Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

“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 good 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.”

"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?”

“That was Hani’s word,” Rahmani said. “It didn’t sound quite right when I repeated it.”

Two Indian men in their mid-sixties came into view walking along the wet concrete path between the car and windswept water. They squinted for a long moment at the windshield as they passed, but didn’t interrupt their conversation.

Rahmani pointed at their backs.

“Indians are much healthier than us Muslims. They walk and walk. We sit and sit.” He patted his stomach mounding up under his seat belt. “Fat as a pig without the benefit of pork.”

The buzz of his cell phone drew Rahmani’s eyes away from the men. He answered in Arabic, listened, and then hung up and said, “Let’s go.”

Rahmani started the engine, backed up, and merged onto Chestnut Hill Road. Ten minutes later, they looped through the circular driveway of the redbrick Newton City Hall, then headed north up a tree-lined street and pulled into the driveway of a gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial.

Gage recognized the address. It was Rahmani’s house. The countersurveillance effort now seemed amateurish and idiotic: Anyone who’d been watching Rahmani and had lost him would’ve sent people to his home and office to wait for him to show up.

“I have a communications system in the basement,” Rahmani said as they walked inside. “Let’s see if we can get Hani to respond.”

Rahmani led Gage into the kitchen and opened the door to the basement. He reached around the doorjamb, flipped the light switch, and said, “You first.”

Gage shook his head.

“It’s not like I’m planning to take you prisoner,” Rahmani said. “You’re not so interesting to me.”

Gage pointed at the descending wooden stairs.

Rahmani shrugged, took a couple of steps, ducked under the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and continued down. Gage’s shadow caught up to him at the bottom where Rahmani was waiting. It revealed light emerging from under another door. Rahmani opened it, but didn’t invite Gage to walk in first.

Gage stepped in behind him.

Hani Ibrahim looked over from a wheelchair parked in front of a desk at the far end of the room.

Anger mushroomed within Gage’s feeling of surprise at the unexpected discovery, and at the childish smirk with which Ibrahim greeted Gage.

“Aren’t you supposed to yell tag?” Ibrahim said.

“I didn’t think it was a game.”

“Of course it is. Money is nothing but a game.” Ibrahim pointed toward a chair at the side of his desk. “Have a seat.”

Gage shook his head. He wanted to stay positioned between Rahmani and the door.

“You’ll sit,” Rahmani said, his tone sounding less like an order and more like a declaration of a future state of affairs.

Gage looked over. Rahmani was pointing a small revolver at his chest.