Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

“But to do that will require that I disclose some matters that demand not just discretion on your part, but absolute confidentiality.”

“Of course I-“

“Not so fast. At some point it may mean going to jail.”

Roberts’s brows furrowed. “You haven’t committed a crime, have you?”

Wallace shook his head. “Not yet. It’s more in the realm of state secrets, but eventually there may be-there will be-hearings about my conduct. What I knew. When I knew it. Who stood to gain. Who stood to lose.”

“Maybe you should go to Congress now. Isn’t there some procedure-“

“There’d be too much danger of triggering precisely what I’m trying to avoid.”

Roberts shifted his body more toward Wallace, who felt the couch sag and rebound under his weight. “You’re being a little too cryptic.”

Wallace nodded. “According to Milton Abrams…” He watched Roberts struggle to repress a display of disgust. “We are on the verge of an attack on our economy.”

“Why should you believe Abrams? “

The distain in Roberts’s words made it sound to Wallace as if Roberts had asked, Why should you believe the Jew? For all his biblical wisdom, Wallace recognized that one of Roberts’s failings was that he loved Jews only in the abstract, in the way one pities stray dogs awaiting euthanasia at the pound: precious, but doomed to the terrors of the Apocalypse. In the concrete present, in the flesh and blood and black hair and dark eyes and Semitic noses, they were unredeemed Christ killers.

“We’ve confirmed most of what he’s saying.”

“Most?”

“Most. If I knew for certain, I’d have already found a way out of this and acted on it.”

“I see.”

Roberts pointed at the carpet under Wallace’s feet and they slid down to their knees.

“Dear Lord, please guide your servant Cooper Wallace as he faces the challenges of his office. Thou has created the great United States and it has grown according to Thy will and Thou has sent this good and courageous man to lead it. May he be as confident as a sleepwalker led by Thee through a minefield toward the Promised Land. Thou has always granted victory to those most worthy. Though we see but through the glass darkly, Thou sees all.”

Roberts paused for a long moment, and then said, “Amen.”

Wallace eased himself back onto the couch. Roberts pushed his hand down onto the edge of the cushion, struggling to jack his body up from the floor. He grunted as he pulled one knee up. Wallace stood and reached down a hand. Roberts accepted it and then rocked forward, leveraging himself high enough to slide onto the cushion. He leaned back and straightened his suit jacket. Wallace unbuttoned his.

“In… the end,” Roberts said, his breathing heavy from the exertion, “all… we can do… is let the invisible hand of God… work through us.”

Wallace gazed at the bulbous red face-one not of a holy man, but of a glutton-and felt a natal rage rising within him and an inarticulate thrashing: at himself for not listening to President McCormack, and at the sudden meaninglessness of the world, his faith, and the faith of his father, now seeming more like fog, than light.

“And if we’re wrong,” Wallace said, “He forces us to walk into hell on a road we’ve paved with our good intentions.”

Roberts smiled his Sunday-morning-let-us-read-from-Scripture smile. “That’s what our faith is for, to bear us forward in the face of our doubts.” He raised a finger. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me.”

Wallace stared and stared and stared at Roberts until his beatific smile faded into one of awkward uncertainty, and then asked, “The question is not whether God is with me, Manton. But whether you are.”

Gage held his breath as the teleconference monitor in the situation room flashed. He had no reason to trust General Shi Rong-bang, now appearing on the screen with Faith sitting to his left. He’d already guessed what General Shi planned to do with Old Cat once he’d served his purposes, but was terrified of what Shi would do with Faith once she’d served hers.

Standing against the wall behind Wallace, Casher, and Abrams, Gage could see two sheets of paper lying on the table in front of General Shi. It was clear that he intended for them to be seen, and they all knew that the discussion would end with them.

For a moment Gage felt grateful that Ibrahim had broken down, and hoped that the catatonic world of nothingness he now occupied felt safer than the reality that would’ve confronted him here.

Gage watched Faith translate the introductions, her eyes staring back at him. He could feel his heart beating, and knew it was doing so in time with hers. The official PLA translator on the opposite side of General Shi nodded as Faith reached the end of each sentence.

General Shi sat without expression, monklike in his impassivity, his unadorned uniform sagging on his body.

Gage had listened in on the earlier discussion between Abrams on one side and the head of the Chinese Central Bank on the other and knew what both sides had come to understand about the origins of the crisis.

Except that Abrams hadn’t disclosed that Minsky was dead and that his secrets about what would trigger the collapse, and how to stop it, had died with him.

“Mr. Vice President,” General Shi began, “we both know that to a large extent, the resolution to this crisis rests with you.” He waited for Faith to translate, and then continued. “All we have to offer is our cooperation, but there is a condition.”

Wallace didn’t respond.

“My single concern,” Shi continued, “is with the stability of the People’s Republic of China. And there is only one way to end the current troubles, short of violent suppression: punishment of those responsible for the crimes committed against the people of China. I have a much freer hand in the matter than you, for China is not a nation of laws. As long as I have the power, I’ll decide what a crime is and how it will be punished. I’ll decide what a contract is. I’ll decide who owns what. You don’t have that power. Your wrists are bound by legal handcuffs.”

Shi paused, but not as though he was waiting for an answer, then said, “I used to be jealous of the American legal system, but now I see that when law and justice diverge, you are helpless to act.”

Gage suspected that Shi was only jealous in the abstract.

In the concrete, he’d always wanted-needed-the power.

“Assuming we come to an agreement,” Shi said, “I’ll use my authority to abrogate the contract between the Central Committee and the Group of Twelve. The bonds will remain in the hands of the Chinese government. That way, they will maintain their value. That act, however, will leave the Relative Growth Funds naked, with no security to back up its trillions of dollars of obligations.”

Gage saw Abrams’s body tense, and knew what he was thinking. The Chinese could walk away with both the bonds and all the assets purchased with the Relative Growth money.

Abrams cast a glance at Wallace, as if to ask whether the vice president understood the implications.

Wallace nodded without looking over.

“I think it’s time for you to tell us what you want,” Wallace said.

Shi held up one piece of paper in his left hand. “This is a list of our Group of Twelve.” He held up the other sheet in his right hand. “This is your group of twelve, including the CEOs of your old company, Spectrum, along with that of RAID and ten others who’ve paid the largest bribes in China and poisoned our people.”

Shi lowered his left hand and turned the sheet facedown on the table.