Lords of Corruption (23 page)

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Like what?"

Josh had never been prone to panic, but now he could feel it creeping up on him. This wasn't a misunderstanding or an accident. He was standing over the rotting bodies of a hundred people who a few nights before had been living, breathing human beings. He looked into the dirt-covered eyes of the old woman and imagined that the rest were staring up at him, too. Blaming him. Thirsting for revenge.

"Everything JB said was right," he stammered. "It's all bullshit. Stephen Trent, NewAfrica. They've never built anything or fed anyone. They're helping Mtiti get rid of the other tribes and keeping his imag
e p
olished for the rest of the world. Why? Why would they do this?"

"For money," Annika said. "You look at the poverty here and you think there is no money. But that's not true. It's everywhere."

Money. For some reason the word cleared the fog from Josh's head. Everything he'd seen since he'd arrived in Africa was so complicated, it had never occurred to him that the answer to any question here could be as simple as that.

It all made perfect sense. Dan had found out what was going on and started to investigate, so they'd gotten rid of him. But he had to be replaced, preferably by a very different kind of employee. Someone desperate, someone who didn't care one way or another about charity or Africa or breaking a law or two.

He looked down again at the old woman. The handmade wooden jewelry she'd been wearing when he'd helped her was gone --stolen by the people who had killed her. Why would they leave a perfectly good shovel? And not only leave it but leave it right above that particular woman's grave? He dropped to his knees again and began pawing through the dirt. It took less than a minute to turn up his sat phone, no longer in her bag but buried beneath one of he
r s
tiff arms.

Gideon stood in the shadow of the jungle watching the scene playing out in front of him: Josh Hagarty using the shovel to uncover the old hag, his shock, his weakness. And even more intently, he watched the woman. Annika Gritdal, his informants told him. She was a missionary working in a remote village to the north -- one Josh had visited a number of times. By all reports, her language skills were excellent, and it seemed almost certain that she was the one who had translated the threat to Tfmena.

By European standards, she was quite beautiful. And here she was quite exotic. He knew people who would pay handsomely for a woman with pale skin and blond hair, though it was impossible. Trent would find out, and what he knew Mtiti knew. The president would tolerate nothing that could generate negative press in the West, and Gideon knew he was already on the verge of falling out of favor with his brother-in-law -- something that had proven fatal to many before him.

But now he had turned things back to his advantage.

His people had found the phone when they were divvying up the belongings o
f t
hese Yvimbo dogs and brought it to him. His initial reaction had been to bury it far to the south, leading Hagarty deep into dangerous rebel country. But then he'd changed his mind. This arrogant American had caused him to shut down his store and with it much of his livelihood. Gideon had found himself belittled in the eyes of Mtiti and his position with NewAfrica threatened.

So he'd left the phone and the shovel. And he'd waited.

Now there could be no dissent from Stephen Trent. Hagarty and his woman knew too much and would have to die. But not quickly. No, this was something Gideon had looked forward to for some time. They would suffer greatly first. They'd beg for death.

He pulled a pistol from his waistband and crept through the foliage, watching Hagarty dig through the dirt around the old woman's body. There was more than fifty meters between them, and before he showed himself, Gideon needed to be in a position to cut off their escape. He was in no mood for a chase.

Hagarty found the phone and immediately began pushing buttons on it, though instead of putting it to his ear, he let it hang loosely from his hand while he scanned the edge
s o
f the clearing. A moment later, the phone in Gideon's pocket started to ring, cutting through the still air and causing the birds in the trees above him to take flight.

By the time he managed to turn it off, Hagarty and his woman were sprinting back the way they had come.

Chapter
29.

JB Flannary stood huddled against the apartment building, using the stairs to block the wind but still shivering in his borrowed coat. It was one of the things he hated most about America -- the crushing cold and darkness that closed in so quickly in the winter.

The NewAfrica plaque on the building across the street flashed in the headlights of passing cars, and Flannary tried without success to catch a glimpse of what was beyond the darkened windows. No one had gone in or out in the fifteen minutes he'd been standing there, but that wasn't surprising. Charities -- even twisted, evil ones --tended to be nine-to-five affairs.

"Sorry I'm late!"

For some reason the piercing cheerfulness of Tracy Collins's voice had an ability to startle him that the sound of machine-gun fire had lost. He looked into her smiling fac
e a
s she approached, a backpack slung over her wool-clad shoulder.

"Do you have everything?"

"Of course, JB! Absolutely."

He tried to work up a little cynicism -- or at least a little skepticism -- but it felt artificial. Over the last two days Tracy had demonstrated that youth and stupidity didn't always go hand in hand. While he'd been drinking himself into oblivion at his brother's increasingly inane prewedding festivities, she'd been channeling Woodward, Bernstein, and Steve Jobs in roughly equal amounts.

Tracy pushed past him and buzzed one of the apartments, bouncing slightly on her heels. Whether it was from the cold or excitement, he wasn't certain.

"So what made you want to be a reporter, JB?"

"Huh?"

"For me, it was seeing so much injustice that wasn't reported on, you know? The media's gotten so lazy. Not like your generation."

A voice from the speaker saved him from having to answer.

"Yes?"

"Hi, it's Tracy Collins. We talked earlier?" The lock buzzed, and Flannary followe
d h
is young assistant as she headed for the stairs.

"I know it sounds naive, JB, but I still believe the press can make a difference in people's lives. We've just gotten off track. Instead of challenging people, now we just reinforce their beliefs, you know? But I think that's going to change."

"Really?"

His hangover seemed to be getting worse, but that was biologically impossible, so it had to be his proximity to this untainted ball of positive energy. Hopefully they'd do what they needed to do fast enough for him to get a little hair of the dog on the way back to his hotel.

Tracy's knock on the third-floor door was immediately answered by a woman in her midfifties.

"Hi, I'm Tracy, and this is my boss, JB Flannary. JB, this is Ms. Jones."

"Nice to meet you," he said, shaking her hand and examining her vaguely nervous expression with suspicion. He didn't trust people named Jones. Sounded too much like an alias.

"So this is it, here?" Tracy said, pointing to a dark window.

"Yes," the woman answered. "The fire escape is just outside. You said a hundre
d d
ollars a day, right?"

"Yup. That's right."

Flannary's jaw tightened, but Tracy was already pushing the window open and slipping through.

"So, Paris Hilton, huh?" the woman said.

"Crazy, isn't it?" Flannary responded, slipping a leg over the sill and feeling the cold outside air blow up his leg.

Through Internet wizardry he didn't fully understand, Tracy had found the phone numbers and basic background on all the people with apartments facing the New-Africa building. After selecting Ms. Jones as the best candidate, she'd called and offered to pay her to let them put a camera on her fire escape. The cover story was that Paris Hilton was sleeping with someone who worked across the street.

"This thing's super-cutting-edge," Tracy said as Flannary pulled himself out onto the fire escape. "It's got great optics, a huge zoom, and amazing resolution, and it automatically adjusts to ambient light. It even works in the dark. No one will be able to walk in or out of that building without us getting every detail."

He nodded and wrapped his arms around himself, noticing for the first time that she was dressed entirely in black. An amiable
,
chubby cat burglar.

The more they looked into NewAfrica, the stranger things became. The board members seemed to be generally on the upand-up -- mostly wealthy New York women of leisure who were involved in various charities around town. They didn't seem involved on a day-to-day basis, though, and as near as they could tell, none had ever been to Africa. Employees were similarly mundane and also rarely left the United States. Pure bureaucrats well-versed in the theory of aid, if not its unfortunate details.

Stephen Trent, though, broke that mold. A cursory glance at his background suggested he came from the world of real estate development and venture capital. A little digging, though, turned up the fact that it had been mostly fraudulent real estate development and venture capital. He'd managed to stay out of jail, but that seemed to be more the result of fancy legal footwork than innocence. The bottom line was that a lot of people had lost a lot of money on his scams, and someone had gone to great lengths to bury that information.

Another intriguing fact was that Trent had no history of charitable work or world travel. The idea that some Midwestern con artist would be able to suddenly ally himsel
f w
ith Umboto Mtiti and insinuate himself into the politics of Africa seemed far-fetched to the extreme. Flannary had met him on no less than three occasions and he was clearly a lightweight. Slick? For sure. But not a man with the knowledge or resolve that it would take to get an operation like NewAfrica off the ground.

Flannary's gut told him someone else was pulling the strings. And that had inspired Tracy to come up with the camera idea.

"So we just come and pick up the tape in a couple of days?" Flannary asked, trying not to think about how much all these fancy optics were costing him.

She looked back and cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

"To watch it."

"Oh, right. Then we can put some ABBA on my eight-track and watch it on my blackand-white TV." A bemused grin spread across her face. "We're going to link to Ms. Jones's wireless, and then we can connect to it over the Web, JB. It'll download into files that we can fast-forward, rewind, enhance, or whatever. It'll all be right at our fingertips -- archived and date-stamped."

One last turn of her screwdriver, and the camera was mounted. She grabbed her bag and ducked back through the window.

"Come on, we'll pull this thing up on my laptop and see what we've got."

"I'll be in in a second," Flannary said. "You sure? Kinda cold out here."

He nodded and slid the window shut after her.

He'd been trying to contact Josh for the last two days, and the best he'd gotten was a prompt to leave a message. Every time he couldn't get through, the knot in his stomach tightened more. Had something happened to the kid? Or worse, maybe his reporter's insight into people had misfired and Josh wasn't as innocent as he seemed. If that was the case, what had happened to Annika?

Flannary dialed the number for Josh's sat phone and listened to the familiar recording in its entirety before hanging up.

Chapter
30.

A barrage of machine-gun fire tore the limbs from the trees just ahead and sent Annika sprawling to the ground. Josh managed to get a hand under her arm and jerked her to her feet before she'd even stopped sliding.

A glance back placed Gideon in the middle of the narrow dirt road about seventy-five yards away. He was motionless, taking careful aim this time. He wouldn't miss again.

Still gripping Annika's arm, Josh made a sudden left turn, crashing into the jungle at a full sprint. Rounds pulverized the wide leaves above them, turning the air to a hazy green as they searched for cover.

They stopped behind the broad trunk of a tree, both breathing hard and Annika wiping at the spiderweb of blood covering her face.

Josh held her head steady, examining th
e g
ash across the bridge of her nose. It didn't look all that serious, but her eyes were a little cloudy. Her impact with the ground must have been harder than he'd thought.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded as Gideon's shouts penetrated the dense foliage. They were in Xhisa, but no translation was necessary. The African wanted to tear them apart.

"We can't stay in the jungle," Josh said. "We've got to get to the car. Can you still run?"

She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, and when she opened them again, they had cleared. "Faster than you."

They burst back out onto the road, partially crouched and going hard. No shots this time, but Gideon had closed to fifty yards in the time they'd been stopped.