Lords of Corruption

by Kyle Mills

  There were two of them, both probably in their early twenties, and both shouting with the same unbridled fury that he'd seen in Gideon at the airport. Adrenaline quickly cleared his head, and the instincts he'd developed in jail turned out to still be with him.

  "Take it easy," he said, trying to buy some time in a situation that he already knew wasn't going to end peacefully. A quick glance in either direction confirmed that his attackers knew exactly what they were doing. There were no windows looking down on them and no doors to run for. The alley dead-ended in about thirty feet, and they had blocked off any hope of an escape back in the direction of the plaza.

  "You want my money? I don't have much, but you're welcome to it." He began to reach for his pocket, but when he did, they charged. Josh focused on the one with the club, ducking just in time for it to pass over his head and strike the wall behind him with the sound of splintering wood. As it did, though, the other man landed a kick to his chest. The bottom of his foot was hard from a life spent shoeless, but nowhere near as damaging as the boots favored by the people Josh had tangled with in his youth. He managed to catch hold of the man's leg and flip him onto his back in the dirt, opening a path out of the alley.

  He was just a little too slow, giving the man on the ground time to slap his ankle and cause him to stumble as he tried to escape. He regained his balance quickly, but the split-second delay gave his other attacker time to slam what was left of his club into the small of Josh's back.

  This time he wasn't able to maintain his footing, and he landed hard on his stomach, skidding across the dirt and colliding with the wall to his right. The sensation of a hand snatching the wallet from his back pocket prompted him to flip instinctively onto his back and grab at the man's wrist. The loss of a few dollars and his IDs shrank to insignificance when he saw the club, almost entirely intact as it turned out, arcing toward his skull.

  Josh abandoned his efforts to retrieve his wallet and tried to pull his hand back to ward off the blow, but the man anticipated the move and grabbed him in a sweaty but unbreakable grip.

  The combination of being out in the sun all day, jet lag, and the disorientation of being so far from home made it hard to fully accept what was happening. It was simple, though. In less than a second, the club was going to land and he was going to die lying in an alley thousands of miles from home.

  For nothing. For a wallet containing barely enough money to buy a Big Mac and fries.

  Josh closed his eyes and waited for the impact, but nothing happened. No pain, which he supposed was understandable, but also no disorientation or loss of consciousness. No blinding light surrounded by angels or fiery pits guarded with pitchforks.

  The pressure around his forearm disappeared, and he opened his eyes to discover that there were now two more men in the alley, and everyone was trying to kill each other. The one with the club was on the ground and absorbed a kick to the head so vicious that Josh's stomach rolled at the sound of it. The man he'd knocked to the ground tried to run but quickly discovered his own plan working against him. There was nowhere to go. A moment later he was on all fours trying desperately to dislodge the man snaking an arm around his throat.

  There was something about the man on top that was familiar -- the way he moved, the wiry power of his arms. Josh's mind was still coming to terms with the fact that he was alive, and it took a few seconds for him to realize that he actually knew one of his saviors.

  The man beneath Tfmena Llengambi was much larger and younger, but so far he hadn't been able to use that advantage to escape. One of his hands came off the ground and dipped into his waistband, reappearing a moment later with something that gleamed in the sunlight angling into the alley.

  Adrenaline hit Josh full force again, and he jumped to his feet, sprinting the few yards to the struggling men and sliding across the dirt just in time to stop the knife from lodging in Tfmena's ribs.

  It was the opening the older man had been looking for, and he picked up a broken piece of concrete, bringing it down on the back of the man's head with a sickening crunch. Josh released the now limp arm, pedaling his feet in front of him as he scooted away. Tfmena brought the block down again and again until the blood flowing onto the ground mingled with what Josh assumed were pieces of the man's brain.

  And then it was silent again. Josh glanced behind him and saw that his other attacker was in a similar condition, having become the victim of his own club in the hands of a young man wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt over a heaving chest.

  Tfmena stood and held out a steady hand to help Josh to his feet, then brushed the dust off him. His expression was strangely calm and seemed to contain a bit less disdain than it had before.

  Tfmena picked up Josh's wallet and held it out to him, saying something in Yvimbo that was easy to decipher from the tone: "Get out of here. This is none of your business anymore."

  Josh mumbled his thanks, shaking the man's hand and trying not to look at the two corpses as he backed away. Finally he turned and ran. When he burst into the blinding sun of the plaza, he was at a full sprint. He ran past bemused Africans rushing to get out of his way, past the charred monkey that still hadn't been sold, past tables of knockoff watches and boom boxes, not stopping until exhaustion and heat overcame him.

  He bent at the waist, breathing hard and trying to think about what had just happened. When he finally managed to straighten up again, he discovered that he was standing in front of a clothing store with a well-appointed sign reading "Dead White Man Shoppe."

  "Forget your undies?"

  He spun, fists raised, to find JB Flannary standing behind him.

  "Whoa, tiger. Peace, okay?"

  Josh just stood there, his breathing still not controlled enough to answer.

  Flannary pointed to his chest. "You got red on you."

  Josh looked down and saw the blood splattered across his white T-shirt. Was it his? Or did it belong to the man he'd just helped kill?

  "They were slaughtering chickens in the market," he heard himself say.

  Flannary nodded knowingly. "You should be more careful. Sometimes bloodstains don't come out so easy."

  Chapter 12.

  The front of the bar was completely open, but it seemed to have been less an architectural decision than a violent history. Whether the makeshift terrace was the work of a bomb or an out-of-control vehicle was hard to say.

  "Hey, look who I found wandering the streets," Flannary said as he ducked into the relative darkness of the bar's interior and approached a table where Katie was nursing a beer alone, despite the fact that the bar was dominated by the white faces of aid workers. Josh recognized a few of them from the compound, and he returned their waves reflexively as Flannary pushed him into a chair across from Katie.

  She frowned and mumbled a stiff greeting, obviously still working out whether she should forgive him for his insult the night he'd arrived.

  "What can I get you?" Flannary asked.

  Josh adjusted himself in the chair, still too full of nervous energy to sit comfortably. "I could really use a beer."

  "I think that can be arranged," he said, walking to the back of the building and initiating negotiations with a man guarding a bar built into a street vendor's cart. Josh just stared down at the table.

  "Are you all right?" Katie said after a minute or so.

  He barely heard her, his mind still replaying what had happened. How could he have been stupid enough to go into that alley alone? Now two men were dead. Should he tell someone? Stephen Trent? The police?

  Flannary returned and slapped a beer down on the Formica-topped table before falling into a chair. Josh reached for it and took a sip. It tasted like water, but it seemed to have a hint of the alcohol bite he desperately needed.

  "What the fuck am I doing here?"

  Josh wasn't fully aware that he'd spoken aloud until he noticed that the conversations at a number of the tables closest to him had gone silent.

  "Wasting your time?" Flannary said a
nd then jerked when Katie kicked him under the table.

  "Everyone eventually asks themselves that question," Katie said.

  Josh looked up from the table and met her gaze. "Have you? What was your answer?"

  She took a long pull from her beer and then set it back on the table. "I learned to focus on winning small, everyday battles. If you let yourself think about the big picture . . ." Her voice faded.

  A pudgy man sitting at an adjoining table finished her thought. "You'd go crazy."

  He was from CARE, Josh remembered, and wondered if it was his Land Cruiser that was driving around the countryside with a machine gun mounted in the back.

  "I feel like I'm on another planet," Josh said.

  "How so?" Katie asked.

  He considered telling her and Flannary about the alley but decided to keep his mouth shut. If he didn't talk about it, maybe someday he'd be able to tell himself that it hadn't happened.

  "I've been working my ass off since I got here, and you know what I've learned? Nothing. I went through all the project's books, and I still have no idea where all our money's gone. I don't know how much we pay people or even who works for us. There's actually an entry in the ledger for diarrhea mountainscape.' What the hell does that mean? All I can tell you is that it cost two hundred and seventy bucks."

  "Why don't you ask Gideon?" Flannary suggested.

  "I would, but whenever I ask him something I get an answer that doesn't mean anything. And that's only when he actually shows up . . ."

  That elicited a bitter laugh from Katie, but it was Flannary who spoke. "Things are different here, kid. You'll get used to it."

  Josh wasn't so sure, but didn't say so. "What charity do you work for, JB? I don't think you've ever said."

  This time Katie's laugh had some humor in it. "He doesn't work for an NGO. He'll tell you he's a reporter and that his brother's a big deal with the New York Times, but the truth is that he's just a crazy expat. He likes slinking around Africa and every once in a while writes an article to keep him in liquor money."

  "You know, I am sitting right next to you," Flannary said, though he didn't seem particularly upset.

  "Yeah? Tell me I'm wrong."

  "I'm too busy trying to remember how many little kids like you have come and gone over the last twenty years and what exactly it is you've accomplished." "Touche," she said, and she clinked her beer bottle against Flannary's glass.

  "You see," Flannary started loudly, "the charities didn't start showing up in this country until the mining took off. . . ."

  The conversations at the tables around them suddenly erupted in a chorus of groans. A number of wadded-up napkins were thrown in Flannary's direction, one hitting him in the ear and clinging to the sweat for a moment before fluttering to the ground.

  "JB thinks we're to blame for everything that's wrong with Africa," Katie explained. "Josh, do you know what the largest industry in this country is?" Flannary asked. "Wikipedia says mining."

  "Wrong. It's foreign aid. Every year international charities pump tens of millions of dollars into an economy that shouldn't be worth a bucket of spit. And with all that money flying around, feeding yourself from a farm doesn't seem all that attractive anymore. Better to get a gun and see if you can't carve off a few bucks for yourself." He lowered his voice. "If you can find any that haven't ended up in Mtiti's pocket . . ."

  "You may get your wish," Katie said. "We may all be gone soon. Things are getting too unstable for most of the NGOs. They're pulling out, and they're taking their money with them."

  "Even I can't blame them after what happened to Dan," Flannary said.

  "Who?" Josh said.

  Flannary's head tilted slightly. "Dan. The guy you replaced."

  "Oh, right. Dan Ordman. Do either of you know how I can contact him? I've been thinking maybe he can help me figure out where the project money's gone."

  Katie was staring at him with her mouth partially open, and Flannary seemed to be at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

  "I said something stupid again, didn't I? What is it this time?"

  "He's gonna be a hard guy to get in touch with," Flannary said. "They found him dead in the jungle a little over a month ago."

  Josh froze with the beer halfway to his mouth. "Natural causes?" he said hopefully.

  "By African standards, I suppose. He was hacked to pieces with a machete."

  Josh shaded the screen of the satellite phone against the glare of the sun as he walked away from the bar where he'd left JB Flan-nary. It began to ring, and he pressed it hard against his ear, finding trying to hear over the noise of the crowd preferable to going somewhere quieter.

  "Hello? This is Stephen Trent."

  "Stephen, it's Josh."

  "Josh? What's up? Is everything okay?" "Actually, I'm having a pretty bad day." "I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?"

  "Yeah. You can tell me why you never mentioned that the guy I'm replacing didn't quit. That he was dismembered."

  "I never said he quit, Josh."

  "No, but you seemed to have skipped the dismembered part, too."

  "Honestly, I didn't think it was relevant." "Not relevant? He was cut into little pieces, Stephen!"

  "I think we've established that. Thank you. Look, he'd driven out of the compound alone and gone more than a hundred miles into politically unstable territory. We've stepped up security for our people everywhere, but honestly, it really isn't necessary unless you decide to go driving off into the countryside in the middle of the night. And you're not going to, right?"

  Josh didn't respond. The idea that Trent hadn't thought this was pertinent was bullshit. And so was his story about picking only the best people. He picked the most desperate people because no one else would touch this job with a ten-foot pole.

  "Josh? Are you still there?"

  "Yeah," he said, trying to calm down. As bad as this gig was shaping up to be, he couldn't afford to lose it. Not yet, anyway.

  "Look, I'm sorry. I should have mentioned it. But I promise you this isn't because somebody has something against us."

  "Then what?"

  "Look, I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but we have reason to believe that Dan had gotten involved in some things that he shouldn't have. That's one of the reasons we were so careful with our hiring process this time. We needed someone we could fully trust."

  "Yeah . . ."

  "Josh, if you ever feel you're not safe or there's something else we should be doing to make sure you don't have any problems, pick up the phone and tell me. That's all you ever have to do."

  A group of children spotted him and began running toward him with their hands out. He turned and started walking in the other direction.

  What choice did he have? He was banking over thirty grand a year while NewAfrica covered basically every expense he and Laura had.

  "Fine."

  "Great," Trent said, the relief audible in his voice. "How's it going otherwise? Is there anything we can do to help you?"

  "Get me someone who knows something about farming. And you might as well burn the books they've been keeping."

  "It's not that complicated, Josh. They're digging. You just need to keep it on track. You're a smart, resourceful guy. Those are the qualities that got you the job."

  The group of children had almost overtaken him, so he dropped a handful of change on the ground and increased his speed as they wrestled over it.

  "Send me some books on agriculture and terracing."

  "Absolutely," Trent said. "I'll do it today." "Fine."

  "And Josh, keep in mind that you just got there. You'll get it."

  "Like Dan did?"

  Trent either didn't hear or chose to ignore the comment. "Look, I don't want to pile things on you, but in a few days we've got some photographers coming in to take shots of the finished parts of that project."

  "They look great," Josh said. "And that's something else I'd like to talk to you about."

  "And we
will

  I'm coming for the shoot. . . ." The way his voice trailed off suggested there was more. "And so is President Mtiti."

  "Please tell me that's a joke."

  "Take it easy, Josh. There's nothing you need to do. Like you said, that part of the project looks great. Just try to keep the rest of it moving forward, okay?"

  Chapter 13.

  It was after nine A. M. before Josh finally walked out of his cabin. He'd been awake for hours, tossing and turning in a futile attempt to retreat back into unconsciousness. A hangover, combined with the memories of the two dead men in the alley, made sleep come hard.

  He shaded his eyes against the glare of the morning sun as he made his way to breakfast but stopped when he noticed that the door to the Land Cruiser NewAfrica had provided him was open. Through the windows, he could make out the shape of a man digging around in the driver's seat.

  Out of instinct, Josh began to run toward the vehicle, but a moment later he had slowed to a jog, and shortly after that he was walking toward breakfast again. Screw it. If the guy wanted it, he could have it. Josh would call Stephen Trent after he finished his oatmeal and get a new one.

  "Josh! Where the hell are you going?"

  He turned and saw Flannary waving to him over the roof of the Land Cruiser. "We're all packed up and ready to go!"

  "Cut me some slack, JB. I'm hungover, I'm hungry, and I'm not in a very good mood, you know?"

  "Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?"

  Josh waved a hand dismissively and was about to leave when Flannary held up something wrapped in foil. "You know what this is? A breakfast burrito made with my personal stash of authentic tortillas and salsa. We'll throw it on the engine and in about fifteen minutes, the genuine imported cheddar cheese will be all melty. . . ."

  "No, JB. I've got about a thousand years of work to do --"

  "But only about another fifty before you're dead. So since you're clearly doomed to failure, why not come out with me and learn something?" He dropped the burrito and held up a cocktail shaker. "I've got Bloody Marys."