NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

I was going to ask my own wife to cross an ethical line.

Tony Leon’s actions were puzzling to us all. We believed we’d dealt with him months ago. .php Now he was back, and this time he was more than a nuisance.

Because in fact he was right. He had hard evidence of just how favorable Richard Branson’s terms were, when Virgin Maverick was created as a “Super BONGO” in the wasteland that was downtown Johannesburg. There was no government corruption involved – we’d seen to that – but an argument could easily be made that Mbeki had given us too much.

On land Virgin-Maverick owned normal rules did not apply. The laws of Gautang Province and even the Republic of South Africa itself were superseded by the terms of our contract. Violent crime would call for normal investigations. Financial crime was up to Chief Williams.

In some ways it was a license to steal. George Soros and the other buccaneers on the Carlton Center trading floors combed the world’s financial networks, looking not just for profits but situations that, in the right legal environment, could be turned into winners but which, in the wrong environment, were dead losses.

Imagine if you had the technology of New York and the tax environment of the Caymans. That’s what we had. We could create our own shell companies in an instant, and play shell games that not only drove other traders wild, but which were perfectly legal. Taxes were owed on the gross profits of Virgin-Maverick, at the end of the year, but how those profits were calculated was up to us.

A seat on our exchange, which originally was priced at $20,000, was now going for $500,000, more than even a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. And most of the NYSE’s biggest trading firms, along with giants from the City of London, Hong Kong, Geneva and Tokyo, now jostled for desk space.

The tower now going up beside the Carlton Center had been expanded twice, while still on the drawing board. It would now dwarf the Center, a giant square post-modern structure 100 stories tall. And there were now plans to build a twin across the street from it.

The Twin Towers were going up again, only on the other side of the world.

What had been an empty urban wasteland was now a boomtown. There were even rumors of speculators prowling around Soweto, looking to combine lots for the production of palaces, and giving the people there their first taste of real capital.

No, it wasn’t all good. It never is. Land speculation drives out some. Afrikaans who had thought themselves middle class now saw their status falling before their eyes. The next class at Wits University would see one-fourth of its places go to kids with American citizenship. Never mind that they were paying full freight, and never mind that new buildings were planned to accommodate them. Resentment was growing.

Tony Leon could cause huge problems. The mystery was why he was doing it. He couldn’t hope to achieve power. He was unlikely to even increase his pitiful caucus in the next election. Rising tides always benefit incumbents.

There had to be an angle somewhere. Leon was not an idiot. Where did he get his information? And what was his motivation?

So I let our son John fend for himself, calling in for pizza from the Sun’s “food court” (formerly its cafeteria). I called a limo, a car with a driver-bodyguard, and I took Jenni to the nicest restaurant in town.

Moyo, up in Sandton, is one of those food-as-theater places I usually hate. But Jonathan, our driver, insisted it was excellent, and the drive up there, with an iced bottle of champagne to be shared, would give Jenni time to unwind and Jonathan enough remainders to make a nice addition to his own sandwich. When you’re sharing champagne with the one you love, a traffic jam can be a beautiful thing.

I didn’t broach my hidden agenda until our entrees were before us, and our solicitous waiters had all left us to it.

One of the more interesting acquisitions Jenni’s company had made was DolEx, a money exchange. They bought it to get into the lucrative market of helping Mexicans repatriate their earnings from cooking and cleaning American homes. But since Global’s acquisition by Virgin-Maverick, the folks in Atlanta had been growing the business in all sorts of interesting directions.

Jenni’s job gave her access to everything DolEx was doing in South Africa.

And when I finally told her what I wanted, she turned me down flat.

“No,” she said simply. “You should know better than to ask me.”

I did. “But I had to try,” I said.

We were silent for a moment. “Look,” I said, after a few more comments on my meat, “how about if you just ran some gross reports for me. No names, just numbers. All I want to know is whether there are any outstanding weeks.”

“Outstanding weeks?”

“Any weeks with unusually high volume, especially incoming volume. Just give me a hint. Follow the money.”

She blushed. “Mark Felt didn’t really say that,” I added. “Follow the money was written for Hal Holbrook by the people who did the movie.”

“Deep Throat?”

“No, ‘All the President’s Men.’”

“That’s what I meant, silly.”

“Look if there’s nothing to see here you can protect your employers by telling me. You know Chief Williams has authority to tear into your books if he suspects something. I’m sure you don’t want that. Honest, if anyone asks any questions they will thank you for it, especially if it turns out there’s nothing to find.”

She sighed. Her eyes went down, and she pushed her plate away. A tissue came out of her pocket. I hadn’t made her cry in years.

I let her do it, and felt like a jerk for it. But I hadn’t been lieing. The Lady needed answers, I wasn’t her only source. Any door in Virgin-Maverick could be opened on The Lady’s say-so.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jenni said finally, knocking back her glass of wine. “Can we go home now?”

I knew better than to try and sweet-talk. If Jonathan was still into the champagne, that was just his look-out.