Lords of Corruption (18 page)

Gideon looked as though he wanted to reach across the desk and snap Trent's neck, but at the mention of Mtiti his indignation began to falter.

"I didn't mean to say

"I don't give a shit what you meant to say. Do you think being related to Mtiti is going to help you? He'll send his people down here, and they'll kill you and your whole family. He's done it before to people he was a hell of a lot closer to than you."

The African didn't respond, and Trent reached for the MP3 player, slamming it repeatedly down on his desk until the pieces were scattered across its wood top.

"Now, listen to me very carefully, Gideon. You're going to find the person who translated this, you're going to find out if they've talked to anyone about it, and then you're going to kill them. Do you think you can handle that?"

Stephen Trent made himself a drink and held it to his lips with a shaking hand. How the hell had he ended up like this? A few years ago he'd been a reasonably successful con man, swindling people out of their life savings without harming so much as a hai
r o
n their heads. Now he was threatening to have the entire family of one of his employees butchered.

When Aleksei Fedorov had found him, Trent had been facing multiple counts of stock fraud and racketeering. Fedorov had provided enough money, lawyers, and God knew what else to get all the charges dropped. And in return, Trent had taken over Fedorov's latest criminal venture -- N ewAfri c a .

At the time it had seemed like an incredible stroke of luck -- a clean record and a mid-six-figure salary in place of prison. But every day he became less certain.

Wasn't that how deals with the devil always went? He'd bargained for his freedom and in the process had permanently lost it.

Trent picked up the phone and dialed, swilling the rest of his drink as he listened to it ring.

"Yes."

"Hello, Aleksei."

"What the fuck took so long? Mtiti's been calling every hour, and I can't keep ducking him."

"I'm sorry for the delay. I wanted to make sure I had all the facts."

"And what are they?"

"I'm taking care of the situation with Mtiti's photo op, but Josh Hagarty isn't as easy. I don't think he's going to work out."

"What do you mean he isn't going to work out? This was your plan -- you found him, you trained him, and you told me he was perfect for this job."

Of course that was a wild distortion of the truth, but arguing with Aleksei Fedorov was always dangerous and most often pointless.

"He has suspicions --"

"Suspicions? What in the hell are you doing over there, Stephen? He just landed on a continent he's never been to before, he doesn't speak the language, and we have him isolated in a compound in the middle of nowhere. Are you advertising what we're doing on television there?"

"He has some family problems to deal with and wants to go home, Aleksei. No harm done --"

"No harm done? How much does he know?"

"Not enough that it's going to cause us a problem. We'll give him a good severance, and he'll never think about us or this country again."

"What guarantee do I have of that? How do I know he's not going to come home and start talking to people? How do I know h
e i
sn't going to start a goddamn blog called `My Time with NewAfrica'?"

"I'll talk to him. I'll --"

"Get rid of him."

"Aleksei, it's too soon after Dan. Our donors are going to start getting uncomfortable, and it's going to make it impossible for us to replace him."

"Replace him? With who? You searched the whole country, and he's the only thing you came up with."

"There was the candidate from Cali--"

"No. You told me Hagarty was the best man for the job. He's either going to stay on, or he's going to disappear."

Trent looked longingly at his empty glass and fell into the chair behind his desk. The idea had been that Josh was someone who could be slowly brought along and eventually told the truth about NewAfrica. That he, unlike a typical aid agency do-gooder, could be made to understand the situation for what it was and appreciate the financial opportunities it could provide. After their last meeting, though, Trent was beginning to realize that he'd misjudged his new employee -- that Josh Hagarty would never be able to accept what they were doing here.

"I'm not sure either one of those options is the best course, Aleksei."

"What about his sister?"

Trent rested his head in his hand. It always came down to the children. The ones least able to defend themselves.

"Her name is Laura," Trent said quietly.

"She's seventeen years old, living in a rura
l p
art of Kentucky with their mother." "And they're close?"

"Yes."

"Then maybe we need to show him just how easy it is for us to get to her."

Chapter
22.

"Hey!" Josh Hagarty shouted, running toward a soldier who had just sent a young boy sprawling to the ground.

Josh managed to grab the kid and pull him away before the soldier could deliver the kick he was clearly lining up for. A moment later he found himself staring down the barrel of a machine gun. Terrifying, but not exactly unexpected.

The malaise that had engulfed his project after the fire was gone. No fewer than forty of Mtiti's soldiers had come roaring up the road that morning in a convoy of flatbed trucks loaded with mature cornstalks.

Josh raised his hands and began to slowly back away as the soldier barked unintelligibly at him. On the hill, maybe three hundred yards away, he could see Gideon watching. Apparently, instead of firing him, Trent had put him in charge of whatever the hell it was that was happening.

Josh had to admit, though, that he'd never seen his workers move with the kind of urgency he was seeing now. There was obviously something extremely motivating about being chased around by fatigue-clad thugs wielding assault rifles and machetes. Despite a complete lack of organization, the burned tractor was already gone -- dragged out with a team of cows and some rope. The remains of the storage building were in the process of being dismantled by a group of children, and the black ash was being swept away by an army of women armed with brooms improvised from handfuls of straw.

Most impressive, though, was the fact that almost half the field was already replanted, and the corn necessary to finish the job was on its way -- passed hand to hand by a line of straining workers.

The soldier motioned with his gun for him to get out of there, but Josh remained frozen, uncertain what to do.

This was slavery, plain and simple. The men, women, and children he had been working with were being driven past the point of elthaustion by terror and violence. But what could he do? Tfmena was gone, he didn't speak the language, and he was seen as just another ineffectual white alien in this world. One last glance at a smug
Gideon and Josh retreated back through the chaos.

"Busy little beaver today, aren't you?"

JB Flannary had set up two lawn chairs on a small rise that afforded a sweeping view of the mayhem below. He patted the empty seat next to him, and Josh dropped into it, too worn out and frustrated to do anything else.

"I'm done."

"Done with what?" Flannary said, fishing a beer from the cooler next to him and holding it out.

"Everything. You, this continent, Stephen Trent. By this time next week, I'm gonna be sitting in front of my mom's trailer wondering what the hell just happened."

"And that's a good thing?"

Josh accepted the beer and stared down at it. Of course it wasn't a good thing. All the problems he'd run from were still waiting for him. But at least in Kentucky there was someone he could actually help. Here he was useless. Or worse.

They sat in silence for a while, drinking and watching the field being planted. When all the corn was in, the trucks pulled back and the women went to work erasing their tracks from the dirt.

"Looks even better without the shed and the tractor," Flannary observed. "More authentic."

His voice carried more than a hint of sarcasm, but there was no denying that he was right. Tightly framed and from just the right angle, the newly planted field looked almost idyllic. Sun-dappled corn swayed in the breeze, endless green hills retreated into the horizon. If it hadn't been for the soldiers frisking various men and women before dragging them into an inexplicable line, it would have seemed almost peaceful.

A small dot appeared on the horizon, and a few moments later the drone of a helicopter became audible. The workers who hadn't passed muster were chased into the trees by screaming men with guns.

The afternoon rains hadn't come that day, and the dust turned into a choking cloud as the helicopter landed on the far edge of the project. When the air cleared, the door slid open and a few well-armed men jumped out, surveying the area before motioning behind them.

The workers began to cheer as Umboto Mtiti emerged, but it was less a sign of political solidarity than a reaction to the not-so-gentle urging of the men guarding them.

"His Excellency, the president," one of Mtiti's entourage called out in an impressive baritone. "Ruler of the country, commander of the armed forces, and savior of his people."

"Don't forget 'world-class scumbag,' " Flannary added, raising his beer in a drunken salute.

Josh had seen a few poor-quality photos of Mtiti, but beyond the roundness of his face and the uniform heavy with medals he'd awarded himself, they hadn't captured the man. First, they always depicted him smiling -- an emotion that seemed completely foreign to the face that Josh saw now. And second, they couldn't replicate the sheer size of the man. He had to be at least six-four, with the formless bulk of a retired power lifter.

Mtiti didn't acknowledge his fans, instead marching directly toward the cornfield as a group of photographers hurried to keep up. One skittered over to the recently formed line of workers, finding an angle from which he could capture their cheers without including the soldiers extracting them.

"Vultures," Flannary said.

"Photographers. I hate those sons of bitches. The root of all evil, if you ask me."

"I thought money was the root of all evil."

"A distant second, son. Ever wonder how they get all those pictures of starving kids in a country like this one that's drowning in donated food?"

"I never really thought about it."

Flannary frowned deeply as he followed Mtiti's progress. "I was at a hospital down south a few years back. A bunch of photographers from some NGO or another found a kid with dysentery, took him out of his bed and laid him on a patch of floor where the tiles were broken, and started taking pictures. But the kid was on the mend, and he didn't look sick enough, so they asked the doctor if he'd take out the kid's IV for a while."

"Bullshit."

"I swear on my mother's grave."

"Did the doctor do it?"

"I don't know. I went outside, slashed their tires, and got drunk. Been that way ever since."

Josh wanted to believe that the story was an exaggeration, or maybe even the fabrication of a booze-soaked brain, but like most of what the reporter said, it had the depressing ring of truth.

Josh drained the rest of his beer as Stephen Trent appeared in the door of th
e h
elicopter wearing a pair of khaki cargo pants and a NewAfrica T-shirt. He looked a bit reluctant to get out but managed to overcome his hesitation and jog to Mtiti's side. He nodded respectfully as the president talked, but there was no indication that they were actually discussing the project. Neither man showed any interest at all.

"Aren't you gonna go down and press the flesh a little?" Flannary asked. "Mtiti is one of the greatest men in history. If you don't believe me, just ask him."

The truth was that Josh just wanted to sit there, get drunk, and wait for it to be morning in the United States so he could check up on Laura. Even with everything that had happened, though, it seemed a little disrespectful to sit there under an umbrella watching his boss and the president of the country like they were a sideshow in some grotesque circus. His chances for getting a letter of recommendation were looking pretty slim as it was.

Josh pushed himself out of his chair and walked down the hill, joining the carefully selected group of workers being marched toward the president. They seemed nervous, unsure what was going to happen to them, and some looked at him for reassurance. He considered giving them a compose
d s
mile, but it seemed too dishonest.

A shout and wave from Stephen Trent got Josh ushered through the makeshift barricades. He concentrated on looking nonthreatening as he approached, aware of the armed men watching him.

"Mr. President," Trent said, "I'd like to introduce you to Josh Hagarty. He's our man on the ground here."

Mtiti appraised him emotionlessly and ignored Josh's outstretched hand. Not that he could blame the man. It wasn't like the work that had been done here demanded a hell of a lot of respect.