton Roberts as his midwife.

Wallace half smiled. “I know you didn’t come here to listen to me ramble. You came to talk about financial issues, but I need to ask why you came alone. I expected that someone from the Treasury Department or maybe Milton Abrams would be with you.”

Casher had anticipated the question and so had the president. He leaned forward, rested his forearms on either side of his cup, then said, “The president has been undergoing some medical tests in the last few weeks.”

“I haven’t noticed him leaving for—“

“They were done in the facility in the basement of the White House.” “What have they found?” “A brain tumor—” “Dear God.”

Casher saw in Wallace’s eyes what he and the president feared he’d see: wide-eyed bewilderment. Casher waited until it seemed to pass, then said, “It’s not malignant, but it’s growing and has to be removed.”

“When did he find out?” Wallace asked.

“About two weeks ago he began to suspect that there was something wrong. Vision and balance problems. Headaches. Numbness in his hand. They first thought that he had suffered a minor stroke, but an MRI found the tumor.”

Wallace reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

Casher raised his palm. “This isn’t a good time to call. He knew you would want to and asked me to thank you in advance. He’s explaining to his wife and kids what the treatment will be.”

Wallace set his phone down on the table.

“And that is?”

“Surgery. Preceded by an induced coma.” Casher pushed on before Wallace could react. “He’s less worried about surviving the surgery than about post-operative side effects.”

The president was also worried that in his single-minded pursuit of the office he’d made a bad choice for vice president. But Casher suspected that Wallace already knew that.

“He’s concerned about emotional instability, loss of memory, and impaired judgment, and that he won’t be capable of assessing whether he’s competent to reassume the duties of the office.”

Casher watched Wallace bite his lip. Wallace now understood that soon he would be the acting president of the United States.

“The president recognizes that it will fall to you and the Cabinet to determine whether he’s competent.”

Casher withdrew an index card from his suit jacket pocket and slid it across the table to Wallace.

“This is a list of neurologists and psychiatrists that he’s asked to stand by in the days and weeks after the operation to help you make that determination.”

Wallace fumbled as he tried to pick up the card, squeezed the edges until it buckled up off the table, then gripped it with both hands. Staring at it, he said, “I think he’s the most courageous man I’ve ever met. Who else has the mental toughness to think things through like this?”

“The president would like to meet with you at 8
a.m.
tomorrow. That will be followed by a National Security briefing in the situation room and after that a Cabinet meeting at 2
p.m.
He’ll make the announcement, then carry on with his schedule in what he suspects will be an unsuccessful attempt to minimize the impact. At 8
p.m.,
he’ll meet with you, the speaker of the House, and the president pro-tem of the Senate and submit a letter saying that as of six o’clock the following morning he’ll be unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Casher watched Wallace’s face work its way through a kaleidoscope of scenarios: a frown, upper teeth scraping across his lower lip, a squint into the distance, a hand through his hair.

Finally Wallace asked, “Why you? Why didn’t his chief of staff come here to tell me?”

“Because the president knows that I’ll never speak or write about what we say and do here tonight and because he doesn’t want his thoughts and warnings and wishes to be filtered through the mind of a political animal.”

Wallace drew back. “What warnings?”

“Manton Roberts and National Pledge Day.”

Casher watched Wallace flush. He wasn’t sure whether it was from anger or from embarrassment. He hoped it was the latter.

“The president knows that he’s leaving you in a difficult position, but he’s not willing to risk his life by delaying the operation in order to defuse what he considers a temporary political stunt.”

“It’s not—“

Casher raised a forefinger to cut him off.

“At the same time … at the same time, people all over the world are nervous about it. They see it as a kind of mass hysteria, especially combined with Roberts’s ranting about the coming apocalypse and end times. They doubt his motives and suspect that he wants to see the world collapse into anarchy and is trying to push it in that direction.”

Wallace locked his hands on the end of the table. “That’s just hyperbole. No one embraces that kind of terror.”

“If somebody yells fire in a theater, then everybody runs. They don’t sit back and look around and ponder the person’s intentions—but I’m not here to argue. My role is only to communicate the president’s thoughts, and fill you in on some intelligence matters.”

Wallace peered at Casher. “What intelligence matters?”

“Ones relating to China. We think that there are only a few days left in the rebellion, but long enough to do us a lot of economic damage. The president doesn’t know whether it will land in the Oval Office while you’re sitting there, but he wants you to understand the situation.”

Wallace hunched forward.

“The PLA now has dossiers on at least ten U.S. business leaders,” Casher continued, “and on a group of Chinese government and party officials that they’ve paid bribes to in the last ten years. More than enough evidence they’d need to charge them in Chinese courts.”

Wallace nodded. “Or to force us to charge them in U.S. courts.”

“The Chinese are focusing on these specific ones—including the CEOs of RAID and Spectrum—because of the impact the allegations would have on world markets. Our estimate, and it’s only an estimate, is that the Dow will drop about a third in the first hours of trading after they make the announcement and display their proof to the world.”

“Have they disclosed their evidence to you?”

Casher shook his head. “But we suspect that they’ve been able to fill in more boxes on their flowchart than we have on ours.”

Wallace thought for a moment, furrowing his brow, then asked, “Is Graham Gage still helping them? And, maybe more importantly, should he be helping a foreign government?”

“To answer your second question first, it’s more complex than that. And as to the first, not that we know of. But let me come back to him.”

“How do you know the threat of exposure is real?”

Casher opened his briefcase and withdrew a DVD. “You have something we can watch this on?”

Wallace took it and then rose and opened a pocket door, revealing a small television and DVD player. He turned them on and slipped in the disc. Seconds after he pressed the play button, a dim video activated. It showed a wood-paneled room. Men in Chinese military uniforms sat on one side of a conference table. Men in suits on the other.

Casher stood next to Wallace and pointed at the left side of the screen.

“The uniformed man in the middle is Shi Rong-bang, First-class Senior General. We thought he was fully retired, but it looks like we may have been wrong. Even in retirement, he’s been the conscience of the PLA. He lives like a monk in a place called Heng Shan, Balancing Mountain, in Hunan Province. He hasn’t shown his face in public for a decade.”

Casher moved his finger to the right side.

“His face is blocked by the man next to him, but sitting in the middle on the other side is the Chinese president. He may turn out to be a problem for us since he doesn’t like you any more than you like him.”

Wallace locked his hands on his hips as he stared at the screen.

“The general is doing most of the talking,” Casher said. “The given—what both sides accept as true and is the foundation for what they’re talking about—is the data on the flowchart. Who got what from whom and where the money went.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“Shi is laying out the conditions for the army’s suppression of the rebellion. They both know the police and internal security forces can’t do it. They couldn’t even control Beijing if they had to. Not now. Not with millions of laborers in tent camps on the outskirts of the city.”

“But the military is as corrupt as the rest.” “The ideologues in the PLA are ready to clean their own house, too.”

“Then what’s the condition?”

“The main one is they want the Group of Twelve—“

“The what?”

“The Group of Twelve. It’s the nickname for the People’s Foreign Investment Fund managers. They’re the most powerful corporate leaders in the country. Ten years ago they were tasked with coordinating China’s use of foreign currency reserves. It was modeled on Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, but has even more power.”

“And Shi wants them reined in?”

Casher nodded.

“What are they suspected of?”

Casher reached for the recorder, punched the off and eject buttons, and removed the DVD.

“That’s one of the things that’s assumed by everyone participating in the conversation, but not actually discussed.”

Casher gestured with his head toward the table and they both sat down again.

“And that brings us back to Gage,” Casher said. “Milton Abrams hired him to find out what happened to an ex-FBI agent named Michael Hennessy.”

Wallace nodded. “I know who he is. I was briefed on him years ago after that Muslim professor—“

“Hani Ibrahim.”

”—was nailed for funding the bombing of the Spectrum distribution center in China.” Casher raised his hands. “We’re now not so sure about that.”

“What?” Wallace’s face flushed. “I’m the one who leaned on the FBI to bury that guy.” He thumped the table with his forefinger. “And now you’re telling me he didn’t do it? “

Casher shrugged. “Not yet. We’re pursuing a lead, but we don’t know.”

Wallace lowered his gaze and shook his head. “This is absurd.” Then he sighed and looked up again. “What
do
we know?”

“We know that Gage is trying to follow a trail through Hennessy to Ibrahim and from Ibrahim to Relative Growth, which Abrams thinks is a multitrillion-dollar fraud.”

“Why don’t you go after Ibrahim yourself?”

“Two reasons. First, we don’t know whether he’s still alive—some things happened to him that it’s better you don’t know about.”

Casher watched Wallace’s eyes widen. He pushed on before Wallace had a chance to form his fears into a question.

“And second, if he’s still alive, we know we’ll spook him. Gage won’t. He’s been able to get the guy who was Ibrahim’s closest friend—Rahmani, a car dealer of sorts—to talk to him when he hasn’t been willing to talk to anyone else. Same thing with Hennessy’s wife and daughter.”

When Wallace looked away and stared at the dark window, opaque but for the reflection of the kitchen against it, Casher feared that he’d dumped too much on him at once, and had provoked the paralysis he had feared.

Casher now felt sorry for the man, wondering what it must feel like to know with certainty that in a matter of hours he would be transformed by events out of his control from a mere appendix to the presidency, to the body and mind of a nation.

And Casher also thought of himself and felt a shudder of self-revelation: He’d always understood himself as a man who’d never been afraid to pull the trigger, as a marine, as a field operative, as deputy director of the CIA, and as director—but now he grasped that someone else had always loaded the gun and either ordered him, or gave him permission, to fire.

Casher found that he was staring at Wallace, wondering who would emerge from Wallace’s reverie: the corporate executive who built an international corporation, the vice president who seemed to become less and less effective over the two terms, or a man cowering in the shadow of responsibility.

“I don’t want to tell you how to do your work,” Wallace finally said, now looking back at Casher. “But have you considered bringing Gage in and grilling him about what he knows?”