“With your help,” Jimmy said. “You’ll be supplying the needed continuity.”

“Thank you for the recognition,” Whitney responded. “Actually, I deserve it, after how hard I had to work these last months trying to hold the place together. But you are the one who deserves the recognition.”

“I’m pleased you have been so supportive of our little coup.”

“Like I said, if you’d come to me sooner, I’d have helped. Berman was ignoring the business with his stupid, adolescent obsession. Nano will be much safer with you. What you did was so damn clever.”

With Whitney Jones sitting next to him back at the stadium, Berman had looked at the transaction page on the computer and suspected nothing. At the time neither did Whitney. It was a dummy page that only looked like the real thing. There had been no money transfer. Berman thought Jimmy had stolen some respirocytes, but the truth was far worse. The proprietary secrets that comprised Nano’s real worth, besides the highly mortgaged physical plant, was all in Chinese hands. In a few days, a Chinese buyout would complete what was already a de facto truth—Nano belonged to China. Jimmy knew all of Nano’s research secrets, and by now Chinese researchers were well ahead of Nano’s. Jimmy was going home to run the company with Whitney as his newly installed number two. For the foreseeable future China was to dominate medical nanotechnology.

“I’m glad you feel as you do,” said Jimmy. “I’m happy.”

Jimmy was feeling very pleased with himself. Nano was taken care of, and the girl was gone, too. When he learned, thanks to the UK-based Chinese Triads, that Burim Graziani was in London searching for Pia Grazdani, Jimmy decided he could use the Albanian to clean up after him. Burim was on Chinese intelligence’s radar in the United States, recognized as an up-and-coming gangster and as such potentially a useful person in the New York area. Jimmy thought that using an Albanian team to get rid of Pia, and then sending in Burim to remove any evidence of the men who had done away with Pia, was a very neat way indeed to end the whole sordid affair.

•   •   •

WHERE THE HELL had Harry and Billy gotten to? Burim had called Harry and had told him they had missed the action, thank you very much, but that now his party were desperate for a pickup. When Burim had called, he was huddled in the shadows a few hundred yards down the street from the Wimbledon house that was now swarming with police. He knew they had to get out of the area and fast. When Burim’s phone buzzed, it was Harry calling to fix their exact location.

“Where the hell are you? We’re trapped and we need to get out of here now.”