Absolute Risk (33 page)

The temple was no more than a hundred yards away, but the valley cut deep into the mountain. They didn’t see it again until they took a turn a half hour later and the mist and fog separated in front of them. They stopped ten yards away and through a blur of swirling incense smoke watched two monks, bundled in dark robes against the cold, meditating before the altar inside.

Beyond the temple and nestled higher up on the hillside, Gage could make out the monks’ quarters, raw wood on a rough stone foundation, appearing no more substantial than a migrant shack.

The soldier waved them forward and then turned back. They waited until the thudding of his boots died away and walked to the temple steps.

The monks turned at their approach. The younger one rose and helped the older one to his feet. Both were tiny men with bald heads and soft eyes. Neither seemed surprised by the arrival of the two
gweilo,
the two white ghosts.

The old man waved Faith forward. She slipped off her shoes and into a pair of slippers and stepped inside. The younger monk handed her the last incense stick from a bamboo tube below the altar and she lit it from a candle. After fanning away the flame, she held it between her palms for a few moments, and then pressed its bare end into the sand next to the rest.

Gage removed his shoes and stepped forward and took her hand as she stared down at it, the monks now chanting, the stream of sandalwood smoke rising, interlacing and merging with those around it. He’d heard the same rumbling Sanskrit and the dark flat-toned rhythms before, meditations on dying and acceptance and nothingness, and wondered how many pilgrims had come to this place over the centuries and whether they’d received the comfort they’d sought.

The door to the monk’s house scraped open. They turned toward it and looked past the trees and through the rolling mist. They expected to see a novice monk bringing more incense to the temple or a line of older monks coming toward them to pray or perhaps a pilgrim come to honor an ancestor.

Instead, a tall, unshaven man appeared in the shadowed doorway, dressed not like a monk, but in a long wool coat and cap and heavy boots, standing straight, his arms hanging by his sides. Gage heard Faith draw in a breath and felt her hand tighten around his as the man’s face came into view. After gazing at her for a long moment with his deep and unblinking eyes, Old Cat nodded, and then turned away, and slipped back into the darkness.

I
n addition to my wife, Liz, my first and best reader, friends made enormous efforts to try to keep me from making an idiot of myself. Denise Fleming gave the manuscript the sort of close reading only a genius could give and improved the book in ways only an artist can. Davie Sue Litov asked all the questions a writer needs to hear. Seth Norman helped me say what I meant (and thanks to his mother, Enid, for her encouragement and enthusiasm). Chris Cannon, friend and lawyer, participated as a coconspirator in crafting parts of the fictional crime. Ernie Baumgarten took walks with me that rambled in more ways than one, and during which Lulu Fleming-Baumgarten always took the lead.

In the spirit of sometimes learning the most from the worst people, this book has benefited from conversations with certain government officials, military officers, and business executives in China who provided insights into the practices of corruption that are reflected in the book, with money launderers in Hong Kong and elsewhere, with environmental polluters in the Americas and in Asia, and with snakeheads in San Francisco, Bangkok, and Taipei who described the craft of human smuggling.

Thanks also go to my agent, Helen Zimmermann, to my editor, Carl Lennertz, and to the other publishing professionals, Pamela Spengler-Jaffee, Wendy Ho, Eileen DeWald, Barbara Peters, Shawn Nichols, Marcus Opsal and Eleanor M. Mikucki, who have been so dedicated to the success of my novels.

The quote, “Our job is to reclaim America for Christ …” is from Dr. James Kennedy, pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, and was part of a statement distributed at his “Reclaim America” Conference, in February 2005. “Seize your armor, gird it on …” is from the hymn “Soldiers of the Cross, Arise.” “We should invade their countries …” is from Ann Coulter in a
National Review
article, “This is War” (September 13, 2001). “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag …” is from “Theocratic Dreams” in the
National Catholic Reporter
of January 26, 2007. “We obviously are viewing an economy …” is a condensed version of a comment by Alan Greenspan, cited in
A Term at the Fed
by Laurence H. Meyer (Harper Business 2004, p. 47). “There was a flaw in the model …” is abbreviated from an Alan Greenspan interview with ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=6095195). “I am a soldier …” can be found at the Salvation Army War College Web site. The Martin Luther quotes are from
Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History
by Erik Erikson (W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, pp. 204 and 244).

The story about the balancing pole that Gage hears in Dresden is one I heard in Central Europe. Various versions were passed around the latter years of the Soviet Union. The original author may have been Kurt Koffka in
The Principles of Gestalt Psychology
(first published in 1935, Routledge, 1999, p. 86). Another version appears in
The Language of the Third Reich: LTI—Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook
by Victor Klemperer (Continuum, 2006, p. 8).

“A
bsolute Risk
is the work of a talented writer who knows how to hook his readers from the opening line.”

Richard North Patterson,

bestselling author of
Protect and Defend

Faith flipped back through the pages, the mass of names and amounts. Two hundred million from RAID Technologies. A hundred million from Spectrum. A hundred million from Meinhard. Payments made to officials from Beijing to Chengdu and into accounts and shell companies from Hong Kong to the Bahamas to Zurich, to front companies in every world capital and in every offshore haven.

A shudder of dread shook through her. In the intensity of the last hours, her mind hadn’t broken free from the immediacy to realize that thousands of officials and company officers would kill to suppress what lay on the table in front of her …

AND RESOUNDING PRAISE FOR
STEVEN GORE’S ELECTRIFYING FIRST NOVEL

“A
ction packed…. A fascinating look into the world of international industrial espionage. I’m looking forward to the investigator Graham Gage’s next adventure.” Phillip Margolin,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Fugitive

“A
smart, riveting, knock-your-socks-off debut thriller.”

Cornelia Read, author of
The Crazy School

“L
ightning paced, deftly plotted, and compulsively readable…. We will be hearing much more from Steven Gore. Find a comfortable chair and plan to stay up late.” Sheldon Siegel,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Judgment Day

By Steven Gore

F
INAL
T
ARGET
A
BSOLUTE
R
ISK

This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other names, characters and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.

HARPER

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Copyright © 2010 by Steven Gore
ISBN 978-0-06-178220-6

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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01833-5

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