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  ‘I sent Joaquin Lopez down to the ME, fuckhead, asking after Diaz. He nearly fucking died today.’

  ‘That’s supposed to be my fault?’

  Bryant sighed. ‘Diaz was off-limits, Nick. He was our holdout if old scumbag didn’t fold.’

  ‘You knew that!’

  ‘Oh, what am I? A fucking telepath? No one told me not to use Diaz, and he’s the stongest theat we’ve got.’

  ‘Alright.’ Mike rubbed at his face. ‘Maybe we didn’t make it clear enough. But you should have checked with Chris first. Same goes for you, Chris. You should have run it by Nick before you sent Lopez down there.’

  ‘But.’ Chris couldn’t identify the sudden feeling in his chest. ‘You told me to send him.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but not without consultation.’ Bryant looked back and forth between the two men. ‘Come on, people. A little communication. A little cooperation, for Christ’s sake. Is that too much to ask?’

  Neither of the other men even glanced at him. Chris and Makin were either end of a hardwired stare.

  ‘People died, Mike, because of this fucking clown.’

  Makin snorted.

  Bryant frowned. ‘I thought you said nearly.’

  ‘Not Lopez. Other people. I had to call in Langley to get the goons off his back, and they blew up a whole fucking cafe.’

  Makin traded in his snort for a sneer. Bryant made a noise only slightly less dismissive.

  ‘Well, what’d you expect? Come on, Chris. Langley? These guys used to be the CIA, for fuck’s sake. Even before deregulation, they were a bunch of cack-fisted incompetent fucking clowns.’ He looked across at Makin, grinned and made an imploring gesture with one hand. ‘I mean, Langley, for Christ’s sake.’

  Chris felt himself losing his temper with his friend. ‘There was no fucking option, Mike,’ he snapped. ‘No one else in the ME has the response time. You know that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s one for the Monopolies Commission.’ Mike pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. ‘Look. It’s a shame about the cafe, but it could have been worse. I mean, with Langley you’re lucky they didn’t kill Lopez for you as well.’ Makin laughed out loud. Bryant joined in. ‘Fuck, the kind of punk sicarios they’re contracting out to these days, you’re lucky they didn’t take out the whole block.’

  ‘It isn’t funny, Mike.’

  ‘Oh, come on, it is a bit.’ Bryant shelved his grin. Sobered. ‘Alright. A fuck-up, is what it is. But we can cover the damage. We’ll ride out any waves Echevarria makes tomorrow, keep it in the team, and we’ll bury the Langley account. Pay it off, I don’t know, through one of the Cambodia slush funds or something. No one else has to know. Clean hands all round, come the quarterly. Alright?’ He looked round at his team. ‘Agreed?’

  Makin nodded. Chris, finally, too. Bryant’s grin came back.

  ‘Good. But remember, gentlemen. A little more attention to detail next time, please.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hernan Echevarria, predictably, did not take it so well.

  ‘You sit this out,’ said Mike, rather grimly, as they stood in the covert viewing chamber, waiting for the uplink to go through. ‘We’ll do the lying.’

  As usual when faced with politics, he had slung his baseball bat across his shoulders cruciform, and now he prowled about, rolling his neck back against the polished wood. On the other side of a one-way glass wall, Nick Makin busied himself with bottled water and screen control mice along one edge of the conference table. The rest of the slate grey expanse was bare, but for the shallow slope of recessed display screens near the centre.

  ‘You think this is the break point?’ Chris asked.

  Mike pulled a face. ‘If yesterday’s performance is anything to go by, it’s pretty fucking close. It’s only the fact he is actually yelling at us that makes me think we might still have a chance. If he was planning to walk, I don’t think we’d even be talking. Well, shouting.’

  The call had come in a couple of hours before lunch, barely past dawn back in the NAME. Echevarria must have spent all night talking to his forensic experts in Medellin. Mike took it. Chris never heard the detail, but understood it had gone something like what the fuck did you gringo sons of whores think you were doing on my turf, who the fuck do you think you are, talking to this Marquista traitor Diaz behind my back, if you were men of honour and not grey suited scum I would etcetera etcetera, blah, blah, apoplexy.

  ‘Okay, not quite,’ Mike admitted. ‘Figure of speech. He hasn’t dropped dead, fortunately. Otherwise we really would be in trouble. I don’t rate our chances of negotiating with Echevarria junior at all. So, at the meeting, let’s try and keep temperatures low. Conciliatory approach.’

  Later that day, they heard the news. The gunships had flown, the highlands west of Medellin were in flames and the Monitored Economy’s pet press were proclaiming Diaz either dead or fleeing for the Panamanian border where he would be cornered and caged like the cowardly Marquista dog he was. In the cities, the arrests ran into triple figures.

  ‘He’ll be riding high, we’ve got that going for us.’ Mike, trying for upbeat as the three-minute countdown for the uplink commenced. ‘Taste of blood in his teeth, with a bit of luck he’ll think he’s invincible. With the right amount of cringing apology, I think we can talk him round.’

  Chris hauled up a chair and leaned on the back. ‘You sure you don’t want me in there instead of Makin?’

  Bryant just looked at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You going to let this go?’

  ‘Mike, it isn’t even my fucking account. In the end, I don’t give a shit. But you’re not going to tell me this wasn’t deliberate.’

  ‘Oh, give me a fucking break with the conspiracy theories, Chris. Why can’t you just accept it was a communications fuck-up? Is basic incompetence so hard to believe in?’

  In the conference room, Makin stood facing them and rapped on the glass.

  ‘Two minutes, Mike.’

  Bryant leaned down to one of the mikes and pressed trans. ‘Be right there, Nick. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen.’

  He slipped the baseball bat off his shoulders and leaned it in a corner. Chris put a hand on his arm.

  ‘Mike, you saw his face when we ran it by him on Thursday. You were there. He resented the change of tack, and he made damned sure it blew up in our faces. He handed up Diaz so we’d have nothing else to work with, and you know it.’

  ‘And nearly blew out his own account? Cost himself maybe thousands in lost bonuses, come quarterly. Chris, come on. It makes him look bad. Why would he do that? What’s in it for him?’

  Chris shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but—‘

  ‘Exactly.’ Mike gripped his shoulders. ‘You don’t know. I don’t know either. There is nothing to know. Now let it go.’

  ‘Mike, I’ve got no axe to grind here. I came—‘

  Another sharp rap on the glass. ‘Youah cutting it fine, Michael.’

  ‘I only came on board to help you, and I’m—‘

  The shoulders, squeezed tighter. Mike met his eye. ‘Chris, I know that. And I’m grateful. And I’m not blaming you for what happened. But you’ve got to let it go now. Get back to Cambodia. Start worrying about your own quarterly review.’

  ‘Mike—‘

  ‘I’m out of time, Chris.’ He squeezed once more, then darted for the door. Chris watched through the glass as he zipped into the seat next to Makin and settled, instants before the uplink chimed.

  One thing that every Conflict Investment client Chris had ever dealt with had in common was their love of developed world technotoys. It was basic CI wisdom, handed down from partners to analysts everywhere in the trade. Don’t stint on toys. At the top of every hardware gift list, you placed your state-of-the-art global communications gadgetry. That, and personalised airliners. Then the military stuff. Always that order, it never failed. Echevarria’s uplink holocast was razor-sharp in resolution, and came
with about a dozen attached display screens.

  Chris knew his face, of course, from the HM files and occasional newscasts from the ME. Still, it had been a while since he’d seen Echevarria for real. He leaned in close to the glass wall and focused on the sagging, leathery face; the pouched eyes and clamped mouth, the scrawny neck, held ramrod straight, disappearing into the neck of a dress uniform laden with medals and awards. The peripheral display screens fanned out behind him unignited, like a black halo. The hands resting on the holocast table top looked bloated.

  ‘Ah, General,’ said Bryant, with plastic charm. ‘There you are. Welcome.’

  Echevarria raised one hand to his lips and looked to his left. The uplink chime sounded again and about a metre down the table, a second holocast image blipped and fizzled into existence.

  ‘My son will be joining us for these proceedings.’ The dictator smiled, showing brilliant white teeth, clearly not his own. ‘If you gentlemen don’t object.’

  The irony was heavy, but worse lay behind it. Francisco Echevarria was currently in Miami, Chris knew. And the speed with which the holocast had come in past Shorn’s databreaks, uninvited, suggested a level of intrusion equipment beyond that usually on offer to guests at the Miami Hilton.

  He’s with the fucking Americans. Rimshaw or Meldreck, got to be. Chris scrabbled for a hold. Most likely Rimshaw. Lloyd fucking Paul. Calders aren’t usually this flamboyant.

  The new holocast settled down. Francisco Echevarria emerged, darkly handsome in one of his habitual Susana Ingram suits. His face was already flushed with anger looking for discharge.

  Mike Bryant took it and ran with it.

  ‘Of course. We are delighted to have Senor Echevarria with us as well. In fact, the more varied the input at a time—‘

  ‘Hijo de puta,’ spat Echevarria junior without preamble. ‘The only fuckin’ input I have to tell you is that if my father was not so sentimental about old attachments, you would be drivin’ for tender tomorrow. I am sick of your Eurotrash duplici—‘

  ‘Paco! Please.’ There was a light amusement in the father’s voice. His English, Chris noticed, had a mannered southern-states drawl to it, at odds with the Miaspanic rhythms of his son’s speech. ‘These gentlemen have an apology to make. It would be rude not to hear them out.’

  So.

  Chris saw how Makin tautened. He wasn’t sure if the father and son noticed.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Mike Bryant smoothly. ‘There has been a serious misunderstanding, and I do feel that the responsibility is ours. When my colleague brought our files on the rebels to your attention, he perhaps did not stress enough that we were concerned—‘

  Echevarria junior rasped something indistinct in Spanish. His father looked in his direction and he shut up. Bryant nodded grateful acknowledgment to the father, and picked up the threads again.

  ‘Were concerned that perceived instability was going to draw new and less scrupulous investors than ourselves.’

  Hernan Echevarria smiled bleakly from around the globe.

  ‘This instability you speak of has been dealt with. And you’re right, Senor Bryant. That was not how your colleague presented the matter.’ One of the peripheral screens woke into static prior to transmission. ‘Would you like to see the message?’

  Bryant raised a hand. ‘We’ve all seen the message, Colonel. I don’t propose to take up any more of your valuable time here than absolutely

  necessary. As I said, it was a case of poor communication, for which we take full responsibility.’

  He looked pointedly at Makin.

  ‘General Echevaia.’ It sounded as if the words were being ripped out of Makin with pliers. ‘I apologise. Unconditionally. For any. Misunderstanding I have caused. It was never my intention to. Suggest that we would be intested in dealing with your political enemies—‘

  ‘The enemies of my country, senor. The enemies of our national honour, of all Colombian patriots. Condemned, you will recall, by the Catholic church and every other symbol of decency in the Americas.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Makin stiffly. ‘As you say.’

  ‘I have something here.’ Bryant came to his rescue. ‘Which you may be interested in.’

  One of the recessed screens flickered to life, and Chris knew that on the other side of the world the Echevarrias were watching the image emerge from somewhere over Mike Bryant’s shoulder.

  ‘This is some of the primary documentation you received from us in its original format,’ said Bryant, steering the control mouse with one casual hand. ‘As you’ll see from the blow-up, it is not a document originating from Shorn. In fact, this, as I’m sure you’ll recognise, is the logo of Hammett McColl.’

  It could have been computer-generated fakery, and everyone in the room knew it. But Echevarria had invited HM out to the NAME himself the year before, and he knew it fitted.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘From a source.’

  Echevarria junior erupted again in mother-related Spanish insults. Bryant waited him out. The father silenced the son again, this time with an irritated gesture.

  ‘What source?’

  ‘At this stage,’ said Bryant carefully, ‘I am not prepared to reveal that information. A source is only useful so long as it remains secure, and this link-up is not. However,’ He caught the son’s bristling and moved to beat it. ‘In a genuine face-to-face situation, I would be happy to discuss all and any details pertaining to this matter. I feel that we owe you a certain candour after the weekend’s confusion.’

  ‘You are suggesting I fly to London?’

  Bryant spread his hands. ‘In your own time, naturally. I am aware that you have a number of pressing engagements at home.’

  ‘Yes.’ Echevarria smiled again, with about as much warmth as before. ‘Notably clearing up the mess created by one of your agents.’

  Mike sighed. ‘General, I have done what I can to demonstrate our good faith. I give you my word—‘

  A repressed snarl from Echevarria junior.

  ‘—that whatever this man was doing in Medellin, it was not at our request. He may have been operating at the behest of Hammett McColl, or someone else. I do not deny that our source in HM could very well have sold the same data to anyone else willing to pay corporate prices. I understand this person, let us say, has good contacts in both New York and Tokyo and—‘

  ‘Alright, Senor Bryant. I believe I have heard this excuse. You have offered a face-to-face meeting. To what end?’

  ‘Well.’ Mike went back to the mouse. The HM document faded and was replaced by one of the hardware lists he’d shown Chris the week before. ‘There is an outstanding question over the matter of military equipment. In view of these new developments, and the disturbances they are bound to cause, I had it in mind to review the budget.’

  Chris caught the reaction. He wondered how Mike managed not to grin.

  ‘You are saying?’

  ‘Next month, London hosts the North Memorial arms fair. I am suggesting that you kill two birds with one stone and that we visit the fair together with an eye to your immediate requirements. While you are here, we can discuss the matter of Hammett McColl’s information and its US implications.’

  Echevarria’s eyes narrowed. ‘US implications?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I meant international implications.’ Alike did a good imitation of embarrassment. ‘I tend to leap to conclusions that cannot always be justified, but. Well. We can discuss this further when you are in London.’

  After that, it was just noise. Bryant layered on the apologies, with a couple of wheeled-in words from Makin. Echevarria junior growled and snapped at intervals, always brought to heel by his father who just looked thoughtful throughout. Goodbyes were said cordially enough. Mike came storming back into the viewing chambers and slammed the door behind him.

  ‘Get on to Lopez. I want contact with the rebels by the end of the week. This motherfucker is going to turn on us.’

  Chris blinked. �
��I thought you’d hooked him.’

  ‘Yeah, for the moment. The military stuff ought to hold him for a while, and that smear about US involvement will stave off junior’s Miami connections. But in the end, it’s a slum block waiting to come down. Old Hernan doesn’t really buy anything we said in there, he’s just biding his time to see what he can get out of us. And he’s not going to stay bribed with a handful of cheap cluster bombs, which is about all we can afford right now, the state things are in. No, the Americans are going to get him, sooner or later, and I want a player of our own in position before that happens.’

  ‘Yeah, but who?’ Chris gestured out through the glass to where Makin still sat at the table, staring into the middle distance. ‘Fuckhead there’s managed to trash Diaz. Who does that leave us?’

  ‘We’ll have to go with Barranco.’

  ‘Barranco?’

  ‘Chris, he’s what we’ve got. You said yourself, Arbenz isn’t going to be in any position to lead an armed insurrection this year.’

  ‘Yeah, but Barranco. He’s committed, Mike.’

  ‘Ah, come on. They all start out that way.’

  ‘No, he’s a real fucking Guevara, Mike. I don’t think we’re going to be able to control him.’

  Bryant grinned. ‘Yeah, we will. You will.’ He glanced back through at Makin. The other executive hadn’t moved. ‘I’m going to take this shit to Hewitt and get Nick reassigned. It’s high fucking time. Meanwhile, you get Barranco to sit down. I don’t care what it takes. Fly out there yourself if you have to, but get him to a table.’

  There was a brief rush off the words, an image from the Hammett McColl visit, a Caribbean night sky shingled with stars, the warm darkness beneath and the noises of the night time street.

  ‘You want me to go out to Panama?’

  ‘If that’s what it takes.’

  ‘Hewitt isn’t going to like this. She gave the account to Makin in the first place. It isn’t going to look good if he’s written off as the wrong choice. And that’s without her feelings about me. She’s hardly a fan.’

  ‘Chris, you’re fucking paranoid. I told you before. Hewitt’s a fan of money, and right now you’re making plenty of it. Bottom line, that’s what counts.’ Mike grinned again. ‘And anyway, she gives me any static, I’ll go talk to Notley. You are in, my friend, like it or not. Welcome to the NAME account.’