I called Rubino the next morning, two days after the Chinese had announced the contract award. I still had the private work number he had given me. I said I had thought a lot about the matter, and I was interested in talking more about how we could bring Michel Bézy to justice.

“You just want to talk about it?” asked Rubino.

“No, I want to make it happen. But I need to know how we’d lure Bézy here, if I agreed to help.”

“Give me a few hours,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

Late that Friday afternoon, an envelope arrived at the bureau with my name and the word “Urgent” on it. The envelope had no other markings. I was sitting at my desk when the receptionist dropped it off. I didn’t pay any attention at first. Public relations people always mark their press releases “Urgent,” and I put it aside while I finished writing a thank-you letter to Michael Wee, my friend in Beijing. When I finally opened the manila envelope, I found inside a smaller letter-sized envelope with my name on it, marked “Personal and Confidential,” enclosing a brief note:

From sources familiar with the details of the China contract:

On Thursday, May 16, $120 million was wired to Account P-20-52-D, at PanAsia Credit in Vanuatu, the New Hebrides Islands. The money was paid from the account of a French-Chinese joint-venture company called Inter/Orient, which has been established to disburse progress payments for the communications contract. This morning (Paris time), Friday, May 17, $40 million was withdrawn from the Vanuatu account and transferred to bank account 5371-77-244 at Organisation des Banques Suisses. Swiss banking records identify the beneficial owner of this account as a French national named Michel Bézy.

Rubino had delivered the instrument of revenge. The material had the rock-hard certainty of fact. I could only admire the technical competence of the people who had collected the information. They had Bézy, cold.

My phone rang at home that night at 10:30. The caller didn’t identify himself, but I recognized the voice as Tom Rubino’s. He asked me to call him back from a pay phone. I put on my bedroom slippers and a pair of jeans and went downstairs to the phone in the lobby of my building and dialed the number Rubino had given me.

“Get any interesting mail lately?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s nice work. Our man would not be happy to know that information is in the hands of a reporter.”

“So are you in or out? We need to know.”

“I’m interested. But what happens if I can’t get our man to come to America. Can I still use the information in a story?”

“Absolutely. The information is yours now. You can do whatever you want with it.”