Lords of Corruption (32 page)

He glanced at Annika but found no help there. He was on his own.

Gideon's pistol was still lying where he had fallen, and Josh picked it up, trying to ignore the weight of Tfmena's eyes on him. He hoped someone would stop him, but no one moved.

Trent seemed to be struggling just to remain standing as Josh aimed the gun. The man guarding him moved to a safe distance, but Josh wasn't sure it was necessary. He wasn't going to be able to do it. He wasn't going to be able to shoot an unarmed man in cold blood.

Trent sensed his hesitation and smiled. A
clear drop ran down his right cheek, but it was impossible to tell if it was a tear or just sweat.

"I always knew this is how I would end up," he said. "But I'm still kind of scared."

The sound of his voice was strangely calming. "I am, too," Josh said. And then he pulled the trigger.

Chapter
41.

The outskirts of the capital city were quiet, matching the silence that had prevailed in the car for the last five hours. To her credit, Annika had tried to open a dialogue, but she'd gotten nothing more than one-word answers. She was now motionless in the passenger seat, staring out at the firelight leaking from the shacks lining the road.

What was there to say? He'd killed a man. The proof was all around him: in the leather-trimmed interior of the Land Cruiser, in the phone and wallet lying on the dashboard, in the diamond ring rattling inside the cup holder. All stolen from Stephen Trent. Or more precisely taken from the dead body of the human being whose life he had ended. Josh's gaze wandered to Gideon's pistol gleaming on the dark floorboard, and he wondered if the African was dead yet. And if not, what he and his men were going through.

"What did you want me to do?" he said finally, his voice impossibly loud in the confines of the car.

Annika turned away from the window. "I don't understand what you're asking."

"They were going to kill Stephen. I . . . I saved him from that. You understand, don't you?"

"Understand?" She let out a bitter laugh. "For everything he's done -- for the way he's preyed on the most defenseless people in the world. On women and children . . . I would have left him to the Yvimbo."

She'd actually approached Gideon as he was being dragged away and asked him what had happened to her village. The answer was a string of threats, but in them was the clear implication that nothing had been done yet. Publicity and logistics had to be dealt with before the genocide could start.

"Annika . .

"I mean it, Josh. Isn't that strange? I didn't know I could feel this way. If Mtiti was standing in front of me right now, I'd kill him. And I wouldn't regret it. I think I'd enjoy it."

The memory of the buck of the gun and the sound of Trent's last breaths made his stomach roll. "Doing it is different tha
n t
alking about it."

"Is it? How would it feel to kill Mtiti? How would it feel to know I'd saved the people who have been my family for most of my adult life?"

He stared through the windshield for a few moments, straining to see the dark outline of the capital city ahead. "I want to help you, Annika. And I want to help the people here. But my first priority is keeping us alive and making sure my sister is okay. I can't save Africa. Only the Africans can."

Annika went back to looking out the window. A good five minutes passed before she spoke again. "I used to see God everywhere. But more and more I wonder if He's forgotten this place."

Ahead, an armored personnel carrier parked across the road became visible through the darkness and smoke, forcing Josh to swerve down a side street to avoid being spotted.

"Shit! That's the third one."

He'd hoped that Mtiti would have called off the men blocking access to the consulates and that they'd be able to slip in and get help. But you didn't become president of an African country by being careless. Power, phones, and Internet were still down, making communication with th
e o
utside world impossible. Trent's sat phone was charged and tempting, but it would be impossible to know who might be listening and whether it could be tracked.

Josh eased the car to a stop in the unusually quiet road and turned the headlights off. "Mtiti and Fedorov probably already figure something went wrong."

She leaned back in the seat and let out a long breath. "They won't stop until they find us, Josh. They'll do whatever they have to.

"Back in the States, we have an old saying: A good offense is the best defense."

He could just make out her silhouette as she turned toward him. "Did you have something in mind?"

Chapter
42.

The well-maintained asphalt felt strangely exotic beneath Josh's feet as he hurried up the steep road. Around him, rare electric lights were reflecting off walls strung with bougainvillea and razor wire.

He continued to the end of the cul-de-sac, watched by the man policing the gate to Stephen Trent's home. It was the same guard who had been there the first time Josh had visited, and despite the recognition in his eyes, he hadn't yet fulfilled Annika's prediction and started shooting.

"Hi. I'm Josh Hagarty. I'm here to meet with Mr. Trent."

"No one told me," the man said, his accented English barely decipherable.

Josh shrugged disinterestedly, trying to emulate the attitude of the wealthy whites he'd seen in Africa.

"He not here."

"I know he's not here," Josh said, affecting irritation and hoping it would mask the fear eating away at him. "He called me from the road. He's on his way."

Josh was counting on the fact that the guard had no real authority or big-picture knowledge of the workings of NewAfrica. His job was to dissuade the local riffraff from looting the place. Nothing more, nothing less.

Apparently he saw it the same way, because a moment later Josh found himself strolling through the open gate, trying to shake the feeling that he was breaking into prison instead of out.

The maid who answered the front door was even less inquisitive, taking Josh at his word that Trent was on his way and that Josh had been instructed to wait in his office. After he declined her offer of coffee, she wandered off. When her footsteps had completely faded, Josh pushed the office door closed and hurried to the filing cabinets lined up against the wall. He ignored the standard ones and went straight for the safe-like units in the corner. The laser-cut key he'd taken off Trent's body slid easily into the lock, and Josh tried to turn it. Nothing. He tried again with the same result.

Just as panic was starting to set in, he noticed that blood had dried in a few of th
e i
ndentations on the key. Using a paper clip, he gently dug it out, trying not to replay what it had felt like to root around in the blood-and-sweat-dampened pockets of a corpse.

This time when he turned the key, a green light flashed and the drawer slid open.

After a quick overview of the files, he knew he'd found the records that Flannary had told him about -- the ones that never made it back to the United States. There were payments from Mtiti for ambiguously defined services, profits from the sale of food aid, statements from foreign banks, and documents for countless offshore corporations and partnerships.

He began pulling out the most incriminating of them, creating a neat stack on the floor.

Every once in a while footsteps would become audible in the hallway and he'd have to slam the cabinet closed and take a seat in front of Trent's desk. But other than the maid, who was very concerned about his fluid intake, no one seemed to even know he was there.

Josh had been at it for almost twenty minutes when the sound of a powerful engine reached him from the front of the house. He froze, listening to it grow i
n v
olume, and then went into panicked motion when it was overpowered by the screech of tires.

Shouts and running feet in the entryway were already audible when he picked up the nearly foot-tall stack of documents and looked desperately around the room. There was nowhere to run. He dumped the papers into the trash can by Trent's desk as someone in the hallway began shouting what sounded like orders. It took a couple of seconds for him to place the voice, but when he did, he started moving even faster.

Mtiti.

Josh closed the cabinet drawer and locked it, dropping to the floor behind the desk just as the office door burst open. He squeezed past the chair and crammed himself into the small space once occupied by Stephen Trent's legs, listening to Mtiti's men fan out into the room. He could hear his own jerky breathing, too loud in the confined space he was contorted into. Adrenaline was causing him to shake, and he tried to keep from banging audibly into the polished wood surrounding him. The chair was pulled back, replaced by the lower half of a fatigue-clad soldier. Josh's breath caught in his chest as the man started to crouch, but a face never appeared. Instea
d t
wo hands began removing the drawers and stacking them on Trent's blotter.

The center drawer was locked, and after a brief discussion, a pistol appeared. Josh covered his face just as a bullet tore through the lock, sending wooden shrapnel into his sweat-soaked forearm. A couple of kicks from a military boot and the drawer was free.

Mtiti's orders were partially drowned out by the scraping of metal on the as the file cabinets were dragged toward the hallway. Josh remained completely still, concentrating on keeping his breathing as even as possible. It was all he could do to control his panic, to fight off a feeling of claustrophobia he'd never experienced before, to quell the urge to break and run.

Then it was over. The sound of voices and dragging furniture became distant as Mtiti and his men made their way to the front door. Five minutes later, the engine outside roared to life again and then faded away.

He didn't move, thankful that he hadn't taken up the maid's offer of coffee. Caffeine and a full bladder would not have served him well in this particular situation. Finally, as the silence continued to stretch out, he dared a look at his watch.

Eight thirty-two.

He leaned forward and took a quick peek over the desk. The room had been almost entirely emptied: file cabinets, bookshelves, desk drawers. Even the liquor cabinet and in/out box were gone.

The door was open, but no one was in the hallway, so Josh stood and dabbed sweat from his face. He was trying to regain enough composure to walk casually out of there when he froze, staring down in amazement.

The trash can was still there. And still full of the papers he'd put in it.

Chapter
43.

Aleksei Fedorov's phone rang, and he snatched it from his pocket. "Stephen! Where have you been?"

"This isn't Stephen."

Fedorov stopped pacing at the sound of Umboto Mtiti's voice. Around him, everything in the warehouse was still. The blood had run from JB Flannary's body into a drain in the floor, and for the last hour the soft drip of it had been the only thing moving the cold air. Josh Hagarty's sister had stopped struggling after seeing what had happened to the others and now just stared blankly at the bodies of Robert Page and Flannary's young assistant, still slouched in their chairs.

It was an atmosphere that Fedorov always found calming. Dead bodies represented problems permanently solved: a continuation of his power and a warning to anyone who might decide to try to move in on him.

But there were still people unaccounted for, and Mtiti's voice on the other end of the line wasn't the one he'd hoped to hear.

"Excellency. I'm honored by your call."

"But not expecting it, I see. Can I assume that you've lost Stephen Trent?"

Fedorov tried to calculate the most beneficial spin, but there was no way to be sure what Mtiti knew. He was an animal, but not one to be underestimated when playing on his home field.

"My understanding is that they went to retrieve Annika Gritdal so that we can resolve this . . . problem."

"That was twenty hours ago, Aleksei. Twenty hours. I want to know where they are, and I want to know now."

"They took some of your people along, didn't they, Excellency? Have you contacted them?"

Mtiti's voice came back loud enough to distort over the marginal connection. "If I could contact them, would I be calling you?"

"No," Fedorov said, unaccustomed to being yelled at but managing to keep his anger hidden. "I suppose you wouldn't."

The area that Annika had chosen to hide in was beyond Mtiti's reach -- a rebel-controlled black hole to his government. At this point, it seemed likely that Trent'
s m
otorcade had been attacked. But with what outcome? Certainly Mtiti's men were dead, but would the rebels kill Trent and Hagarty? It seemed that there would be better uses for two white men.

"Then what's happened?" Mtiti demanded.

"I can't be expected to know what goes on in your country hour by hour, Mr. President. I'm thousands of miles away."

"Are you suggesting that I don't have control? That I'm weak --"

"I'm suggesting nothing," Fedorov interrupted, letting some of his anger and frustration creep into his voice, "other than the possibility that something has happened to our people and --"