Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

“Let me call you back,” Gage said. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Are you any closer to finding Ibrahim?” Abrams asked.

“That’s what I’m in the middle of.”

“You’re being cryptic again.”

“Let’s keep it that way, at least until I’ve found him.”

Gage disconnected and walked over and inspected Hennessy’s notebook. The narrow opening had widened as the surrounding sheets had dried. He retrieved tweezers from the bathroom and tilted the top edge of the notebook toward the lamp next to the table and reached into the space and tugged at the square of paper. He felt it pull free from the opposite side, then he worked it back and forth up the gap. First a white glossy border appeared, the gray of concrete, then the black of leather shoes and laces, then the brown of socks and cuffs, the slacks splotched with water or The photograph slipped free of its sheath. It was blood.

Gage stared at the mutilated body. Its arms bound with wire that cut into the skin. Its shirt torn exposing a chest pocked with burns. The slacks pulled down to its knees. But the face was untouched, eyes dulled with death, mouth open as if he’d died with a last gasp.

Gage opened the MIT brochure that he’d gotten from

Goldie Goldstein and matched the portrait of Ibrahim to the face in the photo.

It was him. There could be no doubt.

A newspaper lay next to the body. The International Herald Tribune. The photo on the cover showed the French president greeting the world’s central bankers in Marseilles on the day before Abrams was to meet Hennessy.

The message was clear. Hennessy couldn’t have missed it. There was no need for words, for an explanation, or an accusation, or a threat.

In his pursuit of Ibrahim, Hennessy had forced someone’s hand, and they’d used it to torture Ibrahim to death and then aimed the photograph like a sickle to slash at the fragile membrane that had shielded Hennessy from the abyss.

Tabari waited in the hallway of Hospital St. Joseph’s ICU with his uncle’s retired colleagues while Gage entered the room alone. Even in the semidarkness, the sterility shocked him, offended him. The unforgiving stainless steel. The disposable plastics. The starched sheets. The cool air. The caustic stink of disinfectant. The mechanical clicks and beeps-each of them-all of them-belied not only the broken body of a man who’d tried to do good in an evil world, but the tragedy of a wife’s grief and the distress of a rabbi sitting outside, head in hands, whose God had failed him.

Benaroun’s hands lay folded on his chest. His legs, unmoving. His head turned and his eyes blinked at the sound of Gage setting down a chair close to the bed. Benaroun glanced at the remote to raise the bed and Gage eased him up from a flat to an angled position. Benaroun then raised a forefinger and pointed it toward his feet. Gage leaned over and followed its trajectory.

Benaroun’s big toe moved.

Gage felt his chest fill and moisture come to his eyes. He grabbed Benaroun’s shoulder and squeezed.

“First a toe,” Benaroun whispered, “then someday a foot… and then someday a leg.”

Gage’s eyes closed and the tension of the last twenty-four hours seemed to sigh out of him.

A slight smile met his gaze when he opened them again.

“You shouldn’t worry so much,” Benaroun said, his voice now a little stronger. “Bad for the heart.”

“It was as much guilt as worry,” Gage said.

“You have nothing to feel guilty about.” Benaroun licked his lips. Gage dipped an oral swab in a cup of water and then wet them. “They were after me, not you.”

Gage pulled the airplane registration numbers out of his jacket pocket and held them up for Benaroun to see.

Benaroun nodded.

“They’re owned by a Chinese company,” Gage said. “But I don’t know what that means.”

“I do. The Chinese got mining concessions from the South Africa president-“

“For smuggling out the platinum for him.”

Benaroun nodded. “And gold, manganese, and vanadium. He kept the Russians out and gave it all to China.”

“And no money trail back to him.”

“He plans to leave the platinum in Swiss vaults until the Chinese drive up the price.”

“How did you-“

“The promise of the money was enough and my informant in the”-Benaroun glanced toward the closed door-“in the South African Secret Service. He called me and then sent the numbers.”

“You sure it was the money that persuaded him?”

Benaroun stared past Gage for a few seconds, then looked back and said, “I don’t know.” He yawned and his eyes closed. He shook his head and opened them again. “Maybe patriotism. The last flight in brought Chinese saboteurs to shut down the mines.”

Gage turned at the sound of a light knock on the door. A nurse entered, followed by Tabari.

“I think that’s enough for now,” she said, coming to a stop next to Gage. “There will be time later to catch up with friends.”

Benaroun’s face flushed. “But I need-“

“Rest. You need rest.” She adjusted Benaroun’s pillow, then looked at Gage and asked, “Can you return later? “

Gage rose to his feet and glanced at his watch as though he intended to suggest a time. But he knew that he wouldn’t be coming back. His flight to New York was leaving in two hours.

A siren wailed outside, its blare muted by the double-paned windows and heavy drapes.

When Gage looked back at Benaroun, he found that the exertion of his protest had drained him and he’d fallen asleep.

Gage noticed that he’d been holding his breath. He released it. At least now he wouldn’t have to lie to his friend.

Where is he?” Gage asked as he stepped into Viz’s rented SUV next to the curb at John F. Kennedy Airport. “He should be on his way back to a Fed Governors meeting in D.C. I recruited a retired FBI friend who does executive security to stay with him.”

Viz handed Gage a new cell phone. “This will probably be good for a day or two until the bad guys catch on to it.” He then pointed at the leather attache case on Gage’s lap. “That have the stuff?”

Gage nodded. “I didn’t try the SIM or memory cards. I was afraid there might still be moisture inside.” “No problem. I’ll take care of it.” Viz turned the ignition. His headlights reflected off the limousine in front of them and enveloped it in swirling snow as if in a globe.

“What about the rest?” Viz asked as he merged into the passing traffic.

“A lot of his notebook was pulped by soaking in water, so I wasn’t able to recover much, and what I did find is so cryptic that I don’t know what to make of it. Parts of it read like the stream-of-consciousness rambling of those homeless guys who hang out in public libraries scribbling in spiral notebooks. And flowcharts, or at least pieces of them.”

Gage turned on an overhead light, and then opened the briefcase and removed a sheet of paper.

“I tried to piece them together, but there was only one box common to all.” Gage tapped it with his finger. “RGF.”

“Relative Growth Funds.”

“I assume so.”

Viz glanced over as Gage held up one of the flowcharts he’d recovered.

“And HI is Hani Ibrahim?”

“It was always in the biggest letters and always framed by an input box as though he was the mastermind behind Relative Growth Funds. But if Abrams is right, that Ibrahim’s theories were just beautiful nonsense, it can’t be true. No one could build an investment strategy on them.”

Viz smiled. “He gave me that speech a few times. Hell, I didn’t know what the uncertainty principle was, or entanglement, or fractals. I’m not sure Abrams even noticed that I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.” Viz laughed. “I understood what he said about it being impossible to predict the unpredictable only because I learned what a tautology was when I took sociology.”