“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 description, but I’m sure it doesn’t include rectifying nine-year-old presumed wrongs committed by the Justice Department.”

“That assumes that I was Hennessy’s first choice.” Abrams glanced back at Gage. “I wasn’t. He’d already tried the CIA and the head of the European Central Bank and who knows who else. They all turned him away after recommending that he have his head examined. That’s why he wanted to meet with me. He wanted to prove by his manner and his presentation that he wasn’t crazy. He saw on the news that I’d be in Marseilles for a central bankers’ meeting, and called me at home one night and—”

“How did he get your number?”

Abrams shrugged again. “I don’t know. Other than my assistant, only the secretary of the treasury and the president were supposed to have it. That’s part of the reason I called the FBI. They promised to do an investigation, but never followed through, or at least didn’t give me the results. In any case, Hennessy said he’d be somewhere along the Mediterranean at the same time as the conference. The deal was that I would give him fifteen minutes in person at a restaurant in the Oliviers District—”