Incitement (34 page)

If there could have been another way, he would have accepted it eagerly. If only she had not come to suspect Wallace. At the start, he had only wanted to get close to her to keep watch on how
she was doing with her investigation. He could feed her a little misinformation, ensure she was steered away from anything too dangerous. Then that fool Brewer had fucked up by using Kates, and the
shootout with Abeylan resulted. After that, he had to do something more to gain her confidence. Showing her some support when everyone else failed her seemed to be the obvious way.

But it had changed at some point. She had started to mean something to him. Or that’s what he thought had happened. He had been leading this life for so long that sometimes even he
wasn’t sure where the charade ended and reality begun. He remonstrated with himself to be truthful. It had been clear that it might come to this. He had used all her vulnerabilities to ensure
he was optimally positioned. He had tailored himself to fill all the gaps, every emotional weakness in her life. Part of him protested at the thought and the self-loathing that came with it. The
same part that had vaguely imagined some future with her after the mission had come to a successful conclusion.

He snapped himself out of it, remembering there was still work to do. Difficult work, necessary work which he had to see to. Later there would be time enough for this self-indulgence.

He closed his mind to all thoughts of her and turned his attention to the matter of Madrigal’s displacement.

They drove over 300 miles to make it by morning.

Between the long trek and the ordeal of the previous night, she should have been exhausted, but the reverberations of what had occurred had left her in a trance-like state. She had tried to pick
holes in her conclusion that Tom had been the one who had intended her to be killed. She desperately wanted to believe she was wrong and that what they had shared had been real. In the end, though,
she had accepted the truth. Each time she began the process of trying to construct a plausible alternative, she had revisited the intimacy they had shared and the pain grew. A small part of her,
the rational part to which she was just barely holding on, appreciated how he had played on her weaknesses, how her desperate need for an ally had made it so easy for him.

Larsen, which she had learned was her companion’s name at some point or other during the night, had insisted they needed to see Wallace as soon as possible. She had been so preoccupied
that his explanation as to why this was necessary hardly registered. Wallace had been in Washington the previous night as it turned out and when Larsen contacted him, they had agreed to meet at a
property he owned in Charleston. The location was close enough for them to drive and afforded more security than DC. When they had arrived at his estate, they were informed that he was expected
presently and shown to a reception room to wait.

They both sank into deep armchairs and waited in silence.

When Wallace arrived forty minutes later, Mesi was taken aback. When she had been researching him, she had come across numerous archived photographs. The consistent impression had been of a man
who still possessed an enormous amount of charisma and vitality despite his age. There had been a palpable sense of power emanating from the images and she had considered him some kind of
latter-day Caesar. In the flesh, he was far thinner than even the most recent pictures and looked tired. He approached Larsen, who remained seated, then slowed and halted a few paces away, his
awkwardness evident.

“Until yesterday, I’d thought you were dead.”

“Almost.”

He nodded.

“I had no way of finding you ... Brewer ...”

Wallace hesitated and looked at Mesi. Larsen had mentioned her when he had called and said they would be able to talk freely as she knew virtually everything anyway. It had occurred to him that
the mercenary might have turned and needed him to incriminate himself but he had decided that if this was the case, it was nothing more than he deserved. The way he had deserted Larsen justified
any subsequent betrayal.

“We need to discuss how we’re going to fix things,” Larsen said.

“In what way?” He spread his hands and Mesi could see he wasn’t sure what Larsen meant.

“We were infiltrated, I suspect from the start,” explained Larsen. “We’ll probably never be able to ask him but I’m certain it was Brewer, there aren’t really
any other candidates.”

Mesi watched Wallace struggle to digest what he was being told. His lack of acknowledgement at her presence angered her. Thoughts of Tom receded for the moment. The man ultimately responsible
for everything that had occupied her since Mexico was standing right in front of her.

“What are you talking about?” he asked Larsen.

“In the last few months, you’d started to worry about the knock-on effects of what we were doing. I dismissed them as the noises of someone losing their stomach for what was
necessary,” Larsen replied. “But since Cartagena, I’ve gone back over it. The longer I spent, the more I saw how valid your concerns were. What looked, at first, to be merely a
coincidence or two, started to seem deliberate.”

“No, you’re wrong. We tried to do too much. It simply couldn’t work. There were too many variables outside our control. There was no deliberate sabotage!”

She could see that despite his words he was experiencing the same mounting sense of apprehension she had gone through herself only the previous night.

“I’ll explain the ‘why’ in a moment,” Larsen continued, as if Wallace had not even spoken. “As far as ‘how’ goes, in hindsight, Brewer had too
much influence, acting as he did as the conduit between us. I should’ve seen that.”

“You’re wrong; Brewer did precisely what he was told, no more, no less. He followed directions,” Wallace protested.

“That’s not so. He worked with you from the start, refining your original vision, and he collaborated with me on individual missions. He had a significant say in the methods we used
and the schedule we followed. It’s easy now to see how he used that to maximum effect; to subvert the entire project. I underestimated him.” Larsen’s annoyance with himself was
evident. “Really, when you consider it, he had the most effective position – he was so involved, interacted so much with both of us, that we never thought to suspect him.”

“How could he, the two of us were there every step of the way?”

“I was always primarily focused on the next task to hand and you were only too happy to defer to him because it gave you a comfortable distance. Think about it, how often would he suggest
a small, plausible alteration which you just accepted?”

Wallace tried to interrupt but Larsen held up a hand cutting him off.

“If he had done anything drastic we’d have noticed, but he was careful. The cumulative effect of all his inputs, though, of all his minor suggestions, was to render it as much his
creation as yours. Or rather that of whoever was pulling his strings.”

“You’re saying he was working for someone else?”

“Only because this goes way beyond Brewer’s capabilities. I’d say he brought your proposal to someone almost as soon as you’d finished your initial approach.”

“What do you base that on?”

“Hindsight. It was naive to believe he’d go along, considering his vested interests and allegiances in Latin America. What you were proposing would have shattered the status quo and
thrown all that into jeopardy.”

“You’re sure about this?” was all Wallace could manage while he tried to keep up with what he was being told.

“I’m sure I was set up. Who else could it be? I did briefly consider the possibility that you might’ve sold me out, that you had asked for someone to help bail you
out.”

Wallace stared to protest.

“It’s okay, I know that wasn’t it. Wider events consistently fell a particular way, moving towards an outcome which you’d never have condoned. Of course, the smart thing
to do, once I’d seen that, would have been to walk away, instead here we are. Stupid.”

Mesi could see that Wallace was struggling with the same problems she and Larsen had. As difficult as it had been for her to get her head around the breadth of the impact of Hughes’
subversion of Wallace’s plan, it would be even more difficult for Wallace himself. As the initiator of the strategy and suspecting what she did of his motivation, the hardest part would
surely have been the suffering the conflict had caused to innocents. Wallace must have expected some collateral damage but would he view these revelations as a way of trying to absolve himself of
some of the responsibility?

“You know,” the Dane continued. “It only occurred to me recently that the two of us watched one unintended legacy of the initiative. We even discussed it in passing but we
never thought to question it.”

Mesi could see Wallace trying to figure it out and Larsen deliberately letting the other man do the work himself. She guessed it would be easier to convince Wallace that way.

“Were we used to destabilise Plan Coca?” Wallace asked hesitatingly.

“Among other things.”

“What other things?” he asked, his fear evident.

“The combined effect of the Plan and what we did was used to reconstruct the power structure within the Colombian drug industry. The ELN and FARC have been almost wiped out.”

“That’s hardly a travesty; it was one of the Plan’s aims!” Wallace interrupted, his voice strained.

“Plan Coca’s official remit stated one of its main objectives as wresting control of the drug-producing territories from the Marxist rebels. Without these territories, the rebels
would have found it impossible to survive,” the Dane replied calmly.

“Precisely,” Wallace shot back.

“But it wasn’t intended for seventy per cent of the rebels to be murdered by death squads. And it certainly wasn’t part of Plan Coca’s remit for the territories to be
then handed over to these same death squads, so that they could resume production.”

“How could what we were doing have had any bearing on that?”

“We cut off the rebels’ cash-flow. We hurt the cartels so badly that they couldn’t or weren’t willing to extend the money that the rebels needed to fight back
effectively.”

“So we helped replace one element with another? That’s not something to be pleased about, but ultimately I can’t feel too much grief for the rebels. They made a living off the
drug crops for years, at innocent people’s expense.”

During the exchange Mesi’s anger had been building and with Wallace’s last rationalisation it skyrocketed. His conceit was beyond belief. Some of what Larsen was saying was new to
her but she believed him. It all tied in and it was clear the mercenary derived no satisfaction from any of it. He was explaining what he believed to be the hard truth and all Wallace was concerned
with was mitigating his own culpability.

“The territories were only the first part of a chain,” Larsen continued. “The next objective was to seize control of the Alliance from an uncooperative leader. Everything else,
from due process to straightforward assassination attempts, had failed, so, there was only one alternative left.”

“Weaken the Alliance to the point where Madrigal is undermined,” Mesi cut in, “to the point where he’s ready to be forced out. Of course, it requires that a more suitable
replacement be standing by.”

“Considering everything else they’ve achieved, that’s got to be comparatively easy,” Larsen offered.

“You’re crazy. No one could have arranged all that, tied it all together,” Wallace argued.

Mesi guessed Wallace was starting to believe otherwise, despite his protestations.

“Someone could and someone did. Ask yourself why I’d lie. If I wanted something from you, there are easier ways.”

The matter-of-fact tone of Larsen’s declaration completed the process. Wallace sunk down slowly onto a couch. Mesi saw the progression from bewilderment to slow recognition and finally
despair. He looked old and frail sitting there, trying to come to terms with it all.

“That’s it,” Larsen concluded. “Control of the crops, the apparatus to produce and ship the refined drugs, all combined with the elimination of any threat from further US
military intervention. Get ready for a drugs boom that’s going to make what went before pale in comparison.”