could feel the heat from the lamp. A few seconds later, his blindfold was removed and the blinding light met his eyes.
“You Michael Talbot?” Hanley asked.
“Yes,” Talbot said, turning from the light.
“Eyes forward,” Hanley said.
Talbot complied, but he had a hard time looking into the light. He could sense someone was behind him, but the straps were too tight to turn.
“Did you have sex with a teenage boy in Indonesia?”
“Who are you people?” Talbot said.
A second later, he felt a touch on his neck, then a surge of electricity hit his body.
“We ask the questions here,” Hanley said. “Did you have sex with a teenage boy?”
“He told me he was eighteen,” Talbot said through gritted teeth.
“We’re tired of slime like you coming over to Asia to partake of your sick desires,” Hanley said. “It’s giving America a bad name.”
“I’m here on busi—” Talbot started to say.
The sharp bite of electricity.
“Silence,” Hanley snapped.
Talbot was afraid, the kind of deep-down fear of the unknown and unseen that creeps into a man’s soul and plays with his nerves and internal organs. Talbot began sweating from his forehead and the need to urinate was overpowering.
“I have to pee,” he said.
“When we say you can,” Hanley said. “First we are going to make a mold of your head. Then we will produce a three-dimensional image of it, which we will transmit over our computer network. From here on out, the Asian police organizations will be on the lookout for you. Then you are going to read a confession aloud. If you cooperate and perform these tasks, you will be taken to Hong Kong so that you can catch the first flight to the United States. Screw with us in any way and you will be washing up on the beaches of mainland China a few days from now. What’ll it be, lover boy?”
“Okay, okay,” Talbot blurted. “But I’m about to pee my pants.”
“Take him to the facilities,” Hanley said.
Blindfolded once again, Talbot was led to a restroom and his hands untied.
Four minutes later, he was back in his seat and strapped in place. Fifteen minutes after that, the mask was formed and the voice print recorded. A few minutes later, Michael Talbot was placed facedown on the rear seat of the sedan again and was driven toward the ferry dock.
WINSTON Spenser was trying to figure an angle. There was none. He had grabbed for the brass ring and come up short. His choice now was to live or to die, and the people that were controlling him had made a compelling argument. He’d walk out with a new identity and a million in funding. He decided this was a deal he would honor.
Spenser stared at his new passport and documents, then watched the lady in the group talking on the cellular telephone. She disconnected and turned to the leader.
“The president is on his way, Mr. Chairman,” she said. “He’s taken care of the problem.”
Spenser had no idea of the identities or affiliation of the people who had taken him hostage. He only knew from what he had witnessed so far that they had a power that went far beyond anything he had ever seen. They seemed to exist in a world of their own creation, a world of control and illusion, and whatever Spenser may have planned, they had always been one step ahead. And then it hit him.
“You were at the auction in Geneva,” he said to the leader.
Cabrillo stared at Spenser, as if trying to decide. “Yes, I was.”
“How did you know I’d switched the Buddhas?”
“You paid our company to fly the icon here to Macau, then take it by armored car to the temple,” Cabrillo said.
“So you staged the entire affair at the party as a ruse?”
“That, and we wanted to fulfill your deal with the man outside,” Cabrillo said.
“Unreal,” Spenser said. “And the one hundred million?”
“It will go to charity,” Cabrillo said. “We were hired to bring the real Buddha back to its rightful owner—this side deal is just frosting on the cake.”
Spenser thought for a moment. “What is your ideology, your group’s motivation?”
“We are a corporation,” Cabrillo said. “That is the only ideology we need.”
“So you exist to make a profit?”
“We exist,” Cabrillo said, “to make right from wrong. But along the way, we’ve learned how to make that a very lucrative enterprise.”
“Amazing,” Spenser said.
“Not as amazing as this,” Cabrillo said as the door to the hangar opened and the car carrying Hanley drove inside. Once the door closed, Hanley climbed from the passenger side of the SUV. “Meet Michael Talbot,” Cabrillo said to an astonished Winston Spenser.
THE software billionaire took a
