Innocent as Sin sk-3

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The Siberian looked at the officer, who shrugged and said, “There is a track over there that leads to three roads. The Camgerian army controls two of them.”

  Unease crawled through the Siberian’s belly. He had been very careful in his violent climb to the top of a violent profession. No one had ever captured his face on film.

  “Prepare to take off,” he shouted into the cockpit.

  The pitch of the engines increased.

  “Get those men,” he told the rebel officer. “Bring me their film and I’ll give you two artillery pieces and a helicopter gunship. Do you understand?”

  The officer grinned. If the Siberian would pay a million at first offer, he’d pay more on the second. “I’ll get the film. Then we’ll negotiate.”

  The aircraft doors slammed shut as the plane accelerated down the dirt strip, scattering rebels like dust.

  3

  Five years later

  Near Phoenix, Arizona

  Late March

  Thursday

  8:30 A.M. MST

  Kayla Shaw walked out of the little adobe house and put the last of her mementos into the Ford Explorer. It wasn’t much of a load, really. Some photos, her grandmother’s prize bridle, her mother’s barrel-racing trophies, her father’s favorite hunting rifle. Small things rich with memories. After work, she’d come back and pack up her clothes.

  Technically the place was hers to use for another month, but it felt melancholy to be a tenant rather than an owner.

  As Kayla found a safe spot for the small, unframed landscape painting she carried, she remembered her excitement at discovering the piece in a garage sale. It had been just after her parents had died, when she’d been making the difficult adjustment from beloved child to adult orphan. Something in the painting of a predawn forest had whispered to her of time and loneliness and the faintly shimmering hope of a sunrise that might be more imagined than real. When she’d turned the painting over and seen “Maybe the Dawn” written on the back, she’d known she would buy it.

  She touched the name slashed in the lower left of the painting. “R. McCree.” The artist had helped her through a bad time. She’d been looking for his-or her-paintings ever since, but hadn’t found any.

  Leaning against the cool metal frame of the vehicle’s door, she glanced around at the ten acres of Dry Valley Ranch that had been her home for her whole life. The adobe walls of the house were the dusty color that came of age and Arizona weather. Sun had turned the timber fence of the corral a lovely shade of gray. The lean-to barn looked lonesome and enduring, like a windmill at a remote cattle tank-like the windmill that still supplied water to the house and corrals.

  Ten acres of memories.

  Sadness curled around her with the cool morning breeze. She hoped the new owner would love Dry Valley as she and her parents had. She hoped, but she didn’t know. She’d sold the ranch to someone she’d never met, never seen, and knew only through his agent.

  “Change, change, change,” she said, pushing her dark hair away from her eyes. “Hello, good-bye, hello to something new. And good-bye, always good-bye.”

  Despite her lingering sorrow, Kayla knew that selling the little ranch was the right thing to do. The grazing leases on federal lands had lapsed long ago. Without the leases, there was no way to make a living. Even one cow would starve on Dry Valley’s ten acres. The ranch was a tiny piece of desert at the farthest fringe of Phoenix’s urban sprawl. The house was as spare as the land and needed expensive repairs. Yet taxes had steadily risen as the county assessor reappraised the ground for its potential, instead of its reality.

  Good-bye, ranch.

  Hello, career in private banking.

  Too bad she really wasn’t happy in her work. But every request she’d made to transfer out of private banking had been met with a polite, firm refusal.

  It was enough to make a girl think of hitting the road.

  I’m not a girl. I’m an adult. Lots of people don’t like their jobs, but they suck it up and get the job done anyway.

  “Think of tomorrow as going to another continent,” Kayla told herself. “Everything fresh and undiscovered.”

  The thought of distant horizons made her restless. Her job as a private banker was demanding, often fascinating, but it didn’t ease her wanderlust.

  Okay, so don’t think about new continents and of years backpacking around the globe. I’m an adult now, with an adult’s responsibilities.

  Grow up.

  Kayla slid into the driver’s seat, made sure that the pile of escrow documents she’d signed earlier wouldn’t spill off the passenger seat, and admired the check clipped to the big folder. As a private banker she’d handled much larger checks, but none of them had been her own. Her clients’ money was just that-theirs, not hers. If she thought of their money at all, it was simply as numbers to be moved from one place to the next.

  The check clipped to the folder was hers-$246,407.

  Exactly.

  Without meaning to, she looked at the battered backpack stuffed into the passenger foot well.

  I could go anywhere in the world.

  Until the money ran out. Then I’d have nothing.

  Grow up.

  It was a good chunk of money, but Phoenix’s red-hot housing market would gobble it up and not even burp.

  Looking away from the backpack, Kayla started the vehicle. She hoped her next real estate deal would be as clean and easy as this one had been. On the real estate agent’s advice, she’d offered the ranch at a high price, “looking for the market.”

  She’d found it, at full price.

  The buyer’s agent had handled the transaction with the dispatch of the lawyer he was. She’d gotten her price, subtracted the closing costs and rent for the next month, and driven to the ranch to begin packing.

  Today she’d have her own money to deposit in her American Southwest account. It wasn’t the answer to all her problems, but it was a financial security she’d never had before.

  Maybe that security would help her to deal with Elena Bertone, the most demanding client in the history of the demanding world of private banking.

  4

  Phoenix, Arizona

  Thursday

  8:40 A.M. MST

  Andre Bertone shifted his weight, making the expensive leather chair creak. Few office chairs were built well enough to accommodate the barrel-chested bulk of a man who stood six foot three inches and weighed two hundred and eighty pounds, most of it muscle. The satellite phone he held to his ear looked almost dainty against his hand.

  The musical accents of Brazilian Portuguese spilled out of the decoder and into Bertone’s ear. Despite the beauty of the language, what was being said made a red flush crawl up Bertone’s face. There were very few people in the world who could call him to task. Joao Fouquette was one of them.

  For now.

  “Naturally, you are impatient to-” Bertone cut in.

  Fouquette kept talking. “-more than a quarter of a billion dollars American must be laundered to pay for the arms. The money is coming in from France, Liechtenstein, and Dubai. I counted on you to-”

  “And I’ve never let you down,” Bertone interrupted. “Relax, my friend. All is well.” Besides, asshole, half of it is my own money.

  A big gamble, but Bertone hadn’t gotten where he was by being timid.

  “All is not well,” Fouquette insisted. “Neto hired St. Kilda Consulting.”

  “What? I thought Neto was ours.”

  “He was until he found out who we really backed in the revolution five years ago.”

  Bertone shrugged. Allies were people you hadn’t screwed yet, and peace was bad for business. “I assume that’s why he refused to extend the oil contracts with us.”

  Fouquette didn’t bother to respond to the obvious. “There will be a rise in oil prices soon. We want to sell Camgeria’s output at the new level. We’ve moved up the timetable for revolution. Do your connections have the arms we need?”

&n
bsp; “As soon as they see the money, we see the arms. Arms are easy to find. The only problem comes in transportation and distribution.” That was Bertone’s area of experience. He’d seen the choke points in the arms trade, bought planes and pilots, and got very rich transporting cargoes no one else would touch.

  “Whatever you do, don’t use the old laundry,” Fouquette said. “St. Kilda is probably watching LuDoc, waiting to pounce.”

  “LuDoc is dead.”

  Fouquette laughed. “So you finally discovered how much he was skimming.”

  All Bertone said was, “I have been developing a new conduit. A true naïf.”

  “You have a day to transform your naïf into a whore. The arms exchange must be completed immediately.”

  “What? You gave me four weeks to-”

  “Complain to Neto,” Fouquette cut in. “He’s the bastard who brought in St. Kilda. I have to move the money fast and get the arms to Neto’s enemies faster.”

  “When will you have all the money transferred to me?” Bertone said.

  “As soon as you set up an account, each participant has agreed to put in his share within forty-eight hours.”

  “By Saturday?” Bertone grunted. “I can’t guarantee weekend bank-”

  “Don’t tell me your problems,” Fouquette said over the complaint. “Since he has become president, my sponsor has lost all patience. Get that account set up immediately.”

  “Perhaps Brazil needs a new president. It could be arranged, yes?”

  “Not soon enough. If the arms aren’t on the way to overthrow Neto’s New Camgerian Republic very quickly, I’m out of a job. And you, my Siberian friend, you are dead.”

  5

  Manhattan

  Thursday

  12:15 P.M. EST

  Former ambassador James B. Steele rolled into the conference room on the fifty-seventh floor of the UBS Building as if he owned the television network headquartered there. He was fifteen minutes late and he didn’t apologize. He had more to bring to this meeting than the five people he’d kept waiting.

  “Good afternoon,” Steele said to everyone and no one.

  He guided the electric wheelchair over to the rosewood conference table. An overstuffed leather armchair blocked him from taking his place.

  “Oops. Okay, I’ll get that,” Ted Martin said quickly.

  “Thank you.”

  The field producer had been Steele’s principal UBS contact for the past two months of research and negotiations. As Martin scrambled to shove the armchair aside, Steele rolled forward. His position put him opposite the most important man in the room, Howard Prosser, executive producer of The World in One Hour.

  Steele greeted Prosser and nodded to the most famous face at the table, Brent Thomas. Being the best-looking guy in a war zone drew a television audience, but Steele had seen his own war zones. They hadn’t been nearly as pretty as Thomas, who was one of the network’s hottest correspondents. And the most ambitious. Fortunately for Steele’s plans, Thomas was as smart as he was camera-ready.

  “Deb Carroll is our senior researcher,” Martin said, gesturing toward a woman who hadn’t attended any of the previous meetings. “She’ll be in charge of fact-checking all material before it hits the air.”

  Steele nodded. “I’ll look forward to your questions.”

  Carroll’s smile said she doubted it.

  “Stanley Carson is our corporate counsel,” Prosser said. “He insisted on attending the meeting.”

  Steele’s eyebrows, nearly black despite his silver hair, lifted. “You’re wasting your time, Mr. Carson. Truth is an absolute defense against both libel and slander.”

  “We prefer to forestall suits rather than defend them.”

  “St. Kilda Consulting has no such aversion to conflicts, legal or otherwise,” Steele said pleasantly. “Mr. Thomas may be a pretty face, but he’s not stupid. He has documented the leads we gave him very carefully, as I’m sure Ms. Carroll will discover.”

  “I ran up thousands of miles on some of the worst airplanes that ever got off the ground,” Thomas said, his trained voice a mixture of rue and enthusiasm. “All to track down those former rebel commanders you recommended. Great tape on all of them, great interviews. It puts human faces to the arms traffic. That’s why Mr. Prosser is thinking about giving us the whole hour for the piece.”

  Prosser grimaced. “The final decision hasn’t been made to air the segment, short or long. There are crucial elements missing, including an interview with our subject, Mr. Bertone.”

  Steele shook his head slightly. “When we’re certain of his location, we’ll tell you, so that Thomas and a camera crew can confront him. But Andre Bertone won’t give you an interview. It isn’t in the man’s nature.”

  Prosser grinned. “No problem. Our audience sees silence as an admission of guilt.”

  “Hold it,” Carson said. “Before I allow this network to air an attack on a man who is an extremely wealthy businessman-and a United Nations diplomat, according to Thomas-I want to see proof.”

  Steele already knew about Bertone’s diplomatic credentials, but he was surprised they did. He looked at Thomas.

  “Nice work,” Steele said. “If you ever want to leave television, come see me at St. Kilda.”

  “Actually, St. Kilda Consulting is what we wanted to talk about today,” Prosser said quickly. “We’re a little, um, concerned about some aspects of your organization-”

  “And how your company’s rather unsavory international reputation might impact ours,” Carson cut in. “There are reports spreading in the European press that St. Kilda Consulting is a private army that hires itself out to the highest bidder. This network can’t afford to associate itself with mercenaries. Period. That sentiment comes all the way down from the sixty-first floor.”

  Steele looked at the researcher, who was examining her nail polish with great interest. “So you read Le Figaro,” he said to her in French.

  Surprised, she put hands over the folder in front of her almost protectively.

  “I assume you brought the article,” Steele said, switching to English.

  After a moment the researcher shrugged, opened the folder, and said, “It’s one of Europe’s leading newspapers, not some rag.”

  “Pass the article around,” Steele said. “Everyone should see what is being used in an effort to discredit St. Kilda Consulting.”

  She slid the single sheet of paper toward Prosser, a copy of the article. He picked it up and looked at it. “I don’t read French,” he said.

  “The pertinent section is about halfway down,” Steele said, taking the paper from him, “between the two typographic devices this particular gossip columnist uses to break up items in his screed. Correct my translation if you wish, Ms. Carroll.”

  She pulled a second copy of the article from the folder and read while Steele translated.

  “‘The American-based mercenary security organization St. Kilda Consulting, a group well known for collecting extortionate fees from private clients all over the world, is expanding its activities into central Africa, according to well-placed intelligence sources.

  “‘It is reported that the group, which outwardly operates as an independent investigative and security consulting firm, has been retained to cripple legitimate commercial intercourse between various French firms and customers in the French sphere of influence in Africa, which includes several countries on both sides of the equator.

  “‘It is not known if St. Kilda’s efforts are endorsed or perhaps even secretly sponsored by American interests or even the government itself, but various international investigators are pursuing all leads.’”

  Steele glanced toward the researcher and waited.

  “That’s an honest translation,” she said, faintly surprised.

  “That’s not how this article was represented to me,” Carson said. “It may be a respected newspaper, but this is a gossip column, not an investigative piece.”

  Carroll went back to looki
ng at her nails.

  “The correspondent is a well-regarded journalist,” Steele said, “although that designation has different meanings in different places. He has excellent sources in the French political and security establishment, which is why his attack is so interesting. He has no particular reason to run the item, no news hook, as I believe you in the business call it. He’s just throwing mud.”

  Prosser winced.

  Martin began to relax.

  Carroll decided that she’d redo her nails in bloodred.

  “The attack on St. Kilda,” Steele said, “most likely comes from one of France’s largest energy companies. The company is seeking oil concessions all over Africa. In the past, the company has paid for such concessions with guns, bullets, aircraft, even machetes like the one that was used so many years ago to chop off John Neto’s hand.”

  “Wait a minute,” Brent Thomas broke in. “You’re saying that some French oil company is pulling strings behind the scenes, trading guns for oil with one hand and planting rumors with respected and influential journalists with the other?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s either crazy or the best damned news story I ever heard.”

  “It’s both,” Steele said.

  Carson leaned forward. “All I care about is Andre Bertone. He’s the man we’re putting in the UBS spotlight. He’s the one who’ll sue our balls off if he doesn’t like what we say.”

  “Bertone is the cutout for the oil company,” Steele said. “If you’re a multibillion-dollar multinational corporation with direct political connections, you don’t openly buy planeloads of guns and then hand them over to rebels who in return will give you multiyear oil concessions when they come to power.”

  Carson started taking notes.

  “Andre Bertone is brokering the deal for the oil company,” Steele continued. “He used to be an ordinary middleman. Rebel groups would siphon barge loads of oil out of transnational pipelines and trade them to Bertone for cases of assault rifles. From there he bought planes and pilots. Now he’s an international energy broker who, if Neto is overthrown, will control millions of barrels of potential Camgerian production, which he’ll sell to the French for a long-term profit of a billion dollars.”