Lords of Corruption (16 page)

"The pump you fixed! It's working great."

"I guess you're going to have to take back all the horrible things you've said about me."

"We'll see."

She squinted through the windshield o
f h
is vehicle, probably looking for Flannary. "So why do I have the pleasure of your visit, Josh?"

It was a good question. He should have been hiding out in the compound's pool, drinking heavily and figuring out what he was going to do with his life.

"I needed to talk to you. And to ask a little favor."

"It seems that I owe you. What do you want to talk about?"

"Is it true that the ownership of the land my project is on is disputed by the people working there?"

"Did JB tell you that?"

"Does it matter?"

She thought for a moment before speaking. "It's true."

"So the project was never going to work?" She started toward the church, waving for him to follow. "Let's go sit down."

They didn't actually enter the building but instead went around back, passing through a rickety gate into an oasis carved from trees hung with fruit he couldn't identify. Large, carefully placed rocks gave it a Japanese feel, though the metal table in the middle was more Italian. She gestured for him to wait and disappeared through the back door of the church. He sat gingerl
y i
n one of the chairs, noticing that, despite the meticulous paint job, it was about
. R
eady to collapse.

"It doesn't make it easier, though," Annika said when she reemerged.

"Doesn't make what easier?"

"Watching something that was so hard to build, so important, be destroyed. It's always in the back of your mind here -- that something it took hundreds of people years to build can be destroyed by a few people in minutes. And often for no reason at all."

"Do you think that's going to happen to you?" he said.

She didn't answer, instead ceremoniously unwrapping a small piece of chocolate, breaking it in half, and holding one of the pieces out to him. "Here. This will make you feel better."

The way she was handling it made it obvious how rare and precious it was to her. "No, I can't accept that."

"Of course you can. It's just a little piece. I'm afraid that's all you get for your project burning."

He accepted the candy reluctantly, popping it into his mouth and licking the residue off his sweating palm. "What would have to happen for me to get a big piece?"

"Oh, you should hope you never deserv
e a
big piece. Sometimes you don't survive big-piece days."

She chewed slowly, savoring the chocolate for the treasure it was.

"So you never answered my question," Josh said.

"Do I think the same thing could happen to me?" She frowned subtly. "It's becoming more dangerous for us. Our crops have done well, and we've been able to sell some on the open market. That's drawing the attention of the government."

"Why would the government have a problem with you selling your crops? Isn't that what you're supposed to do with them?"

She swallowed and ran a tongue across her teeth, making sure she didn't miss anything. "In one way or another, the government -- and by that I mean Mtiti --controls all the food the aid agencies bring into the country. In fact, the main job of his agriculture minister is to get his hands on it and sell it or give it to Mtiti's supporters. Successful local agriculture throws a, uh, hammer into their machine."

"Wrench."

She screwed up her face in an expression that was impossibly endearing. "Yes, of course. A wrench. You can imagine how this could lower the prices they can get fro
m t
heir stolen food and how it could feed people they want to stay hungry."

He shook his head miserably.

"What?"

"Why do you do it, Annika? How do you keep going?"

"I believe that things can be better. I believe that God wants us to help people who haven't been as lucky."

"I guess. But it seems like Jesus had the good sense to split two thousand years ago."

"You sound just like .113. Africa is a very hard place. Everything can disappear in a moment. Violence is always just under the surface. And no matter how long you're here, you'll always be an outsider. But still you came. You're trying to help. So you must understand."

"Not for much longer."

"What do you mean?"

"I quit yesterday. I'm just waiting for a flight out."

There was a flash of something in her expression that looked like sadness, but he decided that he was just projecting.

"I'm sorry about that, Josh. I think you could have helped a lot of people here."

"That's what I thought, too. But now I know I was just fooling myself."

She nodded sympathetically. "You menti
o
ned a favor before. What is it?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his MP3 player. "I recorded some people talking yesterday. I was wondering if you could tell me what they're saying."

She accepted the player and turned it over in her hands, staring down at it. "If you're leaving, why all the questions? Why this?"

"I have some problems with my family at home," he said. "It's not something I can deal with from here. But before I leave, maybe there are some things I can set straight. I'd like to leave something more positive than a bunch of burned corn and melted irrigation equipment."

Chapter
19.

Josh glanced over his shoulder as the sun made its way to the horizon. The confused faces staring at him from the edges of the dirt track were receding more and more into shadow, giving his surroundings an increasingly menacing feel. Ahead, the refugee camp's roads narrowed further, forcing him to stop.

A boy of about twelve watched fascinated from the doorway of a house constructed primarily of mud, and Josh motioned him over. "Tfmena? Do you know him? I'm looking for Tfmena Llengambi."

The boy just shook his head, so Josh pointed to his Land Cruiser and pressed a five-dollar bill into the kid's hand. "Can you watch that for me?"

The boy nodded excitedly and climbed up onto the hood, making a show of scanning for ne'er-do-wells. Josh started up the road on foot, certain he'd never see th
e v
ehicle again.

The narrow street turned to a path, and now the ramshackle houses and tiny stores all selling the same things were only a few feet to either side of him. People and cows pushed past, always staring but not otherwise acknowledging his presence. When a plump older woman in traditional dress smiled at him, he seized the opportunity.

"Tfmena?"

She stopped and tilted her head slightly. "Tfmena Llengambi?"

"Yes! That's right. Tfmena Llengambi."

At best he had hoped that she would point him in the right direction, but instead she motioned for him to follow and led him deeper into the chaotic maze of the refugee camp. After five minutes of walking silently behind her, the initial relief he'd felt started to wane. His sense of direction had completely abandoned him, and it was now fully night. This woman could have been taking him anywhere.

He was about to turn around and take his chances finding his way out when she suddenly stopped and pointed to a small dwelling with a door fashioned from a faded Pepsi sign. She gave a short bow before waddling back the way they had come.

"Thank you!" Josh called after her, bu
t s
he didn't acknowledge it. He knocked hesitantly on the door and waited. An eye appeared in a crack about waist high, and Josh crouched. "Hey, there. Is Tfmena here?"

The eye widened in fear and disappeared. He heard the panicked shouts of a young girl followed by the soft padding of feet on dirt.

The woman who answered had a similar style of dress as the one who had led him there, but she was quite a bit younger and rail thin.

"Tfmena Llengambi?"

She leaned through the door to see who was watching and then pulled him inside.

The interior was probably ten degrees hotter than it was outside, lit by a single kerosene lamp and smelling of damp earth. He was starting to wonder where the hell he was when Tfmena entered through a door at the back.

"Why are you here?"

His expression conveyed the same calm dignity it always did but couldn't hide his surprise at finding Josh on his doorstep.

"You and your family have to get out of here. Right now."

"What? I don't understand what you're saying to me."

"I want you to listen to this," Josh said, handing his MP3 player to Tfmena and helping him with the earphones.

Annika had struggled to translate the voices on the poor recording, but after four listenings she'd gotten the general gist: Now that the project was destroyed, there was no reason Tfmena and his family couldn't be murdered and the payment for performing that assassination couldn't be collected.

Judging by Tfmena's expression, her translation was dead-on. The African finally pushed the stop button and handed the recorder back to Josh before taking a seat on a low bench that was the only furniture in the room.

"You must think we are a very strange people."

It was peculiar how out of place the man seemed there, on the dirt floor with old magazine clippings serving as artwork on the walls. It was hard not to wonder what someone like him could have become if he'd been born under different circumstances.

"I don't suppose it matters what I think."

"When you came to us, I would have agreed. But now I think you may be a man with . . ." Tfmena's voice trailed off while he tried to retrieve the correct word. "Weight."

"I appreciate that. Coming from you, it really means something. But shouldn't you be getting --"

Tfmena waved a hand dismissively. Whether he knew something Josh didn't or it was just that irritating African fatalism was impossible to discern.

"We've lived this way for a long time. And for a long time it was good. The tribes, the big families. These protected us against Africa. Because this is a place that always wants to kill you. It does this with droughts, with floods, and with sickness. But the whites came, and the world changed. Now the things that once protected us kill us."

"The world changes faster and faster," Josh said. "Sometimes it's hard to keep up."

"This thing is much more difficult than you can understand, Josh. There are many people who want many different things."

"Like who?"

Tfmena smiled. "I wonder if this is something you want to be a part of. No one will win. Not in my lifetime. Not even in yours."

Josh glanced back at the dark cracks around the door, trying to discern movement -- evidence that the men he'd recorded were outside sharpening their machetes. There was nothing, though. He pulled what little money he had from his

pocket and held it out to the man. "I want you to have this. To help you get your family away."

Tfmena shook his head. "I saved you. And now you've saved me. You owe me nothing."

Josh set the cash on the shelf holding the lamp. "Then pay me back someday."

Chapter
20.

The main road was blocked by an armored vehicle, forcing Josh to turn onto a side street and once again recalculate his path.

He barely recognized the capital city he'd driven through when he'd first arrived. Illumination was provided by fires built in rusting oil drums, occasional bare bulbs hanging from wires, and a few brightly lit and heavily barricaded storefronts. The women and children darting about were gone, too, replaced by young men talking and drinking on street corners. When he passed, they always fell silent.

Unwilling to stop at a crossroad, he gunned the vehicle through it and aimed at a dull glow hanging over the east side of town. The powerful security lights made the capital's high-rent district look a little like Oz. Now if he could just find the yellow-brick road.

After fifteen more stifling minutes in th
e c
losed-up Land Cruiser, the dirt road turned to pavement, and idle men were replaced by neatly kept trees. Razor wire gleamed atop fences that allowed only brief glimpses of the colonial mansions behind them.

Josh pulled up to a small guardhouse and rolled down the window, happy to feel the damp breeze again.

"I'm here to see Stephen Trent," he said, squinting as a uniformed man approached him and shined a flashlight in his face.

"There are no visitors tonight. Come back tomorrow."

"Could you tell him Josh Hagarty is here? It's important."

The man scowled before walking back into the guardhouse. A few moments later, the gate began to swing open.

Josh eased the vehicle across the cobbled courtyard and parked in front of a house that was impressive by any standard probably five thousand square feet of white stucco, Roman-style columns, and cathedral-like windows.

"Josh, what the hell are you doing here?" Stephen Trent said, coming out onto the wraparound porch wearing wrinkled slacks and an untucked linen shirt that suggested Josh had gotten him out of bed.