Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

Gage watched Minsky half smile, unable to suppress his owner’s pride.

Ibrahim grabbed his mouse and navigated to a spreadsheet, but the entries on it weren’t financial. They were a list of business and financial media. The Financial Times, Bloomberg, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, India Market Watch, and Reuters UK, and next to them falsehoods, half-truth headlines, and fact-sounding rumors and the times they’d be planted in the press:

“STRIKE TO SHUT DOWN SOUTH AFRICAN PLATINUM MINES”

“TERRORIST ATTACK ON RUSSIAN GAS PIPELINE THWARTED”

“FRENCH FLOODS CAUSE LOSSES IN THE BILLIONS, MASSIVE SPIKE IN UNEMPLOYMENT”

“EU REVEALS $500B TRADE DEFICIT WITH CHINA”

“GERMANY FALLS BEHIND CHINA IN EXPORTS”

“MAD COW DISEASE FOUND ON DUTCH FARM, CATTLE INDUSTRY THREATENED”

Gage imagined Minsky’s currency trading network then engaging, starting to dump euros from a thousand different trading desks around the world, and speculators watching their monitors, then panicking and rushing to trade their euros for dollars ahead of the collapse, each sale driving the euro lower and lower.

“You think the Group of Twelve are on your side,” Ibrahim said. “A strong dollar means high bond prices. You win, they win. But the truth is that they’ll win, and you’ll lose. The Group of Twelve will be buying the cheap euros you create.”

Minsky smirked. “You don’t really think that I’m going to fall into a trap and reverse our bets. It’ll break Relative Growth.”

Ibrahim ignored the protest.

“In a matter of hours after you begin your attack, NexCo and others will announce that they’re defaulting on their loan payments. Which triggers what? “

Minsky didn’t respond, but his now-fidgeting hands told Gage that he knew the answer.

“The Group of Twelve will surrender to you the treasury bonds that are securing the NexCo property and all of the rest of their assets around the world, and the loans will be paid off.”

Ibrahim looked over at Gage. “See how the setup comes together? The loans on the assets were secured by the bonds, not by the land or buildings or mines. The Group of Twelve will walk away with all Relative Growth’s investors’ money and leave the bonds behind.”

He looked back at Minsky. “But you’ll say to yourself, ‘That’s okay, investors’ rush into dollars makes the bonds worth even more than before,’ but then the Group of Twelve goes public and the world learns that China has shed them all-and then there’s worldwide panic. A rush to sell as bond prices collapse. Then the dollar collapses and Relative Growth is wiped out.”

In Minsky’s wide eyes and licking lips, Gage saw that Ibrahim was telling the truth.

“You think the Group is conspiring with you against the euro,” Ibrahim said, thumping the desk, “but they’re aiming to collapse the dollar you intend to stand on.”

Minsky rose, wobbled, and then steadied himself against the desk. “I’ve got to stop-“

Thudding shoes sounded on the stairs.

Rahmani threw the door open. “The house is surrounded.”

The crack of shattering wood and fracturing glass racketed down the stairwell. Minsky ran toward Rahmani, elbowed him aside, and turned up the steps as if he believed that those breaking in had come to rescue him.

Gunshots exploded.

Gage ran to the door, yanked Rahmani back into the room, then grabbed Minsky’s jacket collar and pulled him backward and down to the floor. He pulled out Rahmani’s gun, reached around the doorjamb, and fired up toward the kitchen. He heard a grunt, then thudding as a body tumbled down the stairs.

Gage slammed the door just before the body fell against it and then he looked back into the room.

Rahmani was kneeling over Minsky, staring at the almost bloodless hole in his chest. Minsky was dead before he’d hit the floor.

Gage glanced over at Ibrahim hunched over in his wheelchair, sobbing, his body trembling, hands covering his eyes; his mind fleeing from the invading chaos of the world.

Footsteps pounded on the floor of the kitchen and dining room above, followed by snapped orders: Freeze-On your knees-Under arrest. Followed by pleas of surrender.

In the silence that followed, a rough voice rumbled from the top of the stairs: “Gage?”

It was Mark Madison, the CIA unit leader.

Gage grabbed Rahmani’s arm, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him away from the line of fire and toward Ibrahim. He then pressed himself against the wall near the door.

Gage turned the knob, pointed the revolver downward, and opened the door a few inches. He backed away as the dead man slumped backward over the threshold and to the floor.

“I’m coming down. The director is on his way.”

Ten seconds later, Madison stepped into the room and over the body, then glanced down at Minsky. His eyes widened as he recognized Ibrahim, but he didn’t say anything. He turned away and knelt down and searched the man lying in the doorway. He pulled out an ID case and opened it.

“You ever hear the name David J. Hicks?” Madison asked.

Gage nodded. “Davey Hicks. He’s a private investigator who’d been tracking Michael Hennessy. He switched to Milton Abrams and then to me.”

Madison rose. “Why’s that? “

Gage pointed his shoulder at Ibrahim. “To find him before he found out the truth and to keep him from talking.”

Madison reached for his radio. Gage slipped the gun into his jacket pocket.

“We’re gonna need some bodies hauled out of here,” Madison said. “And go around to the neighbors and cool them out.” He cocked his head at the sound of rising sirens. “And the local cops, too. Make sure they understand that they don’t want any part of this.”

Gage pointed at Rahmani, then at the door. “Why don’t you head back upstairs.”

Casher appeared at the threshold ninety seconds after Rahmani left, and surveyed the room. His eyes settled on Ibrahim, now sitting numbed and mute, then he looked at Gage.

“He’s not our only problem,” Gage said, pointing down at Minsky.

Gage recounted to Casher what had led Minsky to grasping that he’d been set up by the Group of Twelve and to Gage realizing that only Minsky knew how to stop the automated currency attack.

“But the solution died with him,” Gage said.

Casher looked upward. “I think that was the idea. We caught Wycovsky driving away. Minsky thought Wycovsky had been sent to protect him, but it was just the opposite. The Group of Twelve guessed that once you got to Ibrahim, you’d find out the truth of what they were up to, and they didn’t want it to leave this room.”

Vice President Wallace sat at the head of the conference table in the situation room thinking that the two men whose judgment had guided him throughout his political career might as well be dead: President McCormack was in a coma and former president Harris would likely be implicated in a crime.

Looking across at Abrams and Casher, Wallace realized that the president trusting them more than the secretaries of treasury and state, maybe said more about him than about them, but it was irrelevant. The treasury secretary was already in Davos for the World Economic Forum and the secretary of state was in the midst of global warming treaty negotiations in Japan.

Wallace didn’t want Graham Gage in the room at all, didn’t understand his motives, except maybe the pressure he felt to get his wife out of China. And it made Wallace suspicious, that the route Gage had traveled to discover the scheme had taken him through one twisted mind after another: Hennessy, Ibrahim, Minsky.

In the end, he had to agree with Casher: Everyone who knew what the country was facing must stay together until a decision had been made. It was the only way to ensure that there wouldn’t be a leak that would trigger the collapse. Even the Secret Service agents assigned to Wallace had been sent to the perimeters so nothing could be overheard.