Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

Gage saw Faith swallow and her eyes widen.

Shi looked over at her. “No,” he said, “they haven’t been executed.” He looked back at Wallace. “But at the proper moment they’ll be arrested. I want you to do the same with yours. And I want the Japanese and the British and the Germans and the Taiwanese to arrest the ones on the lists I’ve made up for them.”

Shi looked at Casher and said, “I suspect that your lists and mine contain the same names.”

“You’re asking me to eliminate the cream of worldwide corporate leadership,” Wallace said.

Shi lowered the second sheet and stared at Wallace.

“You mean the scum.” Shi rose. “I’ll need your answer in two hours.”

The screen went dark.

Gage glanced down at his watch, but his mind still saw Faith’s frightened, weary eyes.

Wallace bit his lip as he stared at Abrams, then said, “He doesn’t know that without Minsky we have no hope at all of turning this thing off.”

“And that if even a hint of any of this gets out,” Abrams said, “currencies will begin gyrating, Minsky’s algorithmic trading program will activate, and we’ll go into a black hole.”

Wallace raised his palm toward Abrams. “And we don’t even know if all of this is real.”

Gage felt a flash of rage. Backtracking and pretending it wasn’t real was the way Wallace had chosen to excuse his inaction and to escape responsibility. Abrams looked back and caught Gage’s eye and shook his head as if to say: Give him time.

Wallace stood, and said, “I need to meet with someone for a few minutes.” He then walked out of the room.

“Who?” Gage asked Abrams.

“I think Manton Roberts is waiting in his office.”

Gage rolled his eyes. “Not only is Wallace a coward, but he’s delusional. He thinks Billy Graham is sitting in there, but it’s just a lunatic.”

Wallace tried to focus on Manton Roberts’s face as he came to the end of the story, wanting to read something in the tea leaves of the minister’s eyes. But his focus kept drifting toward Roberts’s fidgeting legs, his thighs squeezing together like a little boy who needed to pee.

“If what they are telling me is true,” Wallace said, “the economy will contract into a black hole, a nuclear winter in which nothing will move on the streets of America.”

But then he noticed Roberts’s widening eyes and scissoring legs moving in tandem and realized that the thought of the world collapsing gave him a kind of sexual excitement.

Wallace watched Roberts’s fists clench, like a child in the instant before fate would decide whether a wish would come true.

And Wallace grasped that Roberts wanted it. Wanted a financial earthquake, an economic Armageddon. He was already imagining himself living in the prophesy, standing on top of the biblically ordained Mount Megiddo, looking beyond a mere seizing of power, of taking control of Congress and the courts and the presidency, but of watching the final battle between the armies of Christ and the Antichrist-and reveling in it.

Roberts pushed himself to his feet. He paced the carpet, his fists pulsing. He turned back toward Wallace.

“Let it happen. You have to let it happen.” Roberts stopped and closed his eyes and held his fingers to his temples. “I see it. This is the Book of Revelations come true.” He opened his eyes again. “Who says that the end times have to begin only with floods and earthquakes and pestilence and disease? Why can’t it begin with a crime we commit against ourselves?”

Wallace felt his body tense. “You mean let the world financial system collapse and let people starve?”

Roberts nodded. “It’s God’s will.”

It was Wallace’s turn to rise, and for the first time he felt like he was truly the president of the United States. He faced Roberts, planting himself like a statue in his path, then jabbed a forefinger into his chest.

“No, Manton. It’s your will, and your will alone.”

Roberts shook his head. His sagging chin and wattle swung, painting the knot of his tie with sweat. He pushed away Wallace’s hand and glared into Wallace’s eyes.

“Don’t trivialize the Word of God into mere opinion,” Roberts said. “He speaks to me. He’s always spoken to me, and this is His Word.”

Roberts pushed by him and mumbled as he strode toward the door.

Wallace could only make out a fragment.

“What about hands?” he asked. “What are you saying about hands?”

Roberts glanced back and said, “I said, it’s now out of your hands.” He then drew his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and reached for the door handle. “In thirty seconds, the whole world will know.”

Wallace ran forward, grabbed the back of Roberts’s jacket, and yanked. Roberts fell back into Wallace. He tried to hold Roberts up, but his body was too heavy to control. Wallace ducked aside as Roberts lost his balance and stumbled toward the center of the room. Wallace covered his eyes as Roberts’s forehead slammed against the edge of the desk, and then opened them in time to see Roberts slump to the carpet.

The door opened. Gage and Casher ran in.

Gage knelt down next to Roberts, feeling for a pulse at his wrist.

Casher’s eyes darted back and forth between Wallace and Roberts, and then fixed on Wallace.

“What happened?” “I had to-“

Gage threw his hand up toward Wallace. “Stop. Don’t say anything.”

“I have to tell-“

Gage reached up and grabbed Wallace’s shirtfront and yanked him down onto the couch, and then pushed himself to his feet and leaned down against him.

“I told you to shut up.”

Gage glanced over his shoulder and said to Casher, “Roberts has a pulse.” Then back to Wallace, “If the Secret Service finds out what happened, they’ll have to arrest you. And we don’t have time to swear in the next in succession.” Then back to Casher, “When the medics get here we’ll say that Roberts fainted from the stress.”

Casher nodded.

Wallace struggled under Gage’s weight. “What if-“

Gage shook Wallace, glaring down at him. “Not… another… word.” He looked over at Roberts, then at Casher. “Where can we put him?”

Casher pointed downward. “There’s a medical facility in the subbasement.”

“Once we get a doctor in here,” Gage said, “lock down the White House. Nobody in. Nobody out.” He looked back at Wallace. “That’s what you were trying to do, right? Keep him from telling the world? “

Wallace nodded.

“Then let’s get him down there before he comes to,” Gage said.

Casher called the operator to send for medical help, and then ran from the room and down the hallway until he spotted a Secret Service agent and ordered him to retrieve a gurney.

Gage had guided Wallace to his desk chair by the time Casher had returned.

Gage glanced at his watch. “Everybody’s waiting.” He pointed at Casher. “You take him with you. I’ll wait here and tell a fable.”

Wallace took in a breath as if preparing to protest. Casher shook his head, then signaled for Wallace to follow him.

When Gage arrived back at the situation room, Wallace was asking Casher, “Do you have the indictments?”

Casher nodded. “And the provisional arrest warrants. You give the order and they’ll be served on Swiss authorities in Davos. Their police are standing by, but they don’t know why yet.”

Abrams gestured toward the chair next to him and Gage sat down. Wallace looked back and forth between them. “Ibrahim?”

Gage shook his head. “Even if we could bring him out of his catatonic state, I’m not sure he knows where any of these traders are located.”

“What can we do? “ Wallace asked.