by donning a commandant’s uniform.
“I’m not comfortable accessing Police Judiciaire records and releasing the information to you,” Tabari finally said, “but out of respect for my uncle, I’ll do what I can to help.”
Tabari now raised his head and looked at Gage.
“Which means that I’ll find a discreet way to get you into the places where evidence was found, and in the order it was found, and put you in a position to see what any observer who happened to be in the right place and at the right time would’ve seen.”
Gage recognized in Tabari’s clear-eyed gaze and firm tone that this wasn’t a wink and a nod, a game of let’s pretend. The young man understood moral limits, and he’d found a line etched in marble that he wouldn’t pulverize into sand in order to slide past it.
“And I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.”
CHAPTER 31
Former president Randall Harris fanned out on his desk the blue-, red-, black-, and green-covered proposal binders from the four largest accounting firms in the world. Each outlined its strategy for auditing the assets of Relative Growth Funds. He positioned them along the curve as though he was choosing a paint color for his Rockefeller Center office, rather than evaluating the substance of what was contained inside.
Ronald Minsky, CEO of Relative Growth, sat across from him feeling like a messenger from Kinko’s delivering on-demand documents to a Rottweiler: a beast who’d be able to absorb them in torn chunks, but not comprehend them word by word-except Minsky knew that this dog had perfect instincts.
“These things weren’t written to protect Relative Growth,” Harris said, “but to protect the auditors from us if we someday discover that they’ve screwed up.”
Minsky smiled to himself. Harris’s nose hadn’t failed him.
“Of course they need to protect themselves,” Minsky said. “They can’t be held responsible when they rely on others for information.”
Harris glared at Minsky.
“Cowards. That’s all they are.”
He then pointed at Minsky’s face.
“I’ve got a new Golden Rule for you. Forget the old ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Change it to ‘Always act as though you’re president of the United States.’ He’s got no one he can blame when things go wrong. He has to stand up there and take it. If he doesn’t, he looks like a goddamn putz and history will judge him to be a weakling.”
Minsky felt like pointing out that presidential reputations were matters only of image and had no cash value except in the form of book advances for their memoirs and fees for their memberships on corporate boards. Relative Growth, on the other hand, was about real money: who eats and who doesn’t and, as they both knew, who owns the jet.
Instead, Minsky said, “A lawsuit against them would be pointless. None of them have enough errors and omissions or liability insurance to cover even a fraction of the value of the Relative Growth Funds.”
Minsky watched Harris absorb the thought, and the implication that the audits would only possess the appearance of accountability. He decided that he’d better pet the dog.
“I assumed that’s why you wanted to use the hammer of the ten-million-dollar reward to whoever catches another one’s mistakes.”
Harris shrugged. “Yeah. Right. Except I don’t see much protection in that. My guess is that we’ll be paying ten million extra to all of them. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’re meeting together right now, agreeing on where to leave the bread crumbs.”
“You sound pissed off at them and they haven’t even begun their work.”
Harris pushed himself to his feet.
“You bet your ass I am. These people have never gotten anything right, but I have no choice but to rely on them.”
Harris held out his hand, his thumb pressed against his little finger.
“Enron.”
He moved his thumb to the next finger. “Adelphia.” Then the next. “Global Crossing.” Then the next. “ImClone.”
Then started over. “Sunbeam. Tyco. AIG. Madoff.”
He spread his arms. “And how do we value all of these damn credit derivatives and options and swaps? The economy collapses and all of a sudden we’re freezing our asses off at two trillion dollars below zero.”
“Can’t happen,” Minsky said, shaking his head. “That’s the whole point of the Ibrahim approach. It assumes that a collapse is inevitable and plans for it, profits from it. We’re the only real hedge fund that ever existed. The rest of them rode the rising tide, and when the tide fell, they went out to sea with it. But not us.”
“Save the advertisement. I don’t need to hear the song and dance again. You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, I did. You weren’t listening,” Minsky said, trying to suppress the annoyance he felt at the former president. “It’s not going to happen. It can’t. We’re the gravity that controls the tide. It rises when we say rise and falls when we say fall.”
Minsky thought for a moment.
“Let me put it in concrete terms,” Minsky finally said. “You’re a commodities guy, right?”
Harris nodded.
“You like gold and silver and oil and rice and wheat.”
“All of the above. That’s the real economy. That’s why I watch the prices.”
“Then ask yourself: Why was platinum at twenty-six hundred dollars an ounce a year ago and why it’s at seven hundred dollars an ounce today?”
“You and I both know why. A miner’s strike and electrical blackout in South Africa.”
“And why it will rise to two thousand dollars an ounce three months from now? ”
Minsky watched Harris’s eyes widen.
“How could you know-”
“Because we rule the market, that’s why.”
Minsky watched Harris’s face flush before he spoke.
“You mean that you manipulate it by putting people out of work,” Harris said, “and cutting off the lights by which their kids do their homework when it suits your needs.”
“Our needs. Yours. Mine. Ours. The fact is that there’s a certain quantity of human suffering in the world, we just move it around so peoples’ suffering won’t be in vain.” He smiled. “At least some peoples’ suffering won’t be in vain.” Then he laughed. “Who would’ve thought that the invisible hand would have actual fingers.”
“You really are a scumbag, aren’t you?”
Minsky let his smile harden in place and met Harris’s stare and said, “You know what they say. After the tide’s gone out, what’s left behind is the slime.”
They stood in silence, staring at each other. Finally, Minsky said, “Your State of the Union speeches used to amuse me. ‘The state of the economy is strong… the genius of capitalism… the wealth created by the free market.’ You thought it was all real, but it was just ideological poetry.”
Harris’s face reddened.
“Actually, it wasn’t even that. The invisible hand isn’t a scientific concept, it’s a religious one. It’s Calvinism rewrought. It was John Calvin who declared wealth to be a manifestation of the workings of Providence, and transformed greed and accumulation from the devil’s work into a sign of God’s grace. The words in which he framed it-the invisible hand-are Calvin’s, not Adam Smith’s. So you see that the very first act of modern science of economics was intellectual theft.”
Minsky grinned and spread his hands.
“What am I saying? Economic science, my ass. Smith latched on to the concept in order to define beauty-not
