“I understand. You want to go one-on-one. Get your neighbors behind closed doors where you can cow them into a corner and fence off the Spratlys behind a Chinese wall. You don’t have to dress it up for me.”
“No, that’s not. .”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Ying. “Imperialism pays. It’s a proven fact. Whether the boot doing the kicking is on a British, American, or Chinese foot, it makes no difference to me.”
Cheng started to get up. To an avowed Communist schooled in the system, these were fighting words.
As the general rose to the bait, eyes blazing from across the table, Ying smiled at him and winked. “I’m sorry. It was a bad joke. In extremely poor taste,” he said. “I apologize. I hope you will forgive me. My sense of humor sometimes gets the better of me. ”
Cheng caught himself. He smiled nervously as he glanced over at his security man, who had come off the stool and was moving toward them. Cheng raised his hand and motioned the man away. He was still angry, uncertain as to whether the American wasn’t still playing with his head. He settled slowly back down into his seat. “Are you willing to help us or not?”
“That would depend on how much you are willing to pay, and in what form?”
Their drinks arrived just in time to chill Cheng’s anger. Ying hung his silver-handled walking stick, the sharp metal beak of the bird’s head catching on the wood at the edge of the table. The imagery was not lost on Cheng: the fact that the alias Ying in Mandarin, translated into English, matched the code name often used to identify the American by Western intelligence agencies-the code name “Eagle.”
THIRTY-SIX
Harry and I checked into the Hotel des Alpes in Lucerne. It is situated on the old quay near the north end of the medieval wooden-covered walking bridge, the Kapellbrücke, Chapel Bridge. Here Lake Lucerne closes to a narrow waterway and empties into the Reuss River.
We waste no time unpacking our bags. Instead we head out while it is still light, trying to track down Simon Korff, the banker questioned by Tory Graves and whose business card Graves dropped on me before he was killed.
Harry located four addresses online for the name Korff in and around Lucerne. Three are in town. The fourth appears to be some distance outside the city on the other side of the lake. None of them show the first name of Simon or the letter S. Harry is worried that his search may have been incomplete because of the limitations on the computer search engine he used.
This proves to be the case when we check the local phone book in the room. We find two more listings for Korff but again no match on the first name.
I start dialing using a Swiss SIM card in my unlocked cell phone. Harry and I purchased four of these at a shop at the airport in Zurich when we landed. We’ll use them and toss them as we move.
The first two calls are dead ends. Both are answered in German, which quickly changes to English the minute they realize I don’t speak German. No one at either address has heard of or knows a Simon Korff.
The third call, I hit pay dirt. A woman answers. When I mention the name she says, “Ya. Simon Korff is my father-in-law.”
“Is he there by any chance?”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“My name is Madriani. I’m an American lawyer. I represent some banking interests in the United States. We have been informed that Mr. Korff is knowledgeable and experienced in Swiss banking. We are looking to hire.”
Harry gives me a pained expression.
I shrug. It’s the best I can do on short notice.
“Just a moment.” I can hear her talking in German to someone at the other end.
A few seconds later a man comes on the line. “Hello!”
“Hello, sir. Are you Simon Korff?”
“I am.”
“The Simon Korff who worked for Gruber Bank here in Lucerne?”
“Ya. That is correct.”
“We would very much like to talk to you,” I tell him.
“What does this regard?”
“I would much prefer to discuss that in person if you have the time to meet with us.”
“Of course. When would you like to do this?”
“Tonight, if that’s possible.”
“I could do that. Where are you?”
I give him the name of our hotel.
“I know the place. I could meet you there,” he says.
“Have you already had dinner?”
“No.”
“Why don’t we talk over dinner?”
Harry nods, gestures with his hand like he’s drinking from a glass. My partner is offended that I lied to the man about a job. But he has no difficulty at all plying him with liquor.
“There’s a very nice restaurant here on the second floor. Why don’t we meet there, say seven o’clock?”
“Ya, good,” he says.
I give him my name. As he writes it down I tell him to have the front desk call me when he arrives and we’ll meet him in the lobby.
“Good. See you at seven,” and he hangs up.
“He’s gonna be angry when he finds out there’s no job,” says Harry.
“What else could I say? If I told him how I came by his business card and what happened to Graves he’d hang up in my ear and run. Your job is to keep his glass full.”
“My kind of work. It is, after all, a business deduction,” says Harry.
“I go away for five days and the entire damned world falls apart,” said the Eagle. He was talking to one of his lieutenants from his hotel in Manila in the Philippines. He had one more piece of business to attend to before returning to the States. “What happened?”
“We don’t know. Our people located them. There was a shootout, a lot of damage, blood at the scene, but no bodies. And everybody disappeared.”
“What do you mean, they disappeared?”
“Our people never called in. It’s pretty clear they’re dead.”
“Who did it?”
“We have to assume the P.I. The one with Ives.”
“Was he armed?”
“We don’t know. Mexican police have the building all cordoned off. But according to reports, they found no one inside.”
“What about satellite surveillance? Don’t tell me that you weren’t watching in real time?”
“We were,” said the man, “but there was a problem. Too much smoke. The CS gas clouded out the overhead cameras. And the pavement was too hot to pick ’em up on the thermal. All we saw was a lotta smoke and white light. A white van raced into the lot in front of the place. We lost it in the smoke for maybe a minute, minute and a half. When it popped out again it was doin’ like ninety out of town headed south down the highway.”
“And you didn’t follow it?”
“We did. That’s how we know our people are probably dead. The van stopped along the coast and dumped what looked like two bodies in the ocean.”
“Who were they?”
“Johnson and Hayes.”
“Andy?”
“Yeah.”
Andy Hayes was one of his most reliable operatives. Special Forces trained, he had at one time been part of the army’s Delta Force unit headquartered at Fort Bragg. It had cost the Eagle a bundle to recruit him.
“We lost the van in a parking garage down the coast. They pulled in and never came out,” said the guy at the other end. “Musta had another car stashed. When we checked we found the van, broken windshield, dented front end, and a lot of blood inside, and no clue as to where they went.”
“That means whoever was in the van knew they were being tracked overhead,” said the Eagle.
“That ain’t the half of it,” said the other guy. “They’ve also gone dark at the law office in Coronado. Landlines are all out, cell phones down, and their link to the net, it’s disconnected.”
“What about the two lawyers?”
“They’re in Europe.”
“Where?”
“Switzerland. Lucerne.” The man would have told the Eagle that they had ’em covered, but he didn’t dare. Instead he said, “We brought in assets from Libya. Two guys under contract. They’re very good. In the meantime we’re set up overhead. They checked into their hotel and haven’t emerged.”