“I’ve got an account number.” Knight nodded to Davis, who sat beside him, listening to a headset plugged into a recording box that was, in turn, tethered to the hotel landline. Davis handed Knight a printout of bank accounts known to belong to the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist organization. One of the account numbers was highlighted. Knight dictated the digits to Lee.

“The money will be transferred in the morning,” Lee replied, pleased.

Knight hung up, taking a deep breath as he absorbed what he had just done. Once the money was transferred, the triads would have unwittingly financed a high-profile Islamic terror group, placing them in the crosshairs of every major intelligence agency worldwide.

“How much did that call cost you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ten or twenty million spread over the next five years.”

Knight unceremoniously tossed the plastic trash bag containing the evidence from Cobus’s apartment to Davis. As Davis glanced in the bag, Knight added, “That’s everything you need on their operation. Just leave me out of it.”

Davis closed the bag. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

Davis kept his eyes on Knight. “Really. Why?”

“I got into this job to protect animals, not kill them.” Knight finished his drink as he considered, suddenly feeling a sense of camaraderie with the earnest son of a bitch sitting beside him. “Same reason you left your Wall Street job to join the CIA. I guess we all have to draw a line somewhere.”

“That was just bullshit,” Davis replied. Knight looked up, caught off guard. “I was laid off when the tech bubble burst. I needed any job I could get, and the agency needed folks with finance experience.”

Knight laughed in spite of himself at having been conned.

Davis smiled as he recharged their glasses from a fresh mini bottle of scotch. “Like I said, I have bad luck.”

CHAPTER 48 THE KINGPIN

CHAPTER 48
THE KINGPIN

“I need to know I can count on your vote,” Lee told the two Afro-Caribbean men seated opposite him in his limousine. The men wore loose-fitting linen suits, and their faces were creased with concern over the potential political fallout of accepting Lee’s proposal.

The CITES convention was only ten days away, and Lee still needed four more votes to ensure that the legislation allowing the regulated farming of endangered wildlife would be approved. Lee had arranged a dozen of these cloak-and-dagger meetings in the months leading up to the convention. CITES was like FIFA: every country got a vote, and those votes could be a valuable commodity for the entrepreneurial and unscrupulous. And like FIFA, the Caribbean proved to be a target-rich environment for those looking to buy votes. Today, Lee needed to lock in the Bahamas.

“It is going to look bad when an island nation with no tigers or rhinos votes for legal trade,” one of the two delegates said.