Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

“Let me have your cell phone,” Rahmani said. Gage handed it to him, then Rahmani gestured with the gun barrel toward the chair.

“Suddenly you’re looking a whole lot less like a victim,” Gage said to Ibrahim as he walked the ten feet and sat down.

Gage found himself facing a hospital bed across the room, canopied by an electric-powered patient lift. At its foot stood a small chest of drawers. A door opposite the entrance led to a bathroom.

“I was once a victim,” Ibrahim said, “but now I’m the judge and the executioner.” He looked over at Rahmani and then cocked his head toward the door. Rahmani stepped through it and locked it from the other side. “But not of people.”

Gage surveyed the blank walls and concrete floor. It was as bare and hollow as a monk’s cell.

“You a prisoner in here, too?” Gage asked, looking over at Ibrahim.

“I’ve been deprived of my liberty, as you can see, but that has little to do with my living conditions.”

“And what I’ve been trying to find out is why,” Gage said.

Ibrahim flushed. “Don’t pretend to be naive.” He pointed at the computer monitor centered on his desk. “I’ve had quite a bit of time to research you. You’re not a naive man.”

Ibrahim reached over, touched his mouse, and then pressed the page-down key. The monitor flashed with a series of news articles about Gage, many of them the same ones that Hennessy’s daughter had printed out for her mother. Following those were excerpts of transcripts of old court testimony. The last image on the screen was a twenty-year-old photograph of Orlando Ferrada, the imprisoned and tortured Chilean economist that Gage had rescued on behalf of Milton Abrams.

“I’m certain that you know who put me in this condition,” Ibrahim said, “and I’m certain that you know why.”

Gage shook his head. “I don’t know why. That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to find out.”

“It’s simple. Hennessy framed me to make himself the hero of post-9/11 America and to advance his career.”

“For me,” Gage said, “that’s still a question, not an answer I’m ready to accept. What makes you think he’s the one that framed you? “

Ibrahim didn’t answer at once. Gage watched him rock his head side to side, as though deciding whether it was worth the effort. He straightened in his wheelchair and adopted what seemed to Gage to be an air of professorial distance.

“The interesting thing about a frame,” Ibrahim finally said, drawing a square with his forefingers in front of Gage’s face, “is that there’s nothing within the four corners. It’s like a skeleton without flesh.”

Ibrahim lowered his hands. “Did you read my indictment?”

“What there was of it.”

“See. A frame. A skeleton without flesh. Overt Act One: Ibrahim conspired with Unindicted Coconspirator A to establish a Manx trust. Overt Act Two: Ibrahim conspired with Unindicted Coconspirator B to wire transfer funds from the Manx trust to the bank account controlled by a Hong Kong law firm. Overt Act Three: Ibrahim conspired with Unindicted Coconspirator C to wire funds from the account controlled by the Hong Kong law firm to a U.S. State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization.”

Gage shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve done the research and know as well as I do that indictments don’t-“

“Inform someone what they’re being charged with?”

”-detail every fact. That’s not their function,” Gage said, annoyed both by Ibrahim’s childish evasion and by his pedantic sneer.

“Don’t play dumb,” Gage said. “They told you exactly what you were charged with.” He looked hard at Ibrahim. “How long did it take you to figure out who the unindicted coconspirators were?”

Ibrahim tapped the side of his head. “I knew as soon as I looked at the indictment.”

“And the Hong Kong law firm?”

“The same.”

“And the terrorist organization?”

Ibrahim waved Gage off. “This is silly. I’m not an idiot.”

“Didn’t it cross your mind to wonder why you were even aware of the names of the Hong Kong law firm and the terrorist organization?”

Ibrahim didn’t respond.

“And to wonder about who told them to you? And about why they told you? And about what they did to connect you to them?”

Ibrahim’s brows furrowed and his eyes darted around the room, but he didn’t answer.

Gage pushed on. “It’s not the guy who finds the evidence who does the framing, it’s the guy who plants it.”

Ibrahim’s eyes flickered upward. It seemed an unconscious gesture on Ibrahim’s part, but Gage got a piece of the answer he was looking for.

Ibrahim clenched his jaw and shook his head.

“It was Hennessy.” Ibrahim jabbed his finger at Gage as though he was Hennessy’s stand-in or proxy. “It was Hennessy who was out to get me. And when the criminal case collapsed under the weight of his idiocy, he put me on a chartered flight to London.” Ibrahim’s voice rose. His finger now thumping the desktop. “And then onto a military flight to Saudi Arabia so his helpers could rip off my flesh in order to put some meat on the skeleton.”

Gage reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the photo he had discovered inside Hennessy’s notebook and slid it on the desktop toward Ibrahim.

Ibrahim’s eyes narrowed as he focused on it, then he said, “It’s a fake.”

“Not all of it,” Gage said. “And I think Hennessy understood which part was real.”

Ibrahim nodded as he stared at the photo.

“I don’t remember this being taken,” Ibrahim said. “I’d probably passed out. But I know where and approximately when they took it.” He rubbed his finger over the area of the photo showing where the rope bound his ankles. “You can see they still needed to restrain my feet, so my spine hadn’t been broken yet.”

Gage winced and for a moment regretted the aggression he’d displayed.

“I don’t understand how one human being could do that to another,” Gage said, shaking his head and looking down at the picture. He looked up again. “What were they trying to do to you when that happened?”

Ibrahim shrugged. “It’s not important. Let’s just say that torture isn’t an exact science and they ended up accomplishing more than they intended.”

“Which was what?”

Ibrahim’s face flushed again. “I told you. A confession. But once they’d broken me in two, I was no good to them. Testimony from a man whose body they destroyed wouldn’t be convincing.” He pounded the arm of the wheelchair. “A witness they have to roll into court is useless.”

Gage pointed at the newspaper lying next to Ibrahim’s body in the photograph. “Who do you think superimposed this?” Gage asked.

“Where’d you get this photo?”

“It was among Hennessy’s things. Someone forged it and gave to him in the hours before he died.”

Ibrahim shrugged. “How should I know?”

“Maybe you should think about it.”

Gage watched Ibrahim’s eyes make their darting motions again.

“And about who could’ve gotten hold of the original.”

Ibrahim’s eyes fixed on the blank far wall above his bed, then went vacant.

“And about why those people wanted to convince not only Hennessy that you were dead, but those who were tracking him or who later took up his search.”

Ibrahim blinked and looked back at Gage.

“If Hennessy wasn’t behind what was done to me,” Ibrahim said, “what did he have to feel guilty about?”

Gage shook his head. “Your question contains its own answer. He figured out that he’d been used to frame you. That’s why he started searching. But he discovered something along the way, something he was desperate to tell Abrams about.”