Absolute Risk Page 7

  “Hasn’t Abrams ever wondered why we’ve never missed a dividend,” Harris said, “never did worse than break even, even during the crashes?”

  “He thinks it’s just chance or good luck,” Minsky said, and then grinned. “And it’s not as if we’re transparent.”

  Harris frowned. He didn’t like hearing the word. It made him uncomfortable enough just to be on the board of an offshore hedge fund, much less be reminded of the secrecy with which it operated. If it hadn’t been for the other two ex-U.S. presidents who’d taken seats on the board before him, he wasn’t sure whether he would’ve done it. And they wouldn’t have joined unless George H. W. Bush hadn’t already blazed the trail to the Carlyle Group.

  Minsky. Everyone had been talking about this genius Minsky. How he’d made his first billions short-selling the franc the year before France adopted the euro. Borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and selling and selling and selling, driving the price down, the international banks and foreign corporations and governments dumping their reserves, forcing the French Central Bank to buy more and more and more to support the currency, then having to cave in at the end and devalue it. The price of bread doubled in a day, the price of gasoline tripled, and the French economy free-fell. Minsky then paid back the expensive francs he’d borrowed with the cheap ones he’d contrived, and Relative Growth pocketed five billion dollars.

  Every central banker in Europe knew that sooner or later Minsky would make a move on the euro, they just didn’t know when, or how he’d conceal his approach—and neither did Harris.

  Harris caught a view of himself in the mirror behind the row of liquor decanters. For a moment he felt more like an oblivious lemming than the Lewis and Clark of the financial frontier. He cringed at the recollection of what his wife had once said about hedge funds: They were like tapeworms living in the intestines of a host, absorbing what they’d made no effort to capture and profiting from what they hadn’t earned.

  Minsky walked to the bar, poured two bourbons, and handed one to Harris.

  “You really want to explain to Abrams how we do what we do just so he’ll stop talking about us?” Minsky asked.

  Harris’s face flushed. “I don’t know how we do what we do. It’s all gibberish to me. Fractals and scaling and string theory and entanglement.” He took a sip of his drink, then held up the glass and smacked his lips. “This is real. You can see it. You can taste it. It can get you drunk and make you act like a fool.”

  Harris lowered the glass and stared into it. “The problem with financial theory is that you get intoxicated with the idea that you can control the world, and then the world makes a fool of you.” He sat down in his desk chair. “What was that punk’s name? Levenstein? The guy whose jet you ended up with.”

  “Levinson, Mitchell Allen Levinson.”

  “Take a lesson. Look what happened to him.”

  Minsky smiled at Harris as if at a child. “What makes you think—“

  “Don’t take that pedantic, patronizing, schoolteacher tone with me.” “

  I was just—“

  “Just what? I’m not sure you even understand the mechanics of this. You’ve never been able to explain it in plain English.”

  “It would be like explaining quantum mechanics in words. Can’t be done. Unless you can visualize the math and physics in your head, you can’t really—“

  “And the other thing is that we base all of this on the theories of a traitor. How do I know that Ibrahim wasn’t just setting us up? That we haven’t walked into some kind of Islamic trap?”

  “Because the trillions of dollars held in the Relative Growth Funds are in our hands, not in those of some ayatollah. And not only can’t they get to it, not only can’t they compete with it, but we make sure we never compete on Islam’s home turf. Why do you think we have no investments in oil outside of the United States and have never speculated in oil futures? “

  Harris shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen the books. Hell, I’m not sure anyone on the board has seen the books.” He slammed his glass down. Bourbon spilled onto the Morningstar Report. “Hell, I’m not even sure where the goddamn books are.”

  “Tell me what you want to see and you can sit down with our accountants and they’ll show it to you.”

  “Why should I trust them?”

  “Who would you trust?”

  “People with an incentive to catch each other cheating.” Harris stared down and drummed his fingers on the desk.

  “I’ve got an idea.” He looked up at Minsky. “Do we have some kind of petty cash account?”

  Minsky nodded. “I guess you could call it that. Usually about fifty million dollars.”

  “Hire all of the Big Four accounting firms. Have them each audit the fund separately. Everything. Offer a reward of ten million for whoever proves the other three wrong about what’s really there.”

  “Isn’t that a little excessive?”

  “Look.” You self-important little punk. “History won’t remember you, but it sure as hell will remember me. And I need to control how. I’d sooner blow my brains out than have to stand up there like Richard Nixon trying to convince the world that I’m not a crook—nobody believed him then and nobody would believe me now.”

  CHAPTER 14

  You shouldn’t have jumped bail, asshole.”

  Gage yanked his arm away from the hand that locked on to it. The big man had stepped out of the shadow of the concrete support in the six-level Adirondack Plaza parking structure and grabbed Gage as he was leaving to pick up Elaine Hennessy.

  A punch to his kidney from the opposite side stunned Gage. He threw an elbow at where he thought the fist came from, but missed, and the two men spun him down to the pavement. They then twisted his wrist behind his back and knelt on him.

  “You … got … the wrong … guy,” Gage said. The frozen concrete burned his cheek, and the weight of the men squeezed the air from his lungs. “My name is Graham Gage … and I’m not on bail.” “So you say.”

  While the second man held him, Strubb emptied Gage’s pockets, then stood up and laid everything on the trunk of his rental car.

  Car doors opened and closed. An elderly couple approached. Strubb flashed a badge at them and said, “I’m a bail agent. This guy skipped out and missed his court date.”

  They looked away and hurried on. Strubb flipped open Gage’s ID case. “Who’d you steal the California private eye license from? “

  “It’s mine.” “Yeah, right.”

  Strubb bent down and compared the picture on the license to Gage’s face. “Good likeness.”

  He straightened up and opened the envelope that Elaine had given Gage.

  “Coupons?” Strubb said. “You’re a fucking local boy. No out-of-towner would be carrying coupons.”

  “Who do you think I am?” Gage asked.

  Strubb pulled out a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

  “Says here you’re David Michaels and you skipped out on a child-molesting case.”

  The second man punched Gage again, and pain daggered into his side. He leaned in close to Gage’s ear and said, “You pervert motherfucker.”

  Gage held his breath for a few seconds and gritted his teeth, and then asked, “What’s Michaels look like? “

  “Six-two. Two-ten. White guy. Blue. Brown.” Strubb laughed. “I’d say we’ve got a match.”

  “Me and a thousand other guys in Albany.”

  “Hold on to him,” Strubb told his partner. “Lemme go make a call.”

  Strubb walked ten cars away and called Gilbert.

  “He’s says his name is Graham Gage and that he’s a—“

  “I know who Gage is. Got a big operation out in San Francisco. Lots of international stuff. This guy must’ve stolen his ID. What about the envelope? “

  “All it had was coupons.”

  “What?”

  “Just what I said. Coupons. Grocery store coupons. Cut out of the Albany new
spaper.”

  “He probably switched out what was in there when he was in his room. Go up there and take a look.”

  Strubb slipped the envelope into his back pocket, then returned to where Gage lay and said to his partner, “Hook him up. We’re going to his room.”

  After they’d handcuffed Gage and lifted him to his feet, Strubb said, “Just stay cool. If everything checks out, we’ll be on our way in a couple of minutes and you can get on to wherever you were going.” Strubb grinned. “We’ll just call it no harm, no foul.”

  Gage decided not to fight them. If they intended to kill him, they’d have stuffed him into a trunk and they’d be on their way to the highway by now. He had the feeling they were just puppets and didn’t have a clue about the purpose of what they were doing or the meaning of what they’d been directed to look for.

  Strubb walked close behind Gage to conceal the handcuffs as they walked through the lobby to the elevator and then again down the tenth floor hallway to his room. Strubb opened the door, then pointed Gage toward one of two fabric-covered chairs near the window facing the backlit stained glass of the gothic Episcopal church and the floodlit state capitol beyond.

  Gage sat down on the front edge so he wouldn’t be pressing back against his hands and watched them paw

  through the drawers of the desk and nightstand and then search the closet and his Rollaboard.

  Strubb’s partner found a second cell phone in an inside compartment and held it up.

  “Why do you need a second one? “

  “Taxes. One’s personal and one’s business,” Gage said. The man hadn’t recognized that it was an encrypted model he used to communicate with his office. “I once got audited by the IRS.”

  Strubb dropped Gage’s wallet and ID case, along with his keys and the other cell phone, on the desk, and picked up Gage’s portable printer. He turned it over in his hand and set it down again. He then opened and closed the lid of the laptop, not realizing that the printer was also a scanner and that whatever Gage had collected from Elaine, he might’ve hidden on his hard drive.

  “No paper in this place at all,” Strubb spoke into his cell phone. “No other ID or nothing.” He fell silent, listening, then pointed back and forth between his partner and Gage.

  The partner smirked and then walked between Gage and the window behind him and unlocked the handcuffs.

  Gage rose from the chair.

  Strubb disconnected the call and slipped the phone into his shirt pocket.

  “Sorry man, nothing personal,” Strubb said.

  “Why don’t you send your friend outside for a minute?” Gage said, glancing toward Strubb’s partner. “He knows even less than you what this is really about. And it’s better if he stays ignorant. I’d hate to see him go down on a kidnapping.”

  Strubb smiled and shook his head. “We ain’t going down on nothing.”

  The partner reddened and glared at Strubb. “Kidnapping? What you get me into, Strubb? You said—“

  “This guy’s not gonna call the cops,” Strubb said.

  “He’s right,” Gage said. “I won’t.”

  Strubb jerked his thumb toward the door. “Wait in the hallway.”

  His partner shrugged and then walked out.

  Gage stepped over to his Rollaboard and searched through it making sure that nothing had been taken, then went to the desk where Strubb was standing. Gage leaned over as if to inventory his possessions, then spun and slammed his fist into Strubb’s side, just below his rib cage. He then faked a jab to the head, and when the man’s hands flew up to block it, dropped him to the carpet with an uppercut to his diaphragm.

  Strubb groaned as he rolled onto his side and curled up.

  Gage bent over and grabbed Strubb’s cell phone and wallet, then straightened up and glared down at him.

  “You make a move and I’ll kick you until I’ve broken every bone in your face.”

  “Son of a bitch … I’m gonna—shit this hurts … I’m gonna be pissing blood … for a … for a fucking week.”

  Gage called Alex Z at the office in San Francisco and read off the numbers in the memory of Strubb’s phone and the personal data on his driver’s license.

  “See what you can find out about them,” Gage told Alex Z and then disconnected.

  Gage looked down at Strubb. “Whose numbers are the last ones you called?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “The only reason I didn’t hit you in the eye socket is that I didn’t want to damage my hand,” Gage said. “I’m not so concerned about my shoes. Worse that happens, they get a little bloody.” Strubb didn’t answer.

  “My guy is working on it now,” Gage said. “No reason to get yourself kicked in the head for something I’ll find out anyway.”

  “Jesus-fucking-Christ this hurts … Gilbert. Tony Gilbert. Works out of New York City.”

  “How’d you hook up with him?”

  “A referral from a PI who hires me to do little jobs once in a while.”

  “Like kidnapping.”

  Strubb grunted as he sat up, and then leaned back against the side of the desk.

  “It ain’t kidnapping when a bail agent does it. He said you was an absconder and that you had some papers somebody wanted. It was supposed to be a two-fer. Double the pay. Anyway, we didn’t move you that far. Just up a couple of floors.”

  “Moving somebody half an inch who doesn’t want to go is kidnapping.”

  Gage paused, trying to think of a gimmick to shake off both Strubb and Gilbert, at least for a while. He then pointed down at Strubb.

  “This is what you’re going to do,” Gage said. “You’re going to tell Gilbert and his pals to stay away from me.”

  “Or what?”

  Gage stepped back to his Rollaboard and held up his voice recorder. The red record light was lit. He’d turned it on when he’d reached in earlier. “Or I’ll put you and your partner in prison for a very long time.”

  Strubb winced as he twisted himself onto his knees, then pushed himself to his feet. He hesitated as though he was thinking he’d make a move to grab the recorder, then his eyes locked on Gage’s right fist, and he turned toward the door.

  “Not so fast,” Gage said, reaching out his other hand. “I want my coupons back.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Faith Gage stood in front of her door and looked over the collapsed warehouse across the narrow street and toward Chengdu in the valley below. Smoke rose in columns from the smoldering remnants of the fires that had been triggered by the earthquake. It then spread like a low fog toward the base of the mountain beneath her, yellow-gray, poisoned by exploding chemical tanks at the factories in the economic development zone. In the near distance she could make out the smoldering shell of the almost completed RAID Technologies microchip plant, the largest building on the western edge of the city.

  She recognized that the silent movement of distant things made it hard for her to maintain the images in her mind of the hundreds of thousands of souls entombed in the rubble, the raw hands of searchers, and the roar and grind of earthmoving equipment, and the wail of survivors already gathered in temples, burning incense in honor of the dead.

  Shuffling footsteps drew her eyes toward a young man in his mid-twenties carrying a duffel bag over the shoulder of his wool jacket. His dirt-and soot-covered face seemed forlorn against the background of the dusty anarchy of wood, brick, and concrete spilling out into the street. He came to a stop in front of the remains of the wooden shack next to Faith’s. He stared at it, then took in a long breath, exhaled, and lowered his head.

  Faith walked over. When he looked up she saw that tears had formed, muddying the dirt at the corners of his eyes. She could perceive beyond the tears a somber core, but she couldn’t tell whether it was a product of nature or trauma or grief, or of all three.

  “Aunt Zhao is fine,” she told him in Mandarin, then pointed at her own house. “She’s staying with me.”

  He looked down and sighed, then wiped h
is eyes with his sleeve, tracking the grime across his face and forehead.

  “You are?” Faith asked.

  “Her grandson. Jian-jun.” He pointed toward Chengdu. “From the city. You must be the anthropologist she told me would be coming.”

  Faith nodded, then said, “Chifanle meiyou?“ Have you eaten?

  Jian-jun’s face relaxed, seeming to find comfort in the familiar greeting, even though spoken by a gweilo, a white ghost, in a wasteland.

  “Chifanle,” he answered. I’m fine.

  His sunken cheeks told Faith that he wasn’t, that he probably hadn’t eaten much in days, perhaps even before the earthquake. She led him through the house and into the kitchen where his eighty-five-year-old grandmother sat at the table chopping vegetables for lunch. He walked over and knelt beside her. She reached for him with her thin arms and hugged him against her breast. He pulled back and whispered something to her. She bit her lip and frowned as he again pressed against her.

  After pouring him tea, Faith dragged a wooden chair up next to his grandmother. He pulled himself onto it and then warmed his hands on the cup.

  “How is it in the city?” Faith asked him.

  “Chaos. Fury. Violence.” Jian-jun took a sip of tea; he didn’t seem surprised or put off balance by Faith’s speaking unaccented Mandarin. “Schools and hospitals collapsed everywhere, burying children and sick people.”

  His hands tightened around the cup and his face flushed.

  “The concrete didn’t just crack, it crumbled. Disintegrated. Mobs hunted down the builders and the mayor and a couple of party leaders and hung them. They’ve now surrounded all of the government offices and intend to starve them out and kill them, too.”

  “Isn’t the army—”

  Jian-jun shook his head. “The army isn’t intervening, and not because they’re afraid. They’re as sickened by the corruption as everyone else. I think they want to try to contain it to Chengdu and the other cities in the earthquake area, and let it be an object lesson for the rest of the country.”

  Ayi Zhao stared ahead. Listening.

  “And there’s no clean water. Chemical runoff from the burned factories flowed into the BoTiao River and the waterworks.” He pointed north. “And they can’t use the Zi Pingpu Reservoir. It’s too polluted by lead and cadmium from the electronic recycling companies up in the hills. People are drinking from their toilets.”