“And your bullshit is calling it profit, instead of interest.”
Rahmani raised his cup, took a sip, and then said, “Exactly.”
“How does Fred fit-”
“I’ll tell you. One evening, Fred explains how a hybrid company works. He says that we’re not shareholders. We don’t own it. We’re what they call guarantors. We’re responsible for the debts-”
“Or the profits-”
”-when the company closes down. In the meanwhile it’s completely out of our control. Com-pletely. Fred then asks whether it’s okay if the hybrid loans out money and earns interest and the value of the company increases, and then pays it all to us as profit when the company closes down.”
Rahmani held up a forefinger. “Remember. It’s not our company when it’s earning the interest. The money is out of our hands and Sharia law doesn’t apply.”
“And that also means,” Gage said, “that the profits at the end could be considered capital gains instead of regular income.”
Rahmani grinned. “You’re good. Really good. Fifteen percent federal tax rate, instead of thirty or more. And we don’t have to take the gains until the company goes out of existence. It’s like a 401(k), except offshore and you can put in as much money as you want.”
“It should’ve sounded too good to be true.”
Rahmani shrugged. “Nothing ever sounds too good to be true at the time. At that point we’re on our feet dancing, and the idiots that we were, we dance right down the path Fred laid out for us.”
“And the rest is history.”
“If the terrorist financing allegation hadn’t come up, we’d probably still be doing it.”
Framed by 9/11, Gage knew that there was no way Hennessy, or any FBI agent or U.S. Attorney, would’ve found Rahmani and Ibrahim’s defense credible. No one sets up a tax fraud as a joke.
But there was still the question of where the money went that these men had put into the hybrid.
“How was the money used for terrorist financing?” Gage asked.
Rahmani shrugged again. “We never learned for sure.” He gestured toward Ilkay. “His wife was close to Fred’s wife, Ibadat. You know she’s a Muslim from China, right?”
Gage nodded. “Xinjiang.”
“Ibadat told Ilkay’s wife that Hennessy leaned on her about a Muslim separatist group that bombed a U.S.- owned company over there ten years ago. Spectrum. Vice President Wallace’s old company. Hennessy implied that money from the hybrid was used to finance the bombing.” Rahmani rapped on the tabletop with his knuckle. “But I never saw or heard of a single piece of evidence that proved it.”
Gage suspected that pressure to prosecute Ibrahim had come from Wallace and that Ibrahim’s deportation must’ve been a compromise: face saving for the FBI and a way for Ibrahim to protect his wife. And the cover-up of the details served everyone’s interest: The FBI prevented the widespread use of the technique and Ibrahim didn’t get exposed to the Muslim community around the world as a heretic.
Gage now also understood that Rahmani’s “May Allah grant…” was an act. The man liked Ibrahim, didn’t blame him for anything, not even for the tax bill. And Rahmani had long ago acknowledged to himself that he’d brought that on himself.
“Did you tell all of this to Tony Gilbert when he came by?”
“He didn’t seem all that interested. All he wanted was to find Fred. Or so he said.”
“You help him?”
Rahmani shook his head. “How could I? I don’t know where Fred is or even if he’s still alive. And even if I did know, I wouldn’t have told him. Gilbert was like a pit bull wagging his tail. You don’t know which end to believe, so you keep your hands in your pockets.”
Gage smiled. “I thought Muslims weren’t supposed to touch dogs at all.”
“Religious opinion is divided on the subject.” Rahmani smiled back. “It’s sort of like tax law.”
“But you settled with the government.”
“We all decided it would be better for us and for Fred if the story didn’t stay in the news-”
“And the details didn’t come out.”
Rahmani rocked his head side to side, and then nodded and took another sip of his coffee.
“And now you know my story,” Rahmani said. “What’s yours?”
“Hennessy may have been killed-” Rahmani flopped a hand toward Gage, cutting him off. “That’s his story. I want to know yours.”
“Personally, I don’t have one. Professionally, someone asked me to locate Fred and find out what really happened.”
“Maybe you should go knock on the door of the hedge fund. Rumors in the financial pages say that he’s their secret weapon. Maybe they know where he is.” Rahmani smiled. “Maybe they have him in an old missile silo, ready to shoot down their competition.”
Gage recognized that the maybes were a test to divine his intent.
“It seems a long way around to connect two points,” Gage said. “And I’m not sure that whatever he’s doing now-or is alleged to be doing now-is relevant to what happened then.”
In fact, Gage believed the opposite, but the more narrow the focus, and the more Rahmani believed that exonerating Ibrahim was Gage’s aim, the more likely he’d help.
“It seems to me,” Rahmani said, “that your real interest is not in Fred, but in what happened to Hennessy.”
“Only in the sense that his death provoked my client into wanting to know whether or not Hennessy was right about Fred being framed and whether that had something to do with Hennessy’s death.”
Rahmani smiled, then looked over at the cafe owner and called out, “Ilkay, turn on the music. Mr. Gage here seems to want to dance.”
Gage shook his head.
“It’s true that I wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a suspicion that Hennessy had been murdered. And it’s true that the person who hired me wants to know whether he’s dead because he intended to expose something-either about the past or about the future.” Gage raised his right hand as if to swear an oath. “But at this point, all of the evidence I have points to the past.”
When he said the word “evidence,” Gage felt a little like Bill Clinton manipulating the word “is” or George Bush redefining the word “torture.”
“I can see you’re not an idiot, Mr. Gage, so you’ve no doubt noticed that there are similarities between a hybrid company and a hedge fund. Your money is out of your control for a period of time, you don’t know what they’re doing with it, and you don’t have the right to know.”
Gage drew back. “You’re not suggesting that the Relative Growth Funds is engaged in terrorist financing?”
“Not with its board dominated by the last three Republican administrations. All I’m saying is that the past may not be all that distinct from the present.”
“Only one man knows the answer.”
Rahmani nodded. “But if I was that man, I’d want to know who’s really asking the question.”
Gage leaned forward and rested his chin on his cupped hands, trying to give the appearance of deliberating over whether to reveal the name of his client. There was no way he’d say it was Abrams, but he thought of a partial truth that would satisfy them both.
“You married?” Gage asked.
“Of course.”
“You have children?”
Rahmani paused and stared into Gage’s eyes, and then said, “I see. This must be very painful for Hennessy’s family.” He shrugged. “The problem is that Fred agreed to deportation to protect his wife and the group and for that reason broke off contact with us after he left.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. Gage didn’t think it was safe to pressure him any further.
“I can try to get a message to him,” Rahmani finally said, “but I may never know whether it gets delivered or even whether he’s still alive to receive it.”
Driving away from the cafe, Gage found that he believed Rahmani, but wasn’t convinced of the man’s
