Lords of Corruption (19 page)

"Who's that you're sitting with over there?" Trent said as Mtiti turned his back on them and started toward the photographers setting up equipment.

"Nobody. He's a reporter who lives in the compound."

"JB Flannary," Trent said. "Are you two friends?"

Josh shrugged. "There aren't that many people to hang around with, you know?"

"I understand, but I wonder if you could have chosen more wisely than a burned-out reporter who sits around all day and criticizes everyone who tries to do something positive with their lives. He's done real hatchet jobs on charities in the past."

The workers were being arranged in a way that would obscure the cornfield's lack of depth, and the photographers had descended into an argument about where to best put Mtiti.

"That was a long time ago. These days he just writes positive stuff." Josh paused for a moment. "If he didn't, I'm guessing he'd have been run out on a rail by now."

The photographers made their decision, and the president was positioned amid a group of children, who began cheering and waving their hands in the air on cue. With a little Photoshop, it would be quite the inspiring image.

"Any word on my plane ticket?"

"I think I've managed to get you a seat on the nineteenth."

"The nineteenth? That's almost three weeks from now."

"You're lucky it's not three months the way the flights are these days," Trent said, wiping the sweat off the back of his neck in a way that seemed to be a nervous tic. "Before you leave, though, we need to talk about your sister."

"I've been thinking more about that, Stephen. I appreciate your offer and all, but I don't think you can help. Actually, I know you can't. This is something I have to tak
e c
are of myself."

"Shit," Trent muttered, but Josh realized it wasn't directed at him. After less than two minutes of having his picture taken, Mtiti waved a hand in frustration and started back toward his helicopter.

"Look, I've got to go," Trent said, joining the bodyguards and protesting photographers following along in the president's wake. "But we have to talk. I'll give you a call and we'll set it up."

"Looks like you and Mtiti hit it off right away," Flannary said, still lounging in his shaded beach chair.

"Fuck off."

"Would you like me to get you a drink while I'm fucking off?"

"Goes without saying."

The helicopter was already in the air, and the people beneath it scrambled to escape the stinging dust, temporarily deaf to the soldiers' orders. Flannary held out a beer, but Josh shook his head. "Got anything stronger?"

"Why*

Josh sank into the empty chair and watched the helicopter gain altitude as the soldiers tried to regain control. "Because they didn't fix the irrigation system."

Flannary nodded thoughtfully. "I missed that. You've probably got enough people to hand them water for a couple of weeks until you can rig something up."

"I don't think it'll be necessary."

Flannary's brow furrowed, and he handed Josh a half-full bottle of vodka. The air cleared, and the empty flatbeds pulled back up to the cornfield. Within a few minutes, the first stalks had been dug up and were being passed hand to hand back to the trucks.

"You knew that was going to happen," Flannary said, admiration clearly audible in his voice.

"I suspected."

Flannary reached over and clinked his glass against the bottle of vodka in Josh's hand. "You're one cynical son of a bitch, kid. I think I'm actually starting to like you."

Chapter
23.

"They were going to assassinate Tfmena?" Flannary said. "Who was paying?"

They'd sat in those lawn chairs for almost six hours the day before, drinking and watching Gideon oversee the dismantling of the project. There had been nothing left when they finally got up and stumbled back to the compound. No corn, no tools, no people. Nothing.

Josh had been depressed and drunk enough to agree to get up before dawn to drive Flannary to the airport. At the time it had seemed like a good idea. Now, not so much.

Josh opened the door of the Land Cruiser and vomited onto the dirt rushing below, barely managing to pull himself upright in time to miss an animal-drawn cart meandering up the side of the road.

"Annika listened to the recording at least ten times, and she says she got pretty muc
h a
ll of it," he said, grabbing a warm Coke and swishing his mouth out with it. "No mention of who the moneyman was."

"Please tell me you still have it."

"The MP3 player?" Josh shook his head. "Stephen wanted it, so I gave it to him."

"Jesus Christ!" Flannary shouted. "How could you do something that stupid?"

"Don't bust my balls, JB. I knew it was a mistake, but he's my boss, and he said he needed it to justify getting rid of Gideon. What was I gonna do? Call him a liar and make a run for it?"

"Why the hell not?"

Flannary seemed impervious to lack of sleep, hangovers, and pretty much everything else. He was well-scrubbed, what remained of his hair had been trimmed, and his badly dated clothes were wrinkle free. According to him, this rare trip to the United States was for his brother's wedding, but he didn't seem particularly interested in the prospect of being reunited with his family.

"You know, when you first got here, I figured you were just some stooge New-Africa had hired. But now I think you're too dumb to be a stooge."

Josh grimaced, though he was fairly certain the statement was meant as a compliment. "You know, JB, every time we talk, I get the feeling you're dancing around something. It's starting to make me want to punch your face in."

The reporter grabbed his travel mug and took a thoughtful swig of the Bloody Mary it contained. "Have you ever asked Trent what happened to Dan?"

Josh wasn't sure how he'd expected Flan-nary to respond, but that wasn't it. "Yeah. We've talked about it."

"What did he say?"

"Not much. He implied that Dan had gotten involved in something illegal."

"That's bullshit."

"How do you know?"

"Because Dan Ordman was an insufferable Boy Scout from a stinking-rich family of East Coast liberals. Now, if someone told me you were into something shady, I'd be open to the idea. But Dan? No fucking way."

"I'm driving you six hours to the airport, you know. A little respect would be in order."

"No offense intended," Flannary said. "But you're not exactly the prototype for this kind of work. As near as I can tell, you're nothing but a desperate guy with an armed-robbery conviction."

Josh slammed on the brakes, skidding to
a s
top and sitting there with the dust rolling over them.

"Are you throwing me out?" Flannary asked.

It was a good idea. Just shove him out the door and watch him recede until he was nothing but a little fleck in the rearview mirror. Some lucky hyena's evening snack.

Instead Josh stomped on the accelerator, and they fishtailed back out into the road. "What do you think happened to Dan?"

Flannary didn't answer immediately, a pause that Josh had come to suspect was him calculating how much to say.

"JB?"

"I think Dan was looking for NewAfrica's other projects."

"What do you mean, 'looking for' them?"

"A few days ago, when I asked you about your other projects, you told me you didn't know anything about them."

"So? Why would I?"

Flannary shrugged. "Maybe you wouldn't. The problem is that no one else does, either. NewAfrica has all these brochures with pictures of fancy agricultural projects and grinning refugees, but when I ask for specifics from the locals, all I get is 'Oh, it's west of here a ways.' Or 'I met a guy once who knew someone who worked on tha
t p
roject.' "

"I'm not following you."

"Yes, you are."

"Are you trying to tell me that New-Africa's projects are fake and they killed Dan because he found out? I think you've been hitting the gin a little too hard, JB."

"Maybe."

"What about my project? That exists." "Really? It looks like a burned-out hill to me."

"You know what I mean."

"Yours is different. Pathetic as it sounds, it's NewAfrica's flagship. The others are always in much more remote areas, always completely self-contained, and always manned with imported workers -- not people indigenous to the area." Flannary reached into the backseat and pulled a manila envelope from his duffel.

"What's that?"

"Everything I've been able to find on NewAfrica's projects since they first started in business. I compiled it from brochures, notes of conversations I've had, and Freedom of Information Act stuff on projects the government was involved in." He dropped the envelope in Josh's lap.

"Why are you giving it to me?"

"I'm going to do a little digging while I'
m i
n the States, and I thought maybe you could do the same here."

"I told you I'm not staying. I'm out of here in a couple weeks."

"Then you've got some time on your hands with nothing to do."

Josh didn't respond.

"What?"

"I think you've gone nuts, JB. Seriously."

"So what? If I'm wrong, you get a little vacation in the countryside before you go back to the world."

"You know, I'd actually like to. I'd like to prove once and for all that you're a paranoid schizophrenic and see that you get heavily medicated. But I'll be lucky to find my way back from the airport. How the hell would I track down a bunch of old agricultural projects out in the middle of nowhere?"

"Why don't you just ask Stephen Trent to take you on a tour?"

When Josh didn't answer, a smile spread across Flannary's face. "Because you think I might be right."

"No."

"So to review," Flannary said. "Wha
t y
ou're concerned about is getting lost, getting kidnapped by rebels, getting sexuall
y v
iolated by baboons . . . that kind of thing."

Josh knew he was being set up, but afte
r e
verything that had happened, everything he'd seen, it was hard not to have a little of Flannary's paranoia rub off on him.

"Yeah. I guess."

Flannary slapped the dash again. "Well, my boy, I think I have a satisfactory solution to those problems. In fact, I think I have a solution you're gonna fall in love with."

Chapter
24.

The satellite phone in Josh's pocket began to ring just as the soldier frisking him started up his left leg. Normally the fact that he was scared shitless would have prompted him to let the caller leave a message, but he hadn't been able to reach his sister in two days, and it was killing him. He took one of his hands off the Land Cruiser's scalding hood and dug the phone out.

The rifle butt to the kidneys he'd been expecting didn't materialize, and instead the soldier wandered off to start what would ultimately be a disappointing search of the Land Cruiser. It had been emptied of virtually everything of value at a similar military checkpoint two hours ago.

"Hello? Laura?"

"It's Stephen, Josh. I wanted to call and tell you I was sorry we couldn't talk when I was at the project. I know you must b
e c
oncerned about what happened there, and
I want to explain. Those weren't our crops
Mtiti's government loaned them to us for the shoot. If we had the funds, we would have bought them and had them planted permanently. But the truth is that we don't right now."

"I understand," Josh said.

"Do you? Good. We're hoping the donations we get from the brochure we're putting together will give us the money to get your project going again."

Across the hood from him, Annika grabbed the hand of the soldier frisking her when it got a little too close to her left breast. She said something with a passive sternness that Josh recognized from the first three roadblocks they'd been through that day. It seemed like an impossible balancing act -- she had to be forceful enough for the man to take her seriously, but not so forceful as to make him angry. And, miraculously, she once again managed to create the illusion that they weren't completely defenseless.

"It's not my project anymore, Stephen. We --"

"I know, we still need to talk about your sister and about the possibility of you going home --"

"The possibility of me going home? You said --"

"Look, we're going to relocate some of the refugees you've been working with to one of our more successful projects. It has enough capacity to absorb them, and we can get them on the road to self-sufficiency. I'm knee-deep in that right now."

The soldier searching Annika tried to duck into the Land Cruiser's backseat, but she grabbed his sleeve and showed him the pictures and maps Flannary had collected.