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“We get that,” Peter nodded, “we know precisely where he’s going. If it’s to the Middle East we have our proof of Encarnación’s involvement.”
Hendricks, the mobile to his ear, started giving them orders.
“Hold on,” Soraya said. “You forget we don’t work for you anymore.”
“Who the fuck said that?” Hendricks gave them a hint of a smile just before he stepped through the door.
25
THINK OF IT AS a troika,” Bourne said as he sca
Don Fernando shook his head. “What I don’t understand is why Martha had this material in the first place.”
“It was her fuck-you stash,” Bourne said. “She amassed this information to use as leverage.”
Don Fernando was silent for some time. He stared at the screen of his laptop with a melancholy sorrow. At last he heaved a great sigh. “But, in the end, she didn’t use it.” He turned to look at Bourne. “Why?”
“This was a way out, but only one of several. It would still leave her a life of constantly looking over her shoulder.”
“She wouldn’t have wanted that,” Don Fernando said.
“From what you’ve told me about her, no. But, on the other hand, I doubt that she wanted out at all. That was her essential dilemma. She could no longer go forward, and, for her, there was no way back. There was no other way, no other life that she could conceive of.”
“I told her about it,” Don Fernando lamented. “I laid it all out for her.”
“She couldn’t hear it, or she couldn’t believe it.”
Don Fernando sighed and nodded with a kind of finality. “You’re a good friend, Jason. There aren’t many like you.”
Traffic rolled endlessly by outside. The amplified voice of the guide aboard a passing Bateau Mouche rolled up the stone walls to them, then drifted away as if on a watery tide. The bare trees whipped in the wind off the Seine. Downstairs, on the Quai de Bourbon, there were still gawkers, murmuring among themselves about last night’s suicide. The circus hadn’t died down.
Bourne pointed to the screen. “According to Martha’s information, the Chinese have been laundering money through Maceo Encarnación.”
“They’re going to use the thirty million to buy something from an unknown entity in the Middle East—something very important,” Don Fernando said. “But Martha didn’t know what it was or from whom it was to be bought.”
Bourne did know, however, because Rebeka had whispered the name to him just before she bled out in the backseat of the taxi in Mexico City.
Don Fernando sat back. “What I don’t understand is what Maceo Encarnación gets out of this deal. A ten percent laundering fee? That’s hardly worth the risk he’s taking.”
Bourne scrolled through Martha’s information again. Something he had seen before had stuck in his mind. Then his forefinger stabbed out as he pointed. “There! Tom Brick’s involvement.” He turned to Don Fernando. “What does Core Energy stand to gain in a deal with Maceo Encarnación and the Chinese?”
Don Fernando thought a moment. “That depends on what the Chinese are buying.”
“It’s energy-related,” Bourne said. “Don’t you see? Energy is the element that ties all these people together.”
“Yes. With their huge upsurge in economic expansion, production, infrastructure, and population, the Chinese are always after alternative forms of energy. I can see how Brick and Core Energy would want a piece of whatever technology the Chinese are after.” He shook his head. “But Maceo Encarnación?”
“The troika only makes sense if Maceo Encarnación and Core Energy are somehow allied.”
“What? But Christien and I would know about that, surely?”
“Would you?”
“We’ve had our eye on both Maceo Encarnación and Core Energy, Jason. We could find no money trail between the two.”
“If Brick and Maceo Encarnación went about the alliance in the right way, there wouldn’t be one. A money trail would be the first thing they’d conceal. From what I’ve read, Core Energy has more than enough subsidiaries worldwide to conceal a money trail.”
“Not from us,” Don Fernando insisted. “Christien has developed a proprietary software program that drills down through any mare’s nest of shell corporations and holding companies. I’m telling you there’s no money trail.”
Bourne laughed. “Of course! That’s where Maceo Encarnación’s drug lords come in. They’re the ones who reverse-launder the money flowing between Maceo Encarnación and Core Energy.”
“Reverse-launder?”
Bourne nodded. “Instead of fu
“It’s brilliant.” Don Fernando passed a hand across his forehead. “I wish to God I had thought of it.”
“Don Fernando,” Bourne said, “Maceo Encarnación and the thirty million are going to Lebanon to consummate a deal.”
The older man brightened considerably. It was clear Martha Christiana’s death had hit him hard. “Then we need to get there as quickly as possible.”
Bourne regarded him warily. “We’re not going anywhere until we take care of Nicodemo. You told me you went to a lot of trouble to prove to Maceo Encarnación that you died when your private jet crashed. But if Nicodemo was at your door earlier, then chances are he saw you outside the building. Encarnación knows you’re alive. Nicodemo won’t allow you to leave Paris alive.”
"So many things can go wrong.”
Minister Ouyang, a tiny, translucent teacup balanced between his fingertips, stood in the large central chamber of the magnificent Chonghuagong, the private suite of Qianlong, emperor of the Qing dynasty, buried in the secret center of the Forbidden City. Few people were allowed into the chambers, which gleamed with the emperor’s jaw-dropping collection of precious jade figurines and historic calligraphic scrolls, and none but Minister Ouyang and several others of the Central Committee at such a late hour. The flames from tiers of thick yellow candles threw off flickering, glimmering light that both illuminated and shadowed the array of the Middle Kingdom’s treasures.
The woman to whom Ouyang had directed his concern was curled like a cat on a Mandarin divan brought in for the occasion and followed him with her coffee-colored eyes. Even in this position, the power in her long legs was apparent. Cloaked in a gleaming orange shantung silk robe, she looked like the emissary of the sun. “If you think that way, darling, you will make it so.”
Ouyang turned sharply enough for the hot tea to sting one fingertip. He ignored the pain to stare at his wife. “I will never understand you, Maricruz.”
She bowed her head slightly, her thick waterfall of hair covering one eye, acknowledging the compliment in the restrained ma
Ouyang, in a long, traditional Mandarin’s robe, took a step toward her. “But, really, you are not like a Westerner at all.”
“If I had been,” she said in a voice of stillness and depth, “you never would have married me.”
Ouyang studied her the way a painter eyes the model for his most important work of art. Transformation was the painter’s skill; it was also Ouyang’s. “Do you want to know what ultimately attracted me to you?”
Maricruz opened her eyes slightly.
“Your patience.” Ouyang took a sip of his tea, held it in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed. “Patience is the greatest of virtues. It is almost wholly unknown in the West. The Arabs understand the value of patience, but they are primitives compared to us.”