Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

Bodies stirred in their seats, and pairs of hands fidgeted on the table.

“I mean, what can I do?” Wallace said. “I don’t even know if all of this is true. I mean…”

Gage pushed himself to his feet, feeling a revulsion he’d never felt before.

Ibrahim had been broken. Hennessy was dead. Batkoun Benaroun was paralyzed. Gage had seen the look in Minsky’s eyes moments before he died. And Old Cat would be getting a bullet in the back of the head. It was true. Every bit of it was true-and Faith was in the hands of General Shi.

Gage glared down at Wallace, his disgust rising like lava in his throat.

“There is only one thing you can do.”

Wallace stiffened. “And what exactly is that?”

Gage pointed at the monitor as if General Shi were still visible on the screen and holding up the lists.

“Do what he wants and then stop the world.”

“What… what do you mean, stop the world?”

Gage looked at Abrams. “You explain it to him. I’m going to get my wife.”

This is the captain speaking.”

Bodies stirred in the shadowed airplane cabin. Gage squinted at his watch. They were still four hours from Beijing, too early for the breakfast wake-up announcement.

“I need to advise you that while we will land at Beijing as scheduled, your credit and ATM cards will not function. The entire international financial network has been shut down.”

Hands reached up to turn on reading lights as if they would illuminate what had been said.

“Those of you who have cash with you should have no problem. We’ve been advised that the crisis will soon pass and everything will return to normal within thirty-six hours.”

Gage found his palms pressing against his pants pockets, filled with fifty thousand dollars’ worth of yuan, euros, and dollars that Casher had delivered to him at Dulles Airport.

“The travel advisory issued by the State Department has been withdrawn as far as Beijing is concerned. The city is calm and the revolt in the Western Provinces is nearly over.”

A click seemed to end the captain’s communication, but then he came back on.

“We’ll be routing BBC News through video channel eleven.”

Gage pressed the remote, but didn’t put on the headphones. He knew what the pictures and video would mean; he didn’t need it explained to him. The screen showed a Forex trading monitor with the currency values unchanging. The camera drew back. Farther and farther, until it encompassed a silent trading floor. Hundreds of dealers sitting in silence.

The image switched to a video of downtown Chicago, wool-coated pedestrians staring at a television in a department store window, then to the streets of New York and San Francisco and a pub in London and a cafe in Paris.

Everyone was looking up at monitors showing the vice president sitting at a desk, not standing to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, their faces bearing the expressions of people just told that nuclear war had begun.

A digital clock appeared in the lower right corner, its red numbers counting the seconds toward noon.

Gage heard gasps from those sitting around him, as though the captain’s announcement had been part of a dream and they’d woken up to find it matched reality, as though they were experiencing jamais vu: their minds still trying to deny what they knew to be true.

The camera zoomed in on Wallace’s face. He glanced to his left, toward someone not visible on the screen, and nodded as 12:00 showed on the clock.

That was the moment when the world had stopped.

The screen divided as Wallace spoke. His face on the left side, a list of the world’s stock and commodity exchanges on the other, the word “closed” appearing next to each name.

The image of the right side changed. A video of PLA troop carriers rolling into Chengdu and laborers and farmers walking, or riding in open-bed trucks, out of the city, returning home.

Then to Davos. The Swiss police herding dozens of suited and handcuffed men and women into buses for the ride to the airport and delivery to the Schloss Thorberg prison in Bern and later extradition to their home countries for trial. A breaking news alert flashed at the bottom of the screen: “Trading on world’s stock markets and futures exchanges suspended for forty-eight hours as corporate boards replace arrested officers.”

Now both images faded. Replaced by a head shot of Manton Roberts and the headlines: “Massive brain hemorrhage. Fainted at the White House during prayer.” Followed by his dates of birth and death.

And Gage knew that the truth would be buried with him.

When Gage walked from the gate into the terminal, he was met by a funereal silence. The duty-free shops were open, but empty. The Starbucks was crowded with huddled Americans and Europeans. Lines extended from the windows of the currency exchanges, but the clerks just stared forward, unmoving, as if waiting for someone to tell them what yuan or dollars or euros were now worth.

Passing by a row of chairs, Gage spotted the front page of the English language China Daily lying on the floor. He stopped and looked down at it. A man gazed back at him from the bed of a troop carrier, tied to a stake. Even before Gage spotted the headline bearing the man’s name, he guessed it was Old Cat. Chinese characters were painted on the sign above his head. Gage didn’t know what they said, but he knew what they meant: Old Cat’s heroism had been reduced to mere criminality and he’d been taken to the killing fields.

A broom reached past him and swept the newspaper into a long-handled dustpan that then lifted it into a wheeled trash barrel. As Gage watched the forlorn image of Old Cat drop into the garbage, he felt like grabbing the oblivious janitor by the front of his shirt and tossing him in, too.

But he needed to save himself for another fight that would soon begin.

Gage heard thumping footsteps behind him, maybe passengers running to make a connection. Then he felt stiff cloth brush his shoulder and found himself bracketed by PLA soldiers. Without glancing over his shoulder, he knew that at least one more was behind him.

“Start walking,” one of them said in English. “General Shi is waiting.”

Gage saw two others poised at the opening to the long hallway leading to immigration and passport control.

With his free hand, Gage touched his pants pocket holding part of the money Casher had given him. He now understood the director’s generosity: It was part of a setup to deliver him into the hands of General Shi.

But why?

Because only one person other than Casher and Wallace knew the truth about how Roberts had died and the New York Times was just one phone call from a headline reading: “Acting U.S. President Murders Evangelical Leader.”

And it wasn’t that Casher had any interest in protecting Wallace. His motive was entirely patriotic, and it had made him bedfellows with General Shi.

The two soldiers opened a side door, and the five marched Gage down outdoor stairs to a jeep that then sped them across the tarmac to the rear stairs of a waiting jet. They held him in the kitchen long enough to strip him of his money, his cell phones, and his identification, and then opened the door to the main cabin.

Faith turned toward him as he stepped inside. They met halfway down the aisle. They were still in a silent embrace when a door opened and General Shi shuffled toward them from the cockpit. They separated. Shi reached out an arthritic hand. Gage left it untouched.

“The blood is too fresh,” Gage said. “I saw the photo of Old Cat.”

Shi lowered it and said, “I didn’t expect to hear that from you.” Gage was surprised to find that Shi spoke English. “From your calls that we intercepted, I imagined that you were a man who understood historical necessities. Old Cat understood and went willingly.”