by Steven Gore
Casher narrowed his eyes at Gage. “How was it coded?”
Gage shrugged. “All it said was G12.”
Casher drew back and shook his head. “It’s not coded. It’s been on our radar for the last few years. It’s the People’s Foreign Investment Fund. They’re known to Chinese insiders as the Group of Twelve.”
Gage pushed himself to his feet, then slammed his fist into his palm. “Son of a-“
“What?” Casher asked, squinting up at Gage.
“Ibrahim was working for the Chinese.”
Casher blinked as though stunned by a camera flash. “How do you get from-“
“And when Hennessy began to suspect it and went hunting for Ibrahim, they killed the guy.”
Gage hesitated. He closed his eyes and locked his hands on top of his head. That couldn’t be right. If Ibrahim was dead, then there’d be no reason for Wycovsky to put Gilbert and Strubb and Hicks on his tail “Unless the Chinese are looking for Ibrahim, too,” Gage said aloud. “And that means they believe he’s still alive.”
“Have you gone nuts?” Casher asked.
Gage sat down and reached for the deputy director’s legal pad. Casher’s hand snaked out and grabbed Gage’s wrist, thinking that Gage was trying to read her notes. Gage yanked it free.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Gage said. “I just need a blank sheet of paper.” He flipped to the middle and tore out a piece and drew part of the flowchart that Alex Z recovered from Hennessy’s memory card.
“We found this in Hennessy’s records,” Gage said, then pointed at the HI and G12 boxes. “I think he figured out that Ibrahim was working for the Chinese, not Relative Growth.”
“Or both,” Casher said.
Gage shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He looked over at Casher. “Where’d you send Ibrahim after you deported him?”
Casher flushed. “I didn’t send him anywhere. It was before my time.” He shrugged. “Anyway, you know the answer.”
“And you-collectively-created an economic terrorist.” “We don’t know that.”
“You suspect it strongly enough to commit a burglary on U.S. soil.”
Casher shrugged. “But what could the Chinese possibly need Ibrahim for?”
Gage was now beginning to understand Abrams’s preoccupation with Ibrahim, or at least part of it. And the Chinese were focused on the same thing: If the old theories had proved themselves false, then maybe Ibrahim’s could prove themselves right-with huge Chinese foreign currency reserves behind them.
“Capitalism needed a new god,” Gage said, “a new master of the universe.”
“And they chose Ibrahim?”
Gage shook his head again. “You gave them Ibrahim.”
CHAPTER 60
There’s a chance Ibrahim is still alive and I don’t want to get him killed,” Gage told Milton Abrams after recounting the previous night’s events. “But we need to find him and figure out what the Chinese are up to.”
“And you’re afraid you’ll be bird-dogging him for the Chinese who may be worried he’ll spill the beans, whatever they may be.”
Gage picked up his cup from the kitchen table and took a sip.
“Exactly.”
Gage’s cell phone rang. He’d left it on the kitchen counter the previous night so those who were tracking him would think that he’d remained in Abrams’s apartment. He didn’t recognize the number, but it had a Boston area code. He could think of only two people who could be calling: Goldie Goldstein or Abdul Rahmani. He didn’t answer it, but watched to see if the caller left a message. He or she didn’t. He retrieved his encrypted phone and called Alex Z in San Francisco.
“Sorry to wake you up,” Gage told him when he answered. “I need you to call a number and see who it is and what they want. I don’t want people listening in on me.”
Alex Z yawned. “No problem, boss.”
Gage gave him the number and disconnected.
Alex Z called back a minute later.
“He wouldn’t ID himself,” Alex Z said. “But he was pissed and he said that he’d heard from someone you two called Fred.”
Gage’s hand tightened around the phone. Ibrahim was alive. “What did he say?”
“That Fred is also pissed, homicidal, something about his wife having to go into hiding. The guy said you’ll know where to find him at 1 p.m. today.”
As Gage disconnected, Abrams’s cell phone rang. Moments after he answered it, his eyes widened, and he said, “I’m on my way,” and then flipped it closed and rose from his chair.
“I’ve got to get down to Washington,” Abrams said. “Rumors are flying about the president’s health, and the markets have no confidence in Wallace. They want me and the treasury secretary standing in front of the cameras when the New York Stock Exchange opens.”
Gage thought of the surveillance outside Abrams’s apartment house and of his need to dodge them on the way out.
“How are you getting there?” Gage asked.
“A limo from here in five minutes, then a helicopter from a pad downtown.”
Gage pointed his thumb upward. “Can I hitch a ride partway?”
“Why not? I suspect that the taxpayers are going to owe you a lot more than a helicopter ride.”
Gage called Viz, who’d taken Arndt home and then had checked the layout of the surveillance in Central Park.
“It’s practically a convention out here,” Viz said. “It’s hard to tell who’s who. Hicks is in his usual spot along with two others spread out on either side. And there are two vans stationed at either end of the block that are using as much bandwidth as T-1 lines, but I have no way of knowing whether they’re aware of each other.”
“I need you to come back inside and turn all of the bugs back on as soon as Abrams and I leave.”
Gage disconnected, then called out to Abrams, who was in his bedroom changing into his suit, “You have a large briefcase I can use? I need to take a lot with me, but I don’t want to be seen with my Rollaboard and clue them in that I’m on the move.”
“In my study. There’s an old-style leather catalogue case in the closet.”
Gage retrieved his nonencrypted cell phone to make a call so that those intercepting him would believe that they knew where he was going and called Alex Z.
“Abrams and I are on our way down to Washington,” Gage said. “By helicopter. We’ll stop along the way to pick up one of his underlings.”
Abrams came back into the living room, tying his tie, as Gage turned the phone off again.
“Should you be telling our plans to the other side?” Abrams asked.
“When they hear on the news that you’ve been called to Washington, they’ll assume the rest is true, too. Except I’ll be getting off where they think someone is getting on.”
Abrams smiled. “I like my job better than yours. It’s a lot simpler.”
Gage collected Abrams’s briefcase, stuffed it with his own attache case, along with a change of clothes, and then pointed toward the door.
Abrams’s limo took them first to the helipad, then to Newark Airport where Gage got off. To disguise his trail, Gage rented a car with the unused Federal Reserve card that Abrams had given him the previous week, and then headed north toward Boston. Three and a half hours later, he pulled up in front of the Turkish halal cafe down the block from Ijara Automobiles.
The owner, sitting by the cash register, lowered his paper and cast dead eyes at Gage as he entered.
Abdul Rahmani, the only customer in the cafe, neither looked up nor rose from his seat.
Gage pulled up a chair across from him.
“You’re as much of a bungler as Hennessy,” Rahmani said, shaking his head. “I should’ve known.”
“Ibrahim could’ve picked up his phone at any time since I first came knocking on your door.”
“Why should he have? There’ve been dozens of people looking for him over the years. Investigators. Intelligence agencies. Business reporters. Professors. Graduate
students. Hedge fund managers-why should he bless you of all people with a call?”
“Because I know the truth about what happened to him.”
“That only means that you know what he knows.
Bravo.”
“Thinks he knows-and he’s wrong. Maybe dead wrong.”
Rahmani spread his hands. “So? Let’s hear it.”
“I’ll tell it only to him, and only in person. I’ll also explain to him why some of the people he thought were his friends are now on the hunt for him.”
“It doesn’t make a difference, they won’t find him. No one will ever find him, unless he wants to be found. I don’t even know where he is.”
Gage inspected Rahmani’s face, trying to discern a connection between his aggression and door-slamming protection of Ibrahim and the fact of his calling to get Gage to come to Boston. He then surveyed the cafe, wondering whether it was bugged.
“How long would it take for you to get in contact with him?” Gage asked.
Rahmani shrugged.
Gage walked over to the counter and grabbed a takeout menu and a matchbook and brought them back to the table. He drew out the flowchart that he’d drawn for Casher, showing Ibrahim’s connection to the Group of Twelve. He then spun it around so Rahmani could see it.
“Can you describe this to him?” Gage asked.
Rahmani reached for it. Gage pulled it away. Rahmani’s face reddened.
“It’s not complicated,” Gage said. “Just memorize it.”
Gage let Rahmani stare at it a little longer, and tore it up. He then removed Rahmani’s saucer from under his coffee cup, piled up the pieces, and set them on fire.
Gage held his open hands over the flame and then rubbed them together.
“Let’s see whether this generates a little heat where Ibrahim is, too,” Gage said. “And then maybe a little light.”
CHAPTER 61
Vice President Cooper Wallace sat alone in his office in the Executive Office Building after the security briefing. He flicked on the television and then changed the channel from CNN to CNBC. He wasn’t interested in the political pundits’ speculations, but in the numbers that reflected the financial mind of the country. The header rotated from the prices of gold, silver, and oil to the Dow and NASDAQ. They’d both dropped four percent on the news of the transition, then gained three back. The same in London and Berlin.
At first, he felt relief. The markets had time to absorb the news about the president’s health, to weigh it, to allocate their resources, and decided that the world wasn’t coming to an end. Maybe those economics textbooks were right after all. It really was a self-adjusting mechanism, a collective mind that takes in data and prices itself accordingly.
But then a shudder of self-doubt waved through him.
Maybe it wasn’t confidence in him that the market was showing, but a belief that the president would soon resume his place as the captain of the ship of state and that Wallace’s assignment was merely to hold the rudder steady in the meantime.
He, too, had watched the surgeons’ press conference. He, too, had felt no doubt that the surgery would be routine and successful. He, too, saw the confidence in the wire-rimmed Harvard Medical School faces of the white coats. He, too But then his mind twisted back down the tunnel of the past, to the president calling him into his study, warning him to think and to listen.
You want to be president in two years, but something could happen to me, and you’d be sitting in this chair tomorrow.
Now the white coats seemed like costumes and the wire rims like props and their words spoken from a script written by the president.
Tomorrow had arrived.
Chief of Staff Paul Nichols knocked on his door, then entered.
“This is the list,” Nichols said, handing Wallace a sheet bearing five names. He then pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Russian and Chinese interpreters are standing by. The French, German, and Japanese presidents will speak to you in English. The British prime minister will go first.”
Wallace skimmed down the page. He didn’t mind the others, but was disgusted by the thought of having to call the Chinese president to reassure him that the pull on the American oars would remain steady. He could see the man’s soft, round face, beaming like the owner of a company store No, that wasn’t it. It was the self-satisfied smirk of a colonial master. They owned the debt and therefore had the U.S. by the pocketbook.
Americans could still feed themselves, but they had to cook on Chinese stoves and in Chinese pots and pans and pay tribute in the form of interest on a trillion dollars of treasury bonds. If Casher is right, Wallace thought, they have us not only by our hearts, minds, and consumer cravings, but by the balls.
Wallace reached for the remote to turn off the television. He hesitated as an inset box appeared showing Manton Roberts standing before a microphone. The business reporter’s voice was replaced by Roberts announcing that National Pledge Day would include prayers for the president’s recovery.
“Smart move,” Nichols said to Wallace. “He never misses a trick. He’ll quadruple the participation. Even the crippled will stand to say the pledge and even the deaf will hear the prayer.”
Wallace didn’t rise to the sarcasm. He might not believe in the event, but he believed in the power of prayer.
“Is Casher still out there?” Wallace asked, punching the mute button.
Nichols nodded, then walked back out to the reception area. Casher entered a moment later carrying his briefcase.
“Was it your decision or the president’s not to mention in the Cabinet meeting that the Chinese are putting together criminal cases against us? “
“The president’s. He didn’t want to chance a leak.”
Wallace wanted to say, You mean he doesn’t trust his own people? but he left the thought unspoken for fear of appearing to have forgotten the fundamental lesson of politics: The political animal is first of all an animal, and while some might doubt the theory of evolution, everyone accepted the truth that the first law of nature was survival. And loyalty, like betrayal, was just a weapon.
“But he did ask me to meet with the attorney general,” Casher said, “and in a fill-in-the-blank-later fashion outline the bribery evidence against the corporate officers the Chinese appear to be targeting.”
“You mean to take to a grand jury?”
“Only in case you, or the president, decide to get ahead of the Chinese and charge them with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The U.S. Attorney can simply code all of the targets’ names, the companies’ names, and the offshore accounts that he presents in evidence. Once the grand jurors accept that crimes have been committed, it will take all of ten minutes to fill in the blanks and issue an indictment.”
Wallace didn’t like the path laid out before him. He felt like the Chinese were leading the U.S. into a trap.
“I don’t like the idea,” Wallace finally said. “The Chinese set the terms for doing business over there. If their officials weren’t corrupt, we wouldn’t be paying bribes. Isn’t that what the Mexicans tell us: Stop using drugs and we’ll stop shipping them?”
“You’re right, but it may be out of our hands.”
Casher laid his briefcase on the desk, then opened it and handed Wallace a draft indictment.
“This is it,” Casher said, “with all of the blanks filled in.”
Wallace flipped through the twenty pages. “It seems short, given how massive the scheme was.”
“The indictment doesn’t have to outline our entire theory of the case and every act in the conspiracy,” Casher said, “only enough to prove a single count for each defendant. We picked the most provable.”
“You’ve also named some French and German defendants.”
“We don’t want to take the whole blame.”
“But what’s our jurisdiction? They’re not U.S. citizens.”
“But they paid some of the bribes in U.S. dollars. Our currency, our jurisdiction. That’s go
od enough for the Supreme Court.”
Casher took it back and opened to the overt acts alleged against RAID, then turned it toward Wallace.
“You’ll see that we’ve tracked a single payment from a RAID account in Singapore to a Hong Kong law firm, and then to the offshore account of a coconspirator we’ve identified only as ‘Chinese Official One.'”
Wallace read down the page. “Who is it?”
“The vice mayor of Chengdu, Zhao Wo-li.”
“Why didn’t you name him?”
“It would make things too messy. He’s escaped the PLA encirclement of the city. We don’t want the story to become one about a massive manhunt-“
“Unless we later want to shift the blame onto the Chinese.”
Casher nodded. “We can also lessen the damage to us by orchestrating the announcement of the indictment and the replacement of the officers so they happen simultaneously.”
“I still don’t like it,” Wallace said. “I don’t like us taking the blame for other countries’ problems.” Wallace flipped the indictment closed. “But if it happens, let it not be during the few days of my watch.”
CHAPTER 62
"We’re here,” Gage said to Rahmani, sitting in the driver’s seat of his car. They were parked under an overhanging oak tree along the edge of Chestnut Hill Reservoir north of Brookline. “Now what?”
The angled parking places on either side of them were empty, save for a pickup truck idling seven spaces away, its occupant talking on his phone and turning pages in what looked to Gage to be a map book.
“We wait.” Rahmani waved his finger back and forth as though to mark the extremes of the area. “My friends are watching to make sure you weren’t followed.”
Gage withdrew his cell phone. “How do you know someone isn’t tracking me through this?”
Rahmani smiled. “I asked around. You wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Then why the bungler crack when I walked into the cafe?”