Gage smiled to himself. Goldie always seemed to know how to finish his thoughts, the same way Faith did. When they had dinner together, they’d all speak in half sentences.
“I don’t know what he did,” Goldie said, “if by that you mean the terrorism part-but I have an idea about how he did it.” She grinned. “And that’s exactly why you came knocking on my door.”
“Don’t make it look so easy to guess my motives,” Gage said. “It’ll damage my self-confidence.”
“I doubt it.”
Goldie clapped her hands, then rubbed them together.
“This is what I think he was up to. Back then, Muslim businesspeople in the U.S. were looking for an offshore tax avoidance structure that was consistent with Sharia law. That means that they’re not allowed to make money on interest. It limits the kinds of investments they can make. But-”
Goldie rubbed her hands together again.
“But what if they could surrender ownership of the assets for a while, let those assets earn whatever money they’re going to earn-and by any means they’re going to earn it-and then have the assets returned to them? ”
Gage worked out the implications of the theory himself: It was the perfect way for someone to finance a terrorist organization without being held criminally responsible. The money was out of their legal control while the crime was being committed and then whatever hadn’t been spent was returned to them afterward.
“I think that Ibrahim realized that the perfect vehicle is what’s called a hybrid company,” Goldie said. “It’s also called a Manx trust-not after the cat, after the island. The Isle of Man. Since the U.S. taxpayer has no control over the company-none, zip, nada-he’s not even a shareholder-he doesn’t have to report to the IRS any profits he makes until the company is closed down and the assets are returned to him.”
“And if they put the money in the hands of an expert in Sharia law,” Gage said, “they could even ensure that the profits won’t be tainted.”
Goldie smiled and nodded. “Exactly. A Muslim tax dodge.”
“And a terrorism financing gimmick.”
Goldie shrugged. “Why not? The boss who runs it can be anywhere that has an Internet connection. Pakistan. Saudi Arabia. Sudan. He just e-mails orders to whoever manages the company’s money on the Isle of Man.” Goldie spread her hands. “So what if the boss gets indicted in the States, the U.S. will never get him.”
“And the investors in the U.S. can claim they didn’t know what was going on.” Gage then realized that the plan came with a built in criminal defense. “And you have two branches of the government working against each other. The IRS saying the American investors don’t control the company and the Justice Department claiming they do. No way a jury would convict them. And even if it did, an appeals court would have to overturn the verdict.”
Goldie squinted up at the ceiling for a moment, then asked, “Would that apply to whoever suggested the structure in the first place? Like Ibrahim?”
“As you said, why not? Ibrahim could also claim he didn’t know what the structure would really be used for- and I suspect that’s why the U.S. Attorney couldn’t pursue the case.”
Goldie raised her hands as if trying to restrain his movement down a path.
“That’s only if I’m right about what he was up to,” she said.
“But you think you’re right.”
“It’s a little like reading tea leaves, but I’ll tell you why I think I am.”
Goldie then leaned toward him as though to pass on some gossip.
“I gave a seminar at the Harvard Law Islamic Finance Project eleven years ago. It was right after I got hired to run our center. I spotted Ibrahim walking in near the tail end of my presentation-have you ever seen him?”
Gage shook his head.
“Very distinctive guy. About five-five, solid build, mustache. Looks like a character out of Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon.” She flashed a smile. “You sort of expect him to appear in black and white and wearing a fez.”
Goldie reached again to the bookshelf and withdrew a Sloan School of Management brochure dated ten years earlier. She opened it toward the middle, then turned it toward him and pointed at a portrait.
“That’s him,” she said.
“Can I keep this?”
Goldie nodded, then said, “I think he must’ve showed up to meet somebody who was attending the seminar. He looks at me, or maybe just my name plate on the table, and gives me a funny look. The kind I usually get from Muslim men, like ‘What’s a Jewish girl doing in a place like this?’ Then he sits down in the back row. A couple of minutes later, I’m talking about the problems of control and taxation and how to deal with profits versus capital gains, and I spot him taking notes.
“After he got arrested, the FBI came by and interviewed everybody. The two who talked to me asked questions about Islamic finance and about the prohibition against making money on interest and about offshore structures. They didn’t use the phrase ‘hybrid company,’ but they described the structure and asked about all the different places in the world where one could establish one. I later heard rumors that Ibrahim’s gimmick was connected to the Isle of Man. And back in those days, that was the main reason people set up there.”
“But not anymore?”
“Nope. After the Ibrahim story broke, the IRS changed the rules. All the U.S. lawyers in the offshore tax planning business were pissed. They’d been making a hundred grand off of every hybrid they set up, tens of millions of dollars a year for a dozen years.”
“A cash cow.”
“Without the overhead of running a dairy. And there wasn’t a one of them who wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to put a bullet in Ibrahim’s head.”
“Or already has?”
Goldie raised her eyebrows. “That crossed my mind. Maybe it wasn’t a lawyer who pulled the trigger, but somebody had to have. Ibrahim was a guy who needed, if not to be seen, to be heard. He needed to be recognized as a genius.”
“So you don’t understand his silence.”
She shrugged. “Nobody does, but then again, dead men don’t do much talking.”
CHAPTER 22
Gage’s encrypted cell phone rang as he drove from the MIT campus toward the western edge of Boston. It was Alex Z calling from San Francisco. “I checked Ibrahim for friends and associates,” Alex Z said. “And there weren’t many outside of a Muslim men’s group that met at his house. A member has a blog and mentioned Ibrahim’s first name and MIT, so it was easy to ID him.”
“Find out if the U.S. Attorney up here filed tax fraud cases against any of them. I need to know who was involved. Ibrahim’s was the only name I found in the news articles.”
Gage heard the rapping of Alex Z’s fingers on his keyboard.
“Ibrahim sounds like a real multitasker,” Alex Z said, “Terrorist financing, abstract financial theories, and tax evasion.”
“I’m starting to think they’re all part of the same package,” Gage said, “or maybe different passages in the same maze.”
“I just entered one of the names in the Federal Case Index,” Alex Z said. “Hold on… nothing.”
“Try the rest and call me back.”
The snowfall let up as Gage headed back across the Harvard Bridge and down Massachusetts Avenue. He cut right at Symphony Hall and drove into the multistory garage, then up the circular floors until he located a dry space between two vans. He climbed out and knelt down next to the car to check for a GPS tracking device. He worked his way around the perimeter and the wheel wells, then checked the engine compartment from below and above.
Nothing.
Whoever had been hired to replace Gilbert hadn’t gotten on to him yet. He knew they would, and could, anytime they felt like it. All they had to do was wait for him to show up at the few places connected with Ibrahim, Abrams, or Hennessy-assuming they were following him because he’d met with Abrams, and assuming that they were following Abrams because of Hennessy.
