Absolute Risk

by Steven Gore

  Abrams smiled. “Don’t tell me that the CIA has gone back to analyzing leadership photographs like they did in the cold war days? ”

  Thornton smiled back. “I suspect they even know what you’re wearing right now.”

  “But at least not what I’m saying.”

  Her smile died and her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  He cocked his head toward the reception area where Viz was sitting. Abrams had introduced him only as a friend of a friend.

  “We found listening devices in my apartment. Two sets.”

  The color drained from Thornton’s face as she said, “That means that people were listening to us.”

  She gripped her hands together on her lap and twisted them, her knuckles whitened, and tears seeped into her eyes.

  Abrams nodded and came around his desk. He reached an arm around her shoulder.

  She looked up at him. “That means they heard everything … absolutely everything.”

  “But we did nothing either of us should be ashamed of.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Logan Airport was frozen in time and space. Nothing moved on the runways. Even the deicers sat motionless on the tarmac. In the absence of movement, it seemed to Gage as if history had met its end in a nuclear winter.

  Gage turned away from the window and toward the mass of fidgeting passengers inside the terminal waiting for their international flights.

  Some glared at the ground crew as though controlling the weather was part of their duties. Others stared up at the television monitors, the story of massive pesticide-induced birth defects in Russia replaced by a breaking news report of flooding in Paris, the Seine River overflowing its banks and transforming the city into a French Venice. The aerial view made the Eiffel Tower look like an islanded lighthouse in a sea of gray.

  Gage had intended to fly into de Gaulle and spend a day in Paris visiting bankers, lawyers, and money launderers who were unrelated to Ibrahim or Hennessy, and thereby conceal what he had actually come to France to do. But the floods made that impossible. De Gaulle airport had been shut down.

  Instead, he was flying to Nice, east of Marseilles along the Mediterranean, and to mask his intentions by pretending to help a friend from Transparency Watch trace the proceeds of the sale of platinum, allegedly stolen and smuggled out of South Africa by its president.

  Gage was certain that whoever replaced Gilbert would catch up with him in Marseilles; he just needed twenty-four hours in the city before that happened.

  An elderly Catholic priest standing next to Gage mumbled, and then whispered, “That son of a bitch.”

  Gage glanced over at him, surprised by the outburst and assuming that his words were meant for the uniformed United Airlines employee standing by the gate. The priest’s eyes were focused instead on a wall-mounted monitor showing Vice President Cooper Wallace looking like a celery stalk next to the tomato-shaped Reverend Manton Roberts, red-faced and sweating, with a flop of chin and neck fat oozing over his collar and smothering the knot of his tie.

  The priest looked up at Gage.

  “Maybe the son of a bitch will eat himself to death like Jerry Falwell. That would be God’s justice.”

  The priest then pointed at the screen as the camera pulled back and displayed a line of suited politicians, evangelicals, and talk radio personalities standing against the background of a two-story American flag with a black cross superimposed on it. It was erected behind a stage centered at the fifty-yard line of the Louisiana Superdome.

  “A glutton,” the priest said. “A compulsive gambler. A onetime adulterer. A two-time adulterer. A drug addict. Is there any sin or human corruption that isn’t represented on that stage? ”

  A handful of Korean-American missionaries, white shirts, black ties, and matching backpacks, walked forward as though toward an altar and gathered below the television clutching their Bibles.

  “I call on all Americans to come together on Sunday,” Roberts said from the podium, “two weeks from tomorrow, at noon Eastern time, all across the country to join in the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.” Roberts raised his arms as if leading a hymn. “Let everyone driving pull to the side of the road. Let everyone walking pause in their tracks. Let everyone in church stand. Let every checkout clerk’s hands fall still. Let every toll taker close his lane.”

  The camera panned the audience of seventy-five thousand. They had risen to their feet, smiling and clapping.

  The priest standing next to Gage spoke again.

  “It’s a damn national loyalty test, all on one day.” He again looked up at Gage. “But loyal to who? The country or their version of Christianity? ”

  “Let every voice rise up in unison as we celebrate our one nation under God.”

  The applause morphed into cheering that almost overwhelmed the words, “And let the agents of Satan reveal themselves by their silence.”

  Faces in the Superdome turned hard and shaking fists shot skyward.

  “God’s punishment is upon us,” Roberts said, his voice now raging and his face engorged with angry blood. “He speaks to us through the earthquakes and the floods and the epidemics and the riots. All is in preparation … all … is … in … preparation,

  for mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

  Roberts was speaking the words, not singing them.

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

  His truth is marching on.

  Then the crowd in a single explosion of song:

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  His truth is marching on.

  The missionaries standing below the television interlinked their hands as Roberts spoke again.

  I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

  “As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

  Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

  Since God is marching on.”

  Gage surveyed the waiting area. A scattering of people stood up. Some of those who were already standing turned toward the monitor.

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Those remaining in their seats glanced at one another. One after another they shrugged and then rose. By the end of the last chorus, nearly half the people in the terminal were singing. The rest sat rigid in their seats, jaws set, eyes locked forward.

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Since God is marching on.

  “We’ve got massive unemployment,” the priest said, “people dying in earthquakes and floods, and their answer is a damn loyalty test.” He then shook his head and walked away. “That son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Grayed by the swirling low clouds edging the Mediterranean, the hotels and casinos of Monaco and Monte Carlo that Gage observed out of the plane window appeared to have turned in on themselves. The thin breakwaters defining the harbors seemed to lie like broken picture frames on the water and the yachts in their slips seemed like discarded toys.

  The cities soon gave way to coast roads and tiled mansions, and then to rocky shores separated by points and peninsulas, until the plane descended over Nice and the tires bucked on the runway.

  As Gage emerged from the arrivals hall, Batkoun Benaroun climbed out of his car in the “Kiss and Fly” short-term parking lot across the traffic lane from the terminal. He pointed at the sign over the lot entrance, then held his palm toward Gage.

  “Don’t take it literally,” Benaroun said, his angular North African face rounding into a smile. “My wife wouldn’t understand.” “After forty years of marriage,” Gage said, smiling back, “I suspect she’s done more than her share of understanding.” He reached out and shook Benaroun’s hand. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “No problem.
There were a few things I wanted to talk to you about anyway, and I’d been thinking that it would be better that we did it in person.”

  Benaroun opened the trunk of his Citroën sedan, and Gage slid in his Rollaboard.

  “What happened to the little Fiat?” Gage asked.

  “My back couldn’t take the jolting anymore so I gave it to my nephew.”

  He pointed at the passenger door, then climbed in on the driver’s side.

  “His father was no more thrilled with that than with Tabari following me into the Police Nationale. My brother the great rabbi has always found it a little embarrassing that I was a cop. Even becoming an actual detective didn’t make up for it. He prefers Maigret and Poirot”—Benaroun flashed another smile—“even Clouseau.”

  A gendarme vested in fluorescent green walked by the car and glanced inside. His eyes locked on Benaroun’s face, and then frowned like he’d sniffed into a wineglass only to discover that it contained vinegar.

  Benaroun waited until the guard passed by, then turned the ignition and said in a grim whisper to himself, “Fascist.” He glanced at Gage. “His ancestors were still counting on their fingers and toes while mine were inventing calculus, and this idiot makes himself out to be the fortress of French civilization standing against the swarms of brown people.” He slapped the steering wheel. “Who else will they get to shovel their shit?”

  Benaroun stared ahead for a moment, then shook his head, backed out of his space, and drove toward the exit.

  Gage watched him hand the attendant three euros for parking beyond the five-minute limit, and then said, “You sound like you’re being squeezed every which way.”

  He didn’t need to articulate which ways they were: An Algerian-Jew. A failing economy that led the white ancestral French to turn on the immigrants, no matter how many generations earlier their families had arrived. And brown-skinned young men, less striking back against a defined target than just flailing with bricks.

  “It’s like living in a vise,” Benaroun said as he waited for the gate arm to rise. “I’m not sure it’s been this bad since the German occupation. Just different uniforms. These Muslim kids rioting in Marseilles are burning Jewish businesses, not realizing that the French hate Jews just as much as they hate the kids.”

  Benaroun glanced over his shoulder at the gendarme watching them drive out of the lot.

  “I’ll bet his grandfather was a Nazi collaborator,” Benaroun said, then he looked over at Gage. “You know the real reason I spent my career in fraud and money laundering investigations?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because most of the commissioners believe that Jews are good with money. Even Algerian ones. And shrewd and devious enough to understand the financial criminal’s mind.”

  “You seem to be getting bitter in your old age,” Gage said.

  “It’s not bitterness. It’s realism. We’re internally colonized. All the colored minorities are, whatever their shade.” He emitted a sarcastic laugh. “Maybe God should add some bleach to the floodwaters in Paris to decolorize the city.”

  Benaroun fell silent, then gave Gage a puckish look.

  “Sixty-six isn’t old,” Benaroun said, then he reached for the beginnings of a wattle under his jaw. “Appearances notwithstanding.”

  As they drove west along the freeway away from the center of Nice and toward Benaroun’s foothill home, he pointed toward the storm front that had just crested the bluff.

  “God may not want us all white,” Benaroun said, “but he sure wants us all wet.”

  By the time they’d turned north and headed into the suburb of Cagnes-sur-Mer, a curtain of rain had closed against the hillside. It looked to Gage as though they could drive through it and emerge on the other side, but as they traveled the curved roads they found more of the same, the weather seeming as heavy and solid as the brick house in front of which they pulled to a stop.

  Benaroun turned off the ignition, but left the wipers on and squinted up through the windshield, trying to see past the splattering rain.

  “Let’s wait a minute,” Benaroun said. “Maybe we’ll get a break long enough to run to the door.”

  Benaroun settled back in his seat and looked at Gage.

  “I saw something on the news,” Benaroun said. “Is the whole U.S. really going to come to a standstill to recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Manton Roberts sounded like an Islamic imam calling everyone to prayer. Scary as hell.”

  Gage shrugged. “We’ll see, but I suspect that Americans’ sense of rugged independence will limit the turnout. The real implication of his filling his mega-church with twenty thousand people every Sunday is that the surrounding ten million didn’t show up. I suspect it will be the same with National Pledge Day.”

  “I don’t know,” Benaroun said. “Just watching the announcement on the news almost brought the whole of France to a stop. The English word ‘hysteria’ is what we call a collective noun in French, and it makes us nervous.”

  A gust of wind drove the rain hard against the side of the car, then there was a moment of quiet. Benaroun raised a finger. He waited for a few seconds after a second gust swept over them, and then said, “Let’s go.”

  By the time they’d grabbed Gage’s Rollaboard from the trunk, the rain hit again and they ran through it toward the door thirty feet across the courtyard. It swung open as their shoes hit the slate porch, and Gage followed Benaroun past his nephew and into the foyer.

  “Bonjour, Mr. Gage,” Tabari said, swinging the door closed and handing Gage a towel. “My uncle suffers from the delusion that he can time the rain.”

  “He did pretty well,” Gage said, drying off his hair. “It’s not his fault if I’ve slowed a step or two.”

  “Come on,” Benaroun said, heading off toward the kitchen. “Let’s get a drink. Since he got promoted to detective in the Police Judiciaire he’s become a know-it-all.”

  Tabari grabbed Gage’s arm as he turned to follow, then whispered, “Has he told you exactly what he wants to talk to you about? ”

  Gage shook his head.

  “Talk to me before you encourage him to pursue his theory about the platinum smuggling from South Africa. I think he’s going way beyond what Transparency Watch wants or needs. He may have the brain of a thirty-year-old, but he doesn’t have the body of one, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”

  CHAPTER 27

  What do you mean, you don’t know where Gage is?”

  Edward Wycovsky stood in front of Kenyon Arndt’s desk, glaring down, his hands locked on to his suspenders. His vulturelike head was unmoving and his black eyes unblinking.

  Arndt knew that a few weeks earlier he would’ve risen to his feet in fear and then humbled himself as if before a high priest or lesser god. But not now—for he’d discovered that the spreading stain of crime and death had made them equals.

  “Didn’t you hear what I asked you?” Wycovsky said, his forefinger now aimed down at Arndt like he was a dog who’d soiled the carpet.

  No, that wasn’t it, Arndt thought. He knew they’d never be equals, for he’d never have the kind of power in the law firm that Wycovsky possessed. Rather it had been their positions relative to the dead body of Tony Gilbert that had established them in a new orbit and would hold them there despite their differing weights and densities. And he had a little red badge of courage on his forehead to prove it.

  Arndt fixed his eyes on Wycovsky’s rigid face and tight jaw.

  “Your people let Gage get away,” Arndt said. “And without Gilbert around to tell him how to do it, I’m not sure Davey Hicks—”

  “Who?”

  “Davey Hicks, his number one helper, can do it alone. He seems to be all thug and no brains.” “What about Abrams?”

  Arndt made a dismissive shrug. “Where can he go? He’s one of the most watched men in America. All you have to do is call the Federal Reserve press office to find out where he is and where he’s going.”

  “I don’t need the sarcasm. Our clients have a lot at
stake in this.”

  “I’ll have to trust you on that since I don’t have a clue who they are.”

  And Arndt didn’t care. It was merely out-of-focus background to his immediate need.

  “And it’ll stay that way,” Wycovsky said.

  “But I do have a thought.” Arndt pointed at the computer monitor on his desk. “The local media is saying that police in Albany haven’t been able to reconstruct Gilbert’s movements on the night of his murder.” He paused for a moment of setup. “But we can. And Gage’s movements, too.”

  Wycovsky’s eyes narrowed. “And? ”

  “The link between Gage and Gilbert is a bounty hunter named Strubb.”

  Arndt reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out a DVD. He leaned down and inserted it into his computer drive, and then angled the monitor so Wycovsky could see it.

  “This is a security camera video of Gage and Strubb and a kid Strubb hired. They’re walking from the garage into the lobby of the Adirondack Plaza Hotel a few hours before Gilbert was killed.”

  A gray-scale image of the reception desk appeared on the screen, along with an expanse of carpet and a semicircle formed by a sofa and two wing chairs. Seconds later, the three came into view.

  “That’s Gage in the middle,” Arndt said. “Strubb is the guy behind him.”

  “Why are they so close together?”

  “They’ve got Gage in handcuffs. After they searched his room for documents that Hennessy’s wife supposedly had given him, Strubb went to meet with Gilbert at a leather bar—”

  Wycovsky squinted at Arndt. “Gilbert? Gilbert was a queer? ”

  “No. Strubb is. Hard-core. Black harnesses, chaps, biker hats, and studs. Gilbert had some kind of fetish that made him want to hire these guys. Sort of a master and slave thing, without the sex.”

  “How did you—”

  “Davey Hicks. He’s one, too. He put together the pieces of what happened. He heard that Gage pushed Strubb around and threatened to put him back in prison if he didn’t make Gilbert lay off. Strubb leaned on Gilbert. He refused and then Strubb and two other guys took him for a ride, and things got out of hand.”