economics dissertation on Adam Smith’s
Theory of Moral Sentiments.
She told me that delusional people chase phantoms around inside their own heads or within their own neighborhoods, they don’t pursue them overseas. And the first time Hennessy called he said he was in China.”
Gage shrugged. “Unless believing he was there was part of his delusion.”
Abrams shook his head. “Evidence showed up on my cell phone bill as an incoming call from a local Shanghai number. And the second time it was from Dubai, and the third from Algeria. And he never sounded nuts. Not paranoid. Not thinking that people were out to get him—“
“Or at least shrewd enough not to say it aloud.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Abrams said. “He just sounded guilty, genuinely ashamed of himself. Desperate for my help in making up for what he’d done to Hani Ibrahim.”
Although Gage hadn’t remembered Michael Hennessy’s name when Abrams called the day before, he did recall the FBI’s arrest of Ibrahim for a terrorist financing conspiracy. Ibrahim had been a financial mathematician who’d come to MIT a few years before Abrams had moved on to Harvard. He masterminded a scheme for funneling money from within the U.S. to foreign terrorist groups by using offshore trusts and charities. No criminal case was ever proven, but he was nonetheless deported.
“At some point,” Abrams said, “when, I don’t know—how, I don’t know—and why, I don’t know, Hennessy began to suspect that Ibrahim had been framed.”
“You mean that Hennessy participated in framing him.”
Abrams nodded. “But not knowingly. Or at least that was Hennessy’s claim.”
Gage thought back to the few years after 9/11, and asked, “Was Ibrahim simply deported, or was he flown to a country where a stronger case against him could be developed through torture?”
“I don’t know, but I got the sense that the rendition possibility figured into Hennessy’s desperation. The first time I spoke to him, he seemed to be at the opposite end of the exhilaration he’d displayed after Ibrahim’s arrest. I remember the photo. Him standing behind the director at a press conference in Washington, basking in the glory. It was his career case. He got a promotion to senior special agent and was made second in command of the FBI’s Anti-terrorism Task Force.” “Where was he on the arc the last time you spoke to him?”
“More toward the bottom, but with a feeling of hope. He told me that he had reason to think that Ibrahim was still alive.”
Abrams fell silent. Gage watched his eyes narrow as though he was looking into the tunnel of the past.
“I don’t know about the present condition of Ibrahim’s mind or body,” Abrams finally said, “but his reputation hasn’t suffered much in the long run. I imagine that if the Swedes could find him now, they’d probably give him the Nobel Prize in economics.”
Even though Gage’s practice focused on finance from the perspective of fraud and money laundering, he was familiar with Ibrahim’s work. And in the years since his disappearance, Ibrahim and his quantum theory of finance had achieved mythological, Janus-faced status, with his name either issued as an epithet or whispered in awe. His fame rested on a few papers he’d published twenty years earlier, when he was in his thirties, and on claims by a few large hedge funds, known as chaos funds, that they invested and traded based on his theories.
“I suspect that if he’d stayed in physics rather than moving into finance,” Abrams said, “he would’ve gotten the Nobel in that and he’d still be puttering away at MIT instead of …”
“Instead of what?”
Abrams shrugged and stared at the road ahead. “I don’t have a clue. Maybe Hennessy knew.”
Gage circled back to the call from Abrams that brought him from San Francisco to New York.
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with you,” Gage said. “I haven’t read your job
Theory of Moral Sentiments.
She told me that delusional people chase phantoms around inside their own heads or within their own neighborhoods, they don’t pursue them overseas. And the first time Hennessy called he said he was in China.”
Gage shrugged. “Unless believing he was there was part of his delusion.”
Abrams shook his head. “Evidence showed up on my cell phone bill as an incoming call from a local Shanghai number. And the second time it was from Dubai, and the third from Algeria. And he never sounded nuts. Not paranoid. Not thinking that people were out to get him—“
“Or at least shrewd enough not to say it aloud.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Abrams said. “He just sounded guilty, genuinely ashamed of himself. Desperate for my help in making up for what he’d done to Hani Ibrahim.”
Although Gage hadn’t remembered Michael Hennessy’s name when Abrams called the day before, he did recall the FBI’s arrest of Ibrahim for a terrorist financing conspiracy. Ibrahim had been a financial mathematician who’d come to MIT a few years before Abrams had moved on to Harvard. He masterminded a scheme for funneling money from within the U.S. to foreign terrorist groups by using offshore trusts and charities. No criminal case was ever proven, but he was nonetheless deported.
“At some point,” Abrams said, “when, I don’t know—how, I don’t know—and why, I don’t know, Hennessy began to suspect that Ibrahim had been framed.”
“You mean that Hennessy participated in framing him.”
Abrams nodded. “But not knowingly. Or at least that was Hennessy’s claim.”
Gage thought back to the few years after 9/11, and asked, “Was Ibrahim simply deported, or was he flown to a country where a stronger case against him could be developed through torture?”
“I don’t know, but I got the sense that the rendition possibility figured into Hennessy’s desperation. The first time I spoke to him, he seemed to be at the opposite end of the exhilaration he’d displayed after Ibrahim’s arrest. I remember the photo. Him standing behind the director at a press conference in Washington, basking in the glory. It was his career case. He got a promotion to senior special agent and was made second in command of the FBI’s Anti-terrorism Task Force.” “Where was he on the arc the last time you spoke to him?”
“More toward the bottom, but with a feeling of hope. He told me that he had reason to think that Ibrahim was still alive.”
Abrams fell silent. Gage watched his eyes narrow as though he was looking into the tunnel of the past.
“I don’t know about the present condition of Ibrahim’s mind or body,” Abrams finally said, “but his reputation hasn’t suffered much in the long run. I imagine that if the Swedes could find him now, they’d probably give him the Nobel Prize in economics.”
Even though Gage’s practice focused on finance from the perspective of fraud and money laundering, he was familiar with Ibrahim’s work. And in the years since his disappearance, Ibrahim and his quantum theory of finance had achieved mythological, Janus-faced status, with his name either issued as an epithet or whispered in awe. His fame rested on a few papers he’d published twenty years earlier, when he was in his thirties, and on claims by a few large hedge funds, known as chaos funds, that they invested and traded based on his theories.
“I suspect that if he’d stayed in physics rather than moving into finance,” Abrams said, “he would’ve gotten the Nobel in that and he’d still be puttering away at MIT instead of …”
“Instead of what?”
Abrams shrugged and stared at the road ahead. “I don’t have a clue. Maybe Hennessy knew.”
Gage circled back to the call from Abrams that brought him from San Francisco to New York.
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with you,” Gage said. “I haven’t read your job