“Well that makes sense.”
“But people suspect me, of course. Like the police in Hong Kong. They would have arrested me if they had the necessary proof. But they do not.”
“But would China even let them?” asked Nash.
When she looked at him suspiciously, he said, “I’m not stupid, Victoria-san. I pick up on things, and it was clear when they met with me that the Hong Kong police’s hands are tied. I assume that is why you made your home there.”
“I have what you Americans call belts and suspenders on that score. No evidence the police can use, and also powerful allies in case such evidence materializes.”
Until you turn on the Chinese and they then turn on you,thought Nash.And maybe that’s already happened.
“But you mentioned that the FBI had tried to get people inside your operation.”
“They continue to do so, of that I am sure.”
Nash knew he shouldn’t, but he had been at this for a long time and needed to make a breakthrough.
“Rhett Temple told me about one of them: Walter Nash?”
She glanced up at him from behind her desk. “It is a complex game that I have to play, Dillon-san. And I play it as well as I can. But there is no room for mistakes. And the less you know of the matter the better off you will be.”
“Okay, but I heard that the FBI said that Walter Nash had been framed, and that he hadn’t killed his daughter. She was what, nineteen?”
She took a few seconds to respond. “It is a hard world and I do not make the rules, but I have to live by them.”
“I guess innocent young people dying is just the price of doing business?”
She looked sharply up at him. “What do you care about any of this?”
“I care because I’m an honest man. I was forced to become part of this world.”
“And yet you have never tried to leave, have you?” she retorted.
“How? I was in a foreign country and you were holding a murder charge over my head.”
She eyed him coolly. “Well, there was no murder, as you now know. And you are no longer in a foreign country.Iam.”
“Do you want me to leave?” said Nash.
Now her superior look faded. “I.. . .What I want is to no longer discuss any of this.”
She then waved him away, and Nash reluctantly obeyed.
It had all been a surprisingly candid reveal by her, Nash thought later.
And by me as well.
* * *
The motorcade pulled through the gates of the estate while Nash and Thura stood guard by the front entrance. As the large SUVs, looking more like tanks than civilian vehicles, stopped and the armed men piled out, Thura glanced nervously at Nash.
“Shit, these muthers look serious.”
“Theyareserious,” Nash said. “As serious as they come.”
Nash could only imagine the situations these men had to deal with in their world, where someone was gunning for you every second of every day. It made men into something less than human.
In fact I’m looking at a pack of wolves coming right at me.