Steven Gore - Power Blind

Jeannette lowered her bottle to the armrest. Her eyes slid from Gage’s face to his Carhartt shirt, then held there. She breathed in and out like a kid gathering up courage to race across a railroad track just ahead of a train.

“Yeah, you can have it. I don’t owe any of them shit. None of them suits from TIMCO ever sat down in my house and had a beer with me.”

Isn’t this kind of a long shot?” Faith asked as she drove Gage toward the San Francisco International Airport. They were traveling south past the 49ers’ stadium, dropping down to the gray stretch of freeway bordering the bay. The afternoon traffic crept along, more stop than go.

“Of course it’s a long shot,” Gage said. “But at worst it costs the price of a flight and a few days of jet lag.”

Faith flicked on the radio to check the traffic report in order to decide whether to slip onto the frontage road and skirt the backup. It was tuned to National Public Radio broadcasting one of a series of interviews of leading presidential candidates. It was Landon Meyer’s turn. She reached to change to the A.M. news channel, but Gage said, “Hold on. Let’s see what he has to say.”

“I’d like to start with your first campaign for Congress, your victory over Democratic incumbent Nelson Hedges. It’s still the closest race in California history.”

“It stands as a lesson that every vote counts.” Landon chuckled. “Well, at least the last twelve.”

“Were you aware during the campaign that Congressman Hedges had been diagnosed with ALS?”

“I didn’t learn about it until his announcement on the day he left Congress.”

Gage shook his head. “Amazing guy. He’s still keeping his promise even though Hedges has been dead for years. I’ll bet he’s never even told Brandon.”

Hedges had called Landon to come to his hotel near Stanford Hospital at midnight on the day he was diagnosed. The two talked and prayed together until past midnight. Landon promised neither to disclose nor to exploit it during the campaign.

“Did you learn any lessons from that election, Senator?”

The night concierge had spotted Landon exiting the lobby elevator at 2 A.M., a step behind a familiar prostitute from a local escort service.

Landon had called Gage moments after the first extortion attempt eight hours later.

“Yes. An extremely useful one. Elections often turn on events the public never sees.”

Gage discovered the night’s surveillance tape missing. He tracked it to the apartment of the guard who’d been on duty, where it was hidden with a dozen other tapes of guilty public figures who’d been blackmailed, and innocent ones like Landon who’d been extorted.

“And they depend on people you’ve never met before, but who become trusted friends for life.”

Faith pointed ahead to a stalled car on the shoulder a quarter mile ahead and the traffic clearing beyond it, then glanced over at Gage.

“There are just too many ifs to justify a trip halfway around the world,” Faith said.

“They’re either ifs or they’re links in a chain.” Gage switched off the radio. “Porzolkiewski is the key to Charlie getting shot and I’m pretty sure he’s got a copy of whatever was in Brandon Meyer’s wallet.”

“Is this about Charlie or Brandon? For a while I was wondering whether you were being driven by self-reproach for not insisting that Tansy let you prove it was Charlie who subverted the prosecution of those kids. But now I’m starting to think it’s really about Brandon.”

“Brandon’s a pipsqueak. Landon never should have gotten him appointed in the first place. Sometimes Landon is just blind to what he’s really doing.” Gage’s voice hardened. “And it wasn’t the first time someone in the Meyer family sacrificed the public good to a private one.”

“That makes me think you might be looking for a way to turn this into your father’s last revenge.”

One of the first things Faith had learned about Gage’s father was his fury at the Meyer family, once the General Motors of the arms manufacturing industry. As a combat surgeon during World War II, George Gage witnessed the consequences of their weapons sales to Germany, many made after the Nazis’ criminal intentions were clear. Only the intervention of the secretary of state prevented the indictment of Brandon and Landon’s grandfather in 1941 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

“I’m not looking to punish Brandon for his family’s sins,” Gage said, “and I certainly don’t want to hurt Landon. And I’m only interested in Brandon to the extent he’s the link between Porzolkiewski and Charlie.”

Gage fell silent. He watched a plane rise from the runway, then his eyes lowered to an unseeing stare at the dashboard.

“What?” she finally asked. “Porzolkiewski?”

Gage nodded.

“Your heart goes out to him, doesn’t it.”

He turned toward her. “What could be worse than believing somebody got away with killing your child? I don’t think anything has felt real to him since the day his son died. The only thing now connecting him to the world is anger.”

“You think he’ll be able to see his way clear to cooperate with you when you get back?”

“I don’t know. At least he didn’t go running out of the coffee shop yesterday when I sat down at his table to tell him I was going to look for a way to reopen the TIMCO case. The most important thing in his life is finding out what happened.”

“You mean confirming what he already believes.”

“He’s not the only one. I reread the superior court judge’s order dismissing the suit. I know judge-speak. He said ‘my hands are tied’ and ‘this incident appears’ to be an accident-not is, only appears — and he said the explosion was ‘maybe even an accident waiting to happen.’ Which tells me he didn’t believe TIMCO. It was just that Porzolkiewski’s lawyers hadn’t made a strong enough showing so the judge could’ve let the case go to a jury.”

“I don’t know.” Faith shook her head, then glanced over again. “How can you be so sure Porzolkiewski will tell you what really happened with Charlie if you deliver on your promise? What if the truth about TIMCO isn’t what he thinks it is? Accidents waiting to happen can still be just accidents.”

Jeanette Hawkins was wrong. Son of a Bitch wasn’t in an Islamic country. Gage had recognized it the moment she’d handed him the yellowed slip of paper bearing the telephone number. He’d also seen the hand of genius: laundering a witness through Muslim Pakistan, then depositing him in its Hindu enemy.

I t was the overripe end of mango season in southern India when Gage arrived at the Rajiv Gandhi Airport outside Hyderabad. Vendors were selling juice and sodas from carts bordering the parking lot in front of the arrivals hall. Between them and Gage as he walked out of the automatic doors was a mass of men in short-sleeved shirts and women in saris standing pressed up against a low metal barrier. A dozen taxi drivers swarmed him, grabbing at his forearms to lead him toward their cars. Porters wearing dhotis tied around their thighs and pulled up between their legs reached for his rollaboard. He shook them off as he scanned past the hotel placards held up by drivers bearing the names of arriving business travelers, but he couldn’t find the face he was looking for.

Instead, the face found him.

Gage grasped that customs superintendent Basaam Khan was standing behind him when the drivers and porters backed away. He turned toward a stubby man in a crisp white shirt and brown slacks, then reached out his hand, smiling. “Babu.”

Khan was the youngest child in a family of ten who’d stayed in India after the partition in 1947, when millions of Hindus fled from Pakistan and an equal number of Muslims fled in the opposite direction into India. He was among the forty percent of the population of Hyderabad who were Muslim. As the youngest son, he was simply known among friends and relatives as Babu. Sonny in English.