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  ‘What?’ Bryant barked laughter. ‘You are winding me up.’

  ‘I swear. Mother of parliaments. That’s what he said.’

  ‘The mother of parliaments. Man, I love it. I almost hope Echevarria doesn’t cave in, just so we can have this guy across.’

  Makin, perhaps predictably, was less amused by it all. He went through the stapled paperwork, one snatched-aside sheet at a time, without saving a word, then tossed the whole thing onto his polished desktop so it slid away from him. He looked across the desk to where Chris and Mike sat in steel frame chairs, bracketing him. He focused on Bryant.

  ‘I seiously don’t think this is the way to go, Mike.’

  Bryant wasn’t up for it. He said nothing, just rolled his head in Chris’s direction.

  ‘Listen, Nick,’ Chris leaned forward. ‘I’ve worked the NAME before and I’m telling you—‘

  ‘Youah telling me nothing. I’ve been working Latin American CI longer than you’ve been here. I took top commission in the Americas market last yeah—‘

  Bryant cleared his throat. ‘Year before last.’

  ‘I’m in it for this year as well, Mike.’ Makin’s voice stayed even, but behind the steel glasses his face looked betrayed. ‘When the unwesolveds come in.’

  ‘Ah, come on Nick,’ Chris felt a tight, feral jag of pleasure as he swung the comeback. ‘That was last season. First thing you ever said to me, man. Can’t live off stuff like that indefinitely: It’s a whole new quarter. Time for fresh meat. Another new appoach. Remember that?’

  Makin looked away. ‘I don’t remember saying that, no.’

  ‘Well, you did, Nick.’ Bryant got up and brushed something off the shoulder of his suit. ‘I was there. Now, this is no longer under discussion. We are going to do it Chris’s way, because, to be honest, your Echevarria game plan is making me tired.’

  ‘Mike, I know how these fucking spics work. This is the wrong move.’

  Bryant looked down at him. He seemed more disappointed with the other man than anything else. ‘This isn’t Guatemala, Nick. Chris is the resident NAME expert, you like it or not. Now you talk to him and get this stuff into a usable form by Monday. I meant what I said. I am tired of dicking about with that old fuck. We go uplincon with Echevarria and his cabinet next week, and I want the axe over his head by then. You coming for a coffee, Chris?’

  ‘Uh. Sure.’ Chris got to his feet. ‘Nick. You’ll call me, right?’

  Makin made a noise in his throat.

  At the door, Bryant turned and looked back across the office.

  ‘Hey, Nick. No hard feelings, huh? It’s just, we’ve let this slide too far. It’s getting out of hand. Time to bring in the riot squad, you know. I don’t want Notley looking in on us like we’re a bunch of kids just set fire to the kitchen. That’s not good for anyone.’

  They left Makin with it.

  ‘You threatening him?’ asked Chris, in the lift.

  Bryant grinned. ‘Bit.’

  The doors opened at ground level and they walked out into the arching, light filled space of the tower’s lobby area. Fountain splash and an ambient subsonic vibe filled the air. Chris felt his mouth flex into a grin of his own.

  ‘You pissed off with him, then?’

  ‘Nick? Nah. Just he’s too fucking impressed with himself, is all. Ever since that Guatemala thing. He just needs to know where the orders are coming from, then he jumps. Jesus, look at that.’

  Hanging in the air above one of the fountains, a huge Shorn Associates holo ran back-and-forth flicker-cut footage of the Cambodian conflict. Cross-hair graphics sprang up and tracked selected hardware as it appeared on screen - helicopters, assault rifles, medical gear, camera zeroing in, logistical data scrolling down alongside each sniper-caught item. Make, specs, cost. Shorn contribution and involvement.

  ‘This the BBC footage?’ asked Bryant. He’d handed publicity to Chris a couple of weeks ago.

  ‘At base, yeah. We bought it right out of the can in Phnom Penh, in case there was something inappropriate in there. You never can tell with that guy Syal, he’s a real fucking crusader. Won a Pilger Award last year. Anyway, the woman at Imagicians said they’d generate some of the closer detail themselves, like for the medical hardware. They can shoot some real state-of-the-art life-support stuff in the studio, then mix and match on the palette, so it looks like it was really there.’ Chris nodded up at the holo. ‘Looks good, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, not too shabby. So did Syal cut up rough when they took his footage off him?’

  Chris shrugged. ‘Don’t think he got any say. We made sure there was a programme producer out there for the handover. Standard sponsorship terms. And what we handed them back had enough battle sequences to come across as gritty realism. You know, corpses on fire, that sort of stuff.’

  ‘No women or children, right.’

  ‘No. Ran it myself on the uplink. It’s clean.’

  In the holo, a Cambodian guerrilla commander appeared, face weary. He rattled away in Khmer. Subtitling sprang up in red letters. It is a hard fight but with the help of our corporate partners, our victory is as certain as

  ‘He really saying that?’ asked Bryant curiously.

  ‘Think so.’ Chris was tracking a well-endowed blonde woman across the floorspace. ‘Think they give them cue cards or something. You know, sometimes I think I could just come down here and stand under the subsonics for half an hour, save myself buying the coffee.’

  Bryant spotted where Chris was looking. ‘That’s not subsonics.’

  ‘Ah, come on Mike.’

  ‘Yeah, that reminds me. Want to go to a party tomorrow night?’

  ‘Party in the zones?’ Chris and Mike had been back across the cordons a few times since the Falkland incident, though never back to that particular pub and never quite as wrecked as they had been that night. At first, Chris was nervous on these visits, but Mike Bryant’s easy familiarity with the cordoned zones and their nightlife slowly won him over. He came to see that there was a trick to handling things there, and that Bryant knew it. You didn’t flaunt your elite status, but nor did you try to play it down. You acted like who you were, you didn’t try to be liked, and in most cases you were accorded a wary respect. In time the respect might develop into something else, but you didn’t expect that. And you didn’t need it to have a good time.

  ‘Why should it be in the zones?’ asked Bryant innocently.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ They stepped through the armoured-glass doors and into the street. The sun fell warm on their faces. ‘Because the last three were?’

  ‘Bullshit. What about Julie Pinion’s bash.’

  ‘Okay, the last two, then. And Julie’s wasn’t far off, come to that.’

  ‘I’m sure she’d be thrilled to hear that, price she paid for that duplex. That’s an up-and-coming regenerated area, Chris.’

  ‘So it is. I’d forgotten.’

  They pushed into Louie Louie’s and nodded at familiar faces in the queue. Chris’s fame had eroded sufficiently that all he got from his Shorn colleagues these days were grunts and the odd grin.

  ‘So tell me about this party.’

  Mike leaned back on the tiled wall. ‘Remember Troy?’

  ‘From the Falkland. Sure.’ They’d run into the Jamaican a couple more times in clubs on the other side of the wire, but in Chris’s mind he was irrevocably linked with the events of that night.

  ‘Well. Turns out his eldest son just got a scholarship to the Thatcher Institute. Fast-track international finance and economics programme, guaranteed placement with a major consulting firm at the end of it. So he’s throwing a party at his place. You are cordially invited.’

  ‘So it is in the fucking zones.’

  ‘What? Nah, Troy doesn’t live in the zones. He moved out years ago, got a place on the edge of Dulwich.’

  ‘Which edge?’

  ‘Look, it’s a better area than Julie Pinion picked, alright. You don’t want to come, I’ll tell him you’re wo
rking late. On a Friday.’

  ‘He invited me?’

  ‘Yeah, like I said. Cordially. Bring Faulkner, he said.’

  ‘Nice of him.’

  ‘Yeah, you got to come. Troy’s parties are fucking cool. Lots of powders and potions, big sound systems. Really good mix of people too. Suits, media, DJs, dealers.’ Bryant’s face fell abruptly. ‘Shit, you know what. I bet fucking Liz’ll be there.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘Look, I really don’t think it’s going to be your kind of thing.’

  ‘Why not?’ Carla folded her arms and leaned back against the door of the freezer. ‘Too high-class for me? Am I going to show you up?’

  ‘That isn’t fair. I’ve asked you to come to every Shorn function we’ve had this year.’

  ‘Yes. Very dutiful of you.’

  ‘And that’s really not fucking fair. I wanted you there, every time. Including all the times you said no, I wanted you to be there with me.’ Chris lowered his voice. ‘I was proud of you. I wanted to show people that.’

  ‘You mean you wanted to show off.’

  ‘Ah,’ Chris made a helpless gesture. ‘Fuck you, Carla. I put myself on the line for you every single—‘

  ‘If you’re going to talk to me like that ...’ She was already moving, across the kitchen and away from him. ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’

  ‘Fine. Fuck off, then.’

  He stood, fists knotted, surrounded by the twinned debris of another evening’s separate dining, while she walked out on him. Again. Her voice drifted back down the stairs.

  ‘I’ve got better things to do tomorrow night, anyway.’

  ‘Fine, then fuck off.’ He bawled the last two words after her, dismayed at the sudden detonation of fury in his guts.

  She didn’t answer.

  For a while, he crashed plates and cutlery about, loading the dishwasher with a lack of care or interest that he knew could sometimes drag her back into the kitchen to take over. He was kidding himself, and he knew it. This was a new level of hostility they’d reached.

  He selected a clean tumbler and went to look for the whisky. Poured the glass half full while he stared into the dead blue glare of the TV. The end titles of whatever mindless terrorists-threaten-civilisation flick they had just spun was already gone, already wiped off the screen as cleanly as the details of plot and action from his mind. Rage evaporating into remorse and a creeping sense of desolation.

  A vicious clarity caught up with him, just before he knocked back the drink.

  He was glad of the row, he knew abruptly. Glad of the out it had given him.

  He was relieved she wouldn’t be coming with him.

  Relieved, because—

  He took the knowledge by the throat and drowned it.

  Troy Morris’s home might not have been in the cordoned zones, but Chris could see a zone checkpoint just down the street from his front door, and the quality of housefronts plunged rapidly on the way there. The street was restored Victorian, Troy’s place and the surrounding facades carefully painted, windows clean. After that it started to get rough - at the checkpoint end, paint was a flecked rumour on most frontages and window glass had become strictly optional. Plastic coverings flapped in a couple of places.

  The last three houses on both sides of the street had been demolished to provide open ground on either side of the checkpoint. The rubble had been cleared, and defoliant kept the weeds down. A hundred metres beyond the barriers, the closest structures on the other side were riot-fire blackened and crumbling. A shabby concrete block rose ten storeys high behind the shells, dirty grey facades stained darker with leakage from substandard guttering. Chris spotted someone watching him from a window near the top.

  It was a perfect summer evening, still fully light after eight o’clock and the day’s heat was leaching slowly out of the air without the rain that had been threatening all afternoon. Junk salsa thumped out of Troy’s opened sash windows and when Bryant rang the doorbell, the door seemed to blow open on a gust of bassline.

  ‘Mike! Good to see you, man.’ Troy was kitted out in a Jamaica Test ‘47 shirt with Moses McKenzie’s grinning victorious face poking out behind a holoshot fast-bowled cricket ball that seemed to come right off the fabric at them. In contrast, Troy’s face seemed unusually sombre. ‘Hey, Faulkner. You came. That’s good.’

  Chris murmured something, but Troy had already gone back to Bryant.

  ‘Mike, listen. Need to talk to you later, man.’

  ‘Sure. What’s the deal?’

  Troy shook his head. ‘Later’s better.’

  ‘Whatever you need.’ Bryant craned his neck to look down the hall. ‘Any chance of a spliff?’

  ‘Yeah, somewhere I guess. That blonde TV face you like, she’s here, she’s rolling.’

  ‘Right.’

  They went down the hall, into the heart of the party.

  Chris had never been much of a fiesta machine. Growing up smart and strangely accented in a zone school had ensured he was routinely bullied nearly every day of his life and didn’t get invited to many parties. Later, he learned to fight. Later still he grew into looks that a lot of the cooler female kids liked. Life got easier, but the damage was already done. He remained withdrawn and watchful around other people, found it hard to relax and harder to have fun if he was surrounded. A reputation for moody cool, approved and codified by male peers and female fans alike, nailed the doors shut on him. By the time he hacked his way into the corporate world, he had exactly the demeanour required for long-term survival. The edgy, peer-thrown parties and corporate functions, rancid with rivalry and display politics, were a comfortable fit. He turned up because he had to, faked his way through the necessary rituals with polished skill, never let his guard down and hated every minute. Just like the parties of his youth.

  Accordingly, he was mildly shocked to discover, a couple of hours later, the extent to which he was enjoying himself at Troy Morris’s gathering.

  He’d ended up, as he often did at house parties, in the kitchen, mildly buzzed on a couple of tequila slammers and a single line of very good cocaine, arguing South American politics with Troy’s son James and a glossy Spanish fashion model called Patricia, who they’d discovered -wow, you’re kidding me - had appeared in the same issue of GQ as Chris, though wearing a lot fewer clothes. Not, Chris couldn’t help noticing, that she was wearing a lot of clothes at the moment either. There were about a dozen of these exotic creatures sprinkled around the party like sex-interest models at a motorshow. They drifted elegantly from room to room, drawn occasionally into the orbits of the expensively dressed men they appeared to have come with, spoke English in a variety of alluring non-English accents and, without exception danced superlatively well to the junk salsa blasting out of the speakers in the lounge. To judge by Patricia and her end of the South America conversation, they had all been required to check their brains in at the door. Or had maybe just pawned them for the wisps of designer clothing they were fractionally wrapped in.

  ‘For me, all these bad things they say about Hernan Echevarria, I think they exaggerate. You know, I have met his son in Miami and he is a really quite nice guy. He really loves his father.’

  James, perhaps thinking of his imminent entry into the Thatcher Institute and the possible eavesdroppers on this conversation, said nothing. But he was young and unschooled as yet, and his face said it all.

  ‘It isn’t really a question of his son,’ said Chris, making an effort. ‘The point is that excessive use of force by a regime, any regime, can make investors nervous. If they think the government is stepping up repressive measures too much, they start to wonder how secure the regime is, and what’ll happen to their money if it comes tumbling down. It’s like scaffolding around an apartment block - it’s not the sort of thing that makes you keen to buy in that block, is it?’

  Patricia blinked. ‘Oh, I would never buy a flat in a block,’ she assured him. ‘No garden, and you would have to share the swimming po
ol. I couldn’t stand that.’

  Chris blinked as well. There was a short silence.

  ‘Actually, the right kind of repression is usually a pretty good booster for investor confidence. I mean, look at Guatemala.’

  It was the dealer of the high-quality powdered goods. He’d been leaning into the conversation on and off for the last hour, each time making remarkably astute observations about the political and economic salients of Latin America. Chris couldn’t make up his mind if this was a result of close association on the dealer’s part with some of his corporate clients or just exemplary background knowledge of his supply chain. He thought it’d be unwise to ask.

  ‘Guatemala’s a different game,’ he said.

  ‘How so?’ asked the dealer. ‘From what I hear their indices are pretty close to Echevarria’s, pro rata. About the same balance of payments. Same military budget. Same structural adjustment.’

  ‘But not the same governance durability. The last twenty-five years, you’ve had over a dozen different regimes, a dozen regime shifts, most of them with violence. The US military has been in and out of there like it was a urinal. Violent change is the norm. The investors expect it there. That’s why they get such a huge return. And, sure, violent repression is part of the picture, but it’s successful violent repression. You’re right. Which does inspire investment.’

  James cleared his throat. ‘But not in the North Andean Monitored?’

  ‘No, Echevarria’s been in power a long time. Tight grip on the military, he’s one of them himself. Investors expect stability, because that’s what he’s given them for decades. That’s why shooting protesters on the steps of major universities isn’t smart.’

  ‘Oh, but they were marquistas,’ broke in Patricia. ‘He had to do that to protect the public’

  ‘Thirty-eight dead, over a hundred injured,’ said Chris. ‘Almost all of them students, and more than half from middle-class families. Even a couple of visiting scholars from Japan. That’s very bad for business.’