Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

Strubb groaned as he rolled onto his side and curled up.

Gage bent over and grabbed Strubb’s cell phone and wallet, then straightened up and glared down at him.

“You make a move and I’ll kick you until I’ve broken every bone in your face.”

“Son of a bitch… I’m gonna-shit this hurts… I’m gonna be pissing blood… for a… for a fucking week.”

Gage called Alex Z at the office in San Francisco and read off the numbers in the memory of Strubb’s phone and the personal data on his driver’s license.

“See what you can find out about them,” Gage told Alex Z and then disconnected.

Gage looked down at Strubb. “Whose numbers are the last ones you called?”

“Fuck you.”

“The only reason I didn’t hit you in the eye socket is that I didn’t want to damage my hand,” Gage said. “I’m not so concerned about my shoes. Worse that happens, they get a little bloody.” Strubb didn’t answer.

“My guy is working on it now,” Gage said. “No reason to get yourself kicked in the head for something I’ll find out anyway.”

“Jesus-fucking-Christ this hurts… Gilbert. Tony Gilbert. Works out of New York City.”

“How’d you hook up with him?”

“A referral from a PI who hires me to do little jobs once in a while.”

“Like kidnapping.”

Strubb grunted as he sat up, and then leaned back against the side of the desk.

“It ain’t kidnapping when a bail agent does it. He said you was an absconder and that you had some papers somebody wanted. It was supposed to be a two-fer. Double the pay. Anyway, we didn’t move you that far. Just up a couple of floors.”

“Moving somebody half an inch who doesn’t want to go is kidnapping.”

Gage paused, trying to think of a gimmick to shake off both Strubb and Gilbert, at least for a while. He then pointed down at Strubb.

“This is what you’re going to do,” Gage said. “You’re going to tell Gilbert and his pals to stay away from me.”

“Or what?”

Gage stepped back to his Rollaboard and held up his voice recorder. The red record light was lit. He’d turned it on when he’d reached in earlier. “Or I’ll put you and your partner in prison for a very long time.”

Strubb winced as he twisted himself onto his knees, then pushed himself to his feet. He hesitated as though he was thinking he’d make a move to grab the recorder, then his eyes locked on Gage’s right fist, and he turned toward the door.

“Not so fast,” Gage said, reaching out his other hand. “I want my coupons back.”

Faith Gage stood in front of her door and looked over the collapsed warehouse across the narrow street and toward Chengdu in the valley below. Smoke rose in columns from the smoldering remnants of the fires that had been triggered by the earthquake. It then spread like a low fog toward the base of the mountain beneath her, yellow-gray, poisoned by exploding chemical tanks at the factories in the economic development zone. In the near distance she could make out the smoldering shell of the almost completed RAID Technologies microchip plant, the largest building on the western edge of the city.

She recognized that the silent movement of distant things made it hard for her to maintain the images in her mind of the hundreds of thousands of souls entombed in the rubble, the raw hands of searchers, and the roar and grind of earthmoving equipment, and the wail of survivors already gathered in temples, burning incense in honor of the dead.

Shuffling footsteps drew her eyes toward a young man in his mid-twenties carrying a duffel bag over the shoulder of his wool jacket. His dirt- and soot-covered face seemed forlorn against the background of the dusty anarchy of wood, brick, and concrete spilling out into the street. He came to a stop in front of the remains of the wooden shack next to Faith’s. He stared at it, then took in a long breath, exhaled, and lowered his head.

Faith walked over. When he looked up she saw that tears had formed, muddying the dirt at the corners of his eyes. She could perceive beyond the tears a somber core, but she couldn’t tell whether it was a product of nature or trauma or grief, or of all three.

“Aunt Zhao is fine,” she told him in Mandarin, then pointed at her own house. “She’s staying with me.”

He looked down and sighed, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve, tracking the grime across his face and forehead.

“You are?” Faith asked.

“Her grandson. Jian-jun.” He pointed toward Chengdu. “From the city. You must be the anthropologist she told me would be coming.”

Faith nodded, then said, “Chifanle meiyou? “ Have you eaten?

Jian-jun’s face relaxed, seeming to find comfort in the familiar greeting, even though spoken by a gweilo, a white ghost, in a wasteland.

“Chifanle,” he answered. I’m fine.

His sunken cheeks told Faith that he wasn’t, that he probably hadn’t eaten much in days, perhaps even before the earthquake. She led him through the house and into the kitchen where his eighty-five-year-old grandmother sat at the table chopping vegetables for lunch. He walked over and knelt beside her. She reached for him with her thin arms and hugged him against her breast. He pulled back and whispered something to her. She bit her lip and frowned as he again pressed against her.

After pouring him tea, Faith dragged a wooden chair up next to his grandmother. He pulled himself onto it and then warmed his hands on the cup.

“How is it in the city?” Faith asked him.

“Chaos. Fury. Violence.” Jian-jun took a sip of tea; he didn’t seem surprised or put off balance by Faith’s speaking unaccented Mandarin. “Schools and hospitals collapsed everywhere, burying children and sick people.”

His hands tightened around the cup and his face flushed.

“The concrete didn’t just crack, it crumbled. Disintegrated. Mobs hunted down the builders and the mayor and a couple of party leaders and hung them. They’ve now surrounded all of the government offices and intend to starve them out and kill them, too.”

“Isn’t the army-”

Jian-jun shook his head. “The army isn’t intervening, and not because they’re afraid. They’re as sickened by the corruption as everyone else. I think they want to try to contain it to Chengdu and the other cities in the earthquake area, and let it be an object lesson for the rest of the country.”

Ayi Zhao stared ahead. Listening.

“And there’s no clean water. Chemical runoff from the burned factories flowed into the BoTiao River and the waterworks.” He pointed north. “And they can’t use the Zi Pingpu Reservoir. It’s too polluted by lead and cadmium from the electronic recycling companies up in the hills. People are drinking from their toilets.”

Ayi Zhao whispered, ” Tian ming.” It’s the mandate of heaven.

Jian-jun reached over and took her hand.

He and Faith both knew that saying the words was no different than criticizing the party directly. In historical terms, it meant that the government had lost its legitimacy, and withdrawing the mandate was the way heaven authorized an uprising. Tian ming had justified every dynastic change for three thousand years and explained every earthquake and flood. Even Communist Party members feared the phrase.

What had always bothered Faith about the concept was that it was circular: The success of an uprising meant that the mandate had truly been withdrawn; the failure, that it hadn’t, and millions of lives had been sacrificed over the centuries determining heaven’s intentions.

Ayi Zhao raised a finger and said, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”

Faith cast a questioning look at Jian-jun. It sounded to her as though Ayi Zhao had quoted a lost stanza from Yeats’s “Second Coming.” She saw, more than spoke, the famous lines in her mind.