‘Hey, Harris was a fuck-up.’
‘Yeah, not much of a knife fighter either, even for a gringo.’ Lopez skinned an unpleasant grin, but something desperate leaked from the edges, around the eyes. ‘Time I reach that age, I want to be out of this fucking game. I do good work for you, Chris. Right?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ Chris frowned. Candour wasn’t something he’d looked for here, weakness still less. The naked anxiety in the agent’s tone was touching him in places he’d thought long sealed away.
And we’re still not into the brutal honesty shitstorm with Barranco yet. Jesus fucking Christ
‘I mean, I called it right everywhere you asked me, right? I set up what you need, soon as you needed, right?’
‘You know you have.’ He didn’t know which direction to roll this. Maybe—
‘I know I lost it back there in the NAME, I still owe you for that, but—‘
‘Joaquin, you’ve got to drop that shit.’ Chris made for the mini-bar. Shipped bottles and ice up from the chiller unit onto a table, talking as he worked. ‘Look, it was a problem at this end. I told you that, and I told you we look after our own. Just think about it. Christ, if you don’t trust me, think about the logistics of the thing. Would I have hauled your arse out of there, with all the expense we incurred, just so I could can you six weeks down the line?’
‘I don’t know, Chris. Would you?’
‘Joaquin, I’m serious. You really need to take something.’
‘You know Mike Bryant, right?’
Chris stopped, a glass in each hand. ‘Yeah. He’s a colleague, so watch what you say next, alright.’
‘You know he’s working a Cono Sur portfolio at the moment? Running contacts through Carlos Caffarini out of Buenos Aires?’
‘Yeah, I heard. Didn’t know it was Caffarini, but—‘
‘It isn’t any more,’ said Lopez abruptly. ‘Last week Bryant canned Caffarini because there were call-centre strikes in Santiago, and he didn’t see it coming. Or maybe he didn’t think it was important enough to chase. Now he’s on a ventilator in intensive care until his health cover runs out, and some fucking seventeen-year-old is running the portfolio at a quarter the old retainer. They were only strikes, Chris. Management abuse of female workers, localised action, no political demands. I checked.’
Chris put down the glasses and sighed. Lopez watched him.
Fuck, Mike, why can’t you just
‘Look, Joaquin. Strikes can get out of hand, whatever the original rationale. Reed and Mason, it’s chapter one stuff. You know that.’
‘Yeah.’ The Americas agent had the manic splinter back in his tone. ‘So tell me this, Chris. What’s going to happen to me if a banana strike gets out of hand on a certain plantation up near Bocas?’
Chris looked at him.
‘Nothing.’ He kept Lopez’s eyes while it sank in. ‘Alright? Got it? Nothing is going to happen to you.’
‘You can’t give me—‘
‘I am not Mike Bryant.’
The snap in his voice came out of nowhere, jolting them both. He clamped down on it. Made his hands work on the drinks. He dumped ice into two glasses, decanted rum over the cubes and swirled the mix. Spoke quietly again.
‘Look. I’m happy with what you’ve done for us and I don’t give a shit about what happened in Medellin. Forget about Caffarini and whatever’s going on in Buenos Aires and Santiago. I give you my word, you’re secure with us. Now let’s drink to that, Joaquin, because if you don’t crank down soon, you’re going to pop. Come on, this is expense account overproof rum. Get it down you.’
He offered the glass. After a couple of seconds, Lopez took it. He stared into the drink for a long moment, then his face came up.
‘I will not forget this, Chris,’ he said quietly.
‘Nor will I. I look after my people.’
The glasses chimed in the room. The liquor burned down. Outside the windows, something happened to the light as afternoon shifted smoothly towards evening.
Chapter Thirty
‘I still don’t see why you want me there.’ Carla checked her make-up again in the drop-down roof mirror as Chris rolled the Saab down into the Hilton’s parking deck. ‘It’s not like I know anything about the NAME.’
‘That’s exactly the point.’ Chris scanned the crowded deck, found nothing to his liking and steered down the ramp to the next level. ‘You can get him to tell you about it. I don’t want this guy to feel he’s surrounded by suited experts. I want him to relax. To feel in control for a while. It’s textbook client handling.’
He felt her eyes on him.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
The lower level was all but empty. Chris parked a good half dozen spaces away from the nearest vehicle. Since the proximity alarm had failed on him, he’d taken to parking out in the open where the security cameras could see him. It was irrational, he knew - no one short of a full covert ops squad was going to breach the perimeter defences of the Hilton or the Shorn block in the first place, let alone have time and skill to get through the Saab’s security locks before they were noticed. But the proximity alarm had failed. How exactly was still up for grabs, but in the meantime he didn’t intend it to happen again.
‘I’ll go up and get him,’ he said, killing the engine. ‘The restaurant’s on the mezzanine level. El Meson Andino. Mike said he’d meet us there.’
‘You don’t want me to come up with you?’
‘There’s really no need.’
He didn’t tell her that he wanted to check in on the security squad on the way, and that in some undefined way he felt ashamed of the two blunt middle-aged men and their assemblage of little screens and mikes.
‘Suit yourself.’ She dug out a cigarette and put it to her lips. She seemed to draw into herself as she lit it.
‘I’ll see you there, then.’
‘Yes.’
The security men had nothing to report. On the screen, Barranco prowled back and forth like a prisoner in a cell. He had dressed in a black dinner suit a decade out of fashion. Chris went up to collect him.
‘I don’t know much about Peruvian food,’ he said as they rode down in the lift together.
‘Nor do I,’ said Barranco shortly. ‘I’m from Colombia.’
The food turned out to be excellent, though how Peruvian it was became a matter for dispute a few glasses of wine into the meal. It broke the ice with a resounding crack. Barranco argued that a couple of dishes were pure Colombian, and Chris, casting his mind back to his time in the NAME, had to agree with him. Mike, on good social form, reasoned with great persuasiveness and almost no evidence, that the cuisine of the different regions must have interpenetrated over time. Carla suggested rather acidly that this probably had more to do with marketing than regional mobility. Peruvian was a consumer label here, not a national identity. Barranco nodded sober approval. He was obviously quite taken with Carla, whether because of her blonde good looks or her unorthodox political attitudes, Chris didn’t know or much care. He stowed an unexpected twist of jealousy and resisted the temptation to shift his chair closer to his wife’s. Relief at the way the evening was going closed it out.
Business leaked into the conversation in low-intensity bursts, mostly from Barranco’s side and nurtured by the warmth of Carla’s genuine interest. Chris and Mike let it run, sonar-tuned for the dangers of political reefs and set to steer rapidly away where necessary.
‘Of course, solar farms are a beautiful idea, but it is the old instability argument. The infrastructure is too costly and too easy to sabotage.’
‘Doesn’t that go for nuclear power too? I thought the regime was going to build two of those new Pollok reactors.’
‘Yes.’ Barranco smiled grimly. ‘Francisco Echevarria is a close personal friend of Donald Cordell, who is CEO of the Horton Power Group. And the stations will be built a long way from Bogota.’
Carla flushed. ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘Yes.’
‘Senor Barranco. More wine?’
‘I had a question about Bogota,’ said Chris, feigning memory failure. ‘Oh, yeah. Last time I was there, I saw this really beautiful church in the centre of town. I was wondering ...’
And so on. If Barranco resented the steerage, it didn’t show. He let the tides of the conversation carry him, and stayed polite throughout. Chris knew from the look on Carla’s face that she saw what was going on, but she said nothing.
Only once, when Mike Bryant retired to the toilets for the second time, did the veneer crack. Barranco nodded after him.
‘That kind of thing’s not a problem where you work?’
‘What kind of thing?’
Carla sniffed delicately. Chris looked in the direction of the toilets. He’d honestly not thought anything of it.
‘Well,’ said Barranco. ‘I wouldn’t say your colleague has a problem. But nor is he particularly subtle about it. In the Bogota Hilton, in a restaurant full of people, things would be a little different. Even our ruling families have to watch their drug stance in public these days.’
‘Must be why Francisco Echevarria spends so much time in Miami.’ It hit Chris, just too late, that he’d drunk a little too much.
Barranco’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, I imagine it is. Meanwhile, his father uses the helicopter gunships you buy him to firebomb coca farmers into oblivion. Ironic, isn’t it.’
The silence opened up. Carla made a small noise into it, a mixture of amusement and disgust that told Chris he’d get no help from that quarter.
‘I, uh, that isn’t,’ he stumbled. ‘Shorn policy as such doesn’t outlaw coca production. In fact, we’ve done feasibility studies on bringing the crop into the legitimate commodities market. Shorn’s Financial Instruments division actually commissioned work along that line.’
Barranco shrugged. ‘You expect me to be impressed? Legitimisation will only send coca the way of coffee. Rich men in New York and London will grow richer, and the farmers will starve. Is that part of the package you plan to sell me here, Chris Faulkner?’
That stung. More so, with the fierce satisfaction he saw rising on Carla’s face. Mike had not reappeared. Feeling suddenly very alone, he scrambled to salvage the evaporating good humour around the table.
‘You do me an injustice, Senor Barranco. I merely mention the study to demonstrate that at Shorn we are not blinded by moralistic prejudice.’
‘Yes. I find that easy to believe.’
A small, colourless smile from Carla. Chris plunged on doggedly.
‘In fact, I was going to say, the study found legitimisation on the commodities market would be too problematic to consider seriously. For one thing, there’s a very real fear that it would drain immediate finance out of practically every other investment sector. And clearly we can’t have that.’
It was meant to be funny, but no one laughed. Barranco leaned across the table towards him. His blue eyes were bright and marbled wet with anger.
‘I give you fair warning, Chris Faulkner. I have little compassion to spare for the spoilt stupid children of the western world and their expensive drug problems. I look through the lens that your free marketeers have sold us, and I see a profitable trade. So.’ A short, hard gesture, one upward-jutting calloused palm, halfway between a karate blow and an offer to shake hands. ‘Sell us your weapons, and we will sell you our cocaine. This will not change when the Popular Revolutionary Brigade takes power in Colombia, because I will not sacrifice the wealth it can bring my people. If your governments are so concerned about the flow of product, let them buy up the supply on the open market like anybody else. Then they can burn it or put it up their noses as they see fit.’
‘Hear, hear!’ Mike Bryant was back, clapping slow applause as he circled the table back to his seat. His eyes burned bright enough to match Barranco’s pale blue glare. ‘Hear, hear! Outstanding analysis, really. You were right, Chris. This is the man for us. No doubt about it.’
He seated himself with a grin.
‘Of course, it’ll never happen. Our governments don’t really care enough to take that rather obvious step. They operate a containment policy in the cordoned zones, so crack and edge addiction there costs them almost nothing. And the rich, well, you can always rely on the rich to take care of their own misdemeanours without recourse to public process.’
Barranco looked at him with open dislike. ‘Strange, then, Senor Bryant, that there should have been so much loudly publicised military activity devoted to destroying the coca trade over the last seventy years.’
Mike shrugged and helped himself to more wine. ‘Well, of course, things weren’t quite as clearly defined a few decades back. There was a lot of playing to the gallery back then.’ He smiled again. ‘Something we don’t have to worry about these days.’
‘And yet the frigates sit at anchor in Barranquilla harbour still, flying foreign flags. Our coastal waters are smart-mined in contravention of UN law and our people are showered with napalm for trying to make a living.’
Another shrug. ‘Matters of control, Senor Barranco. I’m sure you’re familiar with the dynamic. It’s distasteful, I agree, but it is the stance the Echevarria government and its creditors have settled for. That, in a very real sense, is one of the reasons why we’re all here right now. If we can reach a realistic agreement with you, Senor Barranco, you could be the man to change that stance.’
Barranco’s lip curled. Bryant, seeming to miss it, sniffed and rubbed with a knuckle at both sides of his nose.
‘In the meantime, you have my word as a representative of the Shorn Conflict Investment division that until the time comes to implement those changes, you’ll be given access to the same covert export routes Hernan Echevarria currently turns a blind eye to.’
‘You’re going to take me to the table with Langley?’ Barranco’s gaze shuttled back and forth between Chris and Bryant. His tone had scaled towards disbelieving.
‘Of course.’ Mike looked surprised. ‘Who did you think I was talking about? They’re the premier distributors of illicit narcotics in the Americas. We don’t believe in doing things by halves at Shorn. I mean, we’ll hook you up with some other European and Asian distributors as well, naturally, but to be honest none of them are in the same class as Langley. Plus you’ll probably shift the bulk of your product in Langley’s back yard anyway, and they can do pretty good onward sales to most of the western Pacific Rim if you’re interested. More wine? Anybody?’
Carla drove them home, focused wholly on the road ahead. In the dashboard-lit warmth of the car, the silence came off her in waves. Chris, still smarting from the way she’d lined up with Barranco, turned away and stared out of the passenger-side window at the passing lights of the city.
‘Well, that was fucking great,’ he said finally.
Carla picked up the motorway feeder lane. She said nothing. If Chris had looked at her, he would have seen how close to the edge they were.
‘Mike in the bathroom powdering his fucking nose, Barranco on a political rant and you backing him up every fucking—‘
‘Don’t start with me, Chris.’ The Saab never wavered from its accelerating trajectory up the feeder ramp, but there was a ragged edge in Carla’s voice that did finally make him look across at her face.
‘Well, didn’t you?’
‘You should be overjoyed I did. Wasn’t that my job tonight? Make your client feel good. Relax him. Isn’t that what you said?’
‘Yeh, that didn’t mean hang me out to dry in front of him.’
‘Well perhaps you should have made yourself clearer. I’m your wife, remember, not some grinning whore out of the escort pages. I don’t do this shit for a living.’
‘You fucking enjoyed watching Barranco lay into me!’
It drew a sideways look from her. For a full two seconds she stared at him in silence, then her eyes went back to the road.
‘You going to shout
like that at Mike Bryant tomorrow?’ she asked quietly. ‘For his bathroom manners?’
‘Don’t avoid the fucking question, Carla!’
‘I wasn’t aware you’d asked me one.’
‘You enjoyed watching Barranco lay into me, didn’t you?’
‘You sound pretty convinced already.’
‘Just fucking—‘ He clenched a fist, clamped his mouth. Locked down the fury. Forced out the words close to normal volume. ‘Just answer me the question, Carla.’
‘You answer mine first. You ever shout at Mike like this?’
‘Mike Bryant is on my side. Whatever else he might do, whatever problems he might have, I know that much. I don’t need to yell at him.’
‘Don’t need? Or don’t dare?’
‘Fuck you, Carla.’ It was almost a murmur. The sheeting fury had guttered out inside him. It wasn’t gone, but abruptly it was cold, and that frightened him more. Frightened him because in the chill he thought he could feel something slowly dying.
‘No, fuck you, Chris.’ Her voice was barely louder than his had been, but it hissed at him. ‘You want an answer to your question? Yes. I enjoyed it tonight. You know what I enjoyed? I enjoyed seeing a man who’s fighting for something more than his fucking quarterly bonus get the upper hand for once. I enjoyed hearing someone who cares what happens to other people telling the truth about the way your sick-making little world works.’
‘A man who cares.’ Chris bounced the loosely curled edge of his hand off the window in the weary ghost of a punch. ‘Oh, sure. A man who wants to sell crack cocaine and edge to children in the zones. Yeah, he’s a real fucking hero, Barranco is. You heard what he said.’
‘Yes, and I heard Mike Bryant promise to hook him up with Langley, who supply eighty per cent of North America’s inner cities. Langley, who you work with on a day-to-day basis. And this weekend, the two of you are taking Echevarria and Barranco both to the North Memorial to sell them the weapons they need to fight each other. And now you’re taking some kind of moral stance here? Jesus Christ, you could give lessons in hypocrisy to Simeon fucking Sands. What choice have we left these people, Chris? What favours have we done them? Why shouldn’t they swamp us all in crack?’
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