LORDS OF CORRUPTION
Kyle Mills
Vanguard Press
Thriller
ISBN: 9781593154998
From Chapter 2
“I’m Stephen Trent. I ride herd over this rabble.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Trent. I really appreciate you inviting me up here.”
“Stephen. And I appreciate you taking the time to talk to a little charity like us. We know you must have big-money offers coming in from all over the country, but I think we might be able to offer you something unique.”
The crowd quietly scattered before any further introductions could be made, and Trent led Josh through a narrow hallway toward the back of the building. The walls were lined with photographs of happy Africans in agricultural settings --- sometimes working, sometimes posed with their arms around each other, sometimes in large groups with Trent’s relatively pale face hovering near the center. The last picture before they entered the door at the back depicted Trent shaking hands with a sturdy African man in a military uniform. President Umboto Mtiti, Josh knew from last night’s African charity cram session.
“Have a seat,” Trent said, pointing to a comfortable-looking leather chair. Josh did as he was told, and Trent took the chair next to him instead of going behind the imposing desk that dominated the room. “I assume you’ve done some research on us?”
“I have, but there wasn’t much time, so I wouldn’t say I’m an expert.”
Trent nodded. “We’re a small, focused charity, and we like it that way. Our donors are sophisticated enough to understand that Africa is too complicated a place to fix with strategies that can be summed up in a sound bite. How much do you know about foreign aid, Josh?”
“Only what I’ve read. I don’t have any direct experience.”
Trent didn’t seem concerned. “Foreign governments and aid agencies have been pouring money and people into Africa for decades. And if you criticize them, they’ll hit you with a bunch of excuses: This or that project didn’t work out because of this or that extenuating circumstance. It’s ridiculous if you think about it. Do you know why?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t. Why would you? It’s because there’s always an extenuating circumstance. And if there’s always an extenuating circumstance...” He paused, obviously wanting Josh to finish the thought.
“Then it’s not an extenuating circumstance?”
“Exactly!” Trent slapped the arm of his chair loudly. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Josh. If you ever become a millionaire and someone comes to you looking for aid money for Africa, ask them to take you on a tour of their projects.”
Josh tried to appear thoughtful, but mostly he was thankful that Trent was content to do most of the talking.
“But when you get there,” Trent continued, warming up to his subject, “tell them you only want to see projects that are at least ten years old. Then watch them scramble.”
“But the newspaper articles I could find on NewAfrica have been pretty complimentary,” Josh said. “They say you’ve been pretty effective.”
“Yes! But it’s because we’re different. Some people think we’re hard-asses, but if we think a project isn’t going to be productive in the long term, we won’t touch it.”
“And other agencies will?”
“Hell, yes. Look, don’t get me wrong. They all have good intentions. But after they’ve hired a bunch of people, put infrastructure in place, and started a donation campaign built around this project or that, it gets pretty hard to just pull the plug.”
“Everyone would be out of a job,” Josh said. “And they’d have to tell the donors that their money had been wasted.”
“Precisely.” Trent leaned back in his chair and examined Josh for a moment. “Have you ever been involved in charity work?”
It was a question that Trent almost certainly already knew the answer to. Josh had thought about it from every possible angle, but he had nothing to work with. He’d never even been in the Boy Scouts.
“I haven’t, Stephen. But I’ve been around it. I grew up in a pretty poor area of the South.”
Trent nodded but didn’t immediately respond. “Okay, then. Let me ask you this: Have you ever been the recipient of charity?”
With his ritual of meticulous preparation, Josh had never been surprised by an interview question, and that left him with no canned reaction when it finally happened. He felt his mouth tighten, and he ran his tongue slowly over his teeth, trying to decide if he should be pissed off and what he should say.
“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want, Josh.”
“No, it’s okay. The answer is yes. I have.”
Trent jabbed a finger in his direction. “You see? That’s a unique perspective that no one here --- not me, not anyone --- has. It’s the kind of diversity that I believe can help make this organization even more effective. I mean, in a way, you’re the model of what we want for the Africans. You started poor and disadvantaged, and you overcame that.”
“I would hope that I could bring something useful to New- Africa, Stephen. But I’m not sure I have any secrets.” Trent grinned. “I’m having a hard time reading you, Josh. You seem a little reticent. Is it because of the way we snuck up on you or because you wouldn’t take a job with a charity if someone put a gun to your head?”
Another surprise question, though it shouldn’t have been. He’d been playing this interview like a politician, figuring that the less he said, the less could be held against him. But what else could he do? He sure as hell wasn’t the rich goody-two-shoes that he imagined charities went for. He wasn’t looking for adventure before returning to the country club and going to work for Daddy’s company. He didn’t need to find himself, and frankly, he’d always been so concerned with his own family that he’d never had time to worry about anyone else’s.
“That brings up an interesting point, Stephen. How exactly did you find me?”
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know. Something to do with Internet databases and search parameters. I tell a company that specializes in these kinds of things all the unusual qualities we’re looking for, and on the rare occasion that we find someone who has those qualities, we pursue them.”
“Unusual how?”
“Maybe ‘unique’ would have been a better word. Look, I won’t lie to you. The realities of Africa can be a little harsh. We need people who are smart and driven, but also people who have some experience with the real world. People who are tougher than average. But most of all, we’re looking for people who have common sense, because that can get lost pretty quickly in the foreign aid business.” He paused for a moment, obviously considering something. “What I’m trying to say is that when you’re faced with some of the things Africa can throw at you, it’s easy to lose yourself in your ideology. We fight against that. You see, we look at this as a business, Josh. Our product is projects --- agricultural, medical, economic --- whatever. We want to manufacture a product for our customers that’s effective, durable, and cheap.”
“Your customers being poor Africans.”
“Right. I know it’s a strange philosophy, but we find that it works. You’ve got an MBA, so you understand how a business should run, you come from a poor, broken family, so you know what people need. You’re an athlete and a hunter, so you’re not soft. And you’ve achieved things on your own, so you understand what it takes to better yourself. That’s what we need on the ground.”
Josh felt his eyebrows rise, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
“We know a few personal details about you, Josh. We’re not trying to pry, but we also don’t want to hire someone who is going to be over their head ten minutes after they land. We ask a lot, frankly.”
Trent had misinterpreted Josh’s surprise. It was less that he knew those few personal details than that he had missed a number of others. Or had he? Maybe he didn’t care. Or was this a test of Josh’s honesty?
“So this is a position outside the country?” Josh said, deciding to let it go. He could always lean on plausible deniability if the shit hit the fan later.
“Yup. You’d be knee-deep in the African mud.” Trent’s mouth widened into another prizewinning smile. “Well, it’s really not that bad, but it’s not the Upper East Side, either.”
Josh nodded slowly. Africa. How many miles away was that? About the same distance as the moon, as far as he was concerned. For a million dollars, he doubted he could name five countries on the whole continent.
“Look, Josh, I know you’re probably looking at a hedge-fund job or something, but I can tell you from personal experience that you should consider this. It’s a different challenge every day, you have a lot of autonomy, you’re not chained to a desk, and at the end of the day someone’s life is better because of you.”
*******
Chapter 3
Stephen Trent sat down behind his desk but immediately stood again. A quick glance at the clock confirmed that he had less than a minute. Aleksei Fedorov had told him nine P.M., and he was never late. Never.
Trent took a deep breath and brushed at the imaginary wrinkles in his shirt, a nervous tic that was impossible to resist but entirely pointless. Fedorov didn’t care about anything that didn’t involve making money, holding on to money, and keeping money --- and the power it implied --- from his enemies.
The lights in the hall were off, and Trent walked through the gloom taking deep, calming breaths, finally stopping in the lobby where he could watch the front door. The second hand on the receptionist’s desk was almost thirty seconds past the hour when the sound of a key sliding into the lock became audible over the hum of traffic outside.
“Aleksei! It’s good to see you!” Trent said, a little too loud to seem calm and a little too cheerful to sound spontaneous. If there was one positive thing about spending so much of his time in one of Africa’s more godforsaken backwaters, it was that Fedorov almost never set foot on the continent.
Unfortunately, this was not true of NewAfrica’s offices in New York. Despite endless hints designed to prevent these visits, Fedorov seemed to enjoy using them as proof that he was untouchable. And maybe he was. But why endanger everyone else?
Fedorov shook Trent’s outstretched hand disinterestedly, his deep-set eyes taking in the surroundings more like a camera than the windows to the soul that poets imagined. They twitched back and forth over a long, straight nose that hinted at his foreign birth and an expression that suggested it hadn’t been a pleasant one.
“We’ve had a thirteen percent drop in donations. Why?”
It seemed that his accent became more imperceptible every time they met, and that was worrying. Fedorov had relocated to the United States less than ten years ago and now, at age fifty, was close to perfecting his fifth language. Trent had been blessed with an impressive intellect that had proven indispensable over his lifetime, but it also tended to make him uncomfortable around those rare people who were clearly smarter than he was. It was an advantage he was loath to give up.
“Let’s go back to my office, Aleksei. I’ll make you a drink.”
“First you’ll answer my goddamn question.”
“We’ve got a few things working against us,” Trent said as he started back down the hall, anxious to get Fedorov away from the windows looking out onto the street. “And they’re all hard to control. The U.S. economy’s weakened pretty significantly, and that makes people feel less generous. Also, after getting a good run in the press for a while, the problems in Africa are taking a back burner. The Middle East, political scandals, even global warming are getting better ratings.”
He stopped and let Fedorov go through the office door first. Trent couldn’t read the man’s expression in the dim light and had no idea how he was taking what he was hearing, making it impossible to properly adjust his tone and approach.
“We’re doing what we can, Aleksei, but...” He let his voice trail off as he poured two whiskeys and Fedorov wandered around the office examining things he clearly had no interest in.
After a few seconds, the silence became uncomfortable and Trent found himself speaking again, purely out of nervousness. “We’re working on a large partnership with USAID right now, and I’m optimistic about it. We’d be the primary administrators of a twenty-million-dollar project. Right now it’s between us and CARE, but I think we’ll get it. The danger is more that the U.S. will pull funding entirely. Conditions in the part of Africa where we operate are getting worse, and it’s hard to convince people that the money invested there is going to make a difference.”
Fedorov turned and accepted the whiskey Trent held out to him, looking down at it as though he thought it might be poisoned. “I saw your new campaign, Stephen. It’s shit. Another bunch of happy niggers with shovels.”
“Aleksei --- ”
“‘Our work is done,’” Fedorov continued, cutting him off. “Is that what you’re trying to say? Because that’s what I’m hearing --- ‘Africans so happy and healthy that I think they should be giving me money.’”
“Like I was saying, Aleksei, we have to show a certain amount of progress and stability. Our focus groups --- ”
“Your focus groups?” Fedorov shouted. “Why don’t you give me your focus groups’ addresses? Then I can have a conversation with them about why I’m not making any money.”
“I think --- ”
“Am I wrong, Stephen? Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that I can’t do simple math.”
“That’s not what I’m saying --- ”
“Don’t we have photos of dead children? Why are you the only person on the fucking planet who can’t find dead Africans to take pictures of? You can’t walk ten feet in that country without tripping over one.”
“It isn’t --- ”
“Remember that picture of the starving kid with the vulture standing next to him? That made people want to give money.”
Trent tried to remember how many times that particular image had come up and how many times he was going to have to defend his decision not to use something similar.
“Going with something like that is going to work against us in this situation, Aleksei. And we’d have to deal with a certain amount of backlash and scrutiny that I think we both agree we don’t need. We have to be very careful about controlling our image.”
“Charities can’t run on good intentions, Stephen.”
It was impossible to know if the statement’s irony was intended or if an acknowledgment of the joke was expected. In the end, Trent decided to pretend he hadn’t heard. “We’re still refining the campaign, and I agree that it could be more hard-hitting. Give us another week, and we’ll send you something more polished. I think you’ll be happy with it.”
Fedorov clearly wasn’t convinced but was willing to move on. “Have you hired someone to take over the farming project?”
“I met with the last candidate yesterday.”
“And?”
Trent sat down at his desk and slid a file across it. Fedorov made no move to pick it up, glancing blandly at it from his position in the center of the office.
“His name is Josh Hagarty,” Trent said. “He graduated from high school with a very average GPA --- essentially As in things he was interested in and Ds in things he wasn’t. After that he went to work for an auto shop near his home and, well, wasn’t exactly a model citizen.”
Fedorov remained silent, but for the first time that night, his expression showed a hint of approval.
“He had a few minor arrests for things like disorderly conduct and marijuana possession, but nothing stuck. Then one night, he and a friend stopped at a liquor store. Josh stayed in the car while his friend went in and robbed the store at gunpoint.”
“But Hagarty just sat in the car?”
Trent nodded. “When the police started chasing them, though, he tried to escape. And because he was drunk at the time, he hit a tree, and both he and his friend ended up pretty seriously injured.”
“How much time did he do?”
“He cut a deal and only spent a year inside. His friend swore that Josh had no idea he was going to rob the store and that Josh screamed at him the entire time they were running from the police.”
Fedorov seemed disappointed. “And what did he learn in prison?”
“Apparently that he didn’t want to go back. When he was released, he enrolled in a community college, got straight As, transferred to a four-year college, and graduated near the top of his class in engineering.”
“He didn’t find Jesus, did he? I hate those fucking people.”
“He doesn’t attend church, and there’s no mention of religiosity from our private investigators.”
Fedorov nodded noncommittally.
“Because of his background, he didn’t get any good job offers, and that prompted him to pursue an MBA. He’s just now graduating, again near the top of his class, despite holding a full-time job the entire time.”
“And?”
“And he’s drowning in student loans and every other kind of debt. He has a sister he’s extremely close to who’ll be graduating from high school next year, and he doesn’t have the money to send her to college.”
“Are any other companies sniffing around him?”
“He’s had a fair number of interviews, but even with his qualifications, his background has kept him from getting any offers. He does have a meeting next week with a small company near his school called Alder Data Systems. They don’t have a terribly sophisticated hiring process, and according to our people, they may have overlooked his problems with the law.”
“I take it we’re going to fix that?”
“It’s being taken care of as we speak.”
“I’m not impressed, Stephen. After all the time and money we’ve spent on this search, this is the best you can do?”
If there was one universal truth, it was that Fedorov was never satisfied.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate, Aleksei, but he’s smart as hell, charismatic, good-looking, and well-educated. More importantly, he’s desperate --- for money, to rise above his upbringing, to prove he’s changed. He’s no angel, and he has a sister who’s important to him. I’m not sure it would be possible to find someone who fits the profile you created any better.”
Fedorov’s expression darkened subtly. “Because of a few minor scrapes with the law and the fact that he was driving the wrong car at the wrong time?”
“There’s only so far we can go down that path, Aleksei. I can sell Josh to the board as a redemption story. And if it ever comes up, I can play the same card with the press. If we go with someone whose background is any worse, it’s going to generate questions that aren’t so easily answered.”
“More attention than we got from that little saint you hired before? I told you he would be a problem. But you didn’t listen to me.”
“You have to understand that --- ”
“What I understand,” he interrupted, “is that I’m not here to fix your fucking mistakes. What you should understand is that I’m holding you personally responsible this time. Do you understand me? Personally responsible.”
********
Chapter 11
Josh Hagarty pushed his way through the people moving urgently along the dirt street and tried to imagine what their lives were like. He’d hoped his visit to town would teach him something, but now he wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off just downing a few of Luganda’s brutal margaritas in the compound’s pool. Everything here was so different that he was having a hard time even finding a context to place it in.
The buildings on either side of him were colonial in design --- still imposing, but peeling paint and the occasional collapsed balcony hinted at inevitable disintegration. As did almost everything else.
He winced when one of the children swarming him grabbed his hand and squeezed the blisters raised by moving too quickly from pushing paper to swinging a pick.
“You give me money,” the boy said cheerfully. It seemed to be his only English, but if you only knew four words, Josh had to admit, those were good ones.
“I’m flat broke, kid. You’re looking at a true American loser.”
None of them understood, but all ten or so laughed, displaying spirits unbroken by their surroundings and dim prospects. He actually did have some change in his pocket but had been warned against passing it out. Something about turning African children into beggars and destroying their future. He understood the concept, but standing there staring at the reality was an entirely different thing. He thought he’d had a pretty good handle on poverty but was quickly realizing that he didn’t know the first thing about it.
The kids lost interest when it became apparent he wasn’t going to cave, leaving him to the mildly curious stares of the adults around him. The crowd became more dense as he approached an outdoor market operating under the watchful eye of Umboto Mtiti, staring down from a large wall mural. This depiction was a bit more modern than the ones he’d seen in the capital, and the caption was scrawled in the style of graffiti: “Gates are doors to the future.”
He had no idea what that meant, but it seemed to capture the competing waves of possibility and hopelessness that had been buffeting him since he’d arrived.
Gideon hadn’t shown up that morning, so Josh had spent a frustrating day using his charades skills to try to get the people on his project digging in straight lines. Not that he was sure the terraces necessarily needed to be straight, but he didn’t have anything else to do.
The main obstacle they were facing was drainage, and he’d waded back into the cornfield to see how its designers had dealt with the problem. He didn’t find the elegant, ancient solution he’d expected, instead uncovering a sophisticated system of pipes and gas-powered pumps. Where they’d come from and where he could get more was a mystery.
Josh wandered past stalls selling the gravy-soaked dough that seemed to be the country’s national dish, past fabric vendors hawking material polka-dotted with Umboto Mtiti’s image, finally entering the sector dominated by meat vendors. He stopped short in front of a table containing what looked like a charred child, its swollen tongue still pink where it protruded from a lipless mouth. Josh held off his revulsion and inched closer as the woman behind the table waved away the flies. He let out the breath he’d been holding when he realized it was a monkey.
She chattered at him unintelligibly, but he held out his hands and backed away. “Looks tasty, ma’am, but no thanks.”
The heat, smoke, and sweat-soaked people sliding past started to close in on him, and he ducked down an alley, happy for a little shade and urine-scented solitude. The thick, colonial-era walls deadened the sound of the plaza, and the increasing quiet created an illusion of serenity as he penetrated deeper. He was going to be all right. He’d just gotten there. Had he thought it was going to be easy? That he was going to roll in there and turn an entire continent around overnight?
He was too lost in thought to hear the footsteps coming up behind him until someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. He managed to get an arm up and deflect the club before it connected with his head, but the force of the blow still knocked him back against the wall of the narrow alley.
There were two of them, both probably in their early twenties, and both shouting with the same unbridled fury that he’d seen in Gideon at the airport. Adrenaline quickly cleared his head, and the instincts he’d developed in jail turned out to still be with him.
“Take it easy,” he said, trying to buy some time in a situation that he already knew wasn’t going to end peacefully. A quick glance in either direction confirmed that his attackers knew exactly what they were doing. There were no windows looking down on them and no doors to run for. The alley dead-ended in about thirty feet, and they had blocked off any hope of an escape back in the direction of the plaza.
“You want my money? I don’t have much, but you’re welcome to it.” He began to reach for his pocket, but when he did, they charged. Josh focused on the one with the club, ducking just in time for it to pass over his head and strike the wall behind him with the sound of splintering wood. As it did, though, the other man landed a kick to his chest. The bottom of his foot was hard from a life spent shoeless, but nowhere near as damaging as the boots favored by the people Josh had tangled with in his youth. He managed to catch hold of the man’s leg and flip him onto his back in the dirt, opening a path out of the alley.
He was just a little too slow, giving the man on the ground time to slap his ankle and cause him to stumble as he tried to escape. He regained his balance quickly, but the split-second delay gave his other attacker time to slam what was left of his club into the small of Josh’s back.
This time he wasn’t able to maintain his footing, and he landed hard on his stomach, skidding across the dirt and colliding with the wall to his right. The sensation of a hand snatching the wallet from his back pocket prompted him to flip instinctively onto his back and grab at the man’s wrist. The loss of a few dollars and his IDs shrank to insignificance when he saw the club, almost entirely intact as it turned out, arcing toward his skull.
Josh abandoned his efforts to retrieve his wallet and tried to pull his hand back to ward off the blow, but the man anticipated the move and grabbed him in a sweaty but unbreakable grip.
The combination of being out in the sun all day, jet lag, and the disorientation of being so far from home made it hard to fully accept what was happening. It was simple, though. In less than a second, the club was going to land and he was going to die lying in an alley thousands of miles from home. For nothing. For a wallet containing barely enough money to buy a Big Mac and fries.
Josh closed his eyes and waited for the impact, but nothing happened. No pain, which he supposed was understandable, but also no disorientation or loss of consciousness. No blinding light surrounded by angels or fiery pits guarded with pitchforks.
The pressure around his forearm disappeared, and he opened his eyes to discover that there were now two more men in the alley, and everyone was trying to kill each other. The one with the club was on the ground and absorbed a kick to the head so vicious that Josh’s stomach rolled at the sound of it. The man he’d knocked to the ground tried to run but quickly discovered his own plan working against him. There was nowhere to go. A moment later he was on all fours trying desperately to dislodge the man snaking an arm around his throat.
There was something about the man on top that was familiar --- the way he moved, the wiry power of his arms. Josh’s mind was still coming to terms with the fact that he was alive, and it took a few seconds for him to realize that he actually knew one of his saviors.
The man beneath Tfmena Llengambi was much larger and younger, but so far he hadn’t been able to use that advantage to escape. One of his hands came off the ground and dipped into his waistband, reappearing a moment later with something that gleamed in the sunlight angling into the alley.
Adrenaline hit Josh full force again, and he jumped to his feet, sprinting the few yards to the struggling men and sliding across the dirt just in time to stop the knife from lodging in Tfmena’s ribs.
It was the opening the older man had been looking for, and he picked up a broken piece of concrete, bringing it down on the back of the man’s head with a sickening crunch. Josh released the now limp arm, pedaling his feet in front of him as he scooted away. Tfmena brought the block down again and again until the blood flowing onto the ground mingled with what Josh assumed were pieces of the man’s brain.
And then it was silent again. Josh glanced behind him and saw that his other attacker was in a similar condition, having become the victim of his own club in the hands of a young man wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt over a heaving chest.
Tfmena stood and held out a steady hand to help Josh to his feet, then brushed the dust off him. His expression was strangely calm and seemed to contain a bit less disdain than it had before.
Tfmena picked up Josh’s wallet and held it out to him, saying something in Yvimbo that was easy to decipher from the tone: “Get out of here. This is none of your business anymore.”
Josh mumbled his thanks, shaking the man’s hand and trying not to look at the two corpses as he backed away. Finally he turned and ran. When he burst into the blinding sun of the plaza, he was at a full sprint. He ran past bemused Africans rushing to get out of his way, past the charred monkey that still hadn’t been sold, past tables of knockoff watches and boom boxes, not stopping until exhaustion and heat overcame him.
He bent at the waist, breathing hard and trying to think about what had just happened. When he finally managed to straighten up again, he discovered that he was standing in front of a clothing store with a well-appointed sign reading “Dead White Man Shoppe.”
“Forget your undies?”
He spun, fists raised, to find JB Flannary standing behind him.
“Whoa, tiger. Peace, okay?”
Josh just stood there, his breathing still not controlled enough to answer.
Flannary pointed to his chest. “You got red on you.”
Josh looked down and saw the blood splattered across his white T-shirt. Was it his? Or did it belong to the man he’d just helped kill?
“They were slaughtering chickens in the market,” he heard himself say.
Flannary nodded knowingly. “You should be more careful. Sometimes bloodstains don’t come out so easy.”
Excerpted from LORDS OF CORRUPTION © Copyright 2009 by Kyle Mills. Reprinted with permission by Vanguard Press. All rights reserved.
