Lords of Corruption

by Kyle Mills

  Trent didn't answer immediately, trying to focus on what he had heard and not on how vulnerable and far from home he was. "I don't understand, sir. How could that be possible?"

  "I'm told that he hid the phone you gave him in some old hag's belongings. Apparently there is a GPS in this phone?"

  Trent's legs were in danger of failing him, and he sank into his chair. He looked past Mtiti at Gideon. "How could you and your people not know that?"

  Gideon had never made any bones about the fact that he considered Trent weak and pathetic -- good at cleverly carrying out Mtiti's will but of little use otherwise. In a world where one was judged on physical strength, courage, and willingness to do violence, Trent knew he came up far short.

  "This is your fault," Gideon said. "You should never have given him the phone."

  That prompted Trent to return his slightly averted gaze to the president. As usual, Mtiti's face was a thick mask, equally likely to break into insane laughter or homicidal rage at any moment.

  "We gave him the phone so Gideon could keep track of him. Just like Dan. Just like everyone."

  Mtiti didn't react, but out of the corner of his eye, Trent could see Gideon glaring defiantly. It infuriated Gideon to have to explain himself in the presence of the soft, pale man in front of him -- to know that Trent's business relationship with the president could eclipse Gideon's own blood connection. He understood his position well, though, and was smart enough to be careful.

  "I don't understand how this happened," Trent continued. "How do you know he used the phone to track those people? Did you see him at the gravesite? Did you just stand there?"

  "If it weren't for me, we wouldn't have discovered any of this," Gideon said, the volume of his voice rising, but not quite to his normal shout. "He would be on his way to America, knowing everything."

  Trent was about to fire back but held his tongue. It seemed likely that Gideon had indeed known about the phone and had left it where it was, salivating over the thought of exacting his own personal revenge against Josh Hagarty. And then he'd let him get away.

  But making that accusation any more forcefully could be dangerous. Just as Gideon had to acknowledge the power of business relationships, Trent had to acknowledge that family relations represented a bond too strong and complex to be trifled with by an outsider.

  "Enough of this," Mtiti said. "Where are they now?"

  " 'They'?" Trent said.

  "He's with a white woman," Gideon replied. "They went to the village where she works. I sent soldiers, but they escaped."

  "They escaped?" Trent said incredulously. "Two unarmed whites -- one of whom is a woman -- escaped your soldiers?"

  Gideon stared silently back at him.

  "Who has the phone now? You or them?" Trent asked.

  "They do," Mtiti said. "Find them. Now."

  Trent reached for his laptop and pulled up the website used to track the location of the sat phone. He entered his user name and password and waited for the screen to respond.

  Invalid log-in.

  He typed them in again, more carefully this time, but knew it was futile. Josh Hagarty was many things, but he wasn't an idiot.

  "They've changed the password."

  "Change it back," Mtiti said.

  "It's not that simple, Excellency."

  "Why is it not simple? It's your phone, isn't it? Didn't you pay for it? Didn't you buy it from a company in your country? Maybe you don't want to change it back. Maybe you're working for this phone company? Maybe they want to take over the communications in my country and give them to the Yvimbo."

  "Excellency," Trent said, struggling to maintain a soothing tone, "it's the same security system that's used all over the world. I can have the phone shut off, but it's going to be very complicated to --"

  "So once again, / have to do this. I have to clean up your problems. Like I did with your last man."

  "We can have this taken care of quickly and easily, Excellency. You just need to have your people watch the airports and --"

  "Are you telling me how to find two whites in my own country?"

  "No. I'm just saying that we need to coordinate --"

  "What do we need to coordinate? Why do I need you? You and your people are the cause of these problems! And now you're going to tell me how to solve them? You're going to give me orders?"

  "I wouldn't presume --"

  "But you already have, haven't you? That's what you people do. You presume."

  Stephen Trent made himself a drink and looked around the empty office. Mtiti and his people had been gone for almost fifteen minutes, but the tension remained. He could hear the staff outside, chattering nervously and working as if their lives depended on it. As if Mtiti was deciding whether their contributions to his country were worth the food and air he wasted on them.

  Trent supposed that bargains with the devil always seemed good at first. He had avoided not only prison but also a criminal record and gotten a well-paid job in New York running Aleksei Fedorov's new pet project. But when it had become apparent that the potential profits and lack of oversight were beyond even Fedorov's most optimistic estimates, the freedom that Trent had been so grateful for began to look more like slavery.

  At first Mtiti had been lukewarm to Fedorov's proposal, but it hadn't taken long for NewAfrica to prove itself. Whenever it was involved, the world was blinded by the fundamental assumption that all intentions were good and that the charity itself would police any problems that arose. And even when reports of serious issues did surface, the reaction was generally to downplay them for what the aid industry assumed was the greater good.

  Soon greed had overtaken caution. The diversion and sale of donated goods was combined with narcotics trafficking. And when that proved successful, they had added arms dealing, and finally the genocide that Josh Hagarty had discovered.

  Now Mtiti not only expected to be able to butcher his enemies in broad daylight, he expected NewAfrica to get him a humanitarian prize for it. And for Aleksei, there wasn't enough money in the world.

  So at a time when every indication was that they should be pulling back and taking fewer risks, they continued to recklessly expand. And it was that blind ambition that had created the situations with Dan and Josh.

  Trent dialed the phone on his desk and cradled the handset between his ear and shoulder. His hand didn't shake when he put his drink to his lips. The sense of inevitability made fear seem increasingly pointless.

  "What?" Fedorov said by way of greeting. "Josh Hagarty saw the new project, Aleksei. He saw the graves."

  There was a brief silence before he exploded. "What the fuck are you talking about? How could he find the dump site? How would he know anything about it?"

  "Where is he now? You have him, right?" "No. He ran. He --"

  "Does Mtiti know?"

  "Yes. He just left my office."

  "You told him? You told that stupid piece of shit without calling me first? Are you fucking crazy? Do you have any idea what you're putting in jeopardy, Stephen? Do you?"

  It was pointless to protest or try to set the record straight. Fedorov knew damn well that Trent wouldn't go to Mtiti without his approval. But he believed whatever best fueled the fury that kept him going. "I understand very well, Aleksei. I'm the one who's here. I'll be the one Mtiti comes for if things go wrong."

  "So what you're saying is that it won't have any effect on me at all if you collapse everything I've built? Everything --"

  "We can take care of this, Aleksei. And there's no way Josh Hagarty could know about you."

  "Are you willing to bet your life on it?"

  Trent knew he already had. It could be a few weeks from now or a few years, but he didn't doubt that he would die a violent, drawn-out death. Whether it would be savage and primitive at the hands of Mtiti or the colder, more precise suffering that Fedorov would inflict was unimportant.

  "We have another problem, Aleksei. One that Mtiti doesn't know about. JB Flannary is back in the Uni
ted States."

  "The reporter? So what?"

  "I find it suspicious that after only a few weeks Josh is behaving like Dan did after being here over a year."

  "You think Flannary's behind it?"

  "I don't know, but he didn't always write sunny stories about the benefits of foreign aid. In his day, he burned a few charities pretty badly."

  "And you let him out of Africa, where he could have been dealt with at the snap of a fucking finger?"

  "I can't track everyone in the country, Aleksei. I don't have the manpower."

  "And so you sit over there in your villa with all your servants and call me when you've completely fucked things up?"

  It was an interpretation of the situation that Fedorov undoubtedly believed wholeheartedly. "I'm sorry, Aleksei. I'm doing my best, but you have to understand that it's barely controlled chaos here. I --"

  "Shut the fuck up. Just shut up!"

  "Aleksei, please. Josh still has the phone we gave him. I can't track him with it, but I can use it to contact him. You need to send people for his sister. Once we have her, we'll have control of the situation again."

  Fedorov let out a long string of expletives in his native language as Trent drained the Scotch from his glass. Josh's close relationship with his sister and the relatively easy access to her was one of the reasons they'd picked him. It had been something Fedorov had insisted on after the problems with Dan Ordman, but not a card Trent had ever expected to play. She was an innocent seventeen-year-old girl. But, like her brother, she would never get a chance at the life she'd so recently started.

  "Where's Flannary?" Fedorov said finally.

  "I don't know exactly. He has family in New York and connections to a magazine there."

  "So I guess you want me to handle that, too, don't you, Stephen?"

  Chapter 34.

  "Mom!" Josh shouted into the sat phone. "This is important. When was the last time you saw Laura?"

  "I don't know. Maybe yesterday?" She sounded relatively lucid -- he must have caught her in that critical time between creeping hangover and early buzz.

  Josh scooted back a few inches, pulling Annika out of the encroaching sun and letting her head settle in his lap again. She'd regained consciousness about an hour after they'd escaped the village, but then immediately went out again. The blow to her head had been harder than he'd originally thought, but he had no idea what to do about it. Help was absolutely not on its way.

  "What about last night, Mom? Did you see her then?"

  "Where are you, Josh?"

  "I'm in Africa, remember? Now, concentrate. Did you see her last night?"

  "I don't think she was here. I don't know where she is. Do you want me to have her call you?"

  Annika stirred, and he ran a hand through her hair, trying to will her eyes open. It didn't work.

  "Mom, you need to listen to me. You can't have Ernie Bruce . . . Mom? Are you there?" The connection had gone dead.

  A quick glance at the battery indicator showed half a charge, and he dialed again, only to get a recording saying that the service had been cut off.

  Trent.

  He sagged against the tree behind him and stared up at the endless blue of the sky. How the hell had all this happened? A few months ago, he'd been sitting around eating nachos with his friends and worrying about getting a B-plus in Quantitative Methods.

  "Josh?"

  Annika was looking up at him with reasonably clear eyes and a symmetrical expression that didn't seem to indicate brain damage. He let out a long, relieved breath. "Jesus, Annika. I was really starting to worry. Are you okay? How are you feeling?"

  "I don't understand. What happened?"

  Based on the last thing she'd seen before she was knocked out, she'd probably expected to wake up at the pearly gates, not lying in the dirt next to a stolen truck.

  "We got away."

  He helped her into a sitting position and kept her steady while her light-headedness passed.

  "How?"

  "It's a long story."

  "What about the village?"

  "I don't know."

  He tried to prevent her from standing, but she shook him off and walked unsteadily away, stopping after twenty-five feet to look out over the sweeping landscape below. They were a good seven hours from her village, parked on top of a steep hill surrounded by rebel territory. He figured Mtiti's men would think twice about penetrating this far into Yvimbo-controlled land, but if they didn't, at least the elevated position would allow Josh to see what was coming.

  "Were any of the soldiers hurt when we escaped?" Her voice was getting stronger, but he wasn't sure that was a good thing.

  "The kid who tried to shoot you is dead. His gun blew up on him."

  She put her face in her hands, and for a moment he thought she was going to fall. "I didn't have anything to do with it, Annika. It just happened."

  "We weren't supposed to get away." "What do you mean?" he said, though he knew perfectly well.

  She turned toward him. "I'm talking about how angry our escaping would make those soldiers. I'm talking about what they might have done to my friends because of that anger."

  "I saw the opportunity, and I took it, Annika. What did you want me to do? Watch them gang-rape you and then hack you apart with a machete before they staked me out and set me on fire?"

  "Yes!" she said. "We're two people, Josh. There are sixty people living in that village. Sixty people who had nothing to do with any of this."

  "Nothing to do with any of this?" he said, jumping to his feet. "Are you kidding? This is their country. Mtiti is their president. Those soldiers are their children. Not yours. And sure as hell not mine."

  "They have no control --"

  "Bullshit! That's all I hear from you aid people. Everybody's the saintly victim of a few bad apples. What would happen if the Yvimbo took over? Would they start the first honest government in Africa? Or would they start a genocidal war against the Xhisa?

  There are no victims here, Annika. There are just people who aren't well-armed enough."

  "Just another bunch of Africans," she responded, the tears now visible on her cheeks. "That's what you're saying, isn't it? It doesn't matter if they live or die, right?"

  "That's not what I mean --"

  "But it's not your fault," she said, her words no longer seeming to be aimed at him. "You just got here. You didn't know any of the people in that village. Why did I go to the window to look out? I knew what was happening. Why didn't I go straight through that door? Those people have been my family for most of my adult life. It was my home."

  "For Christ's sake, Annika. You'd just been shot at with a machine gun -- you weren't thinking straight. You got scared. You're allowed."

  She turned and walked away again, disappearing down a steep slope before he could think of something to say.

  He didn't understand any of this -- not the country, not the people who populated it. Not even his own motivations. Would he have done the same thing if that village had been full of American women and children? And if so, would it have been as easy?

  She returned a half hour later, just as he was getting worried enough to go after her.

  "Annika, I'm sorry. This was my fault. I stopped you when you tried to go out and help those people. And when I saw a chance for us, I took it without thinking about the consequences."

  "It's done," she said, though her tone was ambiguous. No anger but also no forgiveness. For either of them. "Are we in rebel territory?"

  "Yeah."

  She nodded toward the truck. "What do we have?"

  "Not much," he said, grateful for the change in subject. "There's about fifty rounds of ammunition for the gun. A few tools, five gallons of water, and a bag of half-melted candy bars I bought when I stopped for gas."

  "How much money do we have left?"

  "There wasn't that much to begin with," he said, pulling her pouch of cash from around his neck and holding it out to her. "About three hundred euros."


  "This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I decided how much to put in that safe."

  "I know," he said. "What do you think we should do?"

  She considered it for a moment, avoiding looking at him. "I think we should save my village if it isn't already too late. I think we should send Umboto Mtiti to hell. And I think your friend Stephen Trent should go with him."

  Based on her expression, she was dead serious.

  "I was thinking on a less grand scale . . ."

  "Well, we can't stay here. The food and water you brought aren't going to last more than a few days."

  "What, then?"

  "We have no idea when JB's story is going to get published, isn't that right? Or even for sure if it ever will. And it's very hard for us to hide because of our skin."

  "What about a rebel village? They hate the government. Maybe they'd help us."

  "Mtiti doesn't control this area, but he has informants everywhere."

  "What do you figure our chances would be?"

  "Not very good."

  "I was looking for a number."

  "Maybe ten percent?"

  He let out a long breath. "Jesus. I thought you'd at least say fifty-fifty. Okay, what if we were to split up?"

  "Split up? Why?"

  "If we both get caught, we're dead. But what if they only got one of us? It seems like they'd try to use us against each other. It might buy us the time we need for JB's story to come out."

  "I don't think that makes any sense."

  "You know your way around here, Annika. You speak the language, you know the culture. Maybe you could find someone who could help the people in your village -- or at least find out what happened."

  She obviously hadn't considered that, and her expression turned thoughtful. "What about you?"

  "I'd just be in your way."

  "And where wouldn't you be in my way?"

  "Back in civilization. I can try to contact the U. S. Consulate and maybe get the sat phone turned back on. Maybe I could get in touch with JB and find out exactly what his time frame is. He might even know someone who can help us."

  "Your sister. Isn't that what you mean?

  You need to know what's happened to her."

  He looked at the ground, not sure what to say. She was in the same position, but instead of one girl, she had an entire village to worry about. More and more it seemed like his every act was motivated by selfishness.