by Sam Waite
"If it was Diego, the odds that I'll be there just went up. It's the first name of Cervantes, Maduro's enforcer "
"Hurry on then. I'm bored out of my mind here. Why don't you find a footballer for me to follow. Better yet, a babe rock star."
"And get you nicked for stalking?" McNulty was more of a linguist than he admitted. I hung up before he finished his soliloquy in Gaelic. My ears were starting to burn.
I called Jorge Gavizon.
"Buenos noches."
"¿Noche? It should be morning there."
"I was just about to go to bed, and not for no siesta, Mick. What do you want?"
"Can you find out Diego Cervantes's schedule for next Tuesday? I need to know if he's going to be in London."
"Always Cervantes. You can't get enough of that guy can you?"
There was a rolling slur to Gavizon's speech that worried me. "Do you have a pen?" I asked.
"A pin? You want me to stick somebody?"
Gavizon laughed. I could almost see the red in his eye.
"Write this down. 'Where will Cervantes be next Tuesday?'"
"Don't you get it? You said 'pin' not 'pen'—you know, stick somebody. Your English sucks."
The slur was thick. "Pardon my Texan, Jorge. Just write."
I tried to call Burroughs, but all I got was his answering machine. I left my name and number.
Alexandra was transcribing the recording of the PDVSA guy's conversation. She looked up and waved when I came into the room.
"How's it going?"
"I'd say I'm good for ninety percent of it. You did say it was voice activated, didn't you."
"Yes."
"There are two blank areas. They aren't very long, and as far as I can tell, nothing was cut out. You'd better listen for yourself though."
Something was missing, at least from the shorter blank. It didn't cut off in the middle of a sentence, but the conversation didn't flow naturally.
Alexandra looked upset with herself. A little of her marble chill was coming back. I'd rather it didn't. I tried to get her to relax. "There'll probably be more blanks. This stuff isn't state of the art."
"Let's hope we got the good bits at least, whatever they might be. I'm still not sure what to listen for."
I looked over her shoulder at her notes. They would have been easier to read if my eyes hadn't been distracted by strands of light brown hair brushing the slope of her shoulder. "You're doing fine," I said. "Just fine."
"Did you talk to your friend about the oil?"
"Yes, but he's not sure if he can help. He said he would call soon if he can find someone."
"You're just going to wait? If you really think it's important, I might be able to find someone to analyze it."
"He actually suggested we try Schlumberger, but I want to maintain as much control over confidentiality as possible. My friend knows a lot of independents in the business, who are damn good and you can trust on a handshake."
Before Alexandra could respond, my phone rang. It was Pascal. I told her I had to go.
"Shall I go with you, or is it another dangerous friend?"
"Same friend as before, and he's still dangerous."
The bar was almost in the neighborhood, just around the corner from the artist's square at Montmartre. A piano player in a black dress that draped her thighs like a second skin had just played the intro to "Moanin'" when I walked in. I nodded to Pascal. He must have sixth sense, because he returned the nod without taking his eyes off the musician. He was at a table for two. I sat across from him. "Hi." He touched his finger to his lips. All right, I sat silent and joined him in his reverie.
The piano player had blonde hair that touched the keys when she leaned forward and bore down on elaborate embellishments that flowed faster than a mountainside rill. When she hit the two-note accents at the end of each line of the theme she locked her wrists and shoulders and seemed to play with the full weight of a pro wrestler. Grace and power. I was glad Pascal had told me to shut up.
When she finished, she turned toward us and bowed to Pascal. He beamed as he applauded.
"Magnificent, no?"
"Yeah, you know her?"
"Not yet. I just tipped her twenty euros to play that." He called a waiter. I ordered a beer and Pascal handed him a note for the entertainer. When she got it, she looked our way and smiled with her eyelids at half-mast.
"Guess you'd rather I didn't hang around until the place closes."
He shrugged. "That Chinese guy I followed is very rude."
"You approached him?"
"Of course not, I mean he was rude to the Taiwanese. He was scowling and stabbing his finger toward the guy's face when he talked. They didn't stay together very long. When they separated, I followed the mainlander to his home. He has a better place than I do, a lot better."
"What was David's reaction?"
"He looked scared. Who is this guy? He's pretty rich for a Communist."
"Two classes of rich folk in China—party-leader Communists and capitalist insiders. The mark's father is one of the former. Do you have his address?"
Pascal handed me an envelope. "It's in there, along with his phone number and photos of finger-pointing. That's all I have."
"Good timing." The set ended, and I gave my seat to the piano player. Pascal was a highly focused man. He didn't even say good-bye.
It was late, but I called David from outside the bar to find out why the Commie had been angry and what their conversation had been about. Even more, I wanted to know why David had been afraid. He answered on the second ring. "Allo."
"David?"
"Leave me alone." Must have recognized my voice.
"If that's what you want, but I need to talk to you one last time."
"You need? Why should I care what you need?"
Why indeed. "The oil sample could be evidence in a murder case."
"Yeah, murder case, maybe mine, if you don't leave me alone."
"Did the mainlander threaten you?"
He hung up. I called back.
"I can help you with threats." I said when he picked up. All I heard in reply was angry breathing.
"I doubt that. You can't even help your own people."
He hung up again and didn't answer when I called back. Did he know about Sabine and Trevor? If so, how?
If not, who or what was he talking about?
Chapter 19
When I got back to Sabine's flat, I had an email from my Houston friend. I called him.
"Send your sample if you still want it analyzed," he said. "I found a lab that can verify whether the stuff is from the Orinoco. It might also be able to identify the bacteria. This place has done some bacteria experiments on Canadian tar sands. They say they know all about it. In fact, they're so eager to see your oil that they'll do the analysis for free."
"How long?"
"Pretty quick."
"Good job."
Alexandra had been in the bath when I got back. I heard the bathroom door close and the pad of bare feet heading my way. She stepped into the living room with a small towel draped across her hair and a larger one wrapped around her body. Her legs were pink from the heat of the water. In the room's slight chill, an aura of steam rose from her thighs and shoulders. Her smile was broad and free of the tension that I had grown accustomed to seeing in her face.
"How did your meeting go?" She wrapped her hair in the small towel and squeezed.
"Good jazz."
"That's why you went, to listen to music?"
"I'd hoped to learn a little more about our Chinese friend David and a guy from the mainland. Didn't find out much."
Alexandra sat on a cushioned chair across from me and fluffed out her damp hair. No marble goddess now. I glanced at her legs long enough for her to notice. I tried not to, but my eyes apparently were willing to accept direction from body parts other than my brain. In any case, she didn't seem to mind.
"I called David after I met my friend, but he refused to talk to me.
"
"Why?"
"Fear, I guess. Probably a sensible decision."
"I don't understand. What would he have to fear?"
"Don't know."
"Even if you did know, what then?"
That was more of a statement than a question. There was no good reply.
"Do you really think there might be another reason—besides their involvement—for what happened with Sabine and Trevor? What else could it be?"
"Nothing I can put my finger on, but among other things there's a spooky Venezuelan who shouldn't be involved in this at all."
"Who?" A shadow of her icy self drifted across Alexandra's face.
"Cervantes."
"He's not spooky."
"What do you know about him?"
"I've met him. He's charming. He works for PDVSA."
"Not exactly, he works for President Maduro."
"What do you mean?" She tittered in a way that seemed either nervous or forced.
"Probably nothing. It's a state company, so I doubt it matters, but he's paid by Maduro's office."
"How do you know that?"
"Nosing around is what I do. Let's forget it."
"That's the best thing you've said yet." Whether naturally or artfully, Alexandra's warmer persona was coming back. "Why don't you let it go for a while? Take a break. It might make everything clear. That happens to me sometimes with a study. If you're too focused, you can miss things."
She tucked her feet onto the chair in a move that caused the towel to open along the side of her thigh. "Let's both set ourselves free, just for the weekend, maybe a long three-day weekend. Do you like sailing?"
"Love it as long as someone else handles the rigging. The only thing I know about sailing is how to be ballast."
Alexandra planted her feet on the floor and leaned forward. Her body language was putting stress on the towel that it wasn't designed for. "You can leave the rigging to me. I've been sailing since I was ten. Do you remember the harbor at Monaco? We can rent a boat and sail down the coast. If you like, we can take a week and sail all the way to Ibiza. I have a cottage there."
"I..." I couldn't speak well. "No," was the obvious answer, but it was hard to say.
"Mick, no sea on Earth is more beautiful."
There were a lot of unresolved aspects in my investigation that needed to be checked and not much time, but Alexandra was punching buttons deep in my pleasure center and at the moment I didn't know a better way to spend time. "Not a week, I can't be out of the picture that long, but a weekend sounds good."
"Excellent, let's leave now."
"Let's go tomorrow after I send the oil sample to Houston."
"Send it from Monaco. Let's drive, if we leave now, we can get there early tomorrow. Make it a long weekend." Alexandra moved over next to me. "We can take turns driving. You first, I'll sleep." She lay her head on my shoulder and made little snoring sounds. She put her lips close to my ear. "Then tomorrow, we'll sail. Woosh." Her breath tickled. "We'll glide over the waves."
"Why not go to Le Havre, it's closer."
"Because Le Havre is not on the Cote d'Azure." She tacked her hand back and forth like a little sailboat across my thigh. "We can sail to Marseille and back. How about it?"
Two days when no one else in the world was at work. Why not?
"I need to make a phone call." I tried to contact Burroughs. No luck, so I sent an email and asked him to call me. That was the only loose end that needed to be sewn up right away. While Alexandra got ready, I stuffed a T-shirt, underwear and a toothbrush into a satchel and made a schedule. We should be able to find a boat, rig it and put to sea by early afternoon. Go someplace, maybe not Marseille, that might take a little longer than a weekend. Who cared where? Sleep on board, spend Saturday at sea and come back to Paris Sunday night.
Despite the allure of those visions, I started having second thoughts about leaving the investigation for a weekend. Those misgivings were seared away in the flash of a smile, when Alexandra came in with a handbag and a coat slung over her shoulder. Her upper body moved freely as she walked toward me. If she wore any garment under her contoured jersey, it was insubstantial.
"Let's go," she said.
I was ready.
Chapter 20
Alexandra navigated us out of the city. Once we were on the highway, I took over. She lay her seat back and closed her eyes. If the trip was supposed to double as a vacation, I should have turned off my mobile phone. It buzzed. I fit a plug into my ear and found myself listening to Jim Burroughs growl.
"Here's your call back. Anything special or did you just want to chat?"
"I was checking in to see—"
"There's plenty to see all right. We've been looking at some doozy currency moves. Money's flowing into forex derivatives like the Amazon floods in rainy season. All headed toward our strike date."
"How do you know that?"
"There's my little secret. Sorry, Sanchez, but I betrayed your confidence a smidgen. I told the feds. I have a couple of admirers in the Securities and Exchange Commission. If I give them a tip, they know there's something to it. I've helped them before. No offense, but there's too much going on for a lonely PI in Paris to handle, even with the help of me and other civilians like Bizet."
"Take it down a notch, Jim. Try starting from the beginning. Chronology's a good strategy."
"More layman, right?"
"Something like that." I figured Burroughs' admission that he needed the SEC was as close to humility as he got. The "layman line" put him back on track.
"I was running simulations on what we had, but the sampling was too small, and it relied on old data. I needed more and newer information. Still do, but more than that, I wanted lots of muscle. If anyone is trying to rig the markets, we need to stomp them."
"What can the SEC do if the trades are being handled through London and they're in the foreign exchange market? That's outside SEC reach isn't it?"
"It can twist arms and cajole. Also frighten. LIFFE has as much stake in this as anyone. It's agreed to give up a little proprietary data on dollar trends."
"Where is the flood of money coming from?"
"The money's being bounced around so much, I haven't been able to track the source. There may be a few or several, but informed speculation says China's the main one."
"Who's doing the informed speculating, and is anyone guessing why?"
"A number of traders I know say there's a lot of action through firms that are associated with Chinese interests. Naturally, nobody actually doing the trades will say anything. It might jeopardize their profits. As for why, they're traders, like I said. Who wouldn't rig the market to increase take and lower risk, if you could get away with it? What other motivation besides money would they understand?"
"You remember the Chinese paper that I asked you about?"
"The one with the sophisticated encryption?"
"Yeah that one. It described a cheap way to lower the viscosity of extra heavy oil. A couple of engineers from China Petroleum were touring the Orinoco recently. Do you think there might be a connection to the forex deal?"
"Huh? Imagine me doing a double-take, right now. I don't get it."
"Not evident is it? It's just that I've run into both events from an unlikely starting point. It might be more than coincidence."
"You're not a conspiracy nut, are you Sanchez? Don't you need an assassination or two for a proper conspiracy?"
I didn't tell Burroughs, but that was what had got this all started.
"We've got enough to try to figure out without mucking up forex with petroleum. What's your next move?"
"A few days of sailing. I'm on the highway now."
"A working holiday?"
"Just a weekend."
"The strike date is in six days from now, 5:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time. Can't you wait till then?"
I didn't have anything to say to that. Burroughs had only reinforced my earlier misgivings. I glanced at Alexandra. She looked c
oncerned. She put her hand on my thigh.
"You got this started, Sanchez. If we hadn't known what to look for, chances are no one would have associated the trends we're seeing with China. The forex market is a mighty big place. There are a lot of ways to cover trades. If there is a malicious player out there, one that's huge and knowledgeable, it could wreak a slew of grief."
"I don't know if there is much else to find out. I've got a few people being watched. If anything happens, the watcher will contact me."
"Well how about this? You just asked me if I saw any connection between China Petroleum and this forex deal. That was so far out in left field it was behind the bleachers. I have no idea. But I do know that you wouldn't have asked without a reason. Why don't you spend the next day or so figuring out why you asked that? Might put it all together, then you could go sailing."
I could do a couple of things: stay in Monaco and try to keep Alexandra away from her office as long as I could, or collect my fee from Oddsson and go home.
Or, I could finish what I started.
"I have to go back, Alexandra." I made an illegal U-turn and headed toward Paris.
"Why! What are you doing! Who was that?"
"I can't tell you, now."
"You mean you won't."
"Maybe we can go sailing next weekend."
"No, we can't. This was my once-in-a-career week, Mick, my one chance to stick my thumb in the eye of Ian Graham and all the other pompous partners I've had to deal with. Why are you doing this?"
"I started out trying to find Trevor then to figuring out Sabine's death to remove some of the heat from Oddsson. I'm not leading this case; it's leading me. There's something out there that's big, and I might be a key to finding it."
I'm not a mind-reader, but I sensed her anger flow away. I also sensed an aura of suspicion.
As we entered Paris, Alexandra had to tell me where to turn. That mundane necessity seemed to have put her back on an even keel by the time we arrived at Sabine's flat. I asked her if she would still help me. "Who knows, we might keep the world safe for financial speculators."
"Real crime fighters. Do I get a cape?" She stood with her feet spread and put her fists on her hips.
"And a mask." I copied her stance.