He pulled up a chair so the two men faced one another, in fact were uncomfortably close to each other.
“De Bourbon…name doesn’t sound vaguely familiar?”
Lester shook his head furiously as Simon took Lester’s right hand in both of his, separating the fingers, massaging each one. “What are you doing…now, hey there, stop this…”
“You asked who I was. The only thing you need to know is that Rafael de Bourbon was my friend. When he died, I still owed him a favor.”
Meeting Lester’s gaze, he grasped the middle finger and wrenched it violently clockwise. The bone fractured, the sound as loud as a nutcracker crushing a walnut. Lester’s cry was louder still.
London Li looked on passively, as if she’d witnessed this kind of thing a thousand times before.
“Go ahead,” said Simon, as the banker groaned and whimpered. “The suite takes up half the entire floor. Your party is above us. They won’t hear a thing. Anybody else does, I’ll take my chances. We’ll be finished by the time security arrives.”
“What do you want? Is it money? Tell me how much. Done deal. Ten million. Twenty.” He tried to smile, friend to friend, his pain making the smile a grotesque facsimile. “What will it cost me to make this go away?”
“Right now, I could ask you for it all and you’d give it to me.”
Simon grasped the ring finger, gave it a little shake to let Lester know what was coming, then twisted it viciously. Another crack. Another horrible protest. Lester began to cry. Perspiration ran down his forehead mingling with his tears.
“Come on, then,” he pleaded. “Tell me what it is you want…anything. Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” Simon took the index finger. Lester cried out before he’d done anything to it. “Is two enough? Or should we move on to the fingernails and really get this party started?”
“Two’s enough!”
Simon let go of the man’s hand and Lester held it to his chest, trembling, breathing labored, pain creasing his features.
“You, sir, are done. Out of the game. Finished. For your information, Rafa copied over a million files from PetroSaud’s servers. Your name is everywhere. You know what you did. Ms. Li thinks it’s going to be the biggest case of financial larceny in the last fifty years. Once murder is thrown in, you’ll be looking at twenty-five years, no parole. They’ll all be fighting for you. My guess is that you’ll end up in the States. New York. Are you getting this?”
As he spoke, London Li passed along a variety of documents, first the ones that Rafael de Bourbon had sent in his initial email highlighting the monies stolen from the first Future Indonesia fund, then other documents highlighting other crimes. Lester studied them with increasing interest, his eyes shifting occasionally to Simon, then back to the damning evidence.
“We know all about the money,” said London. “How you stole it from the different funds by creating false investments with your associates, wiring money in and out, and back to managers like Nadya Sukarno, all the while taking your cut. It’s all there. Wire instructions. Bank transfers. Commission statements. Notes confirming the wheres and whats and hows. I commend your bookkeeping. It’s going to be very helpful.”
“All that,” said Simon, “that’s Ms. Li’s side of things. Me, I want to know the bigger picture. I have just two questions. What is Prato Bornum? And, who is Luca?”
Lester fidgeted, face red, sniffling, struggling to regain a measure of dignity. “Riske…that’s your name, right? Listen to me. I wasn’t kidding about the money. Go someplace quiet, out of the way. Maybe they won’t find you, but I doubt it. These people you’re asking about, they’re everywhere. Government. Military. Finance. Europe. Asia. The States. Ask me, they’re all a little crazy. Think the world’s coming to an end because of a few immigrants, refugees, whatever. Me, I’m in it for the money. But them…they think otherwise. It’s all about stemming the tide. More than that, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Now, please, I’ll wire you twenty million. Got the cash in my account. You two can split it. Go away.” He leaned closer to Simon, speaking to him as if London weren’t in the room. “If she thinks they’re going to allow her to write her story, she’s got another think coming. She may try, but they’ll get to her. Christ, they’ll buy the bloodyFTif they have to.”
“And Luca?”
“Don’t ask.”
“We’re past that point.”
“Please. Just go. They’ve been planning this for years. They won’t let two nobodies get in the way.”
“I want to know it all. Hear me? Everything. What’s Prato Bornum?”
“Load of bullshit. Like I said.”
“That’s not going to cut it.”
“I always told him. I’m only in it for the money.”
“Tan wasn’t in it for the money. Llado wasn’t in it for the money. Too many people are already dead because of Prato Bornum. Don’t tell me it’s a load of bullshit.”
“They want to clean things up. Send people back to where they belong. Tighten up borders. It’s out of control. That’s what they say. Me, I live here. Everything couldn’t be morein control. But in Europe, the States, other parts of Asia, it’s a free-for-all. People think they can go wherever they like and expect others to care for them. It’s bankrupting the system, the poor countries dragging the rich ones down to their level, not bothering to solve their own problems. You’ve seen the pictures. Internationalism is finished. Isolationism is the order of the day. Everyone to his own. White to white. Brown to brown. Yellow to yellow.”
“Sounds pretty dull,” said Simon. “I wouldn’t want to live in a place where everyone looks like you.”
