said. "On the other hand, that gold coin is without doubt part of Solomon's hoard."
"I don't see how you could be certain," Willard said. "No expert exists who could verify such a thing."
El-Arian's curious smile returned. "For one thing we have verified its age. But more importantly we discovered something else," he said. "Turn the coin over please."
To Willard's surprise and bewilderment, the obverse of the coin was totally different.
"You see, this side isn't made of gold," El-Arian said. "It's made of lead, the original metal before it was transformed into gold."
Chapter Fifteen
MOIRA SET OUT from Guadalajara early in the morning, driving into the heart of blue agave country in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The sky was huge, with just a few brushstrokes of cloud floating in the vivid blue. The sun was searing, and the morning grew hot very quickly. Toward noon she was obliged to roll up the windows and turn on the air conditioner. She lost cell service several times, and without her GPS she had some difficulty finding Amatitan.
She used the time to put her interview with Roberto Corellos into its proper perspective. Why did he tell her that he'd chosen Berengaria to keep her brother's business going? Why on earth would he trust a woman to handle his livelihood? Moira had met many men like Corellos, and none of them was enlightened when it came to females. Screwing, cooking, having babies, that was the extent of their expectations of women.
She mulled these questions over for hours until at last she caught sight of Amatitan. Corellos had a burning need for revenge. In a hot-tempered man of his blood, revenge was a matter of honor. Cuckolding his cousin wouldn't be enough for him. It made sense that Corellos would want to ensnare Narsico in the kind of life his cousin had tried so desperately to put behind him. That was revenge.
If Berengaria was, indeed, heir to the drug business, then it followed a man must be running the show behind the scenes. Who? Corellos wasn't going to tell her, and there was nothing she had to barter with except her body, which she was not about to use. But Berengaria was another story. Piranha she might be, but Moira had had dealings with piranhas before. What had aroused her suspicions most was that Corellos hadn't been concerned that whoever had stolen the laptop now had access to Gustavo's client list. The only reason for this was that Corellos was already in business with him.
The endless fields of blue agave passed by on either side. Workers toiled in the fields, sweating and grunting with their efforts. The Skydel estancia was just ahead.
If, as she now believed, Essai's laptop - the computer stolen from Gustavo Moreno - contained the drug lord's client list, then there must be something else on it of great importance to her employer, and she was willing to bet that it wasn't simply his family history, as he'd claimed. Then why had Essai lied to her? What was he hiding?
Oliver Liss has lied to you from the first day he met you," Benjamin El-Arian said.
"I expect everyone to lie to me," Willard said. "It's a necessary evil of the life I lead."
The two men were walking in the Moorish cloister outside the Monition Club library. Here they were sheltered from the wind. The sun, high in the sky, spilled its warmth onto their shoulders.
"So you're at peace with it."
"Of course not." Willard inhaled deeply. There was something planted in the cloister, an herb or spice, whose scent he found pleasant and familiar. "My life is a war. I sift through the lies, I've trained myself to see past them. Then I act accordingly."
"You already know that Oliver Liss has no intention of allowing you to run Treadstone as you see fit."
"Of course, but I needed someone to get Treadstone off flatline. His agenda and mine were never going to coincide. However, it was Liss or no one."
"Now there's someone else," El-Arian said. "Liss is owned by Jalal Essai. As I told you. Essai was a member of the Monition Club. Currently he's on his own."
"What would make him do that?" Willard asked.
"The same thing that kept you from walking out of the library."
"King Solomon's gold?"
El-Arian nodded. "Once he discovered that the Solomon ring wasn't lost, he decided he wanted the gold for himself."
Willard stopped and turned toward El-Arian. "Just how much gold are we talking about here?"