Doing Dangerously Well (17 page)

He hit speed-dial. “Hey, Beano!”

“Johnno! If you want to ask me for a date, just come right out with it!”

“Too shy. That’s my problem. I prefer stalking. Anyhoos, just wanted to be the first to congratulate you. The Big Cheese has agreed to hire you. As usual, he’s made sure duties overlap—you’re dangerously close to Glass’s region in the sub-Sahara because, as you know, sands do tend to shift.” An easy chuckle slid out. “Got time to come to my place, as they say?’

“I’ll check my little black book. Hmm. Gotta bit of time right now. I could slip you in.” A snort.

Sinclair could hear the dimples. He stood up to survey the landscape he detested, bleak scrubland hostile to human dominance, now plastered with snow. Downwards, towards the city, dreary, desiccated bushes poked through the cluster of adobe houses. The buildings’ dried clay architecture only reminded him of the region’s lack of moisture—his head swirled with dreams of an oceanside villa, the reassuring lull of waves on the shore.

Beano vaulted into the office as if his sneakers had coils in them. He looked like he had just come off a skateboard—younger by the day.

Sinclair affected an avuncular tone. “This is the big one. So don’t underestimate Glass. Behind that bland facade lurk hormones from the very depths of hell.”

“Really? Could hell be that drab?”

“Playing insipid puts her under the radar—great strategy. And she’s placed the mantle on a king of her choosing, in whatever they wear over there.”

“I think it’s leopard skin, John.”

Why were the second generation of the world’s achievers always the idiots? Two worries surfaced simultaneously in Sinclair’s mind: that they had kept Beano back in Sewage for a reason, and that he would have to wipe up after the boy. “A mediocrity like her has helped oust an entire government,” he explained.

“Yeah, but I hear they’re all but illiterate.”

“Well, let’s put it this way, Beano, someone apparently downright incompetent has persuaded TransAqua to part with unheard-of levels of kickbacks.”

Beano scraped a flop of hair and held it in place, thinking. “That’s not very savvy. She’ll have to keep paying. Does she know that?” He looked neat, yet he wore jeans and no tie.
What was Beano’s secret? His uncommonly straight legs? His artless protegé continued. “Is it sex appeal? I mean, she’s got none, right? Am I mistaken? Is the great ship Mary, uh, docking onto Cheeseman, so to speak?”

Sinclair perched on his desk and gestured for Beano to sit. “Listen, she’s got the Niger River project all but signed. It’s the most powerful country in Africa! It’s got a consumer base of almost 180 million.”

“Hey, they’re in desperate need. All she’d have to do is remember their phone number. How difficult is that?”

Displeased, Sinclair cleared his throat. “These deals are more difficult than you might appreciate. Despite her hysteria-induced achievements, Beano, you may have noticed that Mary has yet to meet Kolo. You have to be in this game for a while to realize something’s up. Two months since she first contacted him, one month since he became president. It never takes that long to arrange a meeting that his presidency depends on. Is she going to go straight from phone calls to signing a contract?”

“Can the guy write?”

With escalating irritation, Sinclair skidded into sarcasm. “An X or a thumbprint would still meet requirements.” This elicited some juvenile tittering, and Sinclair realized Beano had been kidding. Perhaps joking all along? “I don’t know why Cheeseman’s swallowing it. Must have other things on his mind.”

“What d’you think’s going wrong?”

“Competitive offers from the French. No backup from his own government. Staving off another coup. Who knows?”

“I don’t know if it’ll help,” Beano offered a shrug of impotence, “but I can ring Dad and see how the land lies. He’d tell you the best people to deal with.”

A quick worker, Beano had already proved useful. After the ambassador called, an idea popped into Sinclair’s mind. Interesting. Perhaps it might work. What harm could there be in trying?

He dialled 8 for an outside line, plus 011 for international, then 234 for Nigeria.

Following a long, enlightening conversation, he shut down his password-protected files, locked his cabinet, then headed to the weekly meeting with Cheeseman, settling into a chair opposite Mary so that he could keep an eye on her. Beano entered with a wink. Everyone cracked open their bottles of water—something to suck on during the forthcoming ordeal.

After an uncomfortable ten-minute wait, Cheeseman appeared, tufts of unruly chest hair poking out of his denim shirt. Why did the man not have the dignity to wax? And his pants were hitched so high, it looked as if his balls had been sliced in half. Sinclair shuddered as a dense concentration of fear punched the pit of his stomach—an emotion only Cheeseman could prompt, despite the fact that Sinclair knew that even Cheeseman was expendable. No one quite knew who maintained the tank; it appeared to be a self-generating system.

The boss sat down and spread his legs wide. “First of all, I wanna welcome Mr. Bates to the team. He’ll be working on Acquisitions Sahara and Sub-Sahara.”

A round of applause. Mary paled, an act that accentuated her blue veins. She forced out The Slash, then whipped it back into its impassive shelter, challenging anyone to identify the underlying panic.

“Now, Mr. Bates, water is a diminishing, finite resource—most people don’t know that. They look at the oceans and think, “That’s water.” Well, it’s not. It’s brine. We don’t deal in brine. No one drinks brine. Taking salt out of brine is very expensive, and then you have to figure where to dump the salt, right?”

“Right.” Hair fell into Beano’s eyes, but he did not even blink. He simply sent forth a boyish smile in Cheeseman’s direction.

“But it’s pretty useful for us that yer average Joe thinks he can drink it.”

“Sure is.”

Mary could tell that the hair was stinging Beano’s eyeballs. Still he did not blink. A mere boy. An adolescent simpleton. Why would Sinclair want him?

Cheeseman leaned back in his chair. “We deal in water—stuff you find in aquifers, in the mountains, in streams and rivers. Water, Mr. Bates, is the oil of the twenty-first century. Wars will be fought over it. What the hell, the world is already fighting over it. TransAqua plans to own it. And I mean own. Licences and rights. We’re gonna be the ones controlling it and how much money it’s sold for.”

“Blue gold, as they say, Mr. Cheeseman, blue gold.”

“Exactly. You get my point. So we’re making sure that international trade agreements define water as a commodity, not as a human right as some tie-dyed Y-front-wearing hippies are demanding.”

“You mean the Senate and Congress?” Beano blushed into another smile.

Sinclair cackled.

Cheeseman rocked back and punched out a concession of laughter. “That’s great—gotta tell the boys that one.”

Beano finally managed to whip the hair out of his eyes.

“Okay,” Cheeseman slapped a hand on the table. “Glass—update.”

“All going well,” Mary replied with a strained smile, her thin lips disappearing entirely. “Kolo has agreed to sell the entire length of the Niger, but in exchange he wants us to insist he rename it. And he’s after the biggest dam in the world.”

“What?” Sinclair blurted. “Is he crazy?”

“He’s looking for over twenty thousand megawatts.” She flicked her pen in circles on her index finger as she talked. A neat trick. Sinclair stared at it, wondering whether there were any hit men for hire in Santa Fe.

“What’s the cost?” Beano asked.

“Over $30 billion,” she replied, looking at Cheeseman rather than Beano. “They’d get World Bank financing, but we’d need to pitch in. We’d own most of the power supply to West Africa.”

Sinclair felt his chest constrict, as if he had swallowed an entire handful of peanuts and triggered full-blown anaphylactic shock. His life expectancy at TransAqua had probably just been reduced to hours. Beano whistled through his teeth, making Sinclair unaccountably jealous. He had recruited him; it was to him that Beano’s adulation should be directed.

Cheeseman tried to shove his hands in his pockets. Only the tips of his fingers made it. “Okay. We need a dedicated meeting. Two o’clock tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir,” Mary replied, two miniscule circles of blush on her angled cheekbones.

“Good girl. Round of applause fer Glass.”

The whole room clapped, but only the associates smiled.

“Now, Sinclair. What’ve y’all been up to?”

There was nothing to lose at this point in the game, and he had an inexperienced devotee to impress. Sinclair lounged back in his chair. “Just been getting inside information on Kolo.
He won’t last long, I’m afraid. General Abucha is planning a coup. He’s willing to talk about rights to the Niger too, but plans to build a much smaller dam. Less outlay for us. I think he’s worth pursuing. Cost us less in the end.”

Mary accidentally flicked the pen off her finger.

“Who told you this?” Cheeseman asked.

“I’ve been speaking to Abucha himself.”

“Well, that kinda shit’s gonna block the drain, don’cha think?” Cheeseman fingered the eagle on his sterling silver bolo tie.

“Not really. A bird in the hand is worth two …” he winked at Beano, “… in the bush. I’m happy for Ms. Glass to pursue the Kolo angle. I’ll follow Abucha. Either way, we get the rights.”

“Excellent! Excellent, Sinclair. Well done.”

He started to clap and the rest of the directors followed in thunderous acclaim.

Cheeseman then turned to the numbers. “This chart shows our projections for this month.”

Details, details. Sinclair’s attention drifted to the pinpricks that represented Mary’s breasts.

Cheeseman spoke softly. “Maybe one day Mr. Sinclair will pay less attention to his colleague’s projections and more attention to
these
!” Cheeseman banged the chart.

Sinclair’s scrotum shrivelled in fright.

A wash of pink fanned around the angles of Mary’s face.

After the meeting, Mary sped from the boardroom, cold rage freezing her blood as it pulsed through her fat-free body. She slammed her door and hit the tenth memory button on her phone. She had no intention of letting the slug Sinclair put her future in jeopardy.

“Good evening. Residence of the president.”

“Hi. It’s Mary Glass, TransAqua.”

“Yes. Just a minute,” the voice trailed off, “just a minute, just a minute” until it diminished into silence.

Five minutes later, another voice answered the phone. “Hello, Ms. Glass. I meant to thank you for the box of chocolates. How can I help you?” Kolo was sucking again.

“I’ve just heard some bad news. Abucha is planning a coup.”

“What?” he coughed. “That’s not possible.”

“It is. He’s been speaking to a colleague about rebuilding Kainji.”

“Who did he speak to?”

“John Sinclair. This morning.” She bit some skin off her thin lip.

“This is very serious.”

“Mr. President, with all due respect, I would highly recommend that you deal with Abucha.”

“I’ll do no such thing, Ms. Glass.” Kolo put down the phone.

A cold, venomous rage froze the blood in every vein of her Type A constitution. After all she had suffered at TransAqua, with twice the barriers he faced, and this so-called politician could not even rouse himself to action!

For Africa, this was the deal of the century. And if TransAqua managed to obtain rights to such a prime piece of fluid real estate, the rewards would be immediate. They would, to all intents and purposes, own Nigeria, as they would proceed to own India through the Ganges and Egypt via the Nile. For Mary, there would be the final and lasting approbation. And this deal was about to slip through Mary’s spider fingers.

Two agonizing days passed with Mary fossilized into inaction. Then she noticed an interruption to the looped broadcast on TV Afrique that played constantly in her office. Reports were flooding in of the unfortunate death of General Abucha in a car accident. The car had exploded after impact, leaving little trace of his or his driver’s remains. Kolo, in tears and wearing a black armband on his golden dashiki, declared a national day of
mourning for his dear friend. He looked heartbroken, his rash flaring red from sorrow.

Watching the lucent images felt unsettling, as if she were diving into her own psyche. This man had adopted a veneer of composure, a glossy coating. Like her, he had to construct an outer shell that, to others, seemed believable. Mary knew much more lay underneath. She did not know, however, what experiences had driven him to such highly polished performances.

Sinclair smiled as he read about Abucha’s death on the Internet. Glass had fallen for the bait. The president would no longer have the general’s vital military support, leaving him vulnerable. He dialled 8 on his personal cellphone, then
011,
followed by 234 for Nigeria.

“Office of the minister for the environment,” a female voice announced with pride.

“Hello. Nkemba, isn’t it? What a pretty name. How are you? I bet all the men love that name.”

“Oh, Mr. Sinclair. I’m fine, sir. Thank you, sir. Fine. And you? How are you also?”