“Now, we get to the goodies.” He turned the page. It displayed a memorandum on the business letterhead of New Asia Development Corp. It was a copy of a payment authorization from the company, directing a bank in the Cayman Islands to pay the sum of $15 million to the account in New Caledonia of a company called NADC Ventures, Société Anonyme, with an address in Luxembourg. I was scribbling notes, trying to copy all these details in my notebook.

“You don’t need to worry about taking notes. I’m going to give you this stuff when I’m done. Now, this document is basically self-explanatory. It authorizes the transfer of fifteen million dollars from Gaspard’s company, New Asia Development, to this outfit called NADC Ventures. But what is NADC Ventures, you may well ask.

“We can answer that, because we have a paper trail.” He turned the page to another document, this one an official-looking form written in French, under the heading Agence Monétaire Luxembourgeoise. “This is the incorporation certificate for NADC Ventures in Luxembourg. As you can see, it lists three principals, all by the name of Wu. The president, a Mr. Wu Laozi; the treasurer, a Mr. Wu Pufeng; and the secretary, a Mr. Wu Yewin. The three are brothers. They are all three sons of a Mr. Wu Jingsheng. Now, who might this elder gentleman be?”

He turned the page again, to the final photograph. It showed a Chinese man: thin, sharp-eyed, dressed in a plain gray suit.

“This is Wu Jingsheng. If you do a Nexis search, you will see that until last year, he was the Chinese minister of communications. We’re told that in internal discussions he was an aggressive advocate for Unetat. We think that’s why he got sacked. He and his three sons got too greedy, and he pissed off colleagues who wanted a share of the loot.”

He flipped over several more pages. “The rest is boilerplate. Information that New Asia has submitted to U.S. banks and local regulatory agencies. Summaries of information we’ve gathered about the Wu family, including addresses and telephone numbers of the boys in Hong Kong and a telephone number for the old man in Beijing.”

“Fabulous stuff,” I said. “How did you get it all?”

“How do you think? We stole it. We bribed and burgled and bled for it. We are still capable of getting the job done occasionally, when we don’t have people sticking fingers in our eyes. And now you, as a representative of the American public, are a recipient of this taxpayer-financed research.” He pushed the briefing book across the table. “Here’s your very own copy. I hope you will use it as a basis for your own reporting.”