In fact, everything about Oliver Liss exuded success to the most exacting degree. But then he and his two partners hadn‘t built Black River from the ground up on trust funds and dumb luck. As Marks sipped at his drink, he felt as if a nest of pit vipers had taken up residence in his abdomen. Mentally, he cursed Willard for not preparing him for this meeting. He tried to dredge up everything he‘d read or heard about Oliver Liss, and was dismayed to discover that it was precious little. For one thing, the man kept out of the limelight-one of the other partners, Kerry Mangold, was the public face of Black River. For another, very little was known about him. Marks recalled Googling him once and discovering a disconcertingly short bio. Apparently an orphan, Liss was raised in a series of Chicago foster homes until the age of eighteen, when he got his first full-time job working for a building contractor. Apparently the contractor had both contacts and juice, because in no time Liss had begun working in the campaign of the state senator, for whom the contractor had built a twenty-thousand-square-foot home in Highland Park. When the man was elected he took Liss with him to DC, and the rest was, as they say, history. Liss was unmarried, without family affiliations of any kind, at least not that anyone knew about. In short, he lived behind a lead curtain not even the Internet could pierce.
Marks tried not to wince when he drank the chai; he was a coffee drinker and hated any kind of tea, especially ones that tried to masquerade as something else. This one tasted like a cupful of the Ganges.
Someone else might have said, Do you like it? just to break the ice, but it seemed Liss was uninterested in icebreaking or any other form of conventional communication. Instead he directed his eyes, the same deep shade of blue as the background of his tie, to Marks and said, — Willard tells me good things about you. Are they true?
— Willard doesn‘t lie, Marks said.
This brought the ghost of a smile to Liss‘s lips. He continued to sip his vile chai, his gaze never wavering. He seemed not to have to blink, a disconcerting asset in anyone, especially someone in his position.
The food came, then. It appeared as if Liss had ordered not only their drinks but their breakfast as well. This consisted of buttered fresh corn tortillas and scrambled eggs with peppers and onions, drenched in an orange chile sauce that just about incinerated the lining of Marks‘s mouth. Following the first incautious bite, he swallowed hard and stuffed his face with tortillas and sour cream. Water would just spread the heat from his stomach to his small intestine.
Graciously, Liss waited until Marks‘s eyes had stopped watering. Then he said, — You‘re quite right about our Willard. He doesn‘t lie to his friends,
just as if there had been no gap in the conversation. -As for everyone else, well, his lies seem like the soul of truth.
If Willard was flattered by this talk, he gave no indication. Rather, he contented himself by eating his food as slowly and methodically as a priest, his expression Sphinx-like.
— However, if you don‘t mind, Liss continued, — tell me something about yourself.
— You mean my bio, my curriculum vitae?
Liss showed his teeth briefly. -Tell me something about yourself I don‘t know.
Clearly, he meant something personal, something revealing. And it was at this precise moment that Marks realized that Willard had been in discussions with Oliver Liss before this morning, perhaps for some time. “It’s already rebooted,” Willard had said to him, referring to Treadstone. Once again he felt blindsided by the quarterback of his own team, not a good feeling to have at a meeting with the import of this one.
He shrugged mentally. No use fighting it, he was here, he might as well play out the string. This was Willard‘s show, anyway, he was just along for the ride. -One week shy of my first wedding anniversary I met someone-a dancer-a ballet dancer, of all things. She was very young, not yet twentytwo, a good twelve years my junior. We saw each other once a week like clockwork for nineteen months and then, just like that, it was over. Her company went on tour to Moscow, Prague, and Warsaw, but that wasn‘t the reason.
Liss sat back and, drawing out a cigarette, lit it in defiance of the law. Why should he care? Marks thought acidly. He is the law.
— What was the reason? Liss said in an oddly soft tone of voice.
— To tell you the truth, I don‘t know. Marks pushed his food around his plate. -It‘s a funny thing. That heat-one day it was there, the next it wasn‘t.
Liss blew out a plume of smoke. -I assume you‘re divorced now.
— I‘m not. But I suspect you already knew that.
— Why didn‘t you and your wife split up?
This was what Liss‘s information couldn‘t tell him. Marks shrugged. -I never stopped loving my wife.
— So she forgave you.
— She never found out, Marks said.
Liss‘s eyes glittered like sapphires. -You didn‘t tell her.
— No.
— You never felt the urge to tell her, to confess. He paused reflectively. -Most men would.
— There was nothing to tell her, Marks said. -Something happened to me-
like the flu-then it was gone.
— Like it never happened.
Marks nodded. -More or less.
Liss stubbed out his cigarette, turned to Willard, and regarded him for a long moment. -All right, he said. -You have your funding. Then he rose and, without another word, walked out of the restaurant.
It‘s the oil fields, stupid! Moira slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. -Good God, why didn‘t I see that all along, it‘s so damn obvious!
— Obvious now that you know everything, Humphry Bamber said.
They were in Christian Lamontierre‘s kitchen, eating roast beef and Havarti cheese sandwiches on sprouted-wheat bread Bamber had made from the well-stocked fridge, washed down with Badoit, a French mineral water. Bamber‘s laptop was on the table in front of them, Bardem up and running through the three scenarios Noah had inputted into the software program.
— I thought the same thing the first time I read Israel Zangwill‘s The Big Bow Mystery. Humphry Bamber swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. -It‘s the first real locked-room mystery, although others as far back as Herodotus in the fifth century BCE, believe it or not, toyed with the idea. But it was Zangwill who in 1892 introduced the concept of misdirection, which became the touchstone for all stories of so-called impossible crimes from then on.
— And Pinprick is classic misdirection. Moira studied the scenarios with mounting fascination and dread. -But on such a massive scale that without Bardem no one would be able to figure out that the real reason for invading Iran was to confiscate their oil fields. She pointed at the screen. -This area-Noah‘s target area, Shahrake NasiriAstara-I‘ve read a couple of intelligence reports about it. At least a third of Iran‘s oil comes from there. She pointed again. -See how small a geographic area it is? That makes it both vulnerable to an assault by a relatively small force and easily defendable by that same small force. It‘s perfect for Noah. She shook her head. -My God, this is brilliant-demented, horrific, unthinkable even, but decidedly brilliant.