‘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. Burnt furniture you can always replace. Burnt 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 onto 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 amongst themselves with impunity, because all they have done is overstep slightly the licence 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 any more?’
‘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.’
‘That’s great, Dad.’ Finally, with the insult to Chris, she had the anger back. The strength to hurt. Her voice came out flat and cold. ‘You finally had the guts to say it to my face. The man who paid your rent and bought you a new kitchen last Christmas is a piece of shit. And I guess it’s clear what that makes me.’
She set down the drink on the coffee table and made for the door. She saw how he lifted one arm involuntarily towards her as she passed him, but she shut it out.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to pack my bag, Dad. And then, if I don’t get mugged and raped on the way out by one of your oppressed proletarians, I’m going home.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to be on your own in the house.’
He said it sulkily, but there was an undertone of fear and regret in his voice now. Dismayed, she realised that it was exactly what she wanted to hear. She could feel the relish bubbling up on hearing it.
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘But I’d rather be alone, somewhere safe and sane, than with you in this shithole.’
She didn’t turn to see his face as she said it.
She didn’t need to.
Some damage, Chris had once told her, you don’t need to see. You know what you’ve done on impact. You can feel it. All you have to do after that is disengage.
She went to pack.
File #2:
Account Adjustment
Chapter Fifteen
It finally hit Chris while he was waiting at the counter in Louie Louie’s for a double-spike cappuccino.
He’d sat up late the previous evening, going over the possibilities, and by the time he finally came to bed, Carla was already asleep. More and more, that was becoming the pattern. Work on the Cambodia contract was keeping him later and later at Shorn. He was forced to relegate his self-defence classes and gun practice to lunch-time, which stretched the day even longer. Carla was getting home anything from two to five hours ahead of him during the week and they had given up any pretence of dining together. He ate the remains of what she had cooked for herself earlier and talked desultorily to her about his day. Loading the dishwasher was usually the only shared activity of the evening; after that, one of them would retire upstairs to read, leaving the other marooned down in the living room with the entertainment deck.
There was an air of detached politeness to their lives now. They had sex at increasingly irregular intervals and argued less than they ever had before, because they rarely had the time or energy to talk about anything of significance. They kept meaning to take a long weekend together somewhere like New York or Madrid and use the time to recharge, but somehow it never came together. Either Carla forgot to book the Saturday off with Mel, or Chris was suddenly needed for a weekend meeting with the Cambodia team. Summer came on, pleasantly mellow, but the layer of superficiality continued to thicken over their day-to-day life and Chris found himself enjoying the new weather only in moments of isolation that he was later curiously unwilling to share with Carla.
He lay awake beside her, turning the game over in his mind until he finally fell asleep.
On the drive in that morning he’d tried again, but he’d been too sleepy from the night before. In the last few weeks his habitual driver’s caution had grown lax to a point that under other circumstances might have been called recklessness. As it was, the attitude made perfect sense. Following the Nakamura challenge, word had got out about the dangerous new player at the Shorn table and no one among the young no-name challengers was keen to go up against Chris Faulkner’s clearly identifiable Saab Custom. The vehicle’s spaced armouring and Mitsue Jones’s demise at its owner’s hands were equally thoroughly mythologised among the driving fraternity - detail upon invented detail until it was impossible even for Chris to separate the true facts from the thicket of embellishments that had sprung up around them. In the end, he gave up trying and started to live with the legend. In this, he was probably the last person on board. Amidst all the hype, one thing had been universally accepted in the City of London weeks ago - there had to be easier ways to carve a name for yourself than go up against Chris Faulkner.
‘Double cap for Chris,’ yelled the girl at the counter.
He was on first name terms with the staff of Louie Louie’s these days -they’d torn out the front cover of GQ that month and pinned it up behind the counter. Reluctantly, he’d autographed it, and now, every time he went in, his carefully groomed features grinned back at him from beneath the imprisoning gloss and black ink scrawl. It made him slightly uneasy. Fame had dripped like sap all over him and now it was hardening into amber and he was trapped inside for all to see. Fansites were starting to give him serious coverage for the first time since the death of Edward Quain. East European working girls with unlikely stage names and credit-card hotlines were in his mail, plying him with suggestions of varying subtlety.
And you’re pinned down, overdeployed, no way to—
The solution boiled out at him like the milk froth from the steamer, bubbling up on itself as it unfolded. It might have been the cross-hatched patterning of the yellow and black tiles behind the counter, or maybe just the results of dissociative thinking, a technique he’d picked up from a psych seminar the week before. Whatever it was, he fielded the insight and took it back up in the Shorn elevator with his coffee.
‘Cambodia Resourcing continues to lead the rising stock trend,’ the elevator informed him as they powered upward. ‘With end-of-day trading at—‘
He tuned it out. He already knew.
Alike Bryant was talking to the machine. Chris could hear him through the door, dictating in jagged pieces to the datadown. It was a chewed-over version o
f a document to the Cambodian rebels that they’d been working on most of yesterday. The East Asia Trade and Investment Commission was leaning on them for Charter compliance with an uncharacteristic fervour. Industrial espionage reports suggested Nakamura bribes were going in at high level.
‘We have no interest in the so-called, no, scratch that, no interest in the areas you have designated resettlement zones, nor are we concerned with what goes on within those zones. The administration of the camps is, of course, not within our jurisdiction provided no overt human rights abuse, uh-uh, provided no human rights abuse, mhmmm, no, back up again, not within our jurisdiction, uhhh, provided, given that, oh fuck it—‘
Chris grinned and knocked at the door.
‘What?’ Bryant bellowed.
‘Having trouble?’
‘Chris!’ Bryant stood poised in the middle of his office space, arms slung on a polished wood baseball bat that he’d braced at the nape of his neck. It gave him the posture of a man crucified, and the tiredness in his face did nothing to alter the impression. ‘Would you believe I’ve been on this motherfucker since eight this morning. It has to go to the uplink at noon, and I’m still splitting fucking hairs on the covering letter. Listen to this.’ He walked to the desk and read aloud from a piece of hardcopy that curled from the datadown printer. ‘ “The administration of the camps is, of course, not within our jurisdiction, provided no human rights abuse occurs.” Sary’s going to go through the roof if we send him that - he’ll say we’re implying the Friday statement’s a lie.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’
‘Please.’ Bryant rolled his neck against the wood of the bat. ‘I’m trying to do politics here. We can’t imply he’s lying.’
‘I thought we were going to go with “given that no human rights abuse is occurring”.’
Bryant shook his head. ‘Won’t wash with the UN. There’s an Amnesty report doing the rounds in Norway and no one’s prepared to deny it at ministerial level. We’ve got to stay “vague but firm”. That’s a direct quote from Hewitt.’
‘Vague but firm.’ Chris pulled a face. ‘Nice.’
‘Fucking Amnesty.’
‘Yeah, well. Shit happens.’ Chris came and stood at Bryant’s shoulder, reading the hardcopy. ‘What about ...’
He tore the sheet from the printer and scanned it. Bryant unslung the baseball bat from his shoulder and parked it in a corner.
‘... Confident. That’s it, look. Admin of the camps blah blah blah not within our jurisdiction and we are confident that no human rights abuse, no, that none of the alleged human rights abuse has occurred.’ He handed back the sheet. ‘How about that?’
Bryant snatched it.
‘You bastard. Forty-five fucking minutes I’ve been staring at this.’
‘Caffeine.’ Chris held up his take-out from Louie Louie’s. ‘Want some?’
‘I’m all caffeined out. I was in at six with Makin, and this landed on my desk an hour ago from upstairs. Notley and the policy board.
Response required. As if I didn’t have enough else to do. Let’s see ... “that none of the alleged human rights abuse has occurred”. Right. Now what about this? “However we cannot permit your forces to obstruct the passage of fuel and supplies”.’
‘Try “forces operating in the area”. Takes the sting out of it and makes him feel like a big man. Like you’re asking him to police the zone generally, not just get a grip on his own troops.’
Bryant muttered and scribbled on the hardcopy as he read it back. ‘ “However we cannot permit forces operating in the area to obstruct the passage of fuel and” blah blah blah blah. That’s it. Brilliant.’
Chris shrugged. ‘Ready-wrapped. I used the same scam on the Panthers of Justice a couple of weeks back, and they lapped it up. Stopped the banditry dead. All most of these rebels really want is some kind of recognition. Paternal acknowledgement from some kind of patriarchal authority. According to Lopez, it had them swaggering around, posting police directives in every village.’
Mike barked a laugh. ‘Lopez? That Joaquin Lopez?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you put Harris up to tender after all.’
‘Well, like you said. It was our investment he was fucking with. And Lopez works flat out for a half per cent less of total. Really took Harris apart in the bullring too, apparently.’
‘Yeah, he’s still young enough to have the drive. Harris burnt out years ago, it’s just no one ever called him on it. You did the whole industry a service putting him out.’
‘It was your idea. If anything, I owe you one for the advice. So anyway, what’s this six a.m. shit with Makin? Anything I should know about?’
‘Nah, shouldn’t think—‘ Bryant stopped. ‘Actually, maybe I should bounce it off you. You worked the NAME, didn’t you? North Andean Monitored Economy? Back when you were at HM?’
Chris nodded. ‘Yeah, we were into the ME in a big way. Anybody with a decent emerging markets portfolio had to be. Why, what’s going on down there now?’
‘Ah, it’s fucking Echevarria again. You remember that first day we met in the gents, I told you I was off to see some greasy dictator for a budget review?’
‘That was Hernan Echevarria? I thought he was dying.’
‘No such luck. The old bastard’s pushing eighty, he’s had major surgery twice in the last decade, and he’s still hanging on. He’s grooming his eldest son, in true corrupt land-owning motherfucker fashion, to take over the whole show when he’s gone. And, as you’d expect with these hacienda families, the son’s a complete fucking waste of space.
Spends all his time in Miami doing the casinos, powdering his nose and fucking the local gringas.’
Chris offered another shrug. ‘Sounds okay. Easy enough to control, anyway.’
‘Not on present showing.’ Bryant punched a couple of points on the datadown screen and the display shifted. ‘See, Echevarria junior’s making a lot of friends in Miami. Investor friends.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, oh. Fresh money, most of it homegrown, but some from Tokyo and Beijing via US management funds. Have a look at this little snap.’ Bryant turned the datadown screen to face Chris. ‘Taken aboard Haithem Al-Ratrout’s private yacht last week. You’ll recognise some faces.’
It was a standard paparazzi shot. Hurried and unflattering angles on people who usually only appeared in the public eye coated in a high media gloss. Chris spotted two Hollywood pin-ups of the moment displaying the cleavage for which they were famous, the US Secretary of State caught picking the olive out of his martini and—
‘Over on the left you’ve got Echevarria junior. The one in the Ingram suit and the stupid hat. And that next to him is Conrad Rimshaw, executive head of Conflict Investment for Lloyd Paul New York. On the other side and towards the back you’ve got Martin Meldreck from Calders Rapid Capital Deployment division. The vultures are gathering.’
‘But the father’s still ours so far, right?’
‘So far.’ Bryant nodded and touched another part of the screen. The photo minimised and gave way to a spreadsheet. ‘But it’s an uphill struggle. These are from the budget review I mentioned. The stuff in red is contested. He wants more, we can’t let him have it.’
There was a lot of red.
‘The Echevarrias have been with Shorn’s Madrid office ever since Hernan pulled the coup back in ‘27. Good solid clients. Our Emerging Markets division backed them all through the civil war and the crackdown afterwards.’ Bryant bent back fingers one at a time as he enumerated. ‘Fuel and ammunition, medical supplies, helicopter gun-ships, counter-subversion trainers, interrogation technology. All at knockdown prices, and for over twenty years it’s all paid off big time. Quiescent population, low wage economy, export-oriented. Standard neoliberal dream.’
‘But not any more.’
‘But not any more. We’ve got another generation of guerrillas in the mountains screaming for land reform, another generation of disaffected student youth in the
cities, and we’re all back to square one. Emerging 3Markets got scared and dropped the whole thing like a hot brick -straight into Conflict Investment’s lap. Hewitt gave it to Makin.’
‘Nice of her.’
‘Yeah, well this was just after Guatemala, so Makin’s rep was riding pretty high. Top commission analyst for the year and all that. I guess Hewitt thought he’d swing it in his sleep. But things didn’t work out, so they brought me in to assist. Now Makin’s having to share Echevarria with me and I’ve got to say,’ Bryant walked across to the door and pressed it completely closed. His voice lowered. ‘I’ve got to say he’s not handling it all that well.’
Chris leaned against the edge of Bryant’s desk, feeling the friendly warmth of trust and a shared conspiracy coming off the other man.
‘So what’s the problem?’
Bryant sighed. ‘Problem is, Makin doesn’t know how to handle Echevarria. See, he’s used to these penny ante revolutionaries holed up in the jungle with their peasant education programmes and he thinks Echevarria’s just the same animal made good.’
‘Oops.’
‘Yeah, I’ve told him. The Echevarrias are as close as you get to nobility in that part of the world. That’s how come the link with Europe. Old Hernan traces his ancestors right back to Pizarro’s original conquistadors. As he never fucking tires of telling us. ‘course, all that means is he’s descended from some dirt-poor younger son mercenary glory-roader who grabbed a seat on the boat over from Spain, but it isn’t cool to mention that in budget meetings.’
‘Makin said that?’
Bryant laughed. ‘No, I’m exaggerating. Makin’s too damn good a negotiator for that. But it smokes off him every time Echevarria starts in on that nobility rap. You can almost see his lip curl. Echevarria sees it too, and that fucking Hispanic pride stokes up, and Makin’s lip curls some more, and there we are, deadlocked. We’re trying to lock him into something long-term, so that when he finally croaks the NAME’ll be stable and, more importantly, ours, but he gets more hostile every time we talk to him. Now he wants double-figure percentage increases in the military budget to put down the rebels, and there’s no way we can afford to give that to him and keep the fund managers happy. The problem is, he’s taking the whole thing personally.’
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