Lords of Corruption (8 page)

Josh stepped from the Land Cruiser, taking a deep breath of the humid air and trying to drive away the nausea that had replaced exhaustion over the last hour. A quick glance at his watch suggested it was early morning in Kentucky, and he guessed that his disoriented body clock was still working on the assumption that he wasn't a million miles from home.

"Who's in charge?" he asked as Gideon walked to the front of the vehicle. This sto
p h
adn't been the African's idea, and he clearly wasn't happy about it.

"You are."

Josh let out a frustrated laugh. Getting a straight answer out of his new assistant might turn out to be the biggest challenge of his new job. Josh had been expecting a smart, enthusiastic guide who could teach him to maneuver effortlessly through the complicated politics, culture, and languages in the country. Someone who had dedicated his life to helping his people. Someone Josh would form an immediate and lasting friendship with.

Of those qualities, Gideon seemed to have one: He was clearly no idiot. What his motivations or interests were, though, was a mystery. And the chance that Josh would feel anything but wariness toward him seemed remote at this point. On the other hand, he'd only been in the country for a few hours. No point in setting any of his impressions in concrete yet.

"I know I'm in charge, Gideon. What I meant was, where's the foreman? Where are the agricultural experts?"

The African shrugged thick shoulders, his face unmoving except for the reflection of the boiling clouds in his glasses. It was a surprisingly expressive gesture that even
Josh's jet-lagged mind could decipher. He wasn't saying he didn't know where they were -- he was saying they didn't exist.

The steep slope in front of them was being systematically hacked into sections by what Josh calculated to be about a hundred workers using hand tools of varying effectiveness -- nothing more sophisticated than a rusted shovel and nothing less sophisticated than a pointy rock.

The plan was for the entire butte to be terraced, creating fertile agricultural land that would not only support a village built on the narrow swath of flat land surrounding it but also produce excess food that could be sold on the open market. Trent had given him only a short briefing on the project, responding to nearly every question Josh asked with "Why don't you go down there and get the lay of the land, then we'll talk."

Trent's attitude had seemed reasonable at the time, but now Josh wondered if his new boss hadn't been intentionally vague in an effort not to scare him off.

Not that Josh knew the first thing about this type of agriculture, but even to his eye, something had gone seriously wrong here. The individual terraces sloped every which way, there was no uniformity to the dept
h o
f them, and there was nothing supporting the vertical slab of earth the digging had created -- a dangerous situation highlighted by what looked like a large mudslide on the eastern edge of the project.

"The rain is coming," Gideon said. "We'll go to the compound now."

It was tempting, but Josh knew he wouldn't be able to sleep with this many unanswered questions spinning around in his head.

"Let me just look around for a minute."

"The rain," Gideon warned as Josh moved away from the Land Cruiser. "There's nothing to be done here tonight."

"I can take a look. It'll give me time to think."

"Think tomorrow. We're going."

There was a finality to his tone that sounded like an order and made Josh pick up his pace. Who was working for who here? And what exactly were they trying to accomplish? To stay dry or to help these people feed themselves?

He aimed himself at the project's most interesting feature -- a small but prominent field at the base of a hill that had been terraced with incongruous precision and was planted with corn that had grown to a height of about five feet.

The first raindrop hit him on the back of the neck with impressive force and an audible splat. He wiped at the warm water as he waded into the rows of corn. "What's up with this?"

"I don't know what you're asking," Gideon said, obviously angry, but not so much that he was willing to wait in the car. "It's almost ready for harvest."

"What I'm asking is why one little section is done and perfect, while the rest . . ." He wasn't quite sure how to describe the rest of the project, so he just waved his hand in its general direction.

This time Gideon's shrug was more disinterested. "I'm not in charge of this project. You are."

"That's what I keep hearing."

"We have to go now."

The rain was coming harder, the drops shaking the leaves and exploding in the dust around their feet. Above them, the people had stopped working but didn't seem in a hurry to leave. Instead they formed groups, talking animatedly and looking in Josh's direction.

"Okay, fine. Let's go," Josh said, deciding it was a little early to make an enemy of the man who was supposed to be his lifeline here. When they turned to go back to the
Land Cruiser, though, he was distracted by a flash of yellow through the corn, and he set off toward it instead.

"Where are you going?" Gideon shouted. "This way!"

"Head back to the car," Josh yelled back, trying to be heard over the rain that had now completely soaked through his clothes. "I'll be there in a sec."

For some reason, Gideon didn't take the suggestion and appeared from the corn just as Josh started to circle the small earth-mover he'd found next to a dilapidated shed.

Trent had mentioned the tractor but had neglected to say that basically every part on it that could be easily unbolted had been stolen. The fact that it had treads instead of tires was the only thing saving it from the indignity of being up on blocks.

"What the hell happened here?"

Gideon's jaw stiffened just as it had right before he'd gone crazy on the soldier at the airport, and Josh felt his resolve wavering. But he refused to let his uneasiness show and just stood there waiting for an answer.

"It's a tractor that NewAfrica provided. It no longer works."

"I'd say that's an understatement. Where's the rest of it?"

Another shrug. Josh could already tell that those were going to get really irritating. "Can we get new parts?"

"It's difficult."

"Maybe we should find the people who stole them and buy 'em back?" Josh forced a smile, though he hadn't actually been joking. Gideon just stared at him, the water running in sheets down his glasses.

There was movement to Josh's left, and he turned to watch a long line of workers coming up a path toward them. They examined him carefully as they passed and put their tools inside the shed. Some scattered, but others hung around and listened to a man who had begun to speak. On the surface, he didn't look much different than his audience -- same strong but slightly malnourished build, same dirty jeans and ratty T-shirt. But his voice was clear and strong, and everyone seemed to be paying attention. Overall, he seemed to be a person Josh should get to know.

He strode up to the man and interrupted him by sticking a hand out. "Hi, I'm Josh Hagarty. I'm from NewAfrica."

His new status seemed to hover between celebrity and roadside oddity, and all eyes were on him. The man fell silent, not moving at first but finally taking Josh's hand.

He looked directly at Josh with an intensity that was impossible to match, so he let his eyes wander. The man's skin seemed impossibly black and camouflaged the creases around his eyes and along his cheeks.

Whatever he saw obviously didn't impress him all that much, and he said something that was meant for the men he'd been speaking to. Josh expected them to laugh, but instead they just nodded gravely.

"This is Tfmena," Gideon said with obvious reluctance. "He's what you would call a village elder. He says that he is pleased that you're here and grateful for your and your organization's commitment to his people's welfare."

That might be who he was, but Josh was fairly certain that wasn't what he'd said. If he had to guess, it would have translated more as, "Look at this arrogant asshole straight out of school who's here to tell us how to live. He was born a white American male, and he managed to screw even that up."

Despite that, this was a man who had the respect of his people, and that didn't seem like something easy to win in this part of the world. Undoubtedly a step in the right direction from the two Africans Josh had interacted with so far -- the soldier at the

airport and Gideon.

"Tfmena," Josh mangled, trying to keep the rain from flowing into his mouth as he spoke. What did these people have against vowels? "It's good to meet you, sir. I want you to know that I'm going to do my best to make all this work."

Chapter
9.

The rain ended as suddenly as it had begun, though the sound of dripping was still audible as Josh's and Gideon's clothes drained onto the Land Cruiser's seats.

The metal gate they were stopped in front of was covered in rust but still looked much more formidable than the guard standing next to it. He was at least seventy, armed only with a tiny bow and dart-like arrows that were in danger of falling from their quiver as he threw his weight behind the gate.

The compound that was to become Josh's home for the foreseeable future was perched on the summit of a low hill and glowed unnaturally in a landscape that was descending into inky darkness. The concrete walls that surrounded it were more than ten feet high and topped with jagged chunks of glass to discourage anyone considering climbing over.

Gideon revved the engine and gunned the vehicle forward, nearly brushing the old man as they passed. The unease that Josh felt at the similarity to the prison he'd been so anxious to leave faded as they skidded to a stop in a gravel courtyard overflowing with bougainvillea, fruit trees, and white Land Cruisers.

He barely had a foot out the door when a thin African man with cheeks that hovered somewhere between extraordinarily chubby and dangerously swollen rushed toward him. His grin was full of teeth almost white enough to outshine his garish Hawaiian shirt, but they disappeared when Gideon began barking unintelligible orders. A moment later, he had pulled Josh's bags from the back of the vehicle and was teetering away with them.

"Hold on!" Josh called. "Let me help you with those."

He turned to thank Gideon for the ride, but the African was already reversing the Land Cruiser toward the gate. Josh swore quietly to himself. Making friends left and right.

"Hey, you! New guy!"

He spotted a white face emerging from a path that had nearly been reclaimed by the banana trees lining it.

"Come on over here and introduce yourself, son."

Josh pointed in the direction he'd last seen his luggage heading. "There's this really skinny guy trying to carry about two hundred pounds of my stuff, and --"

"Luganda?" the man said in an accent that suggested northeastern United States. "Jesus Christ, kid. He doesn't need your help. He could twist your head off like a bottle cap. Now, who the hell are you?"

After one last glance back, Josh walked over to shake the man's hand. He was probably in his late forties, though his shaved head and sun-damaged skin made that more of a guess than an estimate. His clothes were standard mail-order safari, though their style and threadbare condition suggested that the catalog dated back to somewhere in the early '90s.

"I'm Josh Hagarty."

"NewAfrica," he said, contemplating Josh with the same skepticism everyone else on this continent did.

"That's right. Who are you?"

He didn't answer immediately, instead taking a pull from a sweaty glass topped with a paper umbrella. "JB Flannary. Maybe you've heard of me."

"No."

"America's youth has become virtually illiterate, hasn't it? I blame those Ataris."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Flannary paused to take another drink, an act that went on long enough to turn the scene slightly awkward.

"Well," he said finally, "you bothered to come all this way, so I guess I should show you where you're staying. Where are you from, anyway?"

"Kentucky."

"How'd a good ol' boy like you get hooked up with NewAfrica?"

"It's kind of a strange story," Josh said, nearly tripping over a coconut as he followed the man on a detour through the landscaping.

"Yeah? How so?"

He was about to answer when Flannary came to a sudden halt, their path blocked by a white woman in her midtwenties. She wore her mouse-brown hair in a short, square cut that seemed to have been designed to fit around her sturdy-looking glasses. Blue fatigue pants and a similarly colored top gave her a vaguely SWAT feel.

"Hey, Josh, let me introduce you to Katie -- one of our quickly dwindling crew. She's with the African Women's Initiative."

"Nice to meet you. I don't think I'
m f
amiliar with your charity."

"They do firewood," Flannary said before Katie could respond.

"What?"

"Firewood," he repeated.