“Now it makes sense,” Abrams said. “I get it.”
“Now what makes sense?”
“I got a call from CIA Director Casher yesterday. He’d also called the vice president and the secretary of state saying we may want to respond to the big Chinese media blitz at the Davos World Economic Forum this week, accusing the U.S. of trying to undermine their economy. He’s calling it their Whine, with a ‘wh,’ and Dine Strategy.”
Gage now wondered whether it was the CIA that was intercepting Faith’s calls and if they’d gotten on to her because they’d been listening in on him. He stared out of the kitchen window at telephone and power lines illuminated by a streetlight and swaying in the breeze, and imagined the air around him crisscrossed with signals, some intersecting, some dodging and bending and fighting off attacks.
“I don’t think it’s entirely whine,” Gage said. “We’ve gathered almost enough information to get the CEOs of RAID and Spectrum and a dozen others indicted for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and I suspect the CIA has filled in the empty boxes on our flowchart.”
“With the underlying threat that we better make some trade concessions or they’ll start painting bull’s-eyes on all of the corporate heads in the U.S.”
“And Europe.”
“If they start naming names and banks and accounts and amounts,” Abrams said, “the Hong Kong stock market will crash the next morning, followed by the rest of the exchanges one time zone at a time.”
“I take it that Casher didn’t mention that part.”
“No. He just said to stand by for an update.”
“Why was he talking to Wallace instead of the president?”
“I wondered the same thing, then I saw on the news that today is the president’s annual physical. After that he’ll be exercising with schoolkids and then giving a speech announcing a new commission on obesity.” Abrams snorted. “If I was him I’d worry more about our gorging on debt rather than our gorging on fried chicken.”
Gage didn’t respond. He wasn’t in the mood for either an economic tirade or sarcasm, not with Batkoun Benaroun lying in a Marseilles hospital with a bullet lodged next to his spine, the latest in a trail of casualties that might lead to Abrams’s doorstep.
Might lead.
Now Gage wasn’t so certain. He looked through the kitchen door at the dining room table. Only then did he hear the hum of the heater and the hair dryer.
“Let me call you back,” Gage said. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“Are you any closer to finding Ibrahim?” Abrams asked.
“That’s what I’m in the middle of.”
“You’re being cryptic again.”
“Let’s keep it that way, at least until I’ve found him.”
Gage disconnected and walked over and inspected Hennessy’s notebook. The narrow opening had widened as the surrounding sheets had dried. He retrieved tweezers from the bathroom and tilted the top edge of the notebook toward the lamp next to the table and reached into the space and tugged at the square of paper. He felt it pull free from the opposite side, then he worked it back and forth up the gap. First a white glossy border appeared, the gray of concrete, then the black of leather shoes and laces, then the brown of socks and cuffs, the slacks splotched with water or The photograph slipped free of its sheath. It was blood.
Gage stared at the mutilated body. Its arms bound with wire that cut into the skin. Its shirt torn exposing a chest pocked with burns. The slacks pulled down to its knees. But the face was untouched, eyes dulled with death, mouth open as if he’d died with a last gasp.
Gage opened the MIT brochure that he’d gotten from
Goldie Goldstein and matched the portrait of Ibrahim to the face in the photo.
It was him. There could be no doubt.
A newspaper lay next to the body. The International Herald Tribune. The photo on the cover showed the French president greeting the world’s central bankers in Marseilles on the day before Abrams was to meet Hennessy.
The message was clear. Hennessy couldn’t have missed it. There was no need for words, for an explanation, or an accusation, or a threat.
In his pursuit of Ibrahim, Hennessy had forced someone’s hand, and they’d used it to torture Ibrahim to death and then aimed the photograph like a sickle to slash at the fragile membrane that had shielded Hennessy from the abyss.
CHAPTER 53
Tabari waited in the hallway of Hospital St. Joseph’s ICU with his uncle’s retired colleagues while Gage entered the room alone. Even in the semidarkness, the sterility shocked him, offended him. The unforgiving stainless steel. The disposable plastics. The starched sheets. The cool air. The caustic stink of disinfectant. The mechanical clicks and beeps-each of them-all of them-belied not only the broken body of a man who’d tried to do good in an evil world, but the tragedy of a wife’s grief and the distress of a rabbi sitting outside, head in hands, whose God had failed him.
Benaroun’s hands lay folded on his chest. His legs, unmoving. His head turned and his eyes blinked at the sound of Gage setting down a chair close to the bed. Benaroun glanced at the remote to raise the bed and Gage eased him up from a flat to an angled position. Benaroun then raised a forefinger and pointed it toward his feet. Gage leaned over and followed its trajectory.
Benaroun’s big toe moved.
Gage felt his chest fill and moisture come to his eyes. He grabbed Benaroun’s shoulder and squeezed.
“First a toe,” Benaroun whispered, “then someday a foot… and then someday a leg.”
Gage’s eyes closed and the tension of the last twenty-four hours seemed to sigh out of him.
A slight smile met his gaze when he opened them again.
“You shouldn’t worry so much,” Benaroun said, his voice now a little stronger. “Bad for the heart.”
“It was as much guilt as worry,” Gage said.
“You have nothing to feel guilty about.” Benaroun licked his lips. Gage dipped an oral swab in a cup of water and then wet them. “They were after me, not you.”
Gage pulled the airplane registration numbers out of his jacket pocket and held them up for Benaroun to see.
Benaroun nodded.
“They’re owned by a Chinese company,” Gage said. “But I don’t know what that means.”
“I do. The Chinese got mining concessions from the South Africa president-“
“For smuggling out the platinum for him.”
Benaroun nodded. “And gold, manganese, and vanadium. He kept the Russians out and gave it all to China.”
“And no money trail back to him.”
“He plans to leave the platinum in Swiss vaults until the Chinese drive up the price.”
“How did you-“
“The promise of the money was enough and my informant in the”-Benaroun glanced toward the closed door-“in the South African Secret Service. He called me and then sent the numbers.”
“You sure it was the money that persuaded him?”
Benaroun stared past Gage for a few seconds, then looked back and said, “I don’t know.” He yawned and his eyes closed. He shook his head and opened them again. “Maybe patriotism. The last flight in brought Chinese saboteurs to shut down the mines.”
Gage turned at the sound of a light knock on the door. A nurse entered, followed by Tabari.
“I think that’s enough for now,” she said, coming to a stop next to Gage. “There will be time later to catch up with friends.”
