Lords of Corruption (28 page)

Based on her expression, she was dead serious.

"I was thinking on a less grand scale . . ."

"Well, we can't stay here. The food and water you brought aren't going to last more than a few days."

"What, then?"

"We have no idea when JB's story is going to get published, isn't that right? Or even for sure if it ever will. And it's very hard for us to hide because of our skin."

"What about a rebel village? They hate the government. Maybe they'd help us."

"Mtiti doesn't control this area, but he has informants everywhere."

"What do you figure our chances would be?"

"Not very good."

"I was looking for a number."

"Maybe ten percent?"

He let out a long breath. "Jesus. I thought you'd at least say fifty-fifty. Okay, what if we were to split up?"

"Split up? Why?"

"If we both get caught, we're dead. But what if they only got one of us? It seems like they'd try to use us against each other. It might buy us the time we need for JB's story to come out."

"I don't think that makes any sense."

"You know your way around here, Annika. You speak the language, you know the culture. Maybe you could find someone who could help the people in your village -- or at least find out what happened."

She obviously hadn't considered that, and her expression turned thoughtful. "What about you?"

"I'd just be in your way."

"And where wouldn't you be in my way?"

"Back in civilization. I can try to contact the U
. S
. Consulate and maybe get the sat phone turned back on. Maybe I could get in touch with JB and find out exactly what his time frame is. He might even know someone who can help us."

"Your sister. Isn't that what you mean?

You need to know what's happened to her."

He looked at the ground, not sure what t
o s
ay. She was in the same position, bu
t i
nstead of one girl, she had an entire village to worry about. More and more it seemed like his every act was motivated by selfishness.

"I have to get in touch with her," he admitted finally. "I have to know if she's okay."

"I understand."

"I'm not a bad person, Annika."

"I know. Neither of us is. I just can't decide if we're good ones."

Chapter
35.

JB Flannary squinted into the refrigerator and focused on a lonely jar of olives. Robert Page's country home was typical of the New York set: It was neither in the country nor homey. Nothing more than an expensive and generally useless bauble expected in the circles he traveled in.

"There's nothing in there," Page said, poking his head through the door to the dimly lit kitchen.

"You're the master of the obvious."

"I don't need a bunch of your attitude, JB. Get yourself a drink, and the pizzas I ordered will be here before you even have a good buzz on."

The bar was better-stocked than the refrigerator, and Flannary poured himself a tall Scotch as Page disappeared back into the living room. The snowball that he had nudged downhill was now picking up speed and mass, careening out of control, threatening to crush everything in its path. The messages left on Josh's phone about Fedorov had gone unanswered, and now that phone was out of service. A call to Katie confirmed that Josh hadn't been seen at the compound in days and that his project had been shut down.

Now everyone was trapped. If he backed off and didn't publish the article, Mtiti would eventually find Josh and Annika, and they'd be dead. On the other hand, if he did publish the article, there was no telling what would happen to Mtiti and his country. Based on the history of the area, his best guess was a bloody tribal war that would kill tens of thousands and create a refugee crisis that could drag surrounding countries into the conflict. And from that would come . . . nothing.

He downed the Scotch, standing straight and examining his face in the dark window over the sink. The sun-damaged skin and lack of hair made him look older than his birth certificate indicated. As far as he was concerned, the birth certificate was wron
g h
e'd lived three lifetimes. Or at least seen three lifetimes' worth of the horrors men could unleash on each other.

The Scotch was doing its job taking the edge off, and he returned to the living room.

Tracy was sitting at a table typing on her laptop while Page organized stacks of paper on the floor.

"Have you looked at these numbers?" Page asked. "NewAfrica has administered more than seventy-five million dollars in USAID and UN programs. How much of that do you think found its way into their pockets? The oversight reports we've got give them glowing ratings."

Flannary shrugged. "Oversight's looking for competence and efficiency. If your main goal is to create that illusion, it wouldn't be hard to fool them."

Tracy glanced up from her computer. "If the inspectors are assuming that New-Africa's an honest, good-intentioned charity, they'd be completely blind to this kind of thing. As sick and twisted as he is, you almost have to admire Fedorov for coming up with it."

She was almost giddy. It was the story she'd been dreaming of her entire life -- all twenty-odd years of it. In her mind, she would become the hero every journalism student dreamed of being. She would bring down a vicious organized crime figure and snatch millions of helpless Africans from the clutches of an evil, corrupt government. JB tried to remember if he'd ever bee
n y
oung enough to see life in such simple terms.

"Did your guy get photos of the mass grave?" Page asked.

"My guy? He's not my guy."

"You sent him there, didn't you?"

"Hell, no, I didn't send him there! I asked him to go check out one of NewAfrica's old projects. Nothing more."

His tone made Tracy look up from her computer and Page put his hands up submissively. "Take it easy, JB. I'm not accusing you of anything. I just want to know if we have any photographic evidence."

"I think they were busy being shot at."

"Is there any way they could get back there and get pictures? Shit, if we could get something of them moving those bodies, we could --"

"Are you fucking crazy, Bob? They're probably already dead. And if they're not

"Don't shout at me, JB. I'm on your side, remember? I just want this piece to be as strong as possible. I want it to be a bomb going off in Washington. And so do you. I'm prepared to give you basically as much space as you need and maybe even some latitude to talk about the failures of the aid industry in general. But we need reactio
n f
rom USAID and the UN, we need to talk to Mtiti's opposition in country, and we need to try to figure out where all this money's gone. If we put in the time, I see this as a cover. What would you think of that, JB? A cover story."

His smile faded as Flannary stared dumbly at him.

"Have you not been listening to what I've been saying, Bob?"

"We might be able to make month after next. I'd be willing to bump --"

"Josh and Annika might not make it to next week! We put together whatever we can by the deadline for this issue and get it out there. Or I go to the Times."

"The Times?" Page said. "With what? A picture of Aleksei Fedorov walking into a building and a phone call from a guy you can't even get in touch with anymore? Yeah, I'm sure they'll jump right on that."

"If I take this to my brother --"

"He'll tell you the same thing I'm telling you. The Times isn't the Enquirer, and neither are we."

The doorbell rang, and Tracy stood, clearly happy to have an excuse to leave the room. "That's the pizza. I'll get it."

Flannary ignored her as she hurried down the hall. "Then maybe I should go to the
Enquirer. Maybe they'd show some guts."

"Guts? You mean the courage it takes to run a bunch of bullshit speculation when you have the ability to write a Pulitzer-worthy piece that could do some real good? What kind of impact . . ." His voice trailed off, and his gaze fixed over Flannary's shoulder.

"Don't let us interrupt."

The voice was only lightly accented but still recognizable as Eastern European. Flannary turned slowly, careful not to make any threatening moves.

Tracy was being held by a man who was nearly ripping the hair from her scalp with one hand and covering her mouth with the other. A second man pulled the shades down and then crossed the room, stopping with the barrel of his gun hovering an inch from Robert Page's temple.

The man at the center of it all was easily recognizable from the video they'd taken. Same expression and, as near as Flannary could tell, the same clothes.

"Clever," Aleksei Fedorov said, holding up the webcam Tracy had set up across from the NewAfrica office. Flannary barely had time to raise an arm to protect himself when Fedorov suddenly threw the camera. It shattered against his elbow, knocking hi
m o
ff balance long enough for Fedorov to rush him and slam him back against the wall.

He'd miscalculated, though, not taking into account the fact that he wasn't dealing with a typical middle-aged American reporter. Flannary had spent his life in some of the most violent places on earth, and, without thinking, he swung a fist at the European's head. The force of the blow drove Fedorov to his knees, and Flannary realized that with one well-placed kick, he might just be able to separate this piece of shit's head from his body. To avenge all the helpless people whose meager lives he'd destroyed.

Flannary swung his foot with everything he had, his whole body going tense as he focused on his target. He was six inches from smashing that dead expression right off Fedorov's face when the man who had been covering Page tackled him.

As they hit the floor, the familiar sound of a gunshot filled the room, accompanied by a less familiar ache in his stomach. The lights above seemed to fade for a moment and then became too bright. Flannary squinted up at them, only vaguely aware of Tracy's screams or of Fedorov dragging the man off him.

A moment later, Tracy was next to him
,
pressing her hand against his stomach, crying soundlessly. He glanced down at the blood gurgling around her fingers and then back at Fedorov, who was bringing a gun butt down repeatedly on the head of the man who had shot him.

Chapter
36.

Much of the capital city was dark, the power outages that occasionally swept across the country having become chronic over the last few days. Josh was standing just inside a small alley in one of the few neighborhoods that had power. Bare bulbs hung from wires strung between buildings, illuminating the well-armed men patrolling the streets. They seemed unusually vigilant, probably worried that the loss of electricity would embolden the rebels, who were becoming increasingly aggressive in their attacks.

Josh had done everything he could to avoid coming into the city -- stopping at no fewer than ten villages and towns to find a working phone or Internet connection, with no luck. The consensus, delivered with that unwavering African fatalism, was that the problems were likely to persist for the foreseeable future.

That had left him no choice but to driv
e h
is stolen pickup right into Trent and Mtiti's back yard, aiming it at the still-powered business district before parking and covering the last half mile on foot. Jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and hands in his pockets, provided him with enough anonymity to make it to a tiny storefront with "Phone and Internet Here" graffitied over a well-lit window.

Josh had a lot of regrets in his life but few moments that he would say actually haunted him. Laura crying at his sentencing was one. And now he could add the image of Annika standing on an empty roadside, receding in his rearview mirror. He'd actually skidded to a stop a few miles later, overwhelmed by the need to go back for her but fully aware of the pointlessness of it. Staying together didn't make sense. She was better off where she was. Better off without him.

There were very few people in his life who really meant anything to him, and now he'd managed to put two of them in mortal danger. It was time to stop playing the helpless foreigner and make sure they were safe. What happened to him wasn't important anymore.

A burst of gunfire sounded for what was probably the tenth time in the last hour, and the soldiers drinking in the middle o
f t
he intersection across from Josh began jogging halfheartedly toward it. When they were out of sight, he started nervously across the street and entered the store he'd been staking out.

It was crammed with a little bit of everything -- Western and African medicine, used clothing, videotapes, canned food. There was a dirty computer at the back, and when Josh pointed to it, the man behind the counter nodded.

Josh sat on the upended log that functioned as a chair and looked skeptically at the screen. Improbably, the Internet connection was functioning, and even more improbably, it was relatively fast. He glanced behind him every few seconds, but the store remained empty, and the man at the counter appeared to be mesmerized by the blackand-white image of Umboto Mtiti on a minuscule television. The distorted, angry sound of his speech filled the store, evoking the same sense of dread as the hum of a nearby hornets' nest.