Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

Wallace nodded. “Or to force us to charge them in U.S. courts.”

“The Chinese are focusing on these specific ones-including the CEOs of RAID and Spectrum-because of the impact the allegations would have on world markets. Our estimate, and it’s only an estimate, is that the Dow will drop about a third in the first hours of trading after they make the announcement and display their proof to the world.”

“Have they disclosed their evidence to you?”

Casher shook his head. “But we suspect that they’ve been able to fill in more boxes on their flowchart than we have on ours.”

Wallace thought for a moment, furrowing his brow, then asked, “Is Graham Gage still helping them? And, maybe more importantly, should he be helping a foreign government?”

“To answer your second question first, it’s more complex than that. And as to the first, not that we know of. But let me come back to him.”

“How do you know the threat of exposure is real?”

Casher opened his briefcase and withdrew a DVD. “You have something we can watch this on?”

Wallace took it and then rose and opened a pocket door, revealing a small television and DVD player. He turned them on and slipped in the disc. Seconds after he pressed the play button, a dim video activated. It showed a wood-paneled room. Men in Chinese military uniforms sat on one side of a conference table. Men in suits on the other.

Casher stood next to Wallace and pointed at the left side of the screen.

“The uniformed man in the middle is Shi Rong-bang, First-class Senior General. We thought he was fully retired, but it looks like we may have been wrong. Even in retirement, he’s been the conscience of the PLA. He lives like a monk in a place called Heng Shan, Balancing Mountain, in Hunan Province. He hasn’t shown his face in public for a decade.”

Casher moved his finger to the right side.

“His face is blocked by the man next to him, but sitting in the middle on the other side is the Chinese president. He may turn out to be a problem for us since he doesn’t like you any more than you like him.”

Wallace locked his hands on his hips as he stared at the screen.

“The general is doing most of the talking,” Casher said. “The given-what both sides accept as true and is the foundation for what they’re talking about-is the data on the flowchart. Who got what from whom and where the money went.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“Shi is laying out the conditions for the army’s suppression of the rebellion. They both know the police and internal security forces can’t do it. They couldn’t even control Beijing if they had to. Not now. Not with millions of laborers in tent camps on the outskirts of the city.”

“But the military is as corrupt as the rest.” “The ideologues in the PLA are ready to clean their own house, too.”

“Then what’s the condition?”

“The main one is they want the Group of Twelve-“

“The what?”

“The Group of Twelve. It’s the nickname for the People’s Foreign Investment Fund managers. They’re the most powerful corporate leaders in the country. Ten years ago they were tasked with coordinating China’s use of foreign currency reserves. It was modeled on Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, but has even more power.”

“And Shi wants them reined in?”

Casher nodded.

“What are they suspected of?”

Casher reached for the recorder, punched the off and eject buttons, and removed the DVD.

“That’s one of the things that’s assumed by everyone participating in the conversation, but not actually discussed.”

Casher gestured with his head toward the table and they both sat down again.

“And that brings us back to Gage,” Casher said. “Milton Abrams hired him to find out what happened to an ex-FBI agent named Michael Hennessy.”

Wallace nodded. “I know who he is. I was briefed on him years ago after that Muslim professor-“

“Hani Ibrahim.”

”-was nailed for funding the bombing of the Spectrum distribution center in China.” Casher raised his hands. “We’re now not so sure about that.”

“What?” Wallace’s face flushed. “I’m the one who leaned on the FBI to bury that guy.” He thumped the table with his forefinger. “And now you’re telling me he didn’t do it? “

Casher shrugged. “Not yet. We’re pursuing a lead, but we don’t know.”

Wallace lowered his gaze and shook his head. “This is absurd.” Then he sighed and looked up again. “What do we know?”

“We know that Gage is trying to follow a trail through Hennessy to Ibrahim and from Ibrahim to Relative Growth, which Abrams thinks is a multitrillion-dollar fraud.”

“Why don’t you go after Ibrahim yourself?”

“Two reasons. First, we don’t know whether he’s still alive-some things happened to him that it’s better you don’t know about.”

Casher watched Wallace’s eyes widen. He pushed on before Wallace had a chance to form his fears into a question.

“And second, if he’s still alive, we know we’ll spook him. Gage won’t. He’s been able to get the guy who was Ibrahim’s closest friend-Rahmani, a car dealer of sorts-to talk to him when he hasn’t been willing to talk to anyone else. Same thing with Hennessy’s wife and daughter.”

When Wallace looked away and stared at the dark window, opaque but for the reflection of the kitchen against it, Casher feared that he’d dumped too much on him at once, and had provoked the paralysis he had feared.

Casher now felt sorry for the man, wondering what it must feel like to know with certainty that in a matter of hours he would be transformed by events out of his control from a mere appendix to the presidency, to the body and mind of a nation.

And Casher also thought of himself and felt a shudder of self-revelation: He’d always understood himself as a man who’d never been afraid to pull the trigger, as a marine, as a field operative, as deputy director of the CIA, and as director-but now he grasped that someone else had always loaded the gun and either ordered him, or gave him permission, to fire.

Casher found that he was staring at Wallace, wondering who would emerge from Wallace’s reverie: the corporate executive who built an international corporation, the vice president who seemed to become less and less effective over the two terms, or a man cowering in the shadow of responsibility.

“I don’t want to tell you how to do your work,” Wallace finally said, now looking back at Casher. “But have you considered bringing Gage in and grilling him about what he knows?”

Casher nodded.

“We thought about it, but he’s not the kind of guy who’d give in to grilling and we’re not the only ones who are tracking him. Not only are the Chinese intercepting his calls, but somebody-we don’t know who-has added physical surveillance. It would be tricky to haul him in without being noticed.”

“Doesn’t all that suggest that we’re not the only ones trying to use him to find out what’s going on?”

Casher thought for a moment, then said, “The problem for us and for them is that Gage travels fastest on the tiniest of trails. And we’ve lost him. Maybe the other side has, too. We don’t know.”

“Does that mean you have to sit on your hands?”

“No, we’re pursuing our own leads, but because we don’t know everything Gage knows, they may take us into a minefield.”

You want to go after Wycovsky?” Viz asked as they drove south along the Hudson River toward Manhattan.

“I’m not sure yet,” Gage said. “I’m trying to think through the dynamics. Gilbert threatens Strubb with Wycovsky, the guy who Gilbert is afraid of. But it looks like Gilbert was also reporting to Arndt. That means that he’s probably the underling. The gofer.”