“I still don’t do wet,” McKay says.

“The Spics have grabbed my son Hercules,” Lee says, as if relating an irritating but foreseeable occurrence.

McKay’s heart sinks: war. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Mr. Lee, but I don’t see -”

“Emerald Buddha Corporation,” Lee says. “Forty-nine percent. Sign before you get on the plane, or I’ll FedEx the docs to you in Bangkok if you prefer.”

McKay knows Lee is watching his face closely on his giant monitor which he hangs on a wall in his Long Island mansion. McKay knows he swallowed immediately on hearing the name. The EBC was Lee’s respectable front. Well, it was only semi-respectable since it smuggled illegal Buddha heads and other priceless icons stolen from Ankor Wat, but Lee kept it scrupulously apart from his other businesses. It was his “face” for official America, and as such he’d been obliged to spend quite a few tens of millions on stock, which was not exclusively Khmer, but included some museum-quality jade pieces; they looked identical to world-famous missing items, once the property of the last emperor of China. McKay has hinted more than once that a good way for Lee to reward his extra, secret and professionally life-threatening efforts on behalf of his master would be for Lee to simply hand over a chunk of the stock of EBC. McKay knows Lee was keeping EBC for a rainy day, when he would have to ask McKay to go even deeper into hell as his legal representative. Well, today it’s raining.

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