by Steven Gore
Wallace’s face flushed. “I didn’t come over here—”
McCormack held up his palm. “Save it. I’m not done.” He hunched forward, squared the binder in front of him, and turned toward the middle. “Have you read what Manton Roberts has been writing and preaching for the last twenty years? The guy is a goddamn fascist. Listen to this:
Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost, as the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion over every aspect and institution of human society.
“At whatever the cost?” McCormack asked, now glaring at Wallace. “What the devil does that mean? And how many people are supposed to die for the revolution?”
Wallace shook his head. “That’s not what they’re saying. They’re not 1960s Marxist revolutionaries trying to take power by any means necessary.”
“Really? How about this:
Nations are born in revolution, not at the negotiation table. There is no compromise possible for a Christian people. There is only liberty or death. Although a million may fall, the rest shall rise in Glory.
“And who are those million? Remember what he said about 9/11 and Katrina: They were punishments for homosexuality and pornography and for barring prayer from the schools.”
Wallace nodded, for he couldn’t deny that those were the claims Roberts had made.
“How does that not make Roberts’s God a terrorist? Killing both the innocent and the guilty for the alleged sins of a few. How is Roberts’s God any different than a Sunni maniac who plants a bomb in a Baghdad market killing and maiming Sunni and Shia alike? ”
McCormack jabbed a finger at another quote. “And this is the hymn he uses to end every rally:
Seize your armor, gird it on,
Now the battle will be won.
Soon, your enemies all slain.
Crowns of glory you shall gain.
“Is there something about the words ‘battle,’ ‘enemies,’ ‘slain,’ and ‘glory’ that I’m missing? “ McCormack asked, his tone declaring a challenge, rather than posing a question.
“That’s just hyperbole,” Wallace said. “It’s all metaphorical.”
“There’s not a goddamn thing metaphorical about murder. This is outright treason.”
McCormack flipped to another page.
“And as far as the rest of the world is concerned? Open your ears to this one: ‘We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.’ A goddamn Christian jihad. That’s what they want.”
The president slammed the binder closed.
“You need to start listening to what these people are saying. This isn’t like the fine print in a mortgage, it’s right out there. You want to be president in two years, but something could happen to me, and you’d be sitting in this chair tomorrow. And the piper has to be paid. Manton Roberts could just as easily have a hundred million people stopping in their tracks and calling for your impeachment as saying the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Wallace felt himself swallow. An embarrassing, involuntary display … but of what? Weakness? Doubt? Fear?
“I’m going to leave you in here with this material,” McCormack said, rising to his feet. “You may not take what it says literally, but tens of millions do. At least know what he’s saying and who he’s appealing to. If there’s another terrorist attack or if unemployment spikes higher, despair will drive people to him in herds. Unthinking, instinct-driven herds.”
McCormack paused and bit his lip. Finally he said, “Have you been following what’s been happening in China since the earthquake?”
Wallace nodded.
“We’re not immune to that happening here.” McCormack looked away, brows furrowed. “And that’s what people like Manton Roberts are counting on—he’d even drive the country into the ground if he thought it would bring his Christian revolution closer.”
McCormack looked back at Wallace.
“Someone once said that revolutionaries don’t seize power, they just pick it up like a fumbled football lying on the field. We need to make sure it doesn’t slip out of the hands of the people elected to carry it—and that’s you and me.”
McCormack turned and headed toward the door.
“Are you going to participate in National Pledge Day?” Wallace asked.
McCormack stopped and glanced back, the sudden change in direction throwing him off balance for a moment. He steadied himself against a bookcase, then said, “You’ve given me no choice.” He then turned toward the door and reached for the knob. “I have to.”
A half hour after the president left, Wallace closed the binder and placed it back on the desk.
Nonsense. It was all nonsense. No one took this stuff seriously.
Wallace wondered whether the president had read the Salvation Army’s literature when he’d served on their national advisory board.
Does anyone really think that the Salvation Army’s War College really intends to train people for armed combat?
Does anyone think their generals are real generals and their colonels are real colonels? That their commissioned officers are commissioned to do anything more than slop mashed potatoes onto metal plates?
Wallace rose and walked to the window and looked through bare tree branches toward the White House lawn. In the thin layer of snow he could make out the footprints of a uniformed Secret Service officer, the steps measured as if by a yardstick or by a metronome or by fifes and drums.
How many times had the president greeted the Salvationists, given them awards, held a July Fourth celebration with them on that patch of grass?
How many times had the president asked him to carry the Salvation Army’s luggage up to Capitol Hill? Lobby Congress so the Salvationists wouldn’t be forced to hire homosexuals, but nonetheless receive federal funds. Make sure that faith-based didn’t really mean goodwill to all.
Apolitical my ass, Wallace thought. I can do some research on my own.
Wallace returned to the desk and ran a search for the Salvation Army War College on the president’s computer, then navigated to a song titled, “I Am a Soldier in the Army of My God.” He found the words he was looking for and left them on the screen when he walked out:
I am a soldier.
Even death cannot destroy me.
For when my Commander calls me from this battlefield,
He will promote me to a captain
and then bring me back to rule this world with Him.
As Wallace made his way down the rustling hallways, past the ticking keyboards and hushed discussions, he asked himself a question that he was sure the president had never asked himself, especially after church on Sunday with a sermon about the Second Coming still infusing him with joy and lightening his steps:
What need will the country have for a president, or a Congress, or a Supreme Court, or even elections when the Commander returns to govern by the word of God?
And other questions, even more serious ones:
Who is to say when the battle has been won and who has the right to speak for the winner?
CHAPTER 30
Graham Gage’s cell phone rang as he sat in Batkoun Benaroun’s kitchen with him and his nephew. He held up his forefinger and thumb spaced an inch apart to keep Benaroun from overfilling his wineglass for a second time, then looked at the number and answered.
“Is everything all right?” Gage asked.
Low engine rumble and the grumbling of tires on a rough road filled the long seconds before Faith answered.
“Can you hear me? “ she asked.
Benaroun and Tabari cast him questioning looks from across the table.
“Good enough. Go ahead.”
“I left the kids working in the village. I’m in the back of a military ambulance with Ayi Zhao on my way down to Chengdu.”
“Is she sick?” he asked Faith, while nodding at Benaroun and Tabari to indicate that at least Faith was okay.
“She’s fine. It’s just a dodge. Her son and daughter-in-l
aw are being detained by a workers’ group. The leaders are willing to meet with her before they do anything. We told the garrison commander that she needed medical attention so they’d drive her down to the city.”
“What do the workers want?”
“Specifically, I don’t know. Generally, vengeance. Her son was the vice mayor in charge of construction and his wife was the first party secretary. He’s ultimately responsible for the collapses of the hospitals and the schools and her for the party failing to protect them from foreign exploitation. And they’re rich. Astoundingly rich. But their corrupt money won’t buy them out of—”
A blaring truck horn cut off her last words.
“What’s that?”
“We’re near the edge of town. The other drivers on the road seem to have lost respect either for the military or for ambulances.” She emitted a short, nervous laugh. “I’m not sure which. But it’s not the China I’m used to.”
“Does she have a plan?” Gage asked.
Gage gazed out of the window at the fog blurring the stone-walled patio. It reminded him of an outdoor Chinese court hearing he’d attended in a rural Chongqing village on behalf of Transparency Watch. The defendant had confessed under torture to subversion, a capital crime. Usually these hearings were held in secret, but this one was conducted in public and drawn out over a year to intimidate government opposition in the countryside.
“No plan yet,” Faith said, “but I’m thinking that she’ll have to persuade the workers that the two are worth more alive than dead. Not financially, but in terms of propaganda—but she first has to convince the mob that they don’t have the moral authority to set up a provisional court and start executing people.”
“They’ve already killed—”
More honking, a crash, then a screech of tires.
“What happened?” Gage asked.
“Hold on. Let me look into the cab.”
Gage heard rustling as Faith crawled forward and then conversation in Mandarin.
“Some kid by a school gate threw a rock at the windshield. We’re moving again.”
More rustling as she returned to her seat.
“The problem is that once they believe that the mandate of heaven has been withdrawn, authority is up for grabs. Their view at this point may be that they have as much right as anyone else to run things. The Chinese constitution just becomes a relic of a dead era.”
“Do they already believe that it’s happened?”
“I don’t know, but people are saying the words aloud. One more earthquake. One more riot. One more firestorm. And everything may disintegrate.”
“Then don’t stay too long.”
“I only want to be here long enough to help Ayi Zhao through this, then I’ll gather up the kids and get out.”
Gage thought again of the trial and the defendant being led head down, wearing a prisoner’s blue striped shirt, into the yard day after day to be displayed and humiliated. He also remembered why Faith despised Ringling Brothers, whose bears were forced to dance and whose tigers were forced to leap through rings of fire, kept alive in captivity solely for the purpose of spectacle.
“Maybe she needs to divert them with a circus,” Gage said.
“A what?”
“Nobody wants to kill the clown while he’s performing under the big top. Like the impromptu trials during the Cultural Revolution, it’ll be familiar to everyone. Maybe they’ll be seduced by the symmetry or maybe they’ll find some comfort in history repeating itself. If she’s lucky, maybe she can keep dragging out the interrogations until the rebellion is suppressed.”
“Gotcha. I’ll pitch it to her.” Faith paused for a moment, then said. “I think Ayi Zhao feels horribly guilty, for not saving China from her son and for not saving her son from himself. Now the only hope she has left, and only as his mother, is that maybe she can save his life.”
Benaroun was smiling when Gage disconnected. “I thought there was only one crime stopper in the family.”
“It’s more like applied anthropology,” Gage said.
“That’s kind of what we all do,” Benaroun said. He turned his smile toward Tabari. “You may want to get out your pad and take notes, voices of wisdom are about to speak.” Then back at Gage. “I never met a good detective who wasn’t part psychologist and part anthropologist, especially in this part of the world.”
“And in South Africa,” Gage said.
Benaroun’s smile faded. He gave Tabari a sour look, a way of saying that he had suspected the kid had betrayed a confidence.
“He didn’t warn me off,” Gage said. “Just repeated that you wanted to talk to me about something.”
“No. It was him wanting you to talk me out of something.”
Gage smiled. “Are we going to keep circling, or are we about to land?”
Benaroun cast another glance at Tabari, then said, “I’m starting to suspect that the platinum is being smuggled out of South Africa by air.” He pushed his wineglass aside. “The interesting thing is that there are records of the flights arriving in Johannesburg, but no records of them leaving.”
“Do you know which planes?”
“My informant promises to tell me when I get there. If Transparency Watch authorizes the onetime payment that I want, I’ll deliver it to him in person next week and he’ll give me the details.”
“That’s a hell of a risk to take based on what could be a fantasy or—”
“Or an outright lie,” Tabari said.
“Except that he told me a few things that I’ve been able to verify.” Benaroun held up a finger: “First, there’s now an artificially induced platinum shortage.” He held up another: “Second, buyers are purchasing an enormous volume of futures, placing bets that the price will be rising in the next few months.”
Benaroun lowered his hand and leaned forward.
“The contradiction is third: The companies offering the futures contracts are apparently not increasing the reserves of platinum they keep in their bank vaults to secure the paper.”
“What do you mean by ‘apparently’?”
“My informant is telling me that they’re buying on the black market from the stocks stolen by the president—so the reserves are actually there—but they’re not reporting them publicly.”
“How would he know?”
Benaroun glanced at his nephew, then back at Gage. “He’s the deputy director of the South African Secret Service.”
Gage thought for a moment. He wasn’t sure how someone in South Africa would know what was occurring inside a Swiss vault thousands of miles away.
“There’s an alternative,” Gage finally said. “Maybe the whole thing is a fraud and the sponsors are simply lying about their reserves.”
Benaroun shook his head. “Someone I know who used to be with the Swiss Federal Banking Commission is now the compliance officer at Exchange Traded Metals. He’s the one who counts their coins and bars. And he noticed the same anomaly as my informant did.”
“Then I think he has an obligation to turn his company in to Swiss authorities instead of in to Transparency Watch and—”
“And get himself killed?”
Gage drew back. “Isn’t that a little melodramatic?”
“If there is such a thing as economic war, then there is such a thing as economic terrorism,” Benaroun said. “It has to be prevented, and if it’s too late to be prevented, people have to be punished.” Benaroun gestured toward Tabari. “It isn’t just a coincidence that I asked him to come out here from Marseilles to meet you.”
Gage looked at Tabari. “Did you work on Hennessy’s case?”
Tabari shrugged. “Not directly. There was nothing to work on. It was determined to be a suicide.”
“Or someone was determined to make it a suicide,” Gage said.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Tabari said. “There was no relevant evidence to the contrary.”
Gage smiled at Benaroun. “Your nephew may have a career in politics. His every
answer is loaded and invites a follow-up question.”
Benaroun raised his arm and then rotated his forefinger downward as if telling Tabari to put whatever he knew on the table.
Tabari leaned forward and stared down at the grained wood surface. Gage guessed at the choices he was weighing as he sat motionless except for his flicking eyelashes. They were the existential ones with which second generation immigrants, especially those who have achieved conventional success, are confronted. He was a French Algerian. A Jew. An outsider striving for acceptance. His uncle’s asking him to betray official confidences and secrets was more than simply a matter of morality and of integrity, it was a matter of identity.
In Tabari, Gage saw himself thirty years earlier, moving up from Southern Arizona to join the San Francisco Police Department. Everyone in his academy class knew of a local applicant who they’d assumed had been the one pushed aside to make room for Gage, an outsider. The difference was that Gage knew that, unlike Tabari, he wouldn’t spend his career as a police officer and the department wouldn’t be his world.
Gage also grasped that in this conflict of loyalties, Tabari understood that helping him would be a political act requiring enormous courage. They both knew what Benaroun would have done, but Benaroun accepted his position as a pariah, a near untouchable in French society, and rebelled against it, while Tabari hoped to escape it someday by donning a commandant’s uniform.
“I’m not comfortable accessing Police Judiciaire records and releasing the information to you,” Tabari finally said, “but out of respect for my uncle, I’ll do what I can to help.”
Tabari now raised his head and looked at Gage.
“Which means that I’ll find a discreet way to get you into the places where evidence was found, and in the order it was found, and put you in a position to see what any observer who happened to be in the right place and at the right time would’ve seen.”
Gage recognized in Tabari’s clear-eyed gaze and firm tone that this wasn’t a wink and a nod, a game of let’s pretend. The young man understood moral limits, and he’d found a line etched in marble that he wouldn’t pulverize into sand in order to slide past it.