Gage pulled up a chair across from him.
“You’re as much of a bungler as Hennessy,” Rahmani said, shaking his head. “I should’ve known.”
“Ibrahim could’ve picked up his phone at any time since I first came knocking on your door.”
“Why should he have? There’ve been dozens of people looking for him over the years. Investigators. Intelligence agencies. Business reporters. Professors. Graduate students. Hedge fund managers-why should he bless you of all people with a call?”
“Because I know the truth about what happened to him.”
“That only means that you know what he knows.
Bravo.”
“Thinks he knows-and he’s wrong. Maybe dead wrong.”
Rahmani spread his hands. “So? Let’s hear it.”
“I’ll tell it only to him, and only in person. I’ll also explain to him why some of the people he thought were his friends are now on the hunt for him.”
“It doesn’t make a difference, they won’t find him. No one will ever find him, unless he wants to be found. I don’t even know where he is.”
Gage inspected Rahmani’s face, trying to discern a connection between his aggression and door-slamming protection of Ibrahim and the fact of his calling to get Gage to come to Boston. He then surveyed the cafe, wondering whether it was bugged.
“How long would it take for you to get in contact with him?” Gage asked.
Rahmani shrugged.
Gage walked over to the counter and grabbed a takeout menu and a matchbook and brought them back to the table. He drew out the flowchart that he’d drawn for Casher, showing Ibrahim’s connection to the Group of Twelve. He then spun it around so Rahmani could see it.
“Can you describe this to him?” Gage asked.
Rahmani reached for it. Gage pulled it away. Rahmani’s face reddened.
“It’s not complicated,” Gage said. “Just memorize it.”
Gage let Rahmani stare at it a little longer, and tore it up. He then removed Rahmani’s saucer from under his coffee cup, piled up the pieces, and set them on fire.
Gage held his open hands over the flame and then rubbed them together.
“Let’s see whether this generates a little heat where Ibrahim is, too,” Gage said. “And then maybe a little light.”
CHAPTER 61
Vice President Cooper Wallace sat alone in his office in the Executive Office Building after the security briefing. He flicked on the television and then changed the channel from CNN to CNBC. He wasn’t interested in the political pundits’ speculations, but in the numbers that reflected the financial mind of the country. The header rotated from the prices of gold, silver, and oil to the Dow and NASDAQ. They’d both dropped four percent on the news of the transition, then gained three back. The same in London and Berlin.
At first, he felt relief. The markets had time to absorb the news about the president’s health, to weigh it, to allocate their resources, and decided that the world wasn’t coming to an end. Maybe those economics textbooks were right after all. It really was a self-adjusting mechanism, a collective mind that takes in data and prices itself accordingly.
But then a shudder of self-doubt waved through him.
Maybe it wasn’t confidence in him that the market was showing, but a belief that the president would soon resume his place as the captain of the ship of state and that Wallace’s assignment was merely to hold the rudder steady in the meantime.
He, too, had watched the surgeons’ press conference. He, too, had felt no doubt that the surgery would be routine and successful. He, too, saw the confidence in the wire-rimmed Harvard Medical School faces of the white coats. He, too But then his mind twisted back down the tunnel of the past, to the president calling him into his study, warning him to think and to listen.
You want to be president in two years, but something could happen to me, and you’d be sitting in this chair tomorrow.
Now the white coats seemed like costumes and the wire rims like props and their words spoken from a script written by the president.
Tomorrow had arrived.
Chief of Staff Paul Nichols knocked on his door, then entered.
“This is the list,” Nichols said, handing Wallace a sheet bearing five names. He then pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Russian and Chinese interpreters are standing by. The French, German, and Japanese presidents will speak to you in English. The British prime minister will go first.”
Wallace skimmed down the page. He didn’t mind the others, but was disgusted by the thought of having to call the Chinese president to reassure him that the pull on the American oars would remain steady. He could see the man’s soft, round face, beaming like the owner of a company store No, that wasn’t it. It was the self-satisfied smirk of a colonial master. They owned the debt and therefore had the U.S. by the pocketbook.
Americans could still feed themselves, but they had to cook on Chinese stoves and in Chinese pots and pans and pay tribute in the form of interest on a trillion dollars of treasury bonds. If Casher is right, Wallace thought, they have us not only by our hearts, minds, and consumer cravings, but by the balls.
Wallace reached for the remote to turn off the television. He hesitated as an inset box appeared showing Manton Roberts standing before a microphone. The business reporter’s voice was replaced by Roberts announcing that National Pledge Day would include prayers for the president’s recovery.
“Smart move,” Nichols said to Wallace. “He never misses a trick. He’ll quadruple the participation. Even the crippled will stand to say the pledge and even the deaf will hear the prayer.”
Wallace didn’t rise to the sarcasm. He might not believe in the event, but he believed in the power of prayer.
“Is Casher still out there?” Wallace asked, punching the mute button.
Nichols nodded, then walked back out to the reception area. Casher entered a moment later carrying his briefcase.
“Was it your decision or the president’s not to mention in the Cabinet meeting that the Chinese are putting together criminal cases against us? “
“The president’s. He didn’t want to chance a leak.”
Wallace wanted to say, You mean he doesn’t trust his own people? but he left the thought unspoken for fear of appearing to have forgotten the fundamental lesson of politics: The political animal is first of all an animal, and while some might doubt the theory of evolution, everyone accepted the truth that the first law of nature was survival. And loyalty, like betrayal, was just a weapon.
“But he did ask me to meet with the attorney general,” Casher said, “and in a fill-in-the-blank-later fashion outline the bribery evidence against the corporate officers the Chinese appear to be targeting.”
“You mean to take to a grand jury?”
“Only in case you, or the president, decide to get ahead of the Chinese and charge them with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The U.S. Attorney can simply code all of the targets’ names, the companies’ names, and the offshore accounts that he presents in evidence. Once the grand jurors accept that crimes have been committed, it will take all of ten minutes to fill in the blanks and issue an indictment.”
Wallace didn’t like the path laid out before him. He felt like the Chinese were leading the U.S. into a trap.
“I don’t like the idea,” Wallace finally said. “The Chinese set the terms for doing business over there. If their officials weren’t corrupt, we wouldn’t be paying bribes. Isn’t that what the Mexicans tell us: Stop using drugs and we’ll stop shipping them?”
“You’re right, but it may be out of our hands.”
