Mike Black sat quietly and watched Bobby work. Every once and awhile he would get up and ask Rawls the question. "Where is Ebony Washington, and where are the papers she was carrying?" When Rawls didn’t answer, Black would walk away and Bobby would go back to work.

Black sat down and took a deep breath. He thought about the reason he even knew or cared who Ebony Washington was. It was just after eleven o’clock when Black got a call from Martin Marshall. Martin was a United States Congressman who Black was in business with.

"Black, it’s Martin. I need your help."

"What is it now, Martin?" Black asked.

"One of my people was kidnapped earlier tonight, while she was carrying some very important papers."

"What does this have to do with me, Martin?"

There was silence on the phone before Martin finally said, "The truth is I got careless, Black."

"Get to the point, Martin."

"You remember our meeting with Chang and the Cubans?"

"What about it?" Black said and thought back to that meeting and how it led to him getting shot. He remembered Martin coming to him with a plan to invest in sugar-based ethanol in Cuba.

They met a few days later in the Bahamas with Silvestre de la Toribio representing the Cuban Foreign Trade Ministry, Soberon Nicodemo Placido representing the Cuban Sugar Industry, and Maximino Cristobal. He was representing a group with oil interests in Venezuela.

At that meeting the debate raged on about whether to invest in sugar-based ethanol or in oil production between Cristobal and Placido, until Chang had heard enough. "Would you gentlemen excuse us for a moment or two?"

Once Cristobal, Placido, and Toribio left the room, Chang turned to Martin. "What do you think my friend?"

"For my money, ethanol production is the only way to go. I didn’t come here to talk about oil."