“I repeated it because it’s important in the understanding of my attachment, and I can never be certain of your grasp of Spanish.” Maceo Encarnación did not bother to wait for a response from the agent, knowing none would be forthcoming. Was there ever a poorer match in allies, he thought, than extrovert Mexican and introvert Chinese?
This agent had a name, but Maceo Encarnación never used it, assuming that it was false. Instead, he thought of him as Hey-Boy, a despicable term that amused him no end. He would tell him the story—part of it that he would take for the whole—because it amused him to do so. What he would not tell him was the private part. The identity of Nicodemo’s and his sister Maricruz’s mother remained locked inside him. Constanza Camargo had given birth to Nicodemo early in their years-long affair. Maricruz was born three years later. Constanza was the one woman he had ever loved, the one woman he could never have, first, because of Constanza’s husband, and then because of Constanza herself, who loved him, loved her two children with him, but had vowed never to see them, never to interrupt the flow of their lives with the truth, to complicate and warp their destinies in the name of her desire.
“So,” Maceo Encarnación said now, “Nicodemo, parted from his mother, became mine, body and soul. As soon as he was old enough, I sent him to a special school in Colombia. I felt it imperative that he learn the trade.”
“The drug trade,” the agent said, with unnecessary venom. The Middle Kingdom had been done irreparable harm by the opium trade in the 1800s. The Chinese had memories centuries long.
“That and the arms trade.” Maceo Encarnación pursed his lips. “As Minister Ouyang well knows, my prime interest is in arming those who need it most.” When speaking with the agent, he always assumed he was speaking with Ouyang, the spider in the center of his Beijing web.
“You are most altruistic.”
Maceo Encarnación’s left hand twitched. Not for the first time, Hey-Boy had crossed the line that would, in any other circumstance, have cost him, quite literally, his head. Once more it was necessary for Maceo Encarnación to remind himself of the extreme importance of Minister Ouyang and his minions. Without Ouyang’s assistance, the deal with Colonel Ben David would never have been possible.
“My altruism is matched only by Minister Ouyang’s,” he said, enunciating slowly and carefully. “You would do well to remember that.”
The agent stared out the cockpit window. “When do we leave?”
“When I tell you to start the engines.” Maceo Encarnación looked around. “Where is it?”
The pilot looked at him with his long Mandarin eyes. His spidery fingers drew out from beneath his seat an olive-drab metal box with a fingerprint lock. Maceo Encarnación pressed the end of his right forefinger onto the pressure-pad, and the lock opened.
He opened the top and looked down at the close-bonded stacks of thousand-dollar bills. “Thirty million. Amazing to look at,” he said, “even for me.”
“Colonel Ben David will be pleased,” the agent said, deadpan.
Maceo Encarnación gave a silent laugh. “We all will.”
Soraya was about to leave Peter’s hospital room when Secretary Hendricks bustled in.
“Good to see you out of bed, Soraya,” he said. Then he looked past her to where Peter lay. “How are you feeling?”
“Numb,” Peter said, “in every way imaginable.”
Hendricks dredged up a bark of a laugh. “Look, Peter, I don’t have a lot of time. We have a bit of a situation up at headquarters.”
“The computer network is down.”
“That’s right,” Hendricks said, at the same time Soraya said, “What?”
“Dick Richards.” Peter looked at Hendricks, who nodded. “I told Sam to pick him up.”
“Anderson made a command decision to try and definitively link Richards with Core Energy.” Hendricks gestured. “Brick has been ultra-cautious. Despite what he allegedly said to you—”
“He did say it to me, dammit!” Peter said heatedly.
Hendricks let Peter expend himself. “A court of law will rule against you,” he said, after a time. “We’ve tried to follow a money trail, but if Richards is being paid by Core Energy or any of its subsidiaries, we have yet to find any evidence of it. Anderson knew this, which was why he put a keylogger onto the terminal he set Richards up at.”
“Don’t tell me,” Peter said sourly. “It didn’t work.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I assume you have Richards in custody.”
For the first time, Hendricks appeared chagrined. “He’s gone, disappeared.”
“Find Brick,” Peter said. “That’s where Richards went, guaranteed.”
Hendricks spoke softly into his mobile. When the conversation concluded, he said, “For some reason Brick wants the Treadstone system down. Why?”
“Assuming you’re right,” Soraya said, “it’s likely our overseas monitoring he wants to go silent.”
Peter snapped his fingers. “You’re right! But what is he afraid of us finding out?” He gnawed on his thumb for a moment.
Hendricks shifted from one foot to the other. “Peter...” He looked suddenly uncomfortable. When Peter looked up, he continued. “Considering everything that’s happened to you—the serious nature of your current injury, I think it’s best if you’re relieved of duties as codirector of Treadstone.”
“What?” Peter said.
Soraya took a step forward. “You can’t.”
“I can,” Hendricks said. “And I am.”
“It’s my legs that are paralyzed,” Peter said, “not my brain.”
“I’m very sorry, Peter, but my mind’s made up.”
As he turned to go, Soraya said, “If Peter goes, so do I.”
Hendricks swiveled back, leveling his heavy gaze at her. “Don’t be foolish, Soraya. Don’t throw away your career for—”
“For what? My loyalty to my friend?” she countered. “Peter and I have served together from the beginning. We’re a team, end of story.”
Hendricks shook his head. “You’re confusing dedication with loyalty. That’s a terrible mistake, one you’re not likely to recover from.”
“It’s Treadstone that won’t recover from losing its co-directors,” she said with all the force she could muster.
The secretary appeared shocked. “You talk about Treadstone as if it’s a family. It’s not, Soraya. It’s a business.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, Treadstone is a family,” she said. “Every one of its contacts overseas belongs to me. If I leave, they’ll leave with me—”
“They won’t.”
“—just as they did when I was let go from CI during the regime change.” She stood toe to toe with Hendricks, unafraid because, really, she had nothing to lose. She had no desire to remain at Treadstone without Peter. “I told you at the time that regime change was a mistake and that’s turned out to be true. CI is a shell of its former self. It’s dysfunctional, and morale is far worse than it was in the weeks following nine-eleven.”
“I don’t react well to being threatened,” Hendricks said.
“I don’t think I’m the one doing the threatening here.”
“Look, Anderson’s in the field, even as we speak. Peter put him in charge and—”
“I like Sam as much as the next guy,” Peter said, “but he’s not seasoned enough to run field ops for Treadstone for any length of time.”
“Are either of you going to do it?” Hendricks gestured. “Look at you. Neither of you could walk out of here under your own power.”
“There’s nothing to stop us setting up a temporary HQ right here in Peter’s room,” Soraya said. “In fact, given that the Treadstone servers have been rendered useless, a substitute network seems like the best possible course of action right now.”
Peter, who had been watching the dispute like a spectator at a tennis match, now said, “Wait a minute! Soraya, that thirty million I found. I assumed it was drug money, but what if it’s not?”