homosexuals and Jews and Muslims.”
Ibrahim’s eyes went blank for a moment, then he blinked.
“I used to watch CNN with my Chinese colleagues. They were fascinated by Manton Roberts and his movement and by people like him, and amazed that Americans couldn’t see him for the revolutionary that he is. To Chinese ears, he’s been saying for a decade that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, as the City on the Hill, but that Christ’s mandate has been withdrawn. In his mind, that’s all he needs to justify a revolution.”
“I’m less interested in their theories of politics,” Gage said, annoyed that Ibrahim was drifting into a political justification for his participation in the conspiracy, “than in how the Chinese government pulled off this scam.”
“Easy. It discounted the value of the bonds and put them into the hands of the Group of Twelve. All of them were educated in U.S. business schools and each of them was a bearer of the amorality taught there. They then cut a deal with Relative Growth Funds, with Minsky himself.”
Gage could see the dominoes lined up and realized that there was no way to stop the first one from falling, even if it could be located and exposed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ibrahim said. “But if you expose it, it will create a panic that’ll trigger it.”
Gage nodded. “Relative Growth is resting on nothing but air.”
“Worse than that,” Ibrahim said. “What keeps it hovering is its investors’ money and the loans they get to leverage their currency transactions and commodity speculations. The loans are short-term, but massive. Bank after bank will collapse as they discover that Relative Growth can’t pay them back.”
Gage thought of Batkoun Benaroun and the platinum flown out of South Africa on the Chinese planes, and imagined the same thing happening throughout the world.
“They were so powerful,” Ibrahim continued, “that Minsky, with the help of the Chinese, could move the price of almost any currency or commodity or precious metal at will.”
“Including platinum,” Gage said.
“Of course.”
Ibrahim reached for his mouse, searched his document directory, and opened a platinum price chart.
“Virtually every price movement,” Ibrahim said, pointing at the dips and spikes, “was controlled by Minsky. They didn’t gamble on the future price of platinum, they controlled it and leveraged everything they did with it. For every hundred million dollars of their own money they’d use, they’d borrow ten times more. If they forced the price of platinum up a hundred dollars, they’d make a thousand. If they laid out a hundred million, they’d make a billion.”
Gage heard in his mind Abrams’s accusations and former president Harris’s defense.
“Then Relative Growth isn’t a Ponzi scheme,” Gage said.
“Of course not. It was foolish to think it was. But it all rests on one thing, the bonds.”
“But how did they conceal that the Chinese were dumping them? “
“They set up Chinese-sounding front companies as nominal owners, as middlemen for the transfer. It’s just a computer entry for the Treasury Department. There was no paper involved. It looked as though the bonds were simply moved from one Chinese hand into another. It was probably unnecessary, since no accountant would ever check.” Ibrahim shook his head. “The accounting firms that Relative Growth hired certainly didn’t. And they found what they expected to find: two trillion dollars of assets. What Relative Growth hid from the auditors was that their assets were somewhere in the neighborhood of three trillion, not two.”
Gage thought for a moment, then it came together. “And by concealing assets that they were using as security for some of their borrowing, they concealed both their methods and their liabilities.”
“Exactly. It’s not that different from someone applying for a mortgage to buy a house and failing to disclose that he owns a dozen other houses, all with big mortgages.”
Ibrahim spread his right hand open on the desk. “Over here we have what Relative Growth is willing to allow the world to see.” He spread his left hand. “Over here, we have the secret manipulations of an offshore hedge fund.” He brought them together. “In the middle is Minsky.”
“Why the devil did he go along with this?”
“Because he doesn’t understand it, or if he does, he thinks that Relative Growth is powerful enough to control the world-but it isn’t.”
“Can it be stopped?”
Ibrahim glanced at a calendar standing on the far corner of his desk, and then shook his head.
“Right now, Relative Growth needs cash to pay the dividends to its investors that are coming due. And forcing the collapse of a major currency is the fastest way to get it. Just like Soros did in England in 1992 by betting against the pound and breaking the Bank of England-except Relative Growth is wagering not just ten billion like Soros did, but a hundred billion.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Gage said.
Ibrahim looked again at the calendar.
“The problem is that Relative Growth uses a currency trading system that’s decentralized in a thousand trading desks around the world. When they attack a currency or a commodity, no one can trace the move to them. It just looks like the whole world is moving at once and all in the same direction. And they use an algorithm that’s triggered by a set of events they stage and then it operates on its own.”
“What events?” Gage asked.
Ibrahim shrugged. “Only Minsky knows, but it will happen soon. The Group of Twelve has decided that it’s time to kill off Relative Growth and are arranging it so that Minsky pulls the trigger himself.”
“And you know this because…”
“I designed it,” Ibrahim said, then spread his arms to encompass his cell. “And have been managing it from here since I came to the States.”
Ibrahim lowered his hands and gripped them together on his lap.
Gage had the sense that Ibrahim had preserved his sanity during the last few years by losing himself in the mechanics of the scheme or maybe in the aesthetics of it.
Ibrahim sighed. “It seemed so perfect, so beautiful.” He looked at Gage. “Isn’t that what we all expect from justice? A certain perfection? A certain cut-diamond symmetry?” He fell silent, then shook his head, and said, “People forget-I forgot-that in order to create a brilliant diamond you first have to rip apart the earth that sustains us.”
Gage watched Ibrahim hunch over and seem to close in on himself, trying to shut out of his mind the chaos and violence and starvation that would follow a worldwide collapse. But Ibrahim’s darting eyes and clenching fists told Gage that the man had failed.
“God help me now.”
CHAPTER 65
I need to see you,” Ibrahim spoke into the telephone. “Now. Right now. We have a problem.” Gage watched his face mutate, as if it was the expression of a slow-developing chemical reaction.
Frown.
“Tomorrow will be too late.”
Jaw tightened.
“Not on the phone.”
Bit lip.
“You know where.”
Nod.
Ibrahim hung up. “Minsky says he’ll be here in an hour.”
Gage reached into his pocket for his encrypted cell phone and called Alex Z.
“I’m not sure this phone is still safe,” Gage said, “so I’ll e-mail you some information in a minute. Do what it says, then e-mail me back.”
Gage disconnected, then used Ibrahim’s computer to send Alex Z Casher’s cell number and Rahmani’s address.
