‘But you need to smoke that stuff to talk about it.’
The quizzical look again. ‘Chris, you need to get a grip. You’re telling me you’ve really got some kind of moral problem with my career as a porn doll a decade ago? For a man who works in international finance, you’ve got some fucking nerve.’
‘I don’t have a problem with it. And I didn’t think you had a problem with what I do either.’ Spite gleamed through. ‘In fact, I thought it got you off’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
‘Sure. You fucked Mike Bryant, now you’re fucking me. Spot the connection. Hey, I’m not complaining, Liz, but take a look at your own fucking motivations. This is textbook passenger-seat passion. Let’s be honest about it.’
She sat up abruptly, flicked ash off the spliff. ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea, Chris. Let’s be honest. If you had a problem with me, you could have left me well alone.’
‘Left you alone?’ The injustice of it staggered him. It was like fighting with Carla, all over again. An opening well of curdled hurt. ‘You came on pretty fucking strong to me, as I recall. At Troy’s party. After the party, at Regime Change. You called me for that one.’
‘Oh, yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t have sent me a copy of your wife’s flight times to Norway, then. Because you know Chris, as invitations go, that was pretty fucking blatant.’
Shock held him unstirring for a moment. She caught it, coiled back on the bed, face still tight with anger.
‘What?’
‘I. Liz, I didn’t send you anything.’
‘Right.’
‘No, fucking listen to me.’ He reached out for her with both hands. She gestured him away. Stared out of the window. ‘I didn’t send you that stuff. I didn’t even know Carla was going to Tromso until about an hour before you called me. I. Someone’s fucking with us, Liz.’
Her gaze tracked warily back to him. She didn’t turn her head. Her whole body was closed to him again, limbs folded defensively.
‘I’m not a drive-site groupie, Chris.’
‘Okay.’ He held up his hands, palms out. ‘Okay, you’re not a drive-site groupie. Whatever you say. But I’m telling you, I never sent you those flight details. And you’re telling me you didn’t send me Donna’s Dominion. So. Someone’s fucking with us, right? It’s got to be that.’
And he got her back. Limb by limb, line by line, the softening stole through her. The place in Carla he could no longer reach, the point of reconciliation abraded by years of impact along the same emotional front. She opened a little, turned to face him. Nodded.
A tiny shard of hope spiked him, unlooked for. A prickle across the underside of each eye and a sudden surge in the empty space he’d excavated in his own chest.
This time. He promised himself silently. This one, this time, this woman. I will not fuck this one up.
But the hyena was still out there, still prowling in silhouette on the sunset horizon of his thoughts. And would not shut up.
Chapter Forty-Two
He got to work early, running on residual anger that still had no clear focus. The datadown rolled out its gathered screed of messages. Top of the line, Irena Renko, subject: need loading fast. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen the name in the last week. Something snapped.
‘For fuck’s sake.’ He hit reply, and listened to the dial.
‘Da?’
‘Listen to me, you stupid fucking natasha. I do not need your whore’s services, now or ever. Just leave me the fuck alone.’
There was a pause, during which he nearly hung up. Then the accented voice came back, icy with controlled rage.
‘Just who fucking you think you are talking to? Fucking suit cowboy, think you will talk to me like this. I am Captain Irena Renko, commander of free sub freighter Kurt Cobain talking to you.’
‘I’m. Sorry?’
‘You should fucking be sorry. Fuck your mother! Four days I am here in Faslane, awaiting second loading. Four days! My crew drunk in Glasgow bars. What for you waste my time like this?’
‘I. Wait. The Cobain?’ Chris flailed across the desk and hit the datadown deck. Details fled up into a new window. ‘You’re loading for the NAME? Military hardware.’
‘No,’ purred the woman at the other end. ‘I am not loading, because I’m waiting four fucking days for cargo. Port Authority know nothing. I call Lopez, he also knows nothing. Normally, Cobain, she sails and fuck you all if this happens. But Lopez tells me, call you. You are sympathetic, he says. Not like other suits. Perhaps I have wrong man.’
‘No, no. Captain Renko, you have the right man. I, I apologise for my tone earlier. There’s a lot going on at this end.’
‘Well, at this end is nothing going on. No delivery, no data about delivery. And mooring charge is costing me—‘
‘Never mind the mooring charge. I’ll cover that, plus ten per cent for your inconvenience. Go get your crew, I’ll get back to you.’
He cut the connection and stared across the office. The marbled chess board gleamed back at him, pieces frozen in a pattern that hadn’t changed in weeks. He called Mike.
‘Yeah, Bryant.’
Mike, listen, we’ve got a problem.’
‘I’ll say. I would have called you earlier, but I didn’t see the Saab. Didn’t know you were in.’
‘It’s still at home. I haven’t been back for it yet.’ A chilly quiet back down the line. ‘Mike, I just heard from our couriers to Barranco.’
‘We haven’t got time to worry about the NAME right now, Chris. Didn’t you catch the news this morning? Fuck, last night even.’
‘No, last night I.’ I was kiss-and-make-up fucking your ex-mistress. ‘I went to bed early. Headache. And I’m coming from the hotel in cabs at the moment, I don’t get the radio either. What’s going on?’
‘Some fucking junior Langley aide just came down with a bad dose of conscience. He’s promised covert reports from the last two years to ScandiNet and FreeVid Montreal.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘Yeah. What I said.’
‘Cambodia?’
‘We don’t know yet. This gutless wonder at Langley worked archive, so could be the Phnom Penh stuff is too recent to show up. But we can’t rely on that. There’s no telling what he’s going to give them.’
‘Can’t we just have the guy wiped?’
‘Oh, what do you think Langley are trying to do right now? Chris, he worked for them. He was on the inside. You don’t think he’s going to have covered himself? He’s grabbed the discs and gone underground.’
‘Okay, so get someone else, someone better than Langley. Special Air, or one of the Israeli contractors.’
‘Same applies, Chris. First they’ve got to find the fucker. And meanwhile ScandiNet and FreeVid are leaking this fucking stuff like vindaloo diarrhoea. We’re going to have the UN charter people all over us by end of the week at the outside.’
‘Well, look.’ Chris frowned. Something didn’t fit here. ‘Calm down. They don’t have any power of access. All they can do is make a noise. We fight them in the courts, the whole thing boils down to two years’ paperwork and legal wrangling. What are you getting so bent out of shape about?’
‘It’s bad for fucking business, alright. Leakage of any sort. Kind of publicity we don’t need.’
‘Yeah, well, speaking of bad for business, you’d better get onto your pal Sally Hunting. I’ve just had a Russian sub commander yelling at me because she’s been waiting four days at Faslane for a NAME shipment that hasn’t turned up.’
There was a beat of silence. ‘What?’
‘You heard. Barranco’s Mao sticks have gone walkabout. No one at Faslane can find them.’
‘That can’t be.’ There was an odd strain in the other man’s voice.
‘Can be. Is. Look, I’m going to ring Lopez in Panama. See if he knows anything. You get onto Sally, then call me back.’
Lopez wasn’t answering. Chris hung up and was about to try again when the datadown lit w
ith an incoming video call from Philip Hamilton. He frowned again and picked up.
‘Yeah?’
Hamilton’s soft features resolved on the screen. ‘Ah. Chris. There you are.’
‘Yeah.’ Still the vague sense of something out of place. He’d had almost no dealings with the junior partner since he joined Shorn. Some of the Central American stuff he’d inherited from Makin brushed up against Hamilton’s accounts, but—
‘What can I do for you, Philip?’
‘Well, Chris.’ The junior partner’s tone was silky. ‘It’s more a case of what I can do for you, I think. You’ve no doubt heard about the Langley crisis.’
‘Yeah. Mike t—‘ He just stopped himself. ‘I was just talking to Mike about it. Archive material, they reckon. Suggests the Cambodia stuff might not be included.’
‘That’s correct.’ Hamilton nodded. His chins folded. ‘In fact, we just got confirmation. Good news for everybody. Louise will probably forward it down to you shortly. But, ah, it seems there is one covert operation that will crop up, and unfortunately it has your name on it. I’m talking about the action you took against Hernan Echevarria’s security forces in Medellin.’
Now the sense of wrongness was quick and jagged. Like the floor cracking apart under him.
He covered it with drawl. ‘Yeah. So?’
‘Well, I think under the circumstances, and given recent developments with the Echevarria regime, the best thing would probably be if you were removed from the NAME account, at least for the time being.’
Chris sat up. ‘You can’t fucking do that.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘What developments are you talking about, Philip? Last I heard, the Echevarria regime was a corpse walking.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Hamilton fingered his jowls. ‘This also is new. Perhaps you’d better come along to the briefing this afternoon. I’d invited Mike, and assumed he could pass on detail to you later. But, yes, perhaps it’s better if you’re there. Main conference, two o’clock.’
Chris stared at him. ‘Right. I’ll be there.’
‘Marvellous.’ Hamilton beamed and cut the link. His face inked out, still smiling.
Chris tried Lopez again. Still nothing. He windowed up an indesp site he had the keys to and checked the Langley data. Nothing solid. The whistleblower’s face grinned out of an employee file thumbprint that was five years stale. He looked young and happy, and blissfully unaware of what his just-acquired job was going to do to him a few years down the road.
Because they’re going to fucking crucify you, son, Chris told the thumb-print silently. They’re going to take you apart for this.
The datadown chimed. Audio call from Mike. He grabbed it.
‘Talk to me, Mike. What’s going on.’
‘I don’t know, Chris. I wish I did. Sally says the order still went through, but it’s been diverted to some surface shipping contractor out of Southampton. Standard cross-Atlantic rate, she’s getting a cashback bonus for the difference in cost.’
‘Surface?’
‘I know, I know. I don’t get it either. It’s not like Barranco can wander into Barranquilla docks and just sign for it.’
‘That’s—‘ He stopped. Abruptly, the spinning chaos of the last ten minutes locked to a halt in his head. He saw the sense.
‘Mike, I’ll call you back.’
‘Wait, you—‘
He snapped the line across, sat staring at the datadown for a full thirty seconds while the sudden weight in his guts settled. Has to be, he knew. Fucking has to be. He felt physically sick with the knowledge.
He placed another call to Lopez, got the busy signal and fired an override down the connection. There was a brief electronic squabble on the line, as Shorn’s intrusion software fought with the Panama City net, then Lopez came through, still talking to someone else in furious Spanish.
‘—de puta, me tienen media hora esperando—‘
‘Joaquin, listen to me.’
‘Chris? Como has podido—‘ The Americas agent stopped as his language caught up with the change of call. ‘Listen, Chris, what are you fucking playing at over there?’
‘I don’t know, Joaquin, I don’t know. This shit only just landed on me, and I don’t know what it is. Talk to me, man. I’m blind here. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘What’s going on,’ said Lopez, rage spurting from every syllable, ‘is that you’ve sold me just like your fucking amigo Bryant. Arena challenge, Chris. That mean anything to you. I just got the word. Shorn-approved tender, I got some fucking favela-born sicario calling me out for a half per cent fee reduction. He’s twenty years old, Chris. Priority challenge, two weeks’ notice. Shorn-fucking-approved, man.’
‘Alright, listen.’ Chris felt the sudden clarity of drive time set in, the suspended icy seconds of adrenalin injection. ‘Joaquin, listen to me carefully. That’s not me. The tender, it’s not authorised by me. I’m going to fix it for you, it’s dead on the datadown. I promise you. You’ll never have to fight. Meantime—‘
‘Yeah, you say that. You said—‘
‘Joaquin, fucking listen to me. I got you out of Bogota in one piece, didn’t I? I told you, I look after my people. Now, I don’t have much time. I need you to get onto Barranco.’
‘You want me to fucking work for you while—‘
‘Fucking listen, I said.’ Whatever was in his voice must have got through. Lopez went quiet. ‘This is life or death, Joaquin. You get onto Barranco, and you tell him to stay away from that delivery beach next week. Tell him the rest of the arms aren’t coming, and most likely there’ll be an army death squad waiting for him instead. Tell him I’m under fire as much as he is, and it’ll take me time to sort it out. He’s got to fall back to safe ground, and stay there until he hears from me. Have you got that?’
‘Yeah.’ Lopez was suddenly calm, as if the same adrenalin shiver had crept down the line and touched him with its time-warping cold. ‘Got it. You’re in the arena too, huh?’
‘Yeah, looks that way.’ There was a finality about the way his own words sounded in his ears. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
‘Chris.’
He held off the disconnect. ‘Yeah. Still here.’
‘Chris, listen to me. You going into the arena, you stab low, man. Stab low, where they won’t see it coming. And when you pull it out, you twist that fucker. Quadruples the wound. You got that?’
Chris nodded distantly. ‘I got it, Joaquin. Thanks.’
‘Hey, I’ll be praying for you, man.’
Philip Hamilton cut a surprisingly impressive figure in presentation. Somehow the softness of the man disappeared, became confident bulk and the resonance base for a rich baritone voice that gave his words a longevity way beyond the moment of their utterance. His evidence was compelling, it was set up that way, but more powerful was the echo of what he said in the minds of his listeners. Chris looked round the table and saw heads nodding, Mike Bryant’s included.
‘Thus we convert,’ Hamilton declared vibrantly, ‘the uncertainty of change, the certainty of post-land-reform unrest, and the probable budget deficit of the classic revolutionary regime, at a stroke, into a return to the profitable status quo we have enjoyed in the NAME for the last twenty years. It seems to me, ladies and gentlemen, that there is
really no question or choice here, only a course of action that common sense and market return dictate. Thank you.’
Applause rippled politely round the table. Murmured comments. Hamilton inclined his head and stood back a couple of steps. Louise Hewitt stood up.
‘I think that’s pretty clear, thank you, Philip, but if there are any questions, perhaps we could have them now?’
‘Yes.’ Jack Notley raised a hand with completely superfluous deference. Every exec in the room shut up on the instant, and pinned their gaze on the grizzled senior partner. Louise Hewitt folded herself back into her chair, and Philip Hamilton moved to take up the space she had left him. It was, Chris tho
ught bitterly, choreographed tightly enough to be a Saturday Night Special dance act.
‘Yes, Jack.’
‘The Americans,’ said Notley with heavy emphasis that earned a sprinkling of laughter. The old man’s nationalist eccentricity was well known in the division. ‘We know from Mike here’s painstaking research that Echevarria junior has, shall we say, a predilection for our transatlantic cousins and they are, unfortunately, far closer to him, both geographically and culturally, than are we. I appreciate, Phil, that you’re factoring in Calders RapCap with the liaison work, and obviously, Martin Meldreck, well he believes in a free market about as much as Ronald Reagan did.’ More laughter, louder this time. ‘So the secondary contractors he brings in will be exclusively US firms. That much is clear. My question is, will this be enough? Will it hold off Conrad Rimshaw at Lloyd Paul, for example? Or the Saunders Group, or Gray Capital Solutions, or Moriarty Mills & Silver? Francisco Echevarria has had close dealings with all these gentlemen, or at least their Miami officers, at one time or another. Can we be confident he will not bring them into play as soon as a budget review fails to please him?’
Hear fucking hear, sleeted through Chris. Glad someone in this bunch of fucking sycophants spotted it.
Hamilton cleared his throat.
‘That’s a fair concern, Jack. I think it’s indicative that the firms you’ve just named, with the exception of the Saunders Group, are all fast, hungry players from the New York corner. Sure, they’ll all bear watching. But the point with Calders is that they have the US state department’s ear. That’s long-term relationship - in the case of Senator Barlow, we’re talking fifteen years, and there are others with ties almost as old. And of course, as you say, the secondary contractors Calders RapCap’s people will bring in should have their own lobby network in place. If we combine all that pull with the influence we have on our own Foreign Office here in London, I feel sure we’re in a position to repel any prospective boarders.’
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