Absolute Risk (9 page)

I
f you think they’re tailing you, then why’d you show up here?” Abrams said to Gage, reaching to close the living room drapes of his Central Park West apartment.

“Don’t bother,” Gage said. “Enjoy the sunrise. I’m not telling them anything new. They began following me from here. They probably followed us from the airport. Somebody might even have been with me on the plane out here.”

Abrams turned back. “Which means?”

“That you’re the real target, not me. And it’s somehow because of Hennessy.” Gage surveyed the room, then walked up next to Abrams and whispered. “How often do you have this place swept for bugs?”

“What?” Abrams said, also in a whisper. “I bought it from a former defense secretary. He would’ve checked. Anyway, nobody could get in to do it.” He pointed downward. “There’s a concierge at the door twenty-four hours.” He spread his hands. “And there are cameras on every floor.”

“Let’s go into the kitchen.”

“Aren’t you being a little paranoid?”

Gage stepped back, pulled up his shirt, and exposed the bruises where Strubb’s partner had punched him.

Abrams’s eyes widened.

“Paranoia doesn’t come in black and blue,” Gage said.

Gage led him down the hall to the kitchen, turned on the water, set the nozzle to spray, and tuned to a local television news show to cover their voices.

Over coffee at the table, Gage recounted the previous twenty-four hours.

“If the point was to kill Hennessy before he talked to me,” Abrams said, “then why would Gilbert still be interested in what I’m doing? ”

“We don’t yet know whether Hennessy was murdered, and if he was, whether it was related to you or—”

“Then I’ll rephrase it. Once Hennessy was dead for whatever reason.”

“Maybe someone is trying to determine whether you’re acting on something that Hennessy might’ve told you ahead of your meeting.”

Abrams thought for a moment. “And that would be why they followed you, thinking that I had hired you to follow up on whatever that was.”

Gage shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. They were interested in what his wife gave me, and that could go either way. It could be that they’re only afraid that you asked me to take up Hennessy’s search for Ibrahim.”

“Or for who or what caused Hennessy to be dead.”

“I suspect that they think—or maybe know—that it’s the same thing.”

Gage’s cell phone beeped with an incoming text message. It was from Faith.

Gage wrote back.

Abrams rose and walked to the window and looked out toward the gray-fogged Central Park West. He took in a long breath, and then exhaled and turned back.

“I appreciate you coming out here,” Abrams said, “but I think I should just let the thing go. My record in the world of intrigue isn’t so good.”

Neither of them had to say what that record was. Twenty-five years earlier, Abrams had gone on a factfinding mission to Chile on behalf of the World Bank to determine the success of the Milton Friedman- and Augusto Pinochet-imposed economic upheaval on the country.

A government economist named Orlando Ferrada had slipped Abrams secret data showing that the result of those policies was that forty-five percent of Chilean families had descended into poverty, seventy percent of family incomes were being spent on bread alone, and most of the country’s wealth had been transferred to offshore tax havens. Among those funds were ten million dollars in World Bank loans that had been diverted to a secret account in Bermuda controlled by Pinochet’s wife.

Abrams had passed through Chicago on his way back to MIT. He showed the documents to an economist at a think tank founded by a Friedman disciple, hoping that the evidence would persuade them that the attempt to impose their economic theories on the people of Chile through shock and terror had been disastrous.

Days later, Ferrada was arrested at his office by Pinochet’s National Intelligence Directorate.

“What happened to Hennessy is not your fault,” Gage said.

“I feel it in my gut. It’s Orlando Ferrada all over again.”

“Who did you tell about Hennessy?”

“My assistant, the director of the FBI, and his deputy. Who they later told, I couldn’t say. But only my assistant knew I was meeting him in Marseilles.”

“If history is repeating itself, then it’s Ibrahim we should be worried about, and not because of anything that you did, but because of what Hennessy may have done or learned.”

“History is already repeating itself. You got hurt rescuing Ferrada. You got hurt yesterday.”

Gage smiled. “The first time was my fault. I was driving too fast.”

“Only because they were shooting at you.”

Gage had broken Ferrada out of a jungle prison, then had missed a turn on the dirt track leading from Chile into Bolivia. His jeep rolled down a hillside and came to rest in a frigid Andean streambed, fifty yards upstream from a Bolivian customs checkpoint, and they swam across the border.

This morning he’d also driven back roads, from Albany to Manhattan, hoping to determine whether Gilbert or his people were on his tail and whether they were set up around Abrams’s apartment house. He’d only hoped that he could use Strubb to shake them off long enough to get a few steps down the trail ahead of them, but listening to Abrams now, he wasn’t sure that would happen.

Gage glanced at the television. It was the start of the local weather report. The reporter announced that it was cold outside. The mysteries growing about the fates of Hennessy and Ibrahim made Gage wonder why weather reports always began by telling people what they already knew.

“I have the feeling that you’ve made the Orlando Ferrada-Michael Hennessy connection before,” Gage said.

“I was thinking about that while you were gone, but it’s not Chile that worries me. It’s the Relative Growth Funds. They’re supposed to be based on the work Ibrahim did when he was at MIT—but I don’t believe it. For political reasons they don’t use Ibrahim’s name, but when they refer to fractal analysis, insiders know what they mean.”

Abrams sat down and folded his arms on the table.

“I think it’s a scam,” Abrams said, “at least an intellectual one. Ibrahim being right about the markets tending toward the extremes doesn’t mean that you can build an investment model on it. But that’s what Relative Growth says is the reason they’ve beaten the performance of every other hedge fund over the last ten years, even through two economic collapses.”

“And you don’t see how it’s possible to predict the unpredictable.”

“Nobody can—and not just as a matter of logic, but of fact. Despite that, they’ve attracted almost two trillion investment dollars into their funds. Most from the U.S., the rest from Europe.”

“How did you find out? I thought Relative Growth was based in the Caymans.”

“The CIA director. He was concerned about the foreign entanglements of former U.S. government officials. Their board of directors has three former U.S. presidents, two former defense secretaries, and two former secretaries of state. After
Time
magazine called Relative Growth Funds ‘a Republican administration in exile,’ he felt he’d better make some inquiries and warn those guys about conflicts of interest.”

Abrams glanced at the television screen. A reporter stood in the middle of the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink surrounded by racing, screaming children.

He looked back at Gage.

“There are only three explanations I can think of for Relative Growth’s success. The first is simple market manipulation. Shorting a stock like Apple or Microsoft, then planting false stories in the press. But you can’t do that too many times before even the most dim-witted reporters figure out they’re being used.

“The second is insider trading. Altogether, the Relative Growth members sit on about a hundred corporate boards. No major move happens without them knowing about it.” Abrams bit his lip and shook his head. “But I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I know former president Randall Harris well. Very well. He’d blow the whistle, regardless of the personal cost to him.”

“There’s only one other possibility,” Gage said.

Abrams nodded. “It’s a Ponzi scheme with an offshore loop. Running new investors through a Cayman Island black hole, then back in to pay off old investors. And something like that could be concealed from the board by a first year accounting student.”

“How solid is the two-trillion-dollar number?”

“Only little better than rumor. For the most part, the CIA can only track the money when it moves from place to place. They don’t have access to the inner workings of private banks. Relative Growth could have a lot more stashed.”

“Or a lot less.”

“That, too.”

“You think that Hennessy figured it out?” Gage asked.

“Which, the total or the method?”

“The method.”

“If so, not in the same way I did. There’s no way anyone other than someone with a graduate-level mathematics background could’ve figured out that you can’t build portfolio allocation and risk models based on Ibrahim’s theories.”

Gage thought of Hennessy’s highlightings in the books in his home-office library.

“I think he tried,” Gage said. “Maybe he made a kind of intuitive leap and came to the same conclusion you did.”

“It’s possible, but I didn’t ask. I was less interested in Hennessy’s financial theories than in what he knew about Ibrahim and where he is. If I could get Ibrahim to cooperate, then I could do something about the Relative Growth Funds.”

“And you think they killed Hennessy to keep him from bringing you and Ibrahim together.”

Abrams nodded.

“And they’ve been following you, and then me, to see if we were trying to pick up the scent again.”

Gage then realized that it was a mistake to have used Strubb to shake off Gilbert. It would’ve been smarter to have led Gilbert into a trap. But it wasn’t too late. Even if Gilbert had been scared off the case, he still knew what he knew, and while he might not have known why he’d been hired, he knew who hired him.

“You have a phone book handy?” Gage asked.

Abrams reached over and pulled out a drawer of the counter under the television.

The screen showed a view down a commercial alley, and a voiceover said, “New York private investigator Anthony Gilbert was found beaten to death in downtown Albany this morning. Homicide detectives are—”

Gage shook his head, and then said, “Don’t bother.”

Y
ou all right, man?”

Kenyon Arndt blinked up at the personal trainer kneeling over him where he lay twisted on the floor of the 24 Hour Fitness center in Scarsdale.

“Don’t move him,” someone yelled. “Nobody move him. And turn off the goddamn treadmill.”

A second face appeared. “I’m a doctor. Can you bend your arms or legs? ”

Arndt looked past the woman toward the television screen hanging from the wall he’d been facing as he jogged. Anthony Gilbert’s photo had appeared, followed by a report of the discovery of his frostbitten body in a dumpster behind a market and by a description of his injuries: crushed skull, smashed fingers.

Arndt now remembered the tread belt ripping his legs out from under him, his knee hitting and then his shoulder, and the machine spinning him onto the carpeted floor and bouncing him into the crossbeam of a weight bench.

“I think I can move,” Arndt said. He rolled over onto his back. Nausea waved through him and his mouth watered. He swallowed hard and tried to sit up. Dizziness stopped him. He closed his eyes. He let the doctor support the back of his head and ease him back down again.

Arndt felt a towel press against his forehead. He opened his eyes again as the doctor pulled it away. He winced at the splotch of blood.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not as bad as this makes it look.”

“I need to get to my office.”

She smiled. “The first sign of a concussion is talking nonsense. And the idea of you driving to your office in your condition is nonsense.”

Arndt rolled back onto his side and pushed himself to his knees. She helped him to his feet, steadied him as he found his balance, and then sat him down on the weight bench.

“You’ll need to make a stop at the emergency room before you can even think of going into work.” She handed him the towel. “Hold this against your head.”

The club manager walked up. “We’ll have to insist that you get examined,” he said to Arndt, then to the trainer, “Rope off the machine until we can determine whether there was a mechanical problem.”

Arndt shook his head, then looked up. “It was my fault. I forgot to hook the emergency stop cord onto my shirt.”

Someone in the crowd laughed and said, “It’s worse than a concussion. It’s actual brain damage. Who ever heard of a lawyer passing on a lawsuit.”

Maybe he’s right,
Arndt said to himself.
Maybe I should sue. It may be the only way I’ll be able to make money now that my career has gone down the tubes.

Instead, he said, “I’ll telephone my wife. She can take me to the hospital.”

“What’s her number?” the manager asked, pulling out his cell phone.

Arndt shook his head again. “I’ll call her from the locker room.”

Five minutes later, Arndt felt strong enough to make his way across the gym. He pretended to call his wife, then got dressed and went out to his car.

His boss answered on the first ring.

“I know,” Wycovsky said. “I got a call.”

“I quit,” Arndt said, staring through his windshield at the gym, imagining Gilbert’s face on the television screen. “I want out. I didn’t sign up for this.”

“You need to have your head examined.”

“Craziness is staying involved in this, not in getting out—and I’m getting out.”

“Do you have a single shred of evidence that Gilbert’s death has anything to do with us?”

Arndt cringed. His mind locked up. He couldn’t think of an answer.

“We don’t know what else he was working on,” Wycovsky said. “He sure as hell didn’t work for us full-time. And the guy was a royal asshole. Good at his work, but still an asshole.”

By that criterion, Arndt thought, Wycovsky would’ve been murdered ten times over and a hundred people would still be standing in line to kick his lifeless body.

“Look, kid,” Wycovsky said, “every tree that falls in the forest isn’t aiming at you.”

Arndt knew that Wycovsky was right, logically, but he felt, more than he knew, that the logic was an evasion. Even worse, Wycovsky had once again beaten him back into line with an analogy.

“Anyone who says
capisci,”
Wycovsky said, “is just asking for his head to get kicked in. I’ll expect you to be in the office at the usual time.”

As Arndt disconnected, he felt a rumble in his stomach, then a sour taste in his mouth. He got the door open just before his half-digested breakfast sprayed out of his throat and onto the slush and snow.