“Is there any way the CIA hasn’t screwed this up?” Gage asked John Casher, as they faced each other in the living room of a midtown hotel suite. Scattered about the room were Arndt, Viz, Madison, and a CIA deputy director. “A false accusation. Delivering up Ibrahim to be tortured. Hennessy driven to suicide, or set up to be murdered.”
Gage pointed at Arndt sitting on the couch with his shoulders slumped, forearms on his knees. “A fifty-billion-dollar intelligence budget, and it falls on this kid to do your work for you?”
“I’m not going to argue,” Casher said, “but I don’t have evidence in front of me that’ll let me believe you.”
Gage could feel a lump pressing up against his sole: the memory card on which he’d saved images of documents and downloads of Wycovsky’s files. He had no reason to think that the CIA would do any better with that information than it had with everything else—
Except that Casher hadn’t been appointed director until years after Ibrahim’s indictment, and the fact that he came to meet Gage himself might mean—might mean—that he was trying to find a way to set things right.
“I don’t have to show you anything,” Gage said. “But I’ll tell you what I believe.”
“That’s a start.”
“I think Wycovsky gave the orders to transfer the money from Ibrahim’s Manx trust to the Hong Kong law firm and then to the terrorists who bombed the Spectrum facility in Xinjiang.”
Casher’s gaze drifted toward the deputy director sitting at the dining table. Her eyes fixed on his. Her face didn’t change expression.
“But I guess you knew that,” Gage said.
Casher shook his head. “We only suspected. That’s what we went in tonight to try to find out. But it still doesn’t get Ibrahim off the hook.”
Gage felt a slow rage begin to build. He pointed at Viz leaning against the wall by the kitchen, then at Arndt, and said, “Let’s go.”
Arndt rose to his feet. Viz pushed off and started toward the door. Gage turned to follow behind them.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Casher said, gesturing to Madison to block their way.
Gage spun back and glared at Casher.
“What are you going to do? Bind and gag us and send us off to Saudi Arabia, too?” Gage hardened his voice. “Don’t try to play cards you don’t have in your hand. If I want out of here, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Casher opened his mouth to argue, then closed it and looked from face to face, everyone staring back at him, and then said, “You all go into the bedroom.”
Everyone moved except for the deputy director.
“You too,” he told her. “I’ll fill you in later.”
As soon as the door closed behind them, Casher said, “I don’t know who Wycovsky’s client is, so I can’t clear Ibrahim. It’s as simple as that.” Casher pointed at the dining table. “Let’s sit down. I’m beat. There’s a lot going on.”
They sat down across from each other.
Casher folded his forearms on the table and leaned forward.
“We know from UK phone records that the director of the Manx trust made back-to-back calls to Wycovsky and Ibrahim many times in the months before the trust was set up and then again just before the bombing.”
“But no calls directly between Ibrahim and Wycovsky.”
Casher shook his head. “But we wouldn’t expect there to be. It would make it too easy for someone to connect the dots.”
“You did anyway,” Gage said, “or at least thought you did.”
“Then who was Wycovsky’s client?” Casher asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Gage said. “It was coded in their records, or maybe it was an acronym, and”—he tilted his head toward the hallway to the bedroom—“and Arndt doesn’t have any idea.”
Casher narrowed his eyes at Gage. “How was it coded?”
Gage shrugged. “All it said was G12.”
Casher drew back and shook his head. “It’s not coded. It’s been on our radar for the last few years. It’s the People’s Foreign Investment Fund. They’re known to Chinese insiders as the Group of Twelve.”
Gage pushed himself to his feet, then slammed his fist into his palm. “Son of a—”
“What?” Casher asked, squinting up at Gage.
“Ibrahim was working for the Chinese.”
Casher blinked as though stunned by a camera flash. “How do you get from—”
“And when Hennessy began to suspect it and went hunting for Ibrahim, they killed the guy.”
Gage hesitated. He closed his eyes and locked his hands on top of his head. That couldn’t be right. If Ibrahim was dead, then there’d be no reason for Wycovsky to put Gilbert and Strubb and Hicks on his tail—
“Unless the Chinese are looking for Ibrahim, too,” Gage said aloud. “And that means they believe he’s still alive.”
“Have you gone nuts?” Casher asked.
Gage sat down and reached for the deputy director’s legal pad. Casher’s hand snaked out and grabbed Gage’s wrist, thinking that Gage was trying to read her notes. Gage yanked it free.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Gage said. “I just need a blank sheet of paper.” He flipped to the middle and tore out a piece and drew part of the flowchart that Alex Z recovered from Hennessy’s memory card.
“We found this in Hennessy’s records,” Gage said, then pointed at the HI and G12 boxes. “I think he figured out that Ibrahim was working for the Chinese, not Relative Growth.”
“Or both,” Casher said.
Gage shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He looked over at Casher. “Where’d you send Ibrahim after you deported him?”
Casher flushed. “I didn’t send him anywhere. It was before my time.” He shrugged. “Anyway, you know the answer.”
“And you—collectively—created an economic terrorist.” “We don’t know that.”
“You suspect it strongly enough to commit a burglary on U.S. soil.”
Casher shrugged. “But what could the Chinese possibly need Ibrahim for?”
Gage was now beginning to understand Abrams’s preoccupation with Ibrahim, or at least part of it. And the Chinese were focused on the same thing: If the old theories had proved themselves false, then maybe Ibrahim’s could prove themselves right—with huge Chinese foreign currency reserves behind them.
“Capitalism needed a new god,” Gage said, “a new master of the universe.”
“And they chose Ibrahim?”
Gage shook his head again. “You gave them Ibrahim.”