Absolute Risk
Page 33
As they approached a wooden bridge, the crash of a waterfall drowned out the monkeys’ screams, and a couple of hundred yards after they crossed the stream, the trail came to a rocky overlook. They could see an open-walled, six-sided pinewood temple, no bigger than a living room, on the opposite side of the valley. Its sweeping roof tiles were covered in moss and lichen and their upturned corners seemed to reach into the canopy of trees. And beyond it in the distance, the steep peaks of karstic mountains emerged above the mist.
It reminded Gage of looking across the Mediterranean inlet at the limestone pillar near where Michael Hennessy had come to rest, and he realized with an ache in his chest that the only kind of incense Elaine would ever burn for her husband would be in the form of suffering and rage and guilt that would continue to smolder. He felt he understood her well enough to know that convicting Wycovsky and his Chinese accomplices for his murder wouldn’t extinguish her pain.
The temple was no more than a hundred yards away, but the valley cut deep into the mountain. They didn’t see it again until they took a turn a half hour later and the mist and fog separated in front of them. They stopped ten yards away and through a blur of swirling incense smoke watched two monks, bundled in dark robes against the cold, meditating before the altar inside.
Beyond the temple and nestled higher up on the hillside, Gage could make out the monks’ quarters, raw wood on a rough stone foundation, appearing no more substantial than a migrant shack.
The soldier waved them forward and then turned back. They waited until the thudding of his boots died away and walked to the temple steps.
The monks turned at their approach. The younger one rose and helped the older one to his feet. Both were tiny men with bald heads and soft eyes. Neither seemed surprised by the arrival of the two gweilo, the two white ghosts.
The old man waved Faith forward. She slipped off her shoes and into a pair of slippers and stepped inside. The younger monk handed her the last incense stick from a bamboo tube below the altar and she lit it from a candle. After fanning away the flame, she held it between her palms for a few moments, and then pressed its bare end into the sand next to the rest.
Gage removed his shoes and stepped forward and took her hand as she stared down at it, the monks now chanting, the stream of sandalwood smoke rising, interlacing and merging with those around it. He’d heard the same rumbling Sanskrit and the dark flat-toned rhythms before, meditations on dying and acceptance and nothingness, and wondered how many pilgrims had come to this place over the centuries and whether they’d received the comfort they’d sought.
The door to the monk’s house scraped open. They turned toward it and looked past the trees and through the rolling mist. They expected to see a novice monk bringing more incense to the temple or a line of older monks coming toward them to pray or perhaps a pilgrim come to honor an ancestor.
Instead, a tall, unshaven man appeared in the shadowed doorway, dressed not like a monk, but in a long wool coat and cap and heavy boots, standing straight, his arms hanging by his sides. Gage heard Faith draw in a breath and felt her hand tighten around his as the man’s face came into view. After gazing at her for a long moment with his deep and unblinking eyes, Old Cat nodded, and then turned away, and slipped back into the darkness.
Acknowledgments
In addition to my wife, Liz, my first and best reader, friends made enormous efforts to try to keep me from making an idiot of myself. Denise Fleming gave the manuscript the sort of close reading only a genius could give and improved the book in ways only an artist can. Davie Sue Litov asked all the questions a writer needs to hear. Seth Norman helped me say what I meant (and thanks to his mother, Enid, for her encouragement and enthusiasm). Chris Cannon, friend and lawyer, participated as a coconspirator in crafting parts of the fictional crime. Ernie Baumgarten took walks with me that rambled in more ways than one, and during which Lulu Fleming-Baumgarten always took the lead.
In the spirit of sometimes learning the most from the worst people, this book has benefited from conversations with certain government officials, military officers, and business executives in China who provided insights into the practices of corruption that are reflected in the book, with money launderers in Hong Kong and elsewhere, with environmental polluters in the Americas and in Asia, and with snakeheads in San Francisco, Bangkok, and Taipei who described the craft of human smuggling.
Thanks also go to my agent, Helen Zimmermann, to my editor, Carl Lennertz, and to the other publishing professionals, Pamela Spengler-Jaffee, Wendy Ho, Eileen DeWald, Barbara Peters, Shawn Nichols, Marcus Opsal and Eleanor M. Mikucki, who have been so dedicated to the success of my novels.
The quote, “Our job is to reclaim America for Christ …” is from Dr. James Kennedy, pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, and was part of a statement distributed at his “Reclaim America” Conference, in February 2005. “Seize your armor, gird it on …” is from the hymn “Soldiers of the Cross, Arise.” “We should invade their countries …” is from Ann Coulter in a National Review article, “This is War” (September 13, 2001). “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag …” is from “Theocratic Dreams” in the National Catholic Reporter of January 26, 2007. “We obviously are viewing an economy …” is a condensed version of a comment by Alan Greenspan, cited in A Term at the Fed by Laurence H. Meyer (Harper Business 2004, p. 47). “There was a flaw in the model …” is abbreviated from an Alan Greenspan interview with ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=6095195). “I am a soldier …” can be found at the Salvation Army War College Web site. The Martin Luther quotes are from Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History by Erik Erikson (W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, pp. 204 and 244).
The story about the balancing pole that Gage hears in Dresden is one I heard in Central Europe. Various versions were passed around the latter years of the Soviet Union. The original author may have been Kurt Koffka in The Principles of Gestalt Psychology (first published in 1935, Routledge, 1999, p. 86). Another version appears in The Language of the Third Reich: LTI—Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook by Victor Klemperer (Continuum, 2006, p. 8).
“Absolute Risk is the work of a talented writer who knows how to hook his readers from the opening line.”
Richard North Patterson,
bestselling author of Protect and Defend
ABSOLUTE RISK
Faith flipped back through the pages, the mass of names and amounts. Two hundred million from RAID Technologies. A hundred million from Spectrum. A hundred million from Meinhard. Payments made to officials from Beijing to Chengdu and into accounts and shell companies from Hong Kong to the Bahamas to Zurich, to front companies in every world capital and in every offshore haven.
A shudder of dread shook through her. In the intensity of the last hours, her mind hadn’t broken free from the immediacy to realize that thousands of officials and company officers would kill to suppress what lay on the table in front of her …
AND RESOUNDING PRAISE FOR
STEVEN GORE’S ELECTRIFYING FIRST NOVEL
FINAL TARGET
“Action packed…. A fascinating look into the world of international industrial espionage. I’m looking forward to the investigator Graham Gage’s next adventure.” Phillip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author of Fugitive
“A smart, riveting, knock-your-socks-off debut thriller.”
Cornelia Read, author of The Crazy School
“Lightning paced, deftly plotted, and compulsively readable…. We will be hearing much more from Steven Gore. Find a comfortable chair and plan to stay up late.” Sheldon Siegel, New York Times bestselling author of Judgment Day
By Steven Gore
FINAL TARGET
ABSOLUTE RISK
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity,
and are used fictitiously. All other names, characters and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.
HARPER
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
10 East 53rd Street
New York, New York 10022-5299
Copyright © 2010 by Steven Gore
ISBN 978-0-06-178220-6
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01833-5
HarperCollins® and Harper® are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.
Visit Harper paperbacks on the World Wide Web at www.harpercollins.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1 Auckland,
New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com