WASHINGTON, D.C.
After Senator Dixon had left for her office the next morning, Aaron Gage entered his library, closing the door behind him. The housekeeper wouldn’t arrive for another hour and he had the place to himself. Plenty of time before his driver would take him to his private jet for a flight to corporate headquarters.
Five years ago, Gage Capital Partners had relocated to Dallas. He didn’t particularly care for the city, its weather, or its inhabitants, but it was a great place to do business. Texas had extremely low corporate franchise taxes and zero personal income taxes, and that counted for a great deal in Gage’s book. Taxes were for little people, and the morons too stupid to know how to avoid them.
These days, he seldom traveled to the firm’s twenty-second-story downtown office because the day-to-day operations were handled by a cadre of vice presidents and the people under them. GCP employed a small army of talented quant heads, contract lawyers, and technical analysts recruited from all of the best grad schools. They did all of the number crunching and contract writing, conducted the 24/7 searches for promising new market opportunities, and sniffed out tax loopholes, or created them, thanks to their lobbying efforts.
In his youth, Gage had excelled at most of those activities, but now he was bored by them. He made his first $10 million pitching his investing services to big family trusts, pension funds, and high-net-worth individuals. But he soon figured out that the real money lay elsewhere.
Real being loosely defined.
He negotiated big contract purchases of muni bonds, commodities futures, and stock options, ferreting out the last quarter-point of interest rate return, fee reduction, or tax deduction he could find. All of that work added up to millions of dollars for his largest clients and, ultimately, for himself.
But the really big money was in government. Socialism was dead, but so was capitalism. Western liberal governments borrowed trillions of dollars of fake money—ones and zeroes created out of thin air in computers run by central banks—to buy votes rather than balance budgets, enslaving future generations with debt they could never repay.
Gage concluded it was better to do business with the people who created money than with the peasants who merely scrapped over bits of it.
Central banks and governments weren’t the only wealth creators. Trillions of dollars were siphoned away from public and private coffers by criminal syndicates, and many billions more made in illicit trade.
Aaron Gage wanted as much of that free and dirty cash as he could lay his hands on. Millionaires were a dime a dozen these days. He wanted billions.
Gage Capital Partners played a key role in his plan. It continued to provide the legitimate cover of conventional business. It was also the platform that allowed Gage to do the really important work of cultivating strategic relationships with business and political elites around the world. These relationships allowed his business to grow in power and influence, which led, ultimately, to ever-increasing wealth, which, in turn, was its own source of power and influence.
It was the greatest game of all, and his wife had proven to be an important cog in his machine. She knew her part and played it well, even if she didn’t fully grasp the scope of his vision.
Christopher, however, did see the big picture, Gage reminded himself, as he stepped into a large walk-in closet, modified to protect against electronic eavesdropping.
The boy had made some serious missteps in his youth, to be sure, but Gage knew it was far easier to put a saddle on a stallion than it was to turn a mule into a racehorse. Christopher was headstrong but smart—damn smart. And when Gage finally broke through his son’s hormonally challenged adolescent fog, the tumblers all fell into place behind the dark, impenetrable eyes.
His wife was right to be worried. Even when he finally came around, Christopher always played right up to the edge.
Gage’s phone finally engaged Christopher’s encrypted cell, to judge from the long, tonal pulse common to European phones.
“Hello, Father.”
“Can you speak privately?”
“Yes. I’m at home.”
“You know that ‘vacation’ we had coming up? The one you’ve been planning lately?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I need you to postpone it.”
“Why?”
“It’s a bad time. Your mother—”
“The senator isn’t my mother.”
“Your stepmother is preoccupied at the moment.”
“She’s always preoccupied. She’s a senator.”
“She’s particularly preoccupied at the moment. The vacation won’t work right now.”
“I thought she didn’t want to go on vacation with us.”
“She doesn’t. But that means it’s not a good time for me, either.”
Christopher was silent on his end for a moment, processing.
Aaron added, “We can do it later. Just not now.”
“But you don’t understand my situation. I’ve already purchased the tickets. The reservations are set. And there aren’t any refunds.”
“That can’t be helped.”
“The people I’ve made arrangements with will be extremely disappointed.”
“I guess you’re not hearing me. Cancel the damn vacation. Today. Capisce?”
“Yeah, sure. Understood.”
“Good. We’ll talk again soon. Stay safe.”
“You, too.”
Gage ended the call. He smiled.
A fucking stallion.
He just needed to keep the reins tight.