Absolute Risk (8 page)

F
aith Gage stood in front of her door and looked over the collapsed warehouse across the narrow street and toward Chengdu in the valley below. Smoke rose in columns from the smoldering remnants of the fires that had been triggered by the earthquake. It then spread like a low fog toward the base of the mountain beneath her, yellow-gray, poisoned by exploding chemical tanks at the factories in the economic development zone. In the near distance she could make out the smoldering shell of the almost completed RAID Technologies microchip plant, the largest building on the western edge of the city.

She recognized that the silent movement of distant things made it hard for her to maintain the images in her mind of the hundreds of thousands of souls entombed in the rubble, the raw hands of searchers, and the roar and grind of earthmoving equipment, and the wail of survivors already gathered in temples, burning incense in honor of the dead.

Shuffling footsteps drew her eyes toward a young man in his mid-twenties carrying a duffel bag over the shoulder of his wool jacket. His dirt- and soot-covered face seemed forlorn against the background of the dusty anarchy of wood, brick, and concrete spilling out into the street. He came to a stop in front of the remains of the wooden shack next to Faith’s. He stared at it, then took in a long breath, exhaled, and lowered his head.

Faith walked over. When he looked up she saw that tears had formed, muddying the dirt at the corners of his eyes. She could perceive beyond the tears a somber core, but she couldn’t tell whether it was a product of nature or trauma or grief, or of all three.

“Aunt Zhao is fine,” she told him in Mandarin, then pointed at her own house. “She’s staying with me.”

He looked down and sighed, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve, tracking the grime across his face and forehead.

“You are?” Faith asked.

“Her grandson. Jian-jun.” He pointed toward Chengdu. “From the city. You must be the anthropologist she told me would be coming.”

Faith nodded, then said,
“Chifanle meiyou?
“ Have you eaten?

Jian-jun’s face relaxed, seeming to find comfort in the familiar greeting, even though spoken by a
gweilo,
a white ghost, in a wasteland.

“Chifanle,”
he answered. I’m fine.

His sunken cheeks told Faith that he wasn’t, that he probably hadn’t eaten much in days, perhaps even before the earthquake. She led him through the house and into the kitchen where his eighty-five-year-old grandmother sat at the table chopping vegetables for lunch. He walked over and knelt beside her. She reached for him with her thin arms and hugged him against her breast. He pulled back and whispered something to her. She bit her lip and frowned as he again pressed against her.

After pouring him tea, Faith dragged a wooden chair up next to his grandmother. He pulled himself onto it and then warmed his hands on the cup.

“How is it in the city?” Faith asked him.

“Chaos. Fury. Violence.” Jian-jun took a sip of tea; he didn’t seem surprised or put off balance by Faith’s speaking unaccented Mandarin. “Schools and hospitals collapsed everywhere, burying children and sick people.”

His hands tightened around the cup and his face flushed.

“The concrete didn’t just crack, it crumbled. Disintegrated. Mobs hunted down the builders and the mayor and a couple of party leaders and hung them. They’ve now surrounded all of the government offices and intend to starve them out and kill them, too.”

“Isn’t the army—”

Jian-jun shook his head. “The army isn’t intervening, and not because they’re afraid. They’re as sickened by the corruption as everyone else. I think they want to try to contain it to Chengdu and the other cities in the earthquake area, and let it be an object lesson for the rest of the country.”

Ayi Zhao stared ahead. Listening.

“And there’s no clean water. Chemical runoff from the burned factories flowed into the BoTiao River and the waterworks.” He pointed north. “And they can’t use the Zi Pingpu Reservoir. It’s too polluted by lead and cadmium from the electronic recycling companies up in the hills. People are drinking from their toilets.”

Ayi Zhao whispered, ”
Tian
ming.” It’s the mandate of heaven.

Jian-jun reached over and took her hand.

He and Faith both knew that saying the words was no different than criticizing the party directly. In historical terms, it meant that the government had lost its legitimacy, and withdrawing the mandate was the way heaven authorized an uprising.
Tian ming
had justified every dynastic change for three thousand years and explained every earthquake and flood. Even Communist Party members feared the phrase.

What had always bothered Faith about the concept was that it was circular: The success of an uprising meant that the mandate had truly been withdrawn; the failure, that it hadn’t, and millions of lives had been sacrificed over the centuries determining heaven’s intentions.

Ayi Zhao raised a finger and said, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”

Faith cast a questioning look at Jian-jun. It sounded to her as though Ayi Zhao had quoted a lost stanza from Yeats’s “Second Coming.” She saw, more than spoke, the famous lines in her mind.

“It’s from Karl Marx,” Jian-jun said. “From the
Communist Manifesto.
Grandmother was a party member in the 1940s, but Mao purged her for supporting Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the 1970s.”

He pointed toward the front door.

“She was sent to a forced labor and reeducation camp outside of Chengdu for five years, but was taken back into the party when Deng took power. Then in the 1980s she was purged again when she protested the Tiananmen Square massacre and Deng’s support of the wealthy against the poor.”

He held out his arms, as if to encompass the village.

“That’s why she’s living up here now. But she remains a hero to those living below. The government can’t kill her or imprison her without inciting bloodshed. She’s like Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi—except that the condition of her freedom and her continued living is silence.”

Jian-jun looked at his grandmother, then back at Faith, his gaze seeming to classify her as a Westerner who saw Communism not as a theory, but as a peasant society’s delusion.

“For people of my grandmother’s generation,” Jian-jun said, “Communism wasn’t an economic system as much as a philosophy of life and a cry of resistance against foreign occupation, a proclamation of the dignity of labor, even the labor of peasants and farmers.”

He pressed his fingers against his chest.

“I’m a Christian,” he said, “but does that mean I believe everything in the Bible? Would I turn my cheek if someone harmed my grandmother? ”

His voice rose, as though he was repeating an argument he’d already had with himself or with an unseen enemy.

“Do I believe with Jesus that non-Christians are a brood of vipers and that justifies their murder? Do I believe that Christ will return and lead an army that will torment and torture the unbelievers? ”

Ayi Zhao looked at her grandson and nodded.

“The people of my grandmother’s generation weren’t deluded. They knew that China was an agricultural country. They knew that it didn’t have the industrial and economic development that Marx said was the precondition of Communism.” Jian-jun spread his arms again.

“What did they know of capitalism? Only British and German and French imperialism and Japanese occupation. The people of her generation weren’t stupid, but they, and the generations that followed them, were betrayed.”

Jian-jun’s words made Faith realize that there were two empty seats at her table.

“What about your parents?” she asked. “Did they follow your grandmother into the party?”

Ayi Zhao and Jian-jun both stiffened.

“I’m sorry,” Faith said, “I didn’t mean—”

“In China,” Jian-jun said, “we still believe in the Confucian virtue of filial piety. We take care of our parents.” He locked his eyes on Faith’s. “The last thing I did before leaving Chengdu to come here and check on grandmother was hide them from the mob.”

L
ay off this guy. I’m not going back to the joint.” Strubb leaned over the table in a rear booth of the Jupiter Club on the western edge of downtown Albany. “I don’t know what you got me into, but I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t know you were so choosy about what you did.” Tony Gilbert smirked. “You did five years in the joint for a hundred-dollar robbery, this time you made a grand for ten minutes’ work.”

Strubb made a fist and slammed it down, rattling the bowl of pretzels between them.

Two men dressed in black leather body harnesses and studded wrist gauntlets looked over from the bar. The bartender, his stomach mounding out between the front panels of his vest, stared at Strubb and shook his head as if to say,
If you weren’t a regular, I’d kick your ass out of here right now.

“Gage knows what he’s doing,” Strubb said. “He’s got enough on me right now to get my parole violated. No trial. Just straight back to the pen.”

Gilbert snorted, then lowered his voice. “I thought you liked it in there. You’re getting it up the ass anyway.” He smiled and tilted his head toward the bar. “The way I hear, it’s easier for you guys to get it inside prison than on the outside. They even hand out free condoms.”

“Fuck you.” Strubb drew back his fist, then winced and rubbed his side in the area of his kidney.

“What? Baby get pushed around a little?”

“Maybe Gage’ll do the same to you someday. He knows how to use his hands. Like a pro. He knew how to drop me without breaking any ribs.”

“I made calls to some guys in Frisco,” Gilbert said. “He did a little boxing when he was a cop. That doesn’t make him the Terminator. Anyway, you’re out of it.”

“You’re not listening to me. He’s saying I better get you off his back or he’s gonna take it out on me. With my record, a kidnapping conviction is life without parole.”

Gilbert’s cell phone rang. He connected, then asked, “What’s up? “ and turned the phone toward Strubb so he could hear the answer.

“Gage picked up the woman at her house,” the caller said. “We used a three-car rotation to follow him so he couldn’t pick us out. They’re over at a steakhouse. Angelo’s. On Broadway by the Orange Street overpass. I’m parked about a block away.”

Gilbert grinned at Strubb and asked the caller, “Anybody left inside the house? ”

Strubb clenched his teeth at the words and jabbed a forefinger at Gilbert. “I told you to back off.”

Gilbert covered the microphone. “Fuck you.” Then back to the caller. “Have somebody keep an eye on the place and see if the kid leaves, too. If she does, go in again and try to find what we missed last time.”

Strubb lowered his hands to his lap.

Gilbert disconnected and then looked over at Strubb.

“No way, man,” Gilbert said. “I’ve made a couple of hundred grand on this thing and expect to make a couple of hundred more before it’s over. It’s every PI’s dream. A stack of blank checks. And I’m gonna keep cashing them and cashing them and cashing them.”

Strubb reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small semiautomatic. He flashed it at Gilbert, then slipped it back under the table.

“You fucking fag coward,” Gilbert said. “No way you’ll pull the trigger.”

One of the men at the bar spun his stool around. “A fucking what? ”

“You’re right,” Strubb said to Gilbert. “Not in here, anyway.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s take it outside.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Gilbert said.

“A fucking what?” Now the man from the bar was on his feet, walking toward the booth, his right fist cocked in front of his chest. He stopped a foot away. The man who’d been drinking with him also walked up.

“Back off, Cinderella,” Gilbert said, without looking over. “This ain’t about you.”

A grating of metal silenced them. They all looked toward the bar. The bartender held a sawed-off shotgun across his chest. His T-shirt read, “My Bar. My Rules.”

“You guys have twenty seconds to clear out,” the bartender said, “or you’re all gonna be wearing buckshot.”

“This is the second time you should’ve listened to me,” Strubb said, as he slipped the gun back into his coat pocket and stood up. He then pointed his free hand at Gilbert. “I told you. Let’s take it outside.”

W
hen Gage returned to the Adirondack Plaza Hotel garage after dropping off Elaine Hennessy, he was ready for whoever would step out of the shadows. If Strubb hadn’t succeeded in deflecting Gilbert, he’d have to escalate his efforts to find out what Gage had been doing and what he’d learned—and Gage’s ride on the elevator might be replaced by one to the riverbank.

Gage had driven a thirty-mile loop northwest through Schenectady, then back toward the Hudson. On the way, he’d pulled into a truck stop and bought a flashlight. He searched the undercarriage of his car until he located a GPS tracking device that he’d guessed Gilbert had installed. He pulled it free and stomped it with his heel.

As Gage headed back toward the highway, he telephoned his surveillance chief in San Francisco and told him to get on a plane for New York to help him arrange for countermeasures, and then continued down along the river.

Gage drove to the top level of the hotel garage, called for an elevator, reached inside to press the button for the first floor, then ran to the corner stairs and raced down to meet it. He wanted to come up behind whoever might be waiting for him to come down.

He eased the first floor door open, but found himself behind the elevator shaft. He heard the doors slide open and then close. He tried to stay in the shadows as he snuck between cars and along the walls until he was able to get a view of the front of the elevators.

The area was clear except for a woman staring up at the digital floor readout numbers, shivering despite the heavy hooded coat enveloping her.

Another elevator opened. Two men in trench coats got out. Both gave her sideways glances, then one grinned at the other and they walked past her and toward the lobby. She didn’t get into the elevator. She just stood there, rocking back and forth and stamping her feet. It struck Gage that the fidgeting might have been less from cold than from agitation or urgency.

After scanning the floor, Gage came around the van and walked toward her. She turned at the sound of his footsteps.

It was Vicky, her eyes bloodshot and her face raw red.

She took two steps, intercepted him, and then grabbed his upper arm with her gloved hands.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, peering up at him. Tears glistened on her checks. “I’m sorry about how I acted today.” She leaned her forehead against his chest. “Please. If I don’t tell someone, I’ll go crazy.”

Gage reached for her shoulders and turned her so he could see her face.

“Tell me what?”

“I think I killed my father.”

Gage recognized that this was the voice of guilt, not of fact, but that it needed to be heard nonetheless.

“What makes you think so?” Gage asked.

“I told them where he was.”

“Who is ‘them'?”

Vicky looked down and sighed. “I don’t know.”

Gage pointed toward the glass double doors leading to the lobby.

“Let’s go inside,” he said, and then led her into the hotel and toward the coffee shop.

“Can we talk in your room?” she asked, as they passed the reception desk.

Gage shook his head. “I don’t want to be seen taking a girl your age up there.”

His real reason was that she was too erratic, and maybe too delusional, for him to risk being alone with her. Her self-accusation could easily mutate and turn outward, and he didn’t want to become the target.

He guided her to a table along the wall opposite the bank of windows facing the night-lit State Street.

A middle-aged waitress walked up, glancing back and forth between the two of them. Her eyes held for a moment on Vicky’s flushed face, then her brows furrowed, as though she’d decided that Gage was responsible for the distress on Vicky’s face.

When Vicky looked down at the menu, Gage mouthed the words “boy trouble” to the waitress.

She nodded, then rolled her eyes as if to say she’d been through the same thing with her own kids, then took his order for two teas.

“Tell me what happened,” Gage said, after the waitress walked away.

“A year ago an FBI agent stopped me as I was leaving school. He told me that he was worried about my father, afraid that he might get hurt because of his obsession with Hani Ibrahim, and asked me to spy on him.”

Vicky reached for her napkin and smoothed it out on the paper placemat.

“At first I didn’t want to do it. But then I watched my father get more and more frantic, so I called the agent and began to pass on to him things I overheard my father say or whatever I found in his office.”

Gage saw that the napkin was damp with sweat.

“I only learned about the places my father traveled after he got back.” She swallowed hard and crushed the napkin in her hands. “Except Marseilles.”

The waitress arrived and set down two pots of hot water and a selection of tea bags. She slipped Vicky a pocket-sized packet of tissues and then turned and walked away.

“And you think the FBI has something to do with his death,” Gage said, “by having him killed or badgering him into suicide?”

“That’s what I was afraid of, and I’m too terrified to tell my mother what I did.” She shrugged and her eyes went blank. “But now I don’t know what to think.”

“What changed?”

She focused again on Gage. “I started to worry when you showed up and what you might know or tell my mother, so I tried to call the agent earlier tonight, but he didn’t answer his cell phone. Then I called the FBI’s emergency number.” Vicky’s eyes again filled with tears. She stifled a sob. “And they told me they’d never heard of him.”

“What name had he given you?”

“Anthony Gilbert.”