Absolute Risk by Steven Gore Page B

that the attempt to impose their economic theories on the people of Chile through shock and terror had been disastrous.
    Days later, Ferrada was arrested at his office by Pinochet’s National Intelligence Directorate.
    “What happened to Hennessy is not your fault,” Gage said.
    “I feel it in my gut. It’s Orlando Ferrada all over again.”
    “Who did you tell about Hennessy?”
    “My assistant, the director of the FBI, and his deputy. Who they later told, I couldn’t say. But only my assistant knew I was meeting him in Marseilles.”
    “If history is repeating itself, then it’s Ibrahim we should be worried about, and not because of anything that you did, but because of what Hennessy may have done or learned.”
    “History is already repeating itself. You got hurt rescuing Ferrada. You got hurt yesterday.”
    Gage smiled. “The first time was my fault. I was driving too fast.”
    “Only because they were shooting at you.”
    Gage had broken Ferrada out of a jungle prison, then had missed a turn on the dirt track leading from Chile into Bolivia. His jeep rolled down a hillside and came to rest in a frigid Andean streambed, fifty yards upstream from a Bolivian customs checkpoint, and they swam across the border.
    This morning he’d also driven back roads, from Albany to Manhattan, hoping to determine whether Gilbert or his people were on his tail and whether they were set up around Abrams’s apartment house. He’d only hoped that he could use Strubb to shake them off long enough to get a few steps down the trail ahead of them, but listening to Abrams now, he wasn’t sure that would happen.
    Gage glanced at the television. It was the start of the local weather report. The reporter announced that it was cold outside. The mysteries growing about the fates of Hennessy and Ibrahim made Gage wonder why weather reports always began by telling people what they already knew.
    “I have the feeling that you’ve made the Orlando Ferrada-Michael Hennessy connection before,” Gage said.
    “I was thinking about that while you were gone, but it’s not Chile that worries me. It’s the Relative Growth Funds. They’re supposed to be based on the work Ibrahim did when he was at MIT—but I don’t believe it. For political reasons they don’t use Ibrahim’s name, but when they refer to fractal analysis, insiders know what they mean.”
    Abrams sat down and folded his arms on the table.
    “I think it’s a scam,” Abrams said, “at least an intellectual one. Ibrahim being right about the markets tending toward the extremes doesn’t mean that you can build an investment model on it. But that’s what Relative Growth says is the reason they’ve beaten the performance of every other hedge fund over the last ten years, even through two economic collapses.”
    “And you don’t see how it’s possible to predict the unpredictable.”
    “Nobody can—and not just as a matter of logic, but of fact. Despite that, they’ve attracted almost two trillion investment dollars into their funds. Most from the U.S., the rest from Europe.”
    “How did you find out? I thought Relative Growth was based in the Caymans.”
    “The CIA director. He was concerned about the foreign entanglements of former U.S. government officials. Their board of directors has three former U.S. presidents, two former defense secretaries, and two former secretaries of state. After
Time
magazine called Relative Growth Funds ‘a Republican administration in exile,’ he felt he’d better make some inquiries and warn those guys about conflicts of interest.”
    Abrams glanced at the television screen. A reporter stood in the middle of the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink surrounded by racing, screaming children.
    He looked back at Gage.
    “There are only three explanations I can think of for Relative Growth’s success. The first is simple market manipulation. Shorting a stock like Apple or Microsoft, then planting false stories in the press. But you