“No.”

“Where is he?”

“Myanmar.”

“Myanmar!” Knight guffawed. “I’ll need my passport.”

“No, you won’t.”

The sleek Sikorsky helicopter was idling on the roof when Knight and Lee emerged on the helipad. They loaded in, and the bird lifted into the sky, banking over Victoria Harbor.

Six hours later, Knight was sitting in the back of a silver Range Rover, rumbling down a dirt road alongside a rice paddy. It had been a long day between the helicopter and the private plane, then a two-hour drive into the middle of the jungle at the southern tip of China. Lee had been silent for most of it, and Knight was at a loss what to do with himself without his phone to fidget with. So he spent most of the journey looking out the window at the terraced rice paddies that gave the hills the appearance of overgrown ancient temples.

The sun was getting low in the sky, and Knight began to worry that this might be a one-way trip. He nervously wondered if proving himself useful might serve as a life insurance policy. “There’s something you should know,” he said to Lee. “When I was doing my research on your operation, I heard stories about people getting strychnine poisoning from your rhino supply.”

Lee barely registered the comment, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. “We’ll look into it.”

The SUV slowed to a stop, and Lee gazed into the forest. “This is where you get out.”

“Where are we?” Knight asked.

“The border.”

As the Range Rover stopped, Knight looked out the window to see a trail coming down the hill from a rubber-tree plantation in the jungle. At the bottom, a skinny Burmese man with an AK-47 stood guard beside a man on a motorbike.

The door of the Range Rover opened, and Knight stepped out, caught between the Chinese mob and some sort of Burmese mountain militia. Knight glanced back at Lee, concerned. Lee tugged the door shut, and the Range Rover rumbled away.

The man with the AK-47 signaled for Knight to mount the back of the motorcycle. He hesitated, fearing what might happen if he did, then weighing that against what might happen if he didn’t.

Knight hugged the driver’s hips as they rode up the hill through the rubber trees in Myanmar. At the top a shiny Audi A4 was waiting. Knight relaxed. It seemed an unlikely choice for a hearse.

Knight was even more surprised when the Audi ferried him down the other side of the mountain, where a city of brand-new high-rise buildings stood like a mirage in the middle of a remote emerald valley.