Lords of Corruption (29 page)

Josh knew he needed to get out of there as fast as he could, but he had a long list of tasks he had to accomplish first. He had to see if he could contact the U
. S
. Consulate, since his effort to drive there had been stymied by military roadblocks. He also ha
d t
o see if he could get the sat phone he'd left with Annika turned back on. But first things first. E-mail.

He felt a wave of panic that there was nothing from Laura but managed to fight it off. It didn't mean anything. In fact, it was exactly what he should have expected. Right?

Nothing from JB, either, but there was something from someone named Tracy Collins with the subject line: Important Info from JB Flannary
!!

He clicked on one of the linked files and waited for the overtaxed processor to bring up a scan of an old newspaper article. It was in a foreign language, so he concentrated on the photo for a moment. The wavy-haired man had an Eastern European look, thin and intense. The overall impression was that he was someone not to be flicked with. Unfortunately, Josh had a sinking feeling that that was exactly what he'd done.

He paged down to a handwritten translation of the article and began to scan it, becoming so engrossed that he didn't notice the quiet footsteps approaching from behind until the stained blade of a machete was pressed against his throat. He was dragged backward and slammed to the ground, th
e p
osition of the machete making it impossible to fight back. His hood was pulled back, and the pressure of the blade increased until it broke the skin, causing blood to mingle with the sweat on his neck. Josh remained perfectly still, taking rapid, shallow breaths and watching his reflection in Gideon's sunglasses.

Stephen Trent appeared a moment later, righting the log and taking a seat on it. He motioned toward the door, and a young African man appeared. A moment later, he was kneeling in front of the computer tapping on the keyboard.

"I can't imagine what you were thinking," Trent said.

Josh didn't respond, afraid that any movement of his neck muscles would cause the machete to dig deeper. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the shopkeeper locking the door and pulling tattered curtains.

"Do you know how much trouble you've caused us?" Trent said, nodding toward Gideon, who reluctantly eased up on the blade.

"A lot, I hope."

Trent shook his head sadly. "Not as much as you probably think. You've been a real irritation, though, I'll give you that. Do you know that Mtiti had to cut off phone
,
power, or both everywhere except for a few blocks here in the capital? He had to pull soldiers from other assignments to track you when you entered the city and make sure you didn't get anywhere you could do more harm. And I'll tell you right now that he's going to bill us for every dime of this operation."

"Maybe you could do a telethon."

Trent grinned. "I like you, Josh. I'd hoped to bring you along slowly, let you in on what we're doing here. But you didn't need me to say a word, did you? You figured it all out on your own."

The man at the computer stood and turned toward them. "Done."

"You got everything?"

He nodded, and Trent returned his attention to Josh. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to you with a bunch of information on Aleksei sitting in your inbox, would we?"

"Fuck you."

"Don't be belligerent. You had to know this was going to happen. Why go looking for trouble? Why get involved? You don't owe these people anything. Not one of them gives a shit whether you live or die. You're just another white face with money they want to get their hands on." He became increasingly agitated as he spoke, but Jos
h w
asn't sure why. "If you'd just kept your nose out of things, you'd have been living in an air-conditioned villa making more money than you can imagine in a few years. And your sister would be driving a Mercedes around Harvard."

Josh tensed at the mention of Laura, and Trent noticed. "I'm sorry," he said, pulling a phone from his pocket and beginning to dial. "You must be worried sick. Would you like to talk to her?"

Trent put the phone to his ear and waited for the person on the other end to pick up. "We've got him. Uh-huh. He was in his email account when we got here. Everything's been erased. Yeah, he's right here."

Trent held the phone out, and Josh concentrated on not reacting as a thin voice emanated from it. "Josh? Who are these people? You have to help me! They say they're going to --"

Her voice was suddenly cut off, and Josh laid his head back on the floor, his heart pounding uncontrollably. Gideon pulled him to his feet and forced him out into the humid night. Trent followed, still talking on the phone.

"We don't know yet, Aleksei. Yes. It's not going to be a problem. We'll find out." Gideon opened the rear hatch on Trent's
Land Cruiser and shoved Josh inside. There was already someone there, reclining against the back of the seat, face in shadow. His profound stillness left no doubt that he was dead, but it wasn't until the vehicle started moving that Josh caught a glimpse of a blood-stained Hawaiian shirt beneath the green jacket.

Luganda had paid the price for displeasing Umboto Mtiti and NewAfrica. Now it looked like it was Josh's turn.

Chapter
37.

Aleksei Fedorov slapped the duct tape back onto the girl's mouth and went back to screaming into his phone. "Where's Annika Gritdal? This is your responsibility! Do yo
u u
nderstand me? Your goddamn responsibility.
,
Flannary watched, blinking hard in an effort to keep his vision clear.

They didn't have Annika.

He tried to concentrate on that, but it was too thin a victory to hide the defeats. To make him forget his own stupidity and the lives it was about to destroy.

He was lying on a concrete floor in a warehouse full of unmarked crates, the only heat provided by the growing puddle of blood leaking from his belly. Page and Tracy were twenty feet away, secured to chairs next to the wide-eyed blond girl Fedorov had just silenced.

Flannary scooted weakly to his right unti
l h
e was pressed up against the woman next to him. Her dead eyes stared at the lights hanging high above them, and he tried to recall what she'd said her name was when she'd allowed them to set up that camera on her balcony. The memory was gone, though, so he just lay there stealing what heat was left in her body. Because of him, she didn't need it anymore.

"Are you in?" Fedorov said, leaning over the shoulder of a young man with the distinction of being the only person in the warehouse sitting without the assistance of a roll of duct tape. He had a portable computer on his lap, and his eyes kept flicking nervously from the blood gurgling past Flannary's unfeeling fingers to the dead woman he'd cuddled up with to the three panicked people struggling to free themselves.

"With the managing editor's password, I have access to their entire system. I've deleted all the obvious references to New-Africa, and now I'm running a search with as many keywords as I can think of to make sure I got everything. I'm pretty sure I did, though."

Page grunted as he pulled against his bonds, and Flannary let his head loll in the editor's direction. He was virtually unharme
d n
othing more than a red mar
k o
n his cheek in the rough shape of Fedorov's hand. It was all that had been necessary to get him to give up everything he knew in a breathless stream peppered with pleas for mercy and promises to keep his mouth shut. Tracy had been tougher, but what was a girl to do when an Eastern European psychopath threatened to skin her alive?

Fedorov turned toward Flannary and smiled. "So that's about it isn't it, JB? All your notes were at that house, and now they're a pile of ashes. Everything about this in the magazine's archive, all the phone messages, and virtually all the e-mails have been erased -- even your friend Josh's. He was in his account when my people found him."

Flannary stared back at him, but the image was starting to swim. Probably just another milestone on his slow journey to bleeding to death. At this point, sooner would probably be better than later.

"Are you thinking about your Swedish Jesus freak, JB? Are you? Because I guarantee she'll be dead by tomorrow." He thumbed to the blond girl behind him. "You've never met Laura Hagarty, have you? I understand that your friend Jos
h p
ractically raised her from a baby. So when it comes down to her or Annika Gritdal, who do you think he'll choose?"

Flannary turned his attention to the blond girl for a moment. Laura Hagarty. Of course. He was losing his ability to think.

"That's right," Fedorov continued. "He'll give up your little Swedish bitch in a second."

"Norwegian." Flannary managed to get out.

"What?"

"She's Norwegian, you sociopathic Eurotrash prick." The act of getting out an insult that long left him feeling like he'd run a marathon.

"I don't think her nationality will matter much to the Africans I hand her over to, do you?" Fedorov said, walking behind Page and tossing a rope over a rafter above him. He began casually tying a slipknot in one end as he spoke. "Just one more thing to do, eh, JB? I need the password for your e-mail account."

Page threw himself back and forth in his chair, trying futilely to prevent the makeshift noose from being slipped around his neck. Unable to watch, Flannary fixed his gaze on Laura Hagarty, but the terror etched on her face was just as bad.

He hadn't realized how numb he'd become over the years. How easy it was for him to detach himself from the violence and misery around him. Maybe Annika was right about there being a God. And now He had decided to show Flannary the difference between being a spectator and being a participant.

The sound of Page trying to scream through the tape over his mouth finally pulled Flannary back into the present, and he looked back at his old friend. Fedorov was standing with one hand on the rope and the other on Page's shoulder. "The password, JB. Give me the password."

"What's in it for me?" he said, his voice barely a whisper.

"What's in it for you?" Fedorov's brow furrowed. "You make me curious. What do you want?"

There was no point in asking for anything unreasonable -- his bargaining position wasn't that strong, and his ability to enforce any agreement between them was nonexistent. "Kill them quick."

Tracy's head fell forward, her young body convulsing as she finally began to sob. Even after all this, she'd thought he would save her. That he'd be the shining hero.

"Let me think about that," Fedorov sai
d a
nd then threw his weight into the rope, hoisting Page up by the neck.

There were any number of cranes running across the warehouse's ceiling, but Fedorov didn't use one, instead fighting personally with the rope, trying to get the chair entirely off the floor.

Page's eyes bulged and his face turned red as he tried to fight, lacking the leverage to do much more than rock his shoulders. It took only a few moments before his body went slack, but Aleksei held him for much longer than that, his knuckles turning white around the rope and his eyes flashing with sadistic joy.

Finally he let go. The chair's legs slammed back to the floor and Page's body slumped forward against its bonds.

Fedorov removed the noose and put it around Tracy's neck. She didn't bother to resist, instead fixing her gaze on Flannary as he tried to push himself into a sitting position.

"If you do that to her, you'll never get my password. You hear me, Aleksei? Never."

"I still have Hagarty's sister."

"You can't kill her until he gives up Annika. And . . ." His voice lost its strength, and for a moment he wasn't sure it was going to come back. ". . . I'm not going to last

that long."

Fedorov pulled a handgun from his waistband and pointed it at Tracy's head. Flan-nary expected some kind of discussion: a "who goes first" negotiation, a few threats. But it didn't happen that way. She was still looking right at him when the bullet penetrated her skull.

He was having a hard time breathing, and he let his head sink back to the floor. For the first time in twenty years, he wanted to cry. But it was too late for that.

"We made a deal," Fedorov said.

And a deal was a deal.

"Mtiti," Flannary said. The body of the woman next to him had cooled to the point that it could no longer provide the heat he needed. God, how he hated the cold.

"That's it," he heard the man with the laptop say. "I'm in."

A moment later, Fedorov's face was hovering over him, silhouetted by the lights above. He pressed the barrel of his gun against Flannary's forehead. "What does it feel like, JB? What does it feel like to watch every friend you've ever had die because you decided to save a bunch of niggers who don't want to be saved? Do you really believe that any of this would have made a difference?"

Fedorov's voice was becoming increasingly distant, but his question still made it through. Something for Flannary to ponder on his way to hell.

Chapter
38.