The Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York.

Set back from the main avenues, the residential streets were quiet.

Stone townhouses stood in neat rows. Here and there, a bare garden tree stood behind a low iron fence.

Unless you read the small nameplate beside the door, it was hard to tell who lived in any of them.

Richard Whitman lived in one. The exterior was old, but the inside was clean and orderly, as if it had been kept up steadily over the years.

The banister on the stairs showed its age. The lighting and security systems, though, had been worked in everywhere so discreetly you'd never notice them.

Saturday morning. In a study that looked out on the garden, Whitman was reading something on a tablet.

Beside him sat a cup of black coffee and a piece of toast he hadn't touched.

The name on the tablet's screen was Ha Tae-ung. He was the Korean Emilia had introduced at the Plaza Hotel the night before.

"He's twenty-one in Korean age."

The investigator standing across from him spoke up.

"He's still in high school. He goes into his final year this year."

"High school?"

Whitman looked at the investigator over his glasses.

"Yes."

"Now that I didn't expect."

He'd pegged the young man as a college graduate, or close to one.

His face alone looked very young. But nothing in the way he'd carried himself in conversation had felt like a student.

He hadn't rushed to answer people's questions. When the talk turned to something he didn't know, he listened.

When his turn came, he said only as much as was needed and then stopped.

He had none of the itch for attention you saw in young men his age.

"His family?"

"He's the grandson of Chairman Ha Cheolgon of Korea's Haryun Group."

"Haryun……."

Whitman repeated the name. He dug back through what he remembered of Korean companies.

A few familiar names came to mind, but he didn't know where that group stood now.

"Does his grandfather back him?"

"Not exactly. That's where the picture changes."

The investigator turned a…