Absolute Risk (27 page)

I
s there any way the CIA hasn’t screwed this up?” Gage asked John Casher, as they faced each other in the living room of a midtown hotel suite. Scattered about the room were Arndt, Viz, Madison, and a CIA deputy director. “A false accusation. Delivering up Ibrahim to be tortured. Hennessy driven to suicide, or set up to be murdered.”

Gage pointed at Arndt sitting on the couch with his shoulders slumped, forearms on his knees. “A fifty-billion-dollar intelligence budget, and it falls on this kid to do your work for you? “

“I’m not going to argue,” Casher said, “but I don’t have evidence in front of me that’ll let me believe you.”

Gage could feel a lump pressing up against his sole: the memory card on which he’d saved images of documents and downloads of Wycovsky’s files. He had no reason to think that the CIA would do any better with that information than it had with everything else—

Except that Casher hadn’t been appointed director until years after Ibrahim’s indictment, and the fact that he came to meet Gage himself might mean—might mean—that he was trying to find a way to set things right.

“I don’t have to show you anything,” Gage said. “But I’ll tell you what I believe.”

“That’s a start.”

“I think Wycovsky gave the orders to transfer the money from Ibrahim’s Manx trust to the Hong Kong law firm and then to the terrorists who bombed the Spectrum facility in Xinjiang.”

Casher’s gaze drifted toward the deputy director sitting at the dining table. Her eyes fixed on his. Her face didn’t change expression.

“But I guess you knew that,” Gage said.

Casher shook his head. “We only suspected. That’s what we went in tonight to try to find out. But it still doesn’t get Ibrahim off the hook.”

Gage felt a slow rage begin to build. He pointed at Viz leaning against the wall by the kitchen, then at Arndt, and said, “Let’s go.”

Arndt rose to his feet. Viz pushed off and started toward the door. Gage turned to follow behind them.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Casher said, gesturing to Madison to block their way.

Gage spun back and glared at Casher.

“What are you going to do? Bind and gag us and send us off to Saudi Arabia, too?” Gage hardened his voice. “Don’t try to play cards you don’t have in your hand. If I want out of here, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Casher opened his mouth to argue, then closed it and looked from face to face, everyone staring back at him, and then said, “You all go into the bedroom.”

Everyone moved except for the deputy director.

“You too,” he told her. “I’ll fill you in later.”

As soon as the door closed behind them, Casher said, “I don’t know who Wycovsky’s client is, so I can’t clear Ibrahim. It’s as simple as that.” Casher pointed at the dining table. “Let’s sit down. I’m beat. There’s a lot going on.”

They sat down across from each other.

Casher folded his forearms on the table and leaned forward.

“We know from UK phone records that the director of the Manx trust made back-to-back calls to Wycovsky and Ibrahim many times in the months before the trust was set up and then again just before the bombing.”

“But no calls directly between Ibrahim and Wycovsky.”

Casher shook his head. “But we wouldn’t expect there to be. It would make it too easy for someone to connect the dots.”

“You did anyway,” Gage said, “or at least thought you did.”

“Then who was Wycovsky’s client?” Casher asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Gage said. “It was coded in their records, or maybe it was an acronym, and”—he tilted his head toward the hallway to the bedroom—“and Arndt doesn’t have any idea.”

Casher narrowed his eyes at Gage. “How was it coded?”

Gage shrugged. “All it said was G12.”

Casher drew back and shook his head. “It’s not coded. It’s been on our radar for the last few years. It’s the People’s Foreign Investment Fund. They’re known to Chinese insiders as the Group of Twelve.”

Gage pushed himself to his feet, then slammed his fist into his palm. “Son of a—“

“What?” Casher asked, squinting up at Gage.

“Ibrahim was working for the Chinese.”

Casher blinked as though stunned by a camera flash. “How do you get from—“

“And when Hennessy began to suspect it and went hunting for Ibrahim, they killed the guy.”

Gage hesitated. He closed his eyes and locked his hands on top of his head. That couldn’t be right. If Ibrahim was dead, then there’d be no reason for Wycovsky to put Gilbert and Strubb and Hicks on his tail—

“Unless the Chinese are looking for Ibrahim, too,” Gage said aloud. “And that means they believe he’s still alive.”

“Have you gone nuts?” Casher asked.

Gage sat down and reached for the deputy director’s legal pad. Casher’s hand snaked out and grabbed Gage’s wrist, thinking that Gage was trying to read her notes. Gage yanked it free.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Gage said. “I just need a blank sheet of paper.” He flipped to the middle and tore out a piece and drew part of the flowchart that Alex Z recovered from Hennessy’s memory card.

“We found this in Hennessy’s records,” Gage said, then pointed at the HI and G12 boxes. “I think he figured out that Ibrahim was working for the Chinese, not Relative Growth.”

“Or both,” Casher said.

Gage shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He looked over at Casher. “Where’d you send Ibrahim after you deported him?”

Casher flushed. “I didn’t send him anywhere. It was before my time.” He shrugged. “Anyway, you know the answer.”

“And you—collectively—created an economic terrorist.” “We don’t know that.”

“You suspect it strongly enough to commit a burglary on U.S. soil.”

Casher shrugged. “But what could the Chinese possibly need Ibrahim for?”

Gage was now beginning to understand Abrams’s preoccupation with Ibrahim, or at least part of it. And the Chinese were focused on the same thing: If the old theories had proved themselves false, then maybe Ibrahim’s could prove themselves right—with huge Chinese foreign currency reserves behind them.

“Capitalism needed a new god,” Gage said, “a new master of the universe.”

“And they chose Ibrahim?”

Gage shook his head again. “You
gave
them Ibrahim.”

T
here’s a chance Ibrahim is still alive and I don’t want to get him killed,” Gage told Milton Abrams after recounting the previous night’s events. “But we need to find him and figure out what the Chinese are up to.”

“And you’re afraid you’ll be bird-dogging him for the Chinese who may be worried he’ll spill the beans, whatever they may be.”

Gage picked up his cup from the kitchen table and took a sip.

“Exactly.”

Gage’s cell phone rang. He’d left it on the kitchen counter the previous night so those who were tracking him would think that he’d remained in Abrams’s apartment. He didn’t recognize the number, but it had a Boston area code. He could think of only two people who could be calling: Goldie Goldstein or Abdul Rahmani. He didn’t answer it, but watched to see if the caller left a message. He or she didn’t. He retrieved his encrypted phone and called Alex Z in San Francisco.

“Sorry to wake you up,” Gage told him when he answered. “I need you to call a number and see who it is and what they want. I don’t want people listening in on me.”

Alex Z yawned. “No problem, boss.”

Gage gave him the number and disconnected.

Alex Z called back a minute later.

“He wouldn’t ID himself,” Alex Z said. “But he was pissed and he said that he’d heard from someone you two called Fred.”

Gage’s hand tightened around the phone. Ibrahim was alive. “What did he say?”

“That Fred is also pissed, homicidal, something about his wife having to go into hiding. The guy said you’ll know where to find him at 1
p.m.
today.”

As Gage disconnected, Abrams’s cell phone rang. Moments after he answered it, his eyes widened, and he said, “I’m on my way,” and then flipped it closed and rose from his chair.

“I’ve got to get down to Washington,” Abrams said. “Rumors are flying about the president’s health, and the markets have no confidence in Wallace. They want me and the treasury secretary standing in front of the cameras when the New York Stock Exchange opens.”

Gage thought of the surveillance outside Abrams’s apartment house and of his need to dodge them on the way out.

“How are you getting there?” Gage asked.

“A limo from here in five minutes, then a helicopter from a pad downtown.”

Gage pointed his thumb upward. “Can I hitch a ride partway?”

“Why not? I suspect that the taxpayers are going to owe you a lot more than a helicopter ride.”

Gage called Viz, who’d taken Arndt home and then had checked the layout of the surveillance in Central Park.

“It’s practically a convention out here,” Viz said. “It’s hard to tell who’s who. Hicks is in his usual spot along with two others spread out on either side. And there are two vans stationed at either end of the block that are using as much bandwidth as T-1 lines, but I have no way of knowing whether they’re aware of each other.”

“I need you to come back inside and turn all of the bugs back on as soon as Abrams and I leave.”

Gage disconnected, then called out to Abrams, who was in his bedroom changing into his suit, “You have a large briefcase I can use? I need to take a lot with me, but I don’t want to be seen with my Rollaboard and clue them in that I’m on the move.”

“In my study. There’s an old-style leather catalogue case in the closet.”

Gage retrieved his nonencrypted cell phone to make a call so that those intercepting him would believe that they knew where he was going and called Alex Z.

“Abrams and I are on our way down to Washington,” Gage said. “By helicopter. We’ll stop along the way to pick up one of his underlings.”

Abrams came back into the living room, tying his tie, as Gage turned the phone off again.

“Should you be telling our plans to the other side?” Abrams asked.

“When they hear on the news that you’ve been called to Washington, they’ll assume the rest is true, too. Except I’ll be getting off where they think someone is getting on.”

Abrams smiled. “I like my job better than yours. It’s a lot simpler.”

Gage collected Abrams’s briefcase, stuffed it with his own attaché case, along with a change of clothes, and then pointed toward the door.

Abrams’s limo took them first to the helipad, then to Newark Airport where Gage got off. To disguise his trail, Gage rented a car with the unused Federal Reserve card that Abrams had given him the previous week, and then headed north toward Boston. Three and a half hours later, he pulled up in front of the Turkish halal café down the block from Ijara Automobiles.

The owner, sitting by the cash register, lowered his paper and cast dead eyes at Gage as he entered.

Abdul Rahmani, the only customer in the café, neither looked up nor rose from his seat.

Gage pulled up a chair across from him.

“You’re as much of a bungler as Hennessy,” Rahmani said, shaking his head. “I should’ve known.”

“Ibrahim could’ve picked up his phone at any time since I first came knocking on your door.”

“Why should he have? There’ve been dozens of people looking for him over the years. Investigators. Intelligence agencies. Business reporters. Professors. Graduate students. Hedge fund managers—why should he bless you of all people with a call?”

“Because I know the truth about what happened to him.”

“That only means that you know what he knows.

Bravo.”

“Thinks he knows—and he’s wrong. Maybe dead wrong.”

Rahmani spread his hands. “So? Let’s hear it.”

“I’ll tell it only to him, and only in person. I’ll also explain to him why some of the people he thought were his friends are now on the hunt for him.”

“It doesn’t make a difference, they won’t find him. No one will ever find him, unless he wants to be found. I don’t even know where he is.”

Gage inspected Rahmani’s face, trying to discern a connection between his aggression and door-slamming protection of Ibrahim and the fact of his calling to get Gage to come to Boston. He then surveyed the café, wondering whether it was bugged.

“How long would it take for you to get in contact with him?” Gage asked.

Rahmani shrugged.

Gage walked over to the counter and grabbed a takeout menu and a matchbook and brought them back to the table. He drew out the flowchart that he’d drawn for Casher, showing Ibrahim’s connection to the Group of Twelve. He then spun it around so Rahmani could see it.

“Can you describe this to him?” Gage asked.

Rahmani reached for it. Gage pulled it away. Rahmani’s face reddened.

“It’s not complicated,” Gage said. “Just memorize it.”

Gage let Rahmani stare at it a little longer, and tore it up. He then removed Rahmani’s saucer from under his coffee cup, piled up the pieces, and set them on fire.

Gage held his open hands over the flame and then rubbed them together.

“Let’s see whether this generates a little heat where Ibrahim is, too,” Gage said. “And then maybe a little light.”