Market Forces (36 page)

Notley stopped abruptly. He drew a deep breath and let it out, hard. He seemed to become aware of the Nemex in his hand for the first time. He grimaced and put it away.

“My apologies. Shouldn’t touch the hard stuff this early.” He picked up his glass from the edge of the desk and drained it. “So. Getting back to practicalities. You’ve got the disposal handled.”

“Yeah. We pin the rap on the CE—I mean CA—, uh—” Chris gave up and gestured at the screen. “These guys. Mike’s down sorting out the limo and the logistics, but basically we’re all set.”

“Louise tells me there’s another body. Echevarria had an adjutant? Is that correct?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“And I understand you battered him, too, in the same rather impulsive fashion you took care of Echevarria.”

“Yes. He, uh, he got in the way.”

Notley raised an eyebrow. “That was inconsiderate of him. So is he dead?”

“No, not yet.” Chris hurried into explanation. “But that’s okay. Sickbay have him on life support, sedated until we’re ready. In fact, that’s one of the strengths of the way we’ve set this up. If I can just show you the—”

“No, that. Won’t be necessary. As I said before, this is about having the guts to let you run with the ball.” A faint smile. “Just like our old friend Webb Ellis. Illustrious company you find yourself in, Chris Faulkner. Maybe they’ll put up a plaque for you, too, one day.”

H
E CAUGHT IT
on the radio as he drove home. Some general news reporter from the scene, a woman but not—

Cut that out.

“—were shocked by this terrorist attack in the heart of London’s West End. I’m standing outside the famous Brown’s Hotel, only a few meters from the spot where less than an hour ago visiting head of state General Hernan Echevarria and his aide, Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Carrasco, were fired upon by masked gunmen. Details aren’t clear as yet, but it seems two men opened fire with machine pistols as General Echevarria was brought to his hotel in a Shorn Associates limousine. The general’s aide and an unnamed Shorn executive were both hit by machine-gun fire as they exited the vehicle ahead of the general. The terrorists then threw some kind of antipersonnel grenade into the interior and made their escape on a motorcycle. All three men and the driver of the limousine have been rushed to intensive care at—”

He turned it off. He knew the rest. Michael Bryant, thrown miraculously clear of the explosion, recovers from gunshot wounds in the hospital. The limo driver, protected by the armored partition, gets off with burns, abrasions, and shock. General Echevarria and his aide go home in body bags, scorched and shell- and shrapnel-riddled beyond useful autopsy. State funeral, full military honors. Rifles volley, women weep. Closed caskets. Everybody in black.

In the highlands, Barranco’s insurgents stir to freshly equipped life.

You’re a change maker, Chris.

He felt it rising in him, stirring like the hard-eyed men and women in the NAME jungle. He saw himself. Embodied purpose, rushing over asphalt in the darkness, carving a path with the Saab’s high beams like some furious avatar of the forces he was setting in motion on the other side of the globe. Riding the quiet power of the engine across the night, face masked in the soft backwash of dashboard light. Bulletproof, careproof, unstoppable.

He called Barranco at the Hilton.

“You heard?”

“Yes, it’s on the TV. I’m watching it now.” For the first time that Chris could remember, Barranco’s voice sounded unsure. “You are okay?”

Chris grinned in the dark. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I. Would not have believed. Something like that. To do something like that. In front of your colleagues. In your situation. I did not expect—”

“Skip it, Vicente. The old fuck had it coming.”

Barranco was silent. “Yes. That is true.”

And more silence across the connection, like snow drifting to the ground on the other side of the world. For a beat, Chris could feel the cold out there, like something alive. Like something looking for him.

“I saw him die,” said Barranco.

Chris shook himself. “I, uh. Good. I hope that was worth something to you, Vicente. I hope you feel. Avenged.”

“Yes. It is good to know he is dead.”

When the Colombian showed no further sign of speaking, Chris cleared his throat.

“Listen, Vicente. Get some rest. With what’s coming down in the next few weeks, you’re going to need it. Planes’s not till noon, so sleep in. Lopez’ll get you up in plenty of time.”

Silence, sifting down.

“Chris?”

“Yeah. Still here.”

“They aren’t going to punish you for this?”

“No one’s going to punish me for anything, Vicente. Everything’s under control, and you and I are going right to the top of this thing, together. I give it six months before you’re in the streets of Bogotá. Now get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He waited for a reply. When there was none, he shrugged, cut the connection, and gave himself to the driving.

change maker!

He got off at the Elsenham ramp and picked up the road east, pushing the Saab faster than was smart. The car jolted in potholes, and the engine grew shrill as he dropped gears late on the bends. Trees stood at the roadside, sudden and dusty looking in the glare of the Saab’s lights. When he got to Hawkspur Green he shed some of his speed, but he was still rolling too fast. The car snarled angrily to itself as he took the turn into the driveway, and he had to lean on the brakes.

He killed the high beams; up ahead in the sudden dark, the house security lights flared to life. He frowned and glanced at the ID broadcast set. A tiny green active light glowed back at him, reassuring as far as it went. He felt tension go stealing along his nerves, wondering if Notley had, after all, gone conservative on him and sent night callers with silenced guns. The Saab crunched up the winding drive. He reached across to the glove compartment and opened it. The Nemex fell out into his palm, still slightly greasy from the factory wrapping oils. He straightened up again and cleared the last bend.

Carla was waiting for him, wrapped tight in a terry-cloth robe, hair wet and straggling. Backlit by the security system’s lamps, she looked like the ghost of a drowned woman. When she bent to his window, face hard-boned from the wet and the lack of makeup, he almost jumped.

He stopped the Saab short and opened the window.

“What are you doing out here? You’ll catch your death of cold.”

“Vasvik,” she said. “He just called.”

T
HE REST OF
the week snapped by like scenery.

He got Barranco out of the country, got final signatures on the regime term sheets on the way to the airport. Sandwiched between Lopez and Chris in the helicopter, Barranco signed it all like a man under sedation. Chris waved him goodbye from the asphalt.

He dropped in on Mike at the hospital. The other executive had nothing worse than severe bruising across the rib cage from the machine-gun fire, but it seemed politic to keep him in the intensive care unit for a few days at least. There were news crews lining up in the corridor outside, but Shorn security had them managed.

“So now you’re a fucking celebrity?”

Mike grinned from a chair beside the bed. There were a couple of small cuts on his face, and his left hand was bandaged. He got up, wincing with the effort. “You see Liz out there?” he asked.

“No. You expecting her?”

“Never know.” Mike poured himself a drink from a pitcher beside the bed. “Nah, to be honest, she’d be the last thing I need right now. I’m in enough pain just breathing heavily. You want some of this?”

“What is it?”

“What does it look like? Juice.”

“Maybe later. What happened to your face?”

“Ah.” Mike waved dismissively. “Did it myself with a broken bottleneck, beforehand. Good for the media to see a real wound or two, I reckon.”

“And the hand?”

A scowl. “Sprained my wrist going down on the pavement. Like a fucking idiot. I was trying to keep Carrasco upright for the machine gun, like this. And then dive out of the way, this way, when they tossed in the grenade. It was awkward.”

“Any witnesses?”

Bryant shook his head. “Monday night, and it’s a quiet street, anyway. A couple of people might have looked our way once the firing started maybe, but too late to notice anything odd. There’ll be footage from the hotel security cameras, maybe that street scanner we couldn’t mask out at the corner of Stafford Street. Elaine’s already on it. No problem, she says. Barranco get off okay?”

Back at Shorn, Chris sat in the covert viewing chamber while Nick Makin and Louise Hewitt talked to Francisco Echevarria by uplink. The young man was pale and hollow-eyed, and it was clear he had been crying. From the way he kept looking off to the side, it was also clear he was not alone in the projection room at the other end. Hewitt conveyed smooth corporate sympathies, and encouraged him not to concern himself with contractual details at such a time. Shorn’s own principal officer for the NAME account was in any case unable to leave the hospital for the foreseeable future. There was no sense in rushing into anything. Shorn CI would be very happy to put the whole issue on ice until the family felt more able to deal with the negotiations.

by which time Barranco will have your worthless nuts in the fucking vise, you and your whole stinking hacienda clan

The sudden violence of his own thoughts took Chris by surprise.

Francisco Echevarria flickered out. They adjourned to Hewitt’s office to discuss a tentative calendar for Barranco’s revolution.

He went down to the forty-ninth floor to thank the junior execs who had covered the other accounts for them while the crisis was in full swing. He took gifts—cask-strength Islay single malt, Galapagos bourbon, ground coffee, single-estate Andaluz olive oil—and got into mock sparring sessions with a couple of the known hardcases in the section. No full-force blows, he stayed just the right side of friendly, but he pushed hard and fast and got close-up body contact each time. It wasn’t wise to show raw gratitude untempered by signs of strength. It could get taken the wrong way.

He got back his caseload. Started mechanically through the detail, building back up to operational pitch where necessary.

He took a basket of Indonesian fruit and a crate of Turkish export beer up to the hospital, and found Liz Linshaw sitting on the corner of Mike’s bed. Mike sat there grinning like a post–blow job idiot, Liz was a study in her usual offscreen rough-and-ready elegance. She showed Chris exactly the civilized blend of camaraderie and casual flirtation that he remembered from their earliest meetings. The downshift cut him to the quick.

“Listen, Chris,” Mike said finally, waving a hand at the bedside seat Liz wasn’t using. “We’ve been talking about your no-namer problem. Liz says she could ask around, no problem.”

“That’s great.” He looked across at her. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

It was more than he could handle. He caught himself with a barbed comment about Suki rising to his lips, and called time. He made workload excuses and got out.

As he opened the door to go, Liz Linshaw called him back.

“Chris, I’ll be in touch,” she said.

Back at Shorn, he went down to the gym and did an hour of full contact with the autobag.

He worked late.

He took the Nemex to the firing ranges and emptied two dozen clips into the ghost dance of holotargets there. The machine scored him high on accuracy and speed, abysmally low on selection. He’d killed too many innocent bystanders.

And then it was Saturday.

It was time.

T
HERE WERE POLICE
trucks gathered at the entrance to the Brundtland. Revolving blue lights slashed the poorly lit walkways and stairstacks with monotonous regularity, each touch fleeting and then gone, giving way again to the gloom. Flashlight beams and bulky armored figures moved on the exterior walkways. An ampbox blattered across the night.

“Ah
fuck.
” Chris braked the Land Rover to a halt.

Carla stared out at the lights, wide-eyed. “Do you think . . .”

“I don’t know. Stay here.”

He left the engine running and climbed down, digging in his pocket for corporate ID, hoping the Nemex didn’t show under the jacket. A body-armored police sergeant noticed the new arrival and detached himself from the knot of figures beside the trucks. He strode across the cracked concrete, flashlight and sidearm held high.

“You can’t come in here.”

Chris held his ID out in the beam. “I’m visiting someone. What’s going on?”

“Oh.” The sergeant’s tone shifted, abruptly conciliatory. He holstered his pistol. “Sorry, sir. With what you’re driving, you know, I didn’t realize.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Chris manufactured a grin of forbearance. “Easy mistake to make. My wife’s wheels. Sentimental value. So what’s going on here?”

“It’s drugs, sir. Bathroom edge. A couple of the local gangwits have been bad boys. Exporting their product across the line, dealing in the Kensington catchment. Hanging around the schools and such.” The sergeant grimaced in the flashlight beam and shook his head. “Not the first time, either, and the community leaders have been warned before, so it’s the next step. We’ve been told to turn up the heat on cases like this. You know how it’s done, sir. Break a few doors, break a few heads. Only thing gets through to these animals in the end.”

“Sure. Look, I need to get up to the fifth floor and see my father-in-law. It’s quite urgent. Can you do something about that?”

Hesitation. Chris switched on the grin again. Reached carefully into his jacket pocket, well above the Nemex.

“I understand it’s trouble you don’t need right now, but it is important. I’d be very grateful.”

The light gleamed off the edges of the racked plastic and the Shorn Associates holologo on the front card. At the back, the wallet was stiff with a thick sheaf of cash. The sergeant was looking down at it like someone afraid of falling.

“Fifth floor?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Just a moment, sir.” He dug out a phone and thumbed it to life. “Gary? You there? Listen, are we working on five? No? So what’s the nearest? Okay. Thanks.”

He stowed the phone. Chris handed across a slice of currency.

“Should be safe enough to go up there, sir. I’ll have a couple of my men take you up, just to be sure.” He folded the notes into his palm with an awkwardness that bespoke lack of practice, and looked back at the Land Rover. “Your wife, too?”

“Yeah. Tell the truth, she wants to be here a lot more than I do.”

Their escort took the form of two helmeted, body-armored uniforms with pump-action shotguns and hip-holstered pistols. They bounded from the rear of the reserve truck like eager dogs when their names we called. One was white, one black, and neither looked old enough to be shaving yet. They covered angles in the stairwell with a kind of self-conscious intensity that on older men might have looked like professionalism, and once or twice they grinned at each other. The white kid chewed gum mechanically throughout, and the black kid appeared to be rapping under his breath. They both seemed to be enjoying themselves. When the party reached the fifth floor, Chris gave them a fifty apiece, and they clattered back down the stairs with what sounded like none of the drilled caution they’d exhibited on the way up.

Carla knocked at the door of 57.

Erik answered, looking haggard. “I tried to call. The police—”

“Just talked to them,” said Chris, luxuriating in the advantage. “It’s an edge bust. Nothing to worry about.”

Erik Nyquist’s mouth tightened. “Yes, I forgot,” he said thinly. “A different matter when you’re a member of the elite, isn’t it. When—”

“Dad!”

“Maybe we could come in,” added Chris.

Nyquist gave him a venomous look, but he stood aside, and they filed through into the living room. Behind him, Chris heard the door being locked and bolted. Almost as loud through the cardboard-thin walls of the room, he could hear raised voices from the apartment next door, and what sounded like a baby crying. He glanced around the cramped living space, kept an expression of distaste off his face with an effort, and seated himself gingerly in one of the battered armchairs. He looked up as Nyquist followed Carla into the room.

“Getting on with the neighbors okay?” he asked brightly, nodding toward the noise next door. “Sounds a little below your level of intellectual debate.”

interfering fucking cunt
came leaking through the wall.

Erik looked at him stonily. “He’s a dealer. He’s probably expecting to have his skull caved in by your stormtroopers out there.”

“No danger of that. Their commander told me they’re not working this floor. Want me to go next door and tell him?”

“In those clothes?” Erik sneered. “He’d probably stab you as soon as look at you.”

“He could try.”

“Oh yes, I forgot. I have a professional killer for a son-in-law.”

Chris rolled his eyes and was on his way to his feet when he caught a glare from Carla that stopped him.

“Dad, that’s enough.”

Nyquist looked at his daughter and sighed.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get on with this.”

Chris clapped his hands together, pistol-shot loud. The voices next door stopped abruptly.

“Suits me. So where is Vasvik? Hiding in the toilet?”

Carla made an angry gesture at him. Erik moved to a table loaded with bottles and glasses. His voice was toneless with suppressed anger. He picked up a bottle and studied the label intently.

“Perhaps you’d like to act as if you were civilized for a change, Chris. I’m aware that the strain might be too much, but maybe you should try. This man is a guest in my house, and he, in fact everyone in this room, is taking chances for your benefit.”

“Glem det, Erik.”
Truls Vasvik had appeared in the living room doorway, scruffily dressed and running stubble. He looked tired. “Faulkner’s here to negotiate, just like me. The only favors he owes are to you for getting involved.”

Chris shook his head. “You’re wrong about that, Vasvik. I’m not here to negotiate. I’ve told you what I want and it’s not negotiable. Simple yes or no will do.”

“Well then.” Vasvik dropped into the other armchair, eyes speculative on Chris’s face. “The answer is yes. UNECT will take you. But I’m afraid there’s a catch. A subclause, I guess you’d call it.”

Chris looked up at Carla, whose face had gone from tension to relieved delight to puzzlement in as many seconds. He felt a petty, jeering sense of vindication rising in him.

“What subclause?” he asked.

“You’ll have to wait.” Vasvik was still watching him carefully. “For the extraction, I mean. We will extract you, and you will be paid what you ask. But we need you in place for another three to six months. Until the Cambodia contract has matured.”

“What the—” Chris stopped himself with an effort of will and worked back to the easy confidence he’d come in with. “What the fuck do you know about the Cambodia contract, Vasvik?”

“Probably more than you imagine.” The ombudsman made a dismissive gesture. “But that isn’t really the issue—”

“No,” snapped Chris. “The issue is you’re fucking with me.”

Vasvik smiled faintly. “I don’t believe a time frame was mentioned at any point. What did you think? I would come here and magic you out with one sweep of my UN wand? These things take time, Chris. You have to wait your turn. For a change.”

Pushing.
The realization seeped into Chris’s consciousness, damping down the instinctive anger to an irritated curiosity.
Why’s he pushing me?

The previous meeting in the workshop at Mel’s. Vasvik’s face, hard with distaste.

Personally, Faulkner, I don’t give a shit what happens to you. I think you’re scum. The ethical commerce guys would like to hear what you have, that’s why I’m here, but I’m not a salesman. I don’t have to reel you in to get my name up on some commission board somewhere, and frankly, I have a lot of better things to—

But the ethical commerce guys have sent you back here, haven’t they, Vasvik.
Chris felt the answer light up in his head like an arcade game.
You warned them not to bite, but they overruled you and they sent you back for me, and now you’ve got to swallow that shit whole.

Unless, that is, you can trip me into blowing out the offer of my own accord.

He felt a grin building. The maneuvering room was immense. And at the back of it all he had Notley’s avuncular indulgence spread like dark, protecting wings. He could run Vasvik ragged, grind his bony nose up against his own controllers’ orders to acquire Chris Faulkner at asking price, and even if he pushed the ombudsman over the edge and blew it, he could walk away from the wreckage of the deal.
Fuck
’em if they couldn’t take a joke. He’d stay at Shorn.

“All right.” He sat back and nodded. “Let’s talk about Cambodia then.”

The tension in the room eased. Carla seemed to sag slightly with it, and Chris saw how her hand fell on her father’s shoulder. Erik reached up and clasped it without looking back from the drink he was mixing. Neither of them looked at Chris.

“Good,” said Vasvik. “So. The way we see it at the moment, you’ve got Khieu Sary on the customary long-leash arrangement, nominally acting in line with the accords you all signed up to, but in actual fact pretty much doing what he feels like. Recruiting from the villages that’ll listen to him, burning the ones that won’t. Standard terror tactics. My question is, what are you going to do about the enterprise zones?”

Chris shrugged. “We’ve got an understanding with him about that whole area. Gentleman’s agreement, nothing on paper.”

“I see. Any reason why he should stick to that any more than he’s stuck to the Geneva Convention stuff so far?”

“Yeah. If he doesn’t, we pull the plug on his mobile cover. Ever tried coordinating a guerrilla war by landline?”

Erik Nyquist leaned over and handed Vasvik a tall glass. There was a conspicuous lack of a drink in his other hand as he turned to look at Chris, and a familiar anger rising on his face.

“Very neat,” Vasvik said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, because that kind of thing
matters,
doesn’t it, Chris? Can’t have some first-world sportswear manufacturer losing productivity, can we.”

Chris sighed.

“Erik, you still got any of that Ardbeg nonchill filtered I bought you for your birthday?”

“No.”

“Oh. Can I get some of that cheap blended stuff you like, then?”

Erik’s right arm twitched at his side. Chris saw the fist knot up. Then Vasvik murmured something in Norwegian, and the older man stopped himself.

“Get your own fucking drink,” he said and stalked across to the window. The police lights outside pricked the blue in his eyes as he stared downward. Chris shrugged, pulled a face at Vasvik, and rose to follow his father-in-law’s advice. Carla turned away from him as he got there. She disappeared into the kitchen, arms wrapped around herself. Chris shrugged again. It was a view he was getting used to. He selected a clean glass and a bottle from the table, poured four fingers of something apparently called Clan Scott.

“I don’t see where you’re going with this, Vasvik,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s standard CI operating procedure. Protect the foreign capital base at all costs. Sary understands that, like all the rest of these toy revolutionaries.”

“And presumably you have informed those with interests in the EZs that this is the state of play.”

“Yeah, sure. Most of them are buying their protection through our reinsurance arm anyway.” Chris sniffed dubiously at the scotch and took it back to his armchair. “Why?”

“Did you know that Nakamura are modeling for a military coup against the Cambodian government?”

“No.” Chris swallowed some of his drink and grimaced. Next door the shouting seemed to be starting up again. “But it doesn’t surprise me. With Acropolitic still holding the official advisory angle, it’d be their only chance of carving themselves a slice of the action. Our indesp guys should bring it in before they make any substantial moves.”

“Industrial espionage might give you backroom detail on the models, but it won’t help you on the ground. What are you going to do if it looks like Nakamura can get the Cambodian army to do what they want?”

Chris shrugged. “Call Langley, I suppose. Have the relevant uniforms capped at home.”

At the window, Erik Nyquist made a noise in his throat. Chris glanced across at him.

“Hey, I’m sorry if that upsets your sensibilities, Erik. But this is the way the world is run.”

“Yes. I know that.”

fucking bastard
screamed the woman next door. The baby was crying again.