As she had said:You can accomplish so much more from the shadows.
Thura and some of the security team were on duty now so that Nash and the others could sleep. Nash knew that Steers selling her empire to the man for really nothing did not protect her. Her cartel partners would not be at all pleased, especially after she had laid out such an impressive business proposal envisioning a central hierarchy to manage their various empires.
When they find out who their new partner is, they will try to kill her, without a doubt.
But that did not answer the question as to why Steers was getting out of the business altogether. And what about her mother? The woman who had created the empire in the first place? He doubted that she would have approved, which told him that Steers had not allowed her mother to be part of this decision.
And when she finds out, Masuyo will want to kill her daughter, too. You made many enemies with this perplexing decision, Victoria-san, and I wonder why.
His phone buzzed and he looked at the screen. Agent Morris had finally replied to his secure message. He opened the email and read it.
Nash now had a name for the gentleman who had visited them.
Connor Lord had been born. . .in America.
Okay. An American cozying up to Middle Eastern and Chinese dictators.
Lord had been an Army brat, like Nash, but his father’s service had carried Lord to both the Middle and the Far East. When his father’s service ended he had come home; his then-adult son had not. For the following twenty-five-plus years, Lord had been immersed in those twin regions of the world as a wealth builder and keen student of geopolitics. Never in the limelight, Morris noted in the email, and not in anything they could prove was criminal.
But always in the shadows, thought Nash.
Steers had not been joking about the man being good at chess. A fifteen-year-old Lord—who already spoke a half dozen languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, and Japanese—had become a grand master, Morris reported. While still a teenager, he had beaten Garry Kasparov, and Anatoly Karpov the following year. But he had mysteriously left that competitive world before the age of twenty-one, Morris wrote. He had next turned his interests and his reportedly 215 IQ—
Nash gasped as he read this. He didn’t even know the scale went that high.
Morris also said in the email that all efforts to learn more about the man had been met with walls of silence from those around the world in high places who surely knew Connor Lord. And that included those in the United States.
The shadows again.
Morris had asked Nash why he had made the inquiry. Nash wasn’t sure what to tell the man.
Finally, he wrote, Steers offered to sell her entire business to him for a buck.
Morris’ reply was swift.Are you drunk or high on something?
Nash wrote back, I wish. He put his phone down and stared at the ceiling.
None of this made sense, at least the way he was looking at it. Shakespeare had written about rulers kissing away kingdoms, he vaguely recalled from some long-ago college class. But people didn’t really do that. Once you had power you did everything possible to consolidate it, and then keep it.
He rose and found Thura, and spoke with him for a few minutes, then headed over to the main house. He let himself in using an electronic key card that allowed him access to the various buildings.
It was late and the enormous house was exceptionally quiet.Quiet like a morgue.
He moved through one hall and then another. He stopped and stared down the hall where Masuyo had her suite of rooms.
Down another hall was where Hiroko had her room. He had visited with her often since they had come to live here. He had found her favorite chocolates at a shop in town and had brought her several boxes of them. They would have tea and she would speak with him in greater detail of Steers and her family.
As he stood there in the darkness, he recalled some of their discussions.
* * *
“I believe with all my heart that it is not too late for Victoria-san to become what she once was,” Hiroko had said.
“You mean, the shy little girl who loved to draw,” he said.
She looked at him sadly and said, “I think you know of what I speak. But with her mother having returned, things. . .things could once more become out of control.”
“You mean Victoria-san could lose control because of her mother?”