The night concierge had spotted Landon exiting the lobby elevator at 2 A.M., a step behind a familiar prostitute from a local escort service.
Landon had called Gage moments after the first extortion attempt eight hours later.
“Yes. An extremely useful one. Elections often turn on events the public never sees.”
Gage discovered the night’s surveillance tape missing. He tracked it to the apartment of the guard who’d been on duty, where it was hidden with a dozen other tapes of guilty public figures who’d been blackmailed, and innocent ones like Landon who’d been extorted.
“And they depend on people you’ve never met before, but who become trusted friends for life.”
Faith pointed ahead to a stalled car on the shoulder a quarter mile ahead and the traffic clearing beyond it, then glanced over at Gage.
“There are just too many ifs to justify a trip halfway around the world,” Faith said.
“They’re either ifs or they’re links in a chain.” Gage switched off the radio. “Porzolkiewski is the key to Charlie getting shot and I’m pretty sure he’s got a copy of whatever was in Brandon Meyer’s wallet.”
“Is this about Charlie or Brandon? For a while I was wondering whether you were being driven by self- reproach for not insisting that Tansy let you prove it was Charlie who subverted the prosecution of those kids. But now I’m starting to think it’s really about Brandon.”
“Brandon’s a pipsqueak. Landon never should have gotten him appointed in the first place. Sometimes Landon is just blind to what he’s really doing.” Gage’s voice hardened. “And it wasn’t the first time someone in the Meyer family sacrificed the public good to a private one.”
“That makes me think you might be looking for a way to turn this into your father’s last revenge.”
One of the first things Faith had learned about Gage’s father was his fury at the Meyer family, once the General Motors of the arms manufacturing industry. As a combat surgeon during World War II, George Gage witnessed the consequences of their weapons sales to Germany, many made after the Nazis’ criminal intentions were clear. Only the intervention of the secretary of state prevented the indictment of Brandon and Landon’s grandfather in 1941 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
“I’m not looking to punish Brandon for his family’s sins,” Gage said, “and I certainly don’t want to hurt Landon. And I’m only interested in Brandon to the extent he’s the link between Porzolkiewski and Charlie.”
Gage fell silent. He watched a plane rise from the runway, then his eyes lowered to an unseeing stare at the dashboard.
“What?” she finally asked. “Porzolkiewski?”
Gage nodded.
“Your heart goes out to him, doesn’t it.”
He turned toward her. “What could be worse than believing somebody got away with killing your child? I don’t think anything has felt real to him since the day his son died. The only thing now connecting him to the world is anger.”
“You think he’ll be able to see his way clear to cooperate with you when you get back?”
“I don’t know. At least he didn’t go running out of the coffee shop yesterday when I sat down at his table to tell him I was going to look for a way to reopen the TIMCO case. The most important thing in his life is finding out what happened.”
“You mean confirming what he already believes.”
“He’s not the only one. I reread the superior court judge’s order dismissing the suit. I know judge-speak. He said ‘my hands are tied’ and ‘this incident appears’ to be an accident-not is, only appears — and he said the explosion was ‘maybe even an accident waiting to happen.’ Which tells me he didn’t believe TIMCO. It was just that Porzolkiewski’s lawyers hadn’t made a strong enough showing so the judge could’ve let the case go to a jury.”
“I don’t know.” Faith shook her head, then glanced over again. “How can you be so sure Porzolkiewski will tell you what really happened with Charlie if you deliver on your promise? What if the truth about TIMCO isn’t what he thinks it is? Accidents waiting to happen can still be just accidents.”
Chapter 24
Jeanette Hawkins was wrong. Son of a Bitch wasn’t in an Islamic country. Gage had recognized it the moment she’d handed him the yellowed slip of paper bearing the telephone number. He’d also seen the hand of genius: laundering a witness through Muslim Pakistan, then depositing him in its Hindu enemy.
I t was the overripe end of mango season in southern India when Gage arrived at the Rajiv Gandhi Airport outside Hyderabad. Vendors were selling juice and sodas from carts bordering the parking lot in front of the arrivals hall. Between them and Gage as he walked out of the automatic doors was a mass of men in short-sleeved shirts and women in saris standing pressed up against a low metal barrier. A dozen taxi drivers swarmed him, grabbing at his forearms to lead him toward their cars. Porters wearing dhotis tied around their thighs and pulled up between their legs reached for his rollaboard. He shook them off as he scanned past the hotel placards held up by drivers bearing the names of arriving business travelers, but he couldn’t find the face he was looking for.
Instead, the face found him.
Gage grasped that customs superintendent Basaam Khan was standing behind him when the drivers and porters backed away. He turned toward a stubby man in a crisp white shirt and brown slacks, then reached out his hand, smiling. “Babu.”
Khan was the youngest child in a family of ten who’d stayed in India after the partition in 1947, when millions of Hindus fled from Pakistan and an equal number of Muslims fled in the opposite direction into India. He was among the forty percent of the population of Hyderabad who were Muslim. As the youngest son, he was simply known among friends and relatives as Babu. Sonny in English.
Babu pushed aside Gage’s hand, then hugged him, his head reaching only the middle of Gage’s chest. When they separated, Gage could see Babu had gained twenty pounds since they last worked together.
Gage pointed at his stomach. “Married life?”
Babu nodded, proud not only that his happiness was reflected in his body, but that his parents had allowed him to choose his own bride.
Babu took Gage’s briefcase out of his hand, and then led him along the barrier and through the opening toward a white Ambassador taxi, a five-year-old four-door sedan of the lumpy style manufactured in the U.S. in the 1940s. The driver set Gage’s rollaboard inside the trunk. Gage and Babu climbed into the back. The seat was coved by a clean, white sheet, pulled tight and tucked in.
They didn’t talk about Wilbert Hawkins as they drove from the airport and along Hussain Sagar Lake, the city’s main water supply, toward the hotel. There was no reason to share the purpose of Gage’s trip with the taxi driver. Instead, they talked quietly and cryptically about their last case, a multimillion-dollar diamond theft out of New York when Babu was deputy superintendent of customs at the Hyderabad Airport.
Gage had tracked the diamond cutter-turned-thief from Singapore to Bangkok, and finally to Hyderabad, then hired a local lawyer to analyze the legal issues involved in getting a warrant to search the man’s house. The judge decided Gage hadn’t met the probable cause standards imported into the Indian criminal code from British common law because Gage had no witness to testify that the man had the diamonds with him.
The judge suggested Gage speak with Babu, who reviewed the evidence, examined the law, considered the various legal options, and then kidnapped the thief’s wife and imprisoned her in the squalid, lice-ridden central jail until the man surrendered both himself and the diamonds.
All but a single twenty-thousand-dollar gem was recovered.
The insurance company hadn’t objected to Babu deducting his commission, they just wished they’d had the opportunity to offer it first.
Gage hadn’t objected either. He knew someday having an Indian cop in his debt would eventually pay off.
And that day had come.
Babu pointed toward the windshield. A hundred yards in front of them on the Tank Bund Road bordering the lake, a sash-wearing young Muslim rode a galloping white horse to his wedding. Babu then tapped his chest and smiled, indicating that he, too, had taken the same ride.
