Nash was taken aback by this revelation. “She knows about me?”
“Yes.”
“Does Judith know that Maggie is alive?”
“I do not know. But I do know that the CIA does not like to share information with anyone.” She paused. “I communicated with my handler earlier. I was also told that Maggie wanted you to know that she could not be more proud of you for all that you have done.”
Nash felt the tears creep to his eyes. At bottom, regardless of the muscles and tats and lethal skill set, he was, in some respects, still the overly sentimental Walter Nash.
Steers rubbed his arm. “I know how you have suffered. If there had been any other way . . .”
He brushed his tears away and attempted a smile. “I’ve been working with the FBI for a while, so I got a crash course in government secrecy and skullduggery, Victoria. But what about our neighborhood security guard, Billy Adams? Hewaskilled.”
Steers gazed once more into the flames. “The fake police, who were the ones to abduct Maggie, were sent to me by Lord. However, I arranged that Maggie would be immediately turned over to my people for interrogation. . .and disposal. Those people were agents of the CIA. So Maggie was then safe. However, the fake police, unbeknownst to me, placed a listening device at the guard shack. They heard your conversation with the guard, and your urging him to go to the authorities about what he had seen. Again, without my knowledge, they used your vehicle to kill him. I truly did not intend anyone to die or you to be blamed for it.”
Nash nodded slowly. “And your mother and the prison? Why did Lord bring her back so that you could ‘rescue’ her?”
“To me it evidenced a master chess move of stunning creativity. Lord, you see, allowed me to visit my mother in prison as a reward for disposing of the threat you represented to both of us, but for different reasons. He did not want his plans with China thwarted, and I did not want my pact with the CIA disrupted. As I informed you before, with my mother in prison, or so I thought, that was significant leverage over me to do Lord’s bidding without restriction.”
“They might have sensed you wanted to get out.”
“This, too, I have thought is more probable than not.”
“But what happened then? What was this master chess move?”
“My mother returning to the business allowed her to spy on me, a capability Lord did not have previously.”
“Like a Trojan horse,” said Nash.
“As you know, Beijing was not happy with me. They deemed a leadership change in their best interests. So my mother would use whatever intelligence she could gather to eventually dethrone me.Thatis a master chess move because it is both tactical and strategic, and it achieves multiple goals from the same set of actions.”
“But why not just kill you and insert your mother or Lord at the top of the chain?”
“As you now know I have partners all over the world, and they are men who are unafraid of Connor Lord or even Beijing. Were the Chinese to do what you suggested it would have caused a dramatic and violent rupture in that partnership. Beijing and Lord are far too intelligent to go down a road filled with such potholes. She stroked his arm. “I was fooled by my mother until you suggested that she was distracting me from what she was really doing.” She gazed at Nash in reverence. “You actually read Masuyo better than I did, Walter. And that is not an easy undertaking.”
“But sheisyour mother, Victoria. And, regardless of the circumstances, it’s not easy to think badly of a parent. I had no such allegiances to your mother.”
“After that I had her watched most carefully. And my suspicions were confirmed. My mother is brilliant. But she is also arrogant, and sometimes arrogant people are not as careful as they otherwise should be. They make mistakes, and she made enough to where the truth became apparent to me.”
“So you planned to turn that to your advantage?”
“After Hiroko-san’s murder at my mother’s hands, that became my one desire in life. And it also meshed quite perfectly with my plan to lure Connor Lord in and then trap him. Now the authorities are closing in, and all I have to do is survive.”
“I would have thought the CIA would put you in protective custody right after the sale went through.”
“If that had been done, Lord would have instantly seen the truth and taken steps to counteract anything we might have planned. I had to remain in the relative open in my ‘retirement.’ What happened at the estate was unforeseen by any of us, occurring far earlier than any of us would have predicted. With that said, I sense my mother’s impatient hand in it.”
Steers fell silent, and Nash looked to the window as the wind picked up.
“Clearly now they suspect that you are working for the authorities,” he said. “They tried to kill you. They are hunting you. What is the CIA doing about that?”
“They are aware of the attack, obviously, and are working out a suitable plan.”
“If you are killed, is their case weakened?”
She nodded. “Yes, considerably.”
“How long before arrests are made?”