As he was about to leave, he received an encrypted email. Well, it seemed that NIOS had learned some very interesting information. The whistleblower was still unknown, though Metzger had people looking into that. However, the tech department had discovered some names of other people involved in the case, in addition to Ms. Nance Laurel, the prosecutor. The lead investigators were two individuals—an NYPD detective named Amelia Sachs and a consultant, someone with the curious name Lincoln Rhyme.

It was time for some more digging and datamining, Swann reflected, pulling out his phone. After all, the strength of the best cookbook in the world, The Joy of Cooking, derived from the patient assembly and organization of facts, from knowledge, in short—not showy recipes.

Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

DO YOU KNOW ABOUT PANAMA?” Tash Farada asked Sachs, in the passenger seat of the Town Car. He was animated and seemed to enjoy speeding through traffic as they headed toward Wall Street.

She said, “The canal. Some invasion or something down there. A while ago.”

The driver laughed and accelerated hard to avoid a slow-moving lane of traffic on the FDR. “Some ‘invasion or something.’ Yes, yes. I read history a great deal. I enjoy it. In the eighties Panama had a regime change. A revolution. Just like our country.”

“Yes, Iran. In ’seventy-nine, wasn’t it?”

He glanced at her with a frown.

“Persia, I mean,” she corrected.

“No, I’m speaking of seventeen seventy-six. I’m American.”

Oh. Our country.

“Sorry.”

A wrinkle of brow but a forgiving one. “Now, Panama. Noriega used to be an ally of America. Fighting the Communist evil. Helping the CIA and the DEA wage war on the scourge of drugs…Of course, he was also helping the cartel heads wage war on the scourge of the CIA and the DEA. That game caught up with him and in nineteen eighty-nine the U.S. had had enough. We invaded. The problem was that Panama was a dirty little war. You’ve read George Orwell?”

“No.” Sachs might have, long ago, but she never bluffed or tried to impress with knowledge she didn’t have command of.

“In Animal Farm, Orwell wrote, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ Well, all wars are bad. But some wars are more bad than others. The head of Panama was corrupt, his underlings were corrupt. They were dangerous men and oppressed the people. But the invasion was very hard too. Very violent. Roberto Moreno was living there, in the capital, with his mother and father.”

Sachs recalled her conversation with Fred Dellray, who’d told them that Robert Moreno also went by Roberto. She wondered if he’d legally changed it or just used the Latino version as a pseudonym.