Market Forces (14 page)

“I won’t.” Chris finished unknotting the tie and stripped it from around Bryant’s neck with a single hard tug.

“That’s right.” Bryant’s head fell back on the bed again, and his eyes rolled sluggishly closed. “You’re a good guy, Chris. That’s you. You’re a. Fucking good guy.”

He drifted off to sleep. Chris left him there snoring and let himself quietly out of the room. He slipped into his own room like a thief and went to his hotel bed, where he lay awake a while, masturbating to the thought of Liz Linshaw’s tanned thighs and cleavage.

I
T WAS VERY
quiet inside the limo now. The torrential rain of the storm had died back to a persistent drizzle that smeared the windows but no longer drummed on the roof. The limo’s Rolls-Royce engine made slightly less noise than the rush of its tires on the wet asphalt outside. The loudest sound in the rear cabin was the chirrup of Louise Hewitt’s laptop as it processed data.

Maps and graphs came and went, summoned and dismissed by the deft ripple of Hewitt’s hands across the deck. Projections for the Cambodian conflict, altered minutely as new potential elements were factored in. Crop failures,
what if?
Typhoon impact,
what if?
Hong Kong federation cuts diplomatic ties,
what if?
Bryant’s preliminary work was an inspired piece of modeling, but Hewitt believed in tracking her subordinates and pushing for potential weaknesses until they emerged. It was an exercise in basic security. As with any alloy, you didn’t know the material well until you knew what would break it.

The car phone purred up at her from where it was curled on the seat like a red-eyed cat. She killed the phone’s video option and picked up the handset, eyes still fixed on the Hong Kong federation variant.

“Yes?”

A familiar voice crackled in her ear. She smiled.

“On my way to Edinburgh, why?”

Crackle crackle.

“No, I didn’t think there was any point. I’ve got breakfast with a client in the Howard at eight and contracts to go over before that.”

Crackle crackle SNAP.

Hewitt’s smile broadened. “Oh, is that what you thought? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I wouldn’t have come all the way up here just for that. Good enough to eat though you looked.”

The phone crackled some more. Hewitt sighed and hoisted her gaze to the roof. Her voice became soothing.

“Yes, media exposure’s a powerful thing. But I was sitting there, remember. I really wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”

The voice in her ear grew agitated, and Hewitt’s good-natured exasperation hardened. She sat forward.

“All right, listen. You just let me worry about Faulkner. You leave him alone.”

The crackling stopped on a sharp question mark.

“Yes, I know. I was there, remember. It’s no big surprise, to be honest. Look, it’s just an angle.”

Snap, crackle.
Incredulous.

“Yes, I do.”

Snap,
question.

“Because that’s what they pay me for. I don’t have the details worked out yet, but it shouldn’t take much leverage.”

Crackle, crackle, crackle.

“Mike Bryant will do as he’s told. That’s the difference between them, and you need to remember that. Now, we’ve talked about this enough. I’ll be back in London day after tomorrow, we can meet and discuss it then.”

Sullen
crackle.
Silence.

Hewitt cradled the phone and grinned to herself in the quiet gloom.

“S
EEN ENOUGH
?”

Erik Nyquist got up and held the cracked remote closer to the screen. The red active light winked feebly a couple of times, and the program credits continued to scroll down, superimposed over an aerial view of Nakamura wreckage. Finally Erik gave up on the failing remote and snapped on the blue standby screen manually. In the glow it cast, he turned back to face his daughter. Carla sat, glass in hand, and stared at the place the images had been.

“The hero of the hour,” Erik grunted. “Jesus, the irony of that. Butcher a couple of fellow human beings to maximize neocolonial profiteering half the globe away and you’re a goddamn hero.”

“Dad,” Carla said tiredly.

“You heard her.
This is a great moment for you, Chris.
And your beloved husband sitting there grinning like a Mormon.
I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I didn’t like it, Liz.
Christ!”

“He had no choice. The woman on the left was his boss, and from what I hear she already doesn’t like him. What was he supposed to do? If he stepped out of line the way you want, he’d probably lose his job.”

“I know that.” Erik went to the table that served him as an open-plan drinks cabinet and began to mix himself another vodka and orange. “Been there, bought the T-shirt. But sometimes you have to stand by the odd principle, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Carla snapped, surprising herself. “And where did that get you in the end, standing by your much-vaunted principles?”

“Well, let’s see.” Erik grinned down into the glass he was pouring. Having provoked her, he was now backing cheerfully down again. It was one of his favorite drinking games. “I was arrested, held without trial under the Corporate Communications Act, shunned by my so-called friends and colleagues, blacklisted by every news editor in the country, and refused a credit rating. I lost my job, my home, and any hopes for the future. Nothing that a young man of Chris’s caliber couldn’t take in his stride. The trouble is, he just lacks the vision to make it happen.”

Carla smiled, despite herself.

“Liked that one, did you?” Erik lifted his glass in her direction. “For once, it’s something I just made up. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” She barely sipped at her own neat vodka. It had taken her the whole news report to get three fingers down the drink, and now it was warm.

“Dad, why do you stay here? Why don’t you go back to Tromsö?”

“And meet your mother in the high street every day? No thanks. I’m living with enough guilt as it is.”

“She isn’t there most of the time and you know it.”

“Okay, I’d just see her every time she comes back from some particularly successful book launch or lecture tour.” Erik shook his head. “I don’t think my ego’s up to that. Besides, after all these years, who would I know?”

“All right, you could move to Oslo. Write a column back there.”

“Carla, I already do.” Erik gestured at the battered computer in the corner. “See that. It’s got a wire in the back that goes all the way to Norway. Marvelous what they can do with technology these days.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Carla.” The mockery drained from his tone. “What am I going to change, moving back there now? It isn’t as if the costs are prohibitive here. Even with the zone tax on top, e-mail is so cheap you can’t realistically cost it on the number of articles I mail out in a month. And even if you could, even if I was
walking
my work to the editors in Oslo to save money, I’d spend what I saved on winter socks.”

“Don’t exaggerate, it’s not that cold.”

“I think you’re forgetting.”

“Dad.” Her voice grew very gentle. “We were there in January.”

“Oh.” She heard, in that single gruff syllable, how much it hurt him. He made a point of looking her in the face. “Visiting your mother?”

She shook her head. “There wasn’t time, and anyway I think she was in New Zealand. Chris took me to the Winter Wheels Show in Stockholm, and we went across to see Sognefjord on the way back. He’d never been there.”

“And it wasn’t cold? Come on, Carla. I may not be able to afford flights on a whim, but it hasn’t been so long.”

“All right, it was cold. Yes, it was cold. But, Dad, it was so—” She gave up and gestured around her. “Dad, look at this place.”

“Yeah, I know I haven’t tidied up for a while, but—”

“You know what I mean!”

Erik looked at her in silence. Then he went to the window and tugged back one of the ragged curtains. Outside, something had been set on fire, and it painted leaping shadows on the ceiling above where he stood. Shouts came through the thin glass pane. “Yes,” he said softly. “I know what you mean. You mean this. Urban decay, as only the British know how to do it. And here I am, fifty-seven years old and stuck in the middle of it.”

She avoided his eyes.

“It’s just so civilized back there, Dad. There’s nobody sleeping on the streets—”

“Just as well, they’d freeze to death.”

She ignored him. “—nobody dying because they can’t afford medical attention, no old people too poor to afford heating and too scared to go out after dark. Dad, there are no gang zones, no armored police trucks, there’s no
exclusion
like there is here.”

“It sounds as if you should be talking to Chris, not me.” Erik knocked back a large portion of his drink in one gulp. It was an angry gesture, and his voice carried the ragged echo of the emotion. “Maybe you can persuade him to move up there if you like it so much. Though it’s hard to see what you’d both do for a living without anybody to kill on the roads.”

She flinched.

He saw it and reined himself in.

“Carla—”

She looked at her lap. Said nothing. He sighed.

“Carla, I’m sorry. I. I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No.” He set down his drink and came to crouch in front of her. “No, I didn’t, Carla. I know you’re just doing what you have to to get by. We all are. Even Chris. I know that. But can’t you see. Any argument for me going back to Norway is an equally valid argument for you. How do you think
I
feel, looking at
you
stuck in the middle of this?”

The thought stopped her like a slap. Her hands tightened on his.

“Dad—” She swallowed and started again. “Dad, that’s not it, is it? You’re not staying because of me?”

He chuckled and lifted her chin with one hand.

“Staying because of you? Staying to protect you, with all the money and influence I’ve amassed? Yeah, that’s right.”

“Then tell me
why.
”

“Why.” He stood up, and for a moment she thought she was in for another lecture. Instead, he went to stand at the window again, staring out. The flames were stronger now, and they stained his face with orange. “Do you remember Monica Hansen?”

“Your photographer?”

Erik smiled. “I’m not sure she’d like the possessive pronoun, but yes, Monica the photographer. She’s back in Oslo now, taking photos of furniture for some catalog. She’s bored, Carla. The money’s okay, but she’s bored to screaming.”

“Better bored than sleeping in the streets.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Carla. I’m not sleeping in the streets. And, no, listen to me a moment, think about it. You said yourself there’s no exclusion there like there is here. So what would I write about. Back in the comfort and safety of my own Scandinavian social system? No, Carla. This is the front line—this is where I can make a difference.”

“No one wants you to make a difference, Dad.” She got up from the chair, suddenly angry again, and faced him. She jerked back the other curtain and glared angrily down at the fire below. “Look at that.”

The source of the flames, she saw as she gestured, was an overturned armchair. Other items lay scattered around, unrecognizable in the darkness and as yet untorched. A shattered window directly above suggested an origin. Someone had been in one of the first-floor apartments, throwing down what it contained. Now figures in baggy, hooded sportswear stood gathered around the fire, making Carla think of menacing negative-image Disney dwarfs out of some nightmare where it all definitely did not end happily ever after.

“Look at it,” she hissed again. “You think those people care what you write? You think most of them can even read? You think people like that care about you making a difference?”

“Don’t be so quick to judge, Carla. Like Benito says, don’t make three-D judgments of what you can only see on your TV screen.”

“Oh, for—” Her expletives evaporated in an exasperation too old and deep for words. She rapped hard on the glass. “This isn’t a TV, Dad. It’s a fucking window, and you live here. You tell me what we’re looking at, community-night barbecue maybe?”

Erik sighed. “No, it’s probably gang retribution for something. Someone they thought informed on them, someone who spoke out of turn. They did the same thing to Mrs. McKenny last summer because she wouldn’t let her son run balloons for them. Of course, then he had to, just to buy some new furniture. You can’t fault the gangwits on psychology.” He turned away from the window, and suddenly, in the motion, she saw how tired he had become. The vision only fanned the flames of her anger again. Up from the pit of her stomach, a licking, gusting sickness.

Erik appeared not to sense it coming. He was freshening his drink again, working on an ironic grin to match it. “Of course, it could just be kids having fun. Random stuff. A lot of those first-floor apartments have been empty for longer than I’ve been here. They just break in and—”

He shrugged and drank.

“And throw the stuff out the
window
!” Suddenly she was yelling at him, really yelling. “And set fire to it! For
fun
! Jesus fucking
Christ,
Dad, will you listen to yourself. You think this is
normal
?
Are you fucked in the head?
”

The flashback caught like magnesium ribbon behind her eyes. Eleven years old again, and screaming at her father as he tried to explain what he had done and why she had to choose. It burned out as fast, afterimage-inked onto her retina and the returning dimness of the room. She looked up quickly, caught the expression on Erik’s face, and knew he was remembering, too.

“Dad, I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Too late.

He didn’t say it, but he didn’t need to. Silence was settling around them in little black shreds, like scorched down from a pillow shot through at close range.

“Dad—”

She had thought for a moment he might yell back, but he didn’t. He only moved slightly, the way she sometimes saw Chris move when some piece of driving-induced injury caught him awkwardly. He moved and nodded to himself, as if her scream had been a swallow of rough but interesting whiskey. She saw the way he was composing himself, and knew what was coming.

“Normal?” He said the word with careful pedantry that almost hid the returning gruffness in his voice. “Well I think, in the context of the slaughter we’ve just seen committed by the man you share your bed with—”

“Dad, please—”

His voice trampled hers down. “I’d call it normal, yes. In fact I’d call it comparatively healthy. Burned furniture you can always replace. Burned flesh is a little harder.”

She breathed deliberately, loosening the tightness in her chest. “Listen, Dad, I’m not going to—”

“Of course, there is always the double standard to consider. As Mazeau would have put it, crime is a matter of degrees, and the degree that really matters in society’s eyes is the extent to which the criminal has asserted himself beyond his designated social class and status—”

“Oh,
bullshit,
Dad!”

But the anger had deserted her, and all she could feel now was the edge of tears. She held on to her drink with clumsy, eleven-year-old hands and watched as her father retreated, swathing himself in the gauze bandage of political rhetoric to hide the hurt.

“The sons and daughters of the powerful buy and sell drugs among themselves with impunity, because all they have done is overstep slightly the license their class entitles them to, misunderstood the lip service to legality that must be paid if the common herd are to continue grazing quietly. But let one child from the Brundtland enter their fairy kingdom and do the same, and watch the full bloody weight of the law fall on him, because he has
presumed
to behave as he is not entitled, presumed to
not know
his place. And that we
cannot
allow.”

“Dad,” she tried one more time, voice pitched low and urgent. “Please, Dad, look down there again. Never mind whose fault it is. Never mind the politics of it. Do you think anyone down there gives a flying fuck what you write? Do you think they give a fuck about
anything
anymore?”

“And my son-in-law does?” He did not turn to the window, but his eyes were bright with the reflected fireglow. “Chris gives a flying fuck for the bodies he left on the motorway today? Or the bodies that they’ll be stacking in the streets of Phnom Penh a year from now? You know what I wish, Carla? I wish you’d married one of those edge dealers down there instead of that suited piece of shit you sleep with. The dealer at least I could make excuses for.”