CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER
IT WAS A RISK, BUT then again pretty much everything Nash had done for a long time had been risky.
He sat in the waiting area of the car repair facility where some warranty work was being done on one of Steers’s vehicles.
The space was empty except for the man sitting directly behind Nash and facing away from him.
Both he and Nash were scrolling on their phones.
The other man had on a cowboy hat and a jean jacket, and dirty corduroy pants with worn boots.
His face held a few days’ worth of beard.
With all that and sunglasses on as well, he did not look anything remotely like FBI Special Agent Reed Morris.
“I’m taking a chapter from your book,” said Morris softly. “Total transformation.”
“The look suits you,” replied Nash as he continued pretending to scroll on his phone, his face pointed down so no one could really see his mouth moving.
The only other person in the room was the man working the front desk of the shop, and he was on the phone arguing loudly with someone, apparently over a repair bill. A TV hung on the wall and was broadcasting a game show. The sounds helped cover Nash and Reed’s conversation.
“Did you approach Elaine Fixx yet?” Nash asked.
“No, we thought with Steers’s new CEO in place it would be too dangerous, and Fixx recently came out of a nasty divorce. We’re really counting on you, Walter.”
Nash proceeded to methodically fill the FBI agent in on all that had transpired since their last discussion and Nash’s various emails.
“You think Masuyo is plotting out something with all this clandestine stuff?” said Reed.
“Apparently so.”
“And Steers really is getting out of the business?” said Morris.
“Appears to be. But her partners won’t be happy.”
“We’ve been on Lord’s trail ever since he came into the picture, but we’ve got no proof of any illegal dealings. To those in the know he’s a reclusive billionaire genius who’s started many businesses that have created great wealth for him and his partners.”
“Steers said he’s also wired in to the Middle East and Beijing.”
“She’s right. But that’s not illegal. In fact, the Middle East guys are pretty popular now. And China is China. They’re going to be in the thick of things regardless.”
“And Russia?”
“Same answer. Just in a different way.”
“One of Lord’s businesses is running a prison in Myanmar.”
“Right, the one that you and Rhett Temple rescued Masuyo from.”
“Only now I found out that Masuyo was never at that prison.”
“What?” exclaimed Morris in a voice loud enough for the front counter man to look up from his phone for a moment.
They both fell quiet and studied their phones until the man turned back to his call.
Nash explained what Thura had told him about his cousin who’d been a guard there.
“What the hell is that about?” whispered Morris. “Have you told Steers?”
“Not yet. I wanted to think about it for a bit first.”
“So if Masuyo wasn’t in the prison, where was she?”
“You said she was a loyal agent of China?”
“Yes. Dropped into Japan decades ago to disrupt that country’s democracy before she turned to crime.”
“Maybe her turning to crime was the plan all along,” said Nash.
“Explain that.”
“It’s never made sense to me that someone like Masuyo, loyal to her country’s ideology, would suddenly turn to building a criminal empire.
What if she was placed into Japan to do just that?
Marry a Westerner to throw off suspicion and then start building this global outfit that would end up benefiting Beijing? ”
“To do what, exactly?” asked Morris.
“Exactly what she has been doing. Flooding the U.S. and other countries with drugs, crime, and violence. That by itself is more disruptive than anything she could have done as strictly an agent of the Chinese in Japan.”
“And her family?”
“She had five kids. But only Victoria Steers is the child of the man she actually loved. The others were fathered by Joseph Steers.”
“How did you come by that knowledge?”
Nash said, “Steers’s nanny. That’s why Victoria has always been her mother’s favorite. And the nanny also believed that Masuyo actually killed her other children, but tricked Victoria into thinking she did it.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that before. Do you really think this nanny was right?”
“She could be. Steers has compassion and empathy. Masuyo has none.”
“But Steers had your daughter killed!”
“I’ve been trying to reconcile that,” conceded Nash. He was now thinking of his wife and her inability to figure out why Maggie would have said those things about him.
I was innocent. Is Steers also somehow innocent? And do you want that to be true for personal reasons?
“So do you think Masuyo was back in China instead of at the prison?” said Morris.
“When I saw her in Myanmar she looked beaten down, dirty, thin. But that could all be staged. I do think she went back to China because her daughter was running the empire and doing it well. She also might have suspected that her enemies might try to kill her. And there was an attempt on the family’s lives after Masuyo left. ”
“By taking down that plane, you mean?” said Morris.
“Yes. Her father died and Steers almost did, too.”
“Why did Steers finally decide to break her mother out then?”
“I’m not sure about the timing.”
“So, presumably Connor Lord had Masuyo brought back to the prison so she could—what?—be rescued by her daughter?”
“That has to be it. Which means they knew Steers was going to make an attempt. She had one inside person at the prison. He could have been working for Connor Lord, too.”
“But why let Steers get her mother out, then, if they knew it was coming?”
“I think I have the answer to that. The Chinese might want Masuyo to return to power to get the fentanyl deaths back up. You alluded to it before, but now I’m convinced that their falling number was due in large part to Victoria swapping out fentanyl in the pill production for other, less fatal substances.
The Chinese must be working with Lord to get Masuyo back in power to reverse that. ”
“So Masuyo was brought back onto the scene to take over the empire. But how does that mesh with Steers now selling her business to Lord?”
“I don’t think the Chinese or Lord or even Masuyo saw that coming.
Steers threw them a curveball, and Lord is one of the best chess players in the world.
That must have done a number on his ego.
I think she did it deliberately to throw them all off their stride.
A bold chess move of her own. And, Reed, she didn’t have to tinker with the pill production.
She put herself in danger with that. That should count for something. ”
“All right,” said Morris slowly, clearly not reading as much into this gesture as Nash obviously did. “I told you that Lord was on his way to the U.S. He’s now on the West Coast.”
“Which means we can expect another meeting with him at some point, I suppose,” said Nash. “And whether he’ll take over things for a buck.”
“You think Steers knows the truth about her mother? That she may actually be working with Lord and the Chinese and against her?”
“When I tell her about the prison situation she will.”
“But won’t selling her business for a buck tell Lord that something is not on the up-and-up?”
“I think it’s another curveball Steers has thrown. They have more firepower than she does, and she’s trying to thread the needle.”
“Think she’s going to pull it off?
“I wouldn’t bet against the woman.”
Morris didn’t say anything for a few moments. “Even if she sells out we need to nail her, Walter, you know that, right? She’s a criminal.”
Nash didn’t answer right away. “I understand the situation, Reed.”
“I know you’ve been embedded with this woman for a long time.
I’ve worked undercover before with some pretty bad people.
And sometimes, things can get. . .confusing.
And you saved the woman’s life, and she feels like she owes you.
And it seems like you’ve seen a different side of her,” Morris added in an uncomfortable voice.
“I have not lost my objectivity, Reed.”
“I’m just asking because our last call did not end well,” Morris said cautiously.
Nash wanted to tell Morris that he was neither an agent nor an employee of the FBI.
They might have fairly well-aligned interests, but that did not mean perfectly aligned.
And sometimes things went sideways. But he did not tell the man that, because he had decided he was going to need the FBI.
Maybe not entirely how they intended, but he was also not in a position to burn bridges.
So like he had done in numerous business negotiations, he told the other party what he knew they wanted to hear.
“I have every intention of holding everyone accountable who should be.”