Doing Dangerously Well (54 page)

Mary called her sister on computer phone—she wanted to see her face.

“Barbie! It’s Mary. I’m on camera.”

“Ooh! Just a minute.” After an incessant wait, the half-witted lunatic figured out how to work this basic technology. One day she might even be able to flush the toilet without any assistance. “Hey, Mary! Can you see me?”

What the hell was that material satelliting out from her head? Did the toddlers’ shop not carry her size of shirt? How many bangles, mathematically speaking, could be fitted onto the human arm? “Yeah. I can see you.”

“What’s up? Find a new job?”

This embodiment of ineptitude dared to condescend to her! Rage lashed through Mary’s body. “No, actually. I just got promoted to—”

“Well done! Congratulations! Miracles happen, huh?”

Mary grabbed the edge of her desk, the only anchor for a rage that threatened to grow violent, caring little for telltale fingerprints. “I don’t know why, but you’ve been out to get me. I’ve never done anything to deserve that, but hey, water under the bridge. And anyway, you messed that up, as expected. But you know what? You’ve inspired me. It’ll be my new hobby to annihilate every last thing that means anything to you. And I mean from your work—”

“I’m leaving.”

“—to your house—”

“I’m moving!”

“—to every element of your lifestyle—”

“It’s changing!”

Each utterance seemed to cheer Barbara, as if these neutralizations merely conjured up new adventures.

“—to your relationship.”

“I’ve tried that myself-didn’t work. Astro’s pretty needy.”

Barbara stared at the screen eagerly, awaiting more suggestions. Mary decided to drop the big one. “I’ll hold you responsible for Jegede’s death. You, Barbie. Apparently Lance Omeke’s work with the AWW was financed by a Ms. Glass-probably someone like yourself with a preference for armed insurrection.”

Barbara’s smile collapsed. “I wouldn’t try that, Mary. It’s cruel, it’s wrong, and I simply won’t let you.”

“You won’t let me?” Mary snickered. “Someone tells you to get the blueprints. Woohoo! Mission accomplished. So now you actually believe you’re heading up the FBI or something?”

“But, Mary—”

Mary cut the call dead, even more enraged. She seethed, wishing to smash her body against the glass panels, just to see them shatter. She could smash them, because they didn’t move.
Debris like Barbara, too immature to invest in those things precious to others—status, wealth, power—would be harder to obliterate. How do you trash garbage?

Realizing the degree to which this calamity had distracted her, she raced to a team meeting seven minutes early, where she found Cheeseman already seated. He seemed under an inordinate amount of stress.

“Ms. Glass,” he said in his most sarcastic tone. “Thanks for dropping by.”

“Mr. Cheeseman. Sorry I’m late.”

“Siddown. Update.”

A muscle on Mary’s neck bulged with apprehension. “Well, uh, as you know, I uh, I’ve uh—”

“What the hell do you think this is?” Cheeseman yelled. “A support group? I’m not interested in sharing an emotional experience with you, Glass. I want facts.” A stalactite of spit stuck stubbornly to the centre of his mouth as he spoke. “So spill.”

Beano and two other members of the team entered the room.

“Kolo has agreed to the sale of rights to the Benue River in the east. It’s a huge acquisition. The details will be on your desk tomorrow.”

Cheeseman stared at her, threw his head back and laughed. “Whoa!” He issued another volley of spitty laughter, wiping non-existent tears from his eyes as more team members entered the room and scuttled to their chairs. “Promoted a few weeks and …” he leaned forward, screaming, “… you’ve only made
one
goddam phone call! What the hell do you think we’re paying you for? Get your act together, sister, or you’re outta here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nigeria isn’t the only country in Africa and the Middle East. Buy a map.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve handed you the deserts of the world on a silver platter, and this is all you can do?”

“I’ll get right on it, sir.”

“You bet yer skinny ass you will. By Friday next week.”

Beano smirked.

Mary could see only one solution to her predicament: oust Cheeseman. His position was evidently exposed, isolated, precarious.

On returning to her office, Mary closed her eyes, trying to quell her fury. Barbara invaded every thought, distracting her. She had to deal with her sister first. She opened her eyes, clicked on to Drop of Life’s website and picked up the phone, determined to execute Barbara’s downfall. “Hey, Krystal! It’s Barbie.”

“Oh, hi there! I didn’t know you weren’t using your full name anymore.”

“Only to close, close friends, Krystal. I’m trying to wrap up here on TransAqua, but I can’t remember how to log on.”

“Oh, Barbie!” Krystal tinkled into accepting laughter. “You’re at home, right? Okay, here’re your passwords. And you’ll also need remote access, so you’ll need this information …”

Mary wrote down a long string of codes. “Thanks. Could you put me on to Brad?”

“Sure, hon.”

Barbara could never have obtained all that information on the deal–secured within a password-protected environment-and she certainly had nothing to do with forensic accounting; the muttonhead could not even do her own taxes! Responsibility rested with someone higher up in her organization, perhaps that sari woman.

After a microsecond, a man picked up the call. “Brad Chambers speaking.” An efficient, intelligent voice saturated with discretion
flowed through her earpiece. Her arms prickled with goosebumps. His website picture made him look like quite a catch.

“Hey, Brad. It’s Barbara.”

Cheeseman clopped past her office in his cowboy boots, their spurs ringing a persistent message of menace. This would have to wait, in case he spotted any incriminating information. She would give the whole thing a week—tops. “Will call later,” she said and hung up. He would be used to this unpredictability from her sister.

Mary wondered if she could engineer a meeting with Brad after Drop of Life’s crash.

Beano sniffed his new office, realizing that Mary had not even left behind her scent! He watched the silent film in her new office with interest, giggling when she was unable to turn over her desk, wondering what conversation could have provoked such a facial expression, pinched with increasing vexation as she spoke into her camera phone. He particularly admired the impassivity with which she received the blistering attacks that turned Cheeseman’s countenance towards the blue end of the spectrum. Studying Mary was more intellectually stimulating than watching Sinclair, whose emotions he had had no difficulty reading.

At the end of Act I, Beano picked up his phone. “Hey, Dad!”

“Beano.” His father sounded weary, absolutely spent. “It’s chaos. Anarchy. The apocalypse.”

“So, nothing new, huh?” Beano snorted a “gotcha” laugh before his father could detonate. “Time for Major General Wosu P. Wosu? I’ve got this feeling I’ll be promoted again very soon.” He thought of little else but the corner office, with its great view of the mountains. Perhaps in unconscious anticipation, he had worn his mountain boots to work.

“Kolo’s so weak, we no longer need a military man from the east to placate him. Besides which, we miscalculated. That Wosu is already having clandestine meetings. I reckon we’ve got another Kolo on our hands, kid.”

“Dad-you gotta be kidding, right?” Alarmed, Beano mentally logged out of the corner office. Without his own candidate in power, Mary might ultimately connect Jegede’s positive press coverage to him.

“Should have figured that out-that’s how someone with his undesirable ethnic background got so high in the army in the first place: slimy, sly, calculating.”

“Who has Wosu been visiting?”

“The usuals. The paramount leaders, politicos, embassies, you name it. So in answer to your next question, no, we can’t get any religious mileage out of this. He’s done too much groundwork. No one you can trust over here, son. And I mean no one.”

“Jeez, Dad. That must be tough.” All his work, flushed down the toilet. But what might be salvaged if he pulled the lever first? His day brightened and he gazed once again at the corner office. “I’ve heard-it’s just a rumour now, sir-that Wosu will try to get his Igbo cronies into power and secure oil from the Delta for the east. To me-and I’m no, like, politician-that seems potentially divisive. Is that right?”

His father pondered. After some time, he replied, “Yep, I’ll work on it.”

“So the country probably needs firm leadership from the Middle Belt.”

“Military?”

“It’ll wash the stench of Kolo away.”

“I don’t even think your Sewage pals could do that.” The ambassador choked at his own joke.

From his bottom drawer, Beano pulled out a binder entitled “Wastewater: Pathogenic Organisms.” Within it, a list of contenders for presidency. “Okey-dokey. Here we go. Ever heard of Brigadier Jamal Abdullah?”

“Never.”

“Very pleasant guy, apparently. He failed Sandhurst twice.”

“Perfect.”

“The British High Commissioner’s son failed with him.”

“Even better!”

“Plus, he’s got a daughter trying to get into Harvard.”

“Any hope?”

“Not a chance.”

“Guess he’ll need a bit of help with that.”

“Well, education is important, Dad, as you’ve always said.”

When Mary crept into the office the next day, all was silent. Faces ashen. Expressions hollow. Cheeseman anchored motionless. She scrambled into her tank, catching a quick view of Beano, head in hands, she supposed, since all she could see was hair.

She clicked on to a news website. TransAqua had once more made the front page. She could only hope that some other dupe in the company had taken the heat off her. But she noticed yet another of Barbara’s photographic masterpieces of her, alongside images of Cheeseman, the CEO, Sinclair and even a short-haired Beano, circa Sewage era.

It was not the usual reportage—they had unveiled a new narrative style so engrossing that even Mary could not wait until the denouement. Beautifully designed graphics described how Sinclair had tricked Nigeria’s president into assassinating rivals to protect those his team at TransAqua supported. And, the kicker: an entire paragraph outlining Sinclair’s manipulation of her.

With enormous effort, Mary raised her eyes and saw the entire office staring at her-some eyes reflecting Kolo’s demon, others Sinclair’s dupe. Mary felt violated. That slug, may he dance in the flames of an everlasting hell, had stripped her of all dignity, watching all her naked intrigues with a lecherous grin of expectation. She hated Sinclair, loathed him, wished he were still alive so she could watch him die again. More than that, she abhorred the person who had unveiled her humiliation for the world to see. Barbara. How much more ammunition did her sister have stored up, ready to detonate just as Mary recuperated from each successive blow?

Her door still open, Mary waited for a sound but heard only the rustling of a newspaper or the clicking of a computer mouse as the staff read the narrative of their own downfall. She rose, shut herself in and, regardless of this defining catastrophe, renewed her onslaught on Barbara. Her sister must have purchased explosives. That would ruin her career.

Mary picked up the phone. “Brad Chambers, please.”

“Okay, hon, just a minute,” an anonymous voice sparkled.

“Brad Chambers speaking.”

“Oh, hi there, Brad. It’s Barbara. Just trying to wind up this Nigeria thing. Congratulations on the forensic thing, by the way. I saw some diagrams in a magazine. Those Nigerian systems and things. Pretty inventive, huh?”

“Ms. Glass, they exhibited a degree of perfection that is hard to imagine as the creation of a human mind. To describe its sublime formations would lie outside the narrow confines of language.”

She almost swooned. “And yet predatory-you can feel the carnal nature of its invention, Mr. Chambers.”

“There is a saying that tells of the inexpressible beauty of Nigerian financial structures: ‘Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must pass over in silence.’ Are you familiar with the aphorism?”

She put her hand to her chest. “Wittgenstein.
Tractatus.
Proposition 7. So, are Nigerian accounting systems of such exquisite design?”

He passed over this question in silence.

“You must be highly talented, Mr. Chambers.”

“I am a seeker of beauty only, Ms. Glass. The builders are the talented ones. Like your sister.”

“Who? Mary?” she sneered.

“No, Ms. Glass. Barbara.”

Mary’s inhalation caught: outwitted again. The magic of the last few moments dissipated into the polluted air that sustained Barbara’s breathing. “Where is she? Standing next to you? Let me speak to her.”

“I think she’s at home.” Brad sounded discomfited. “She, um, believes in the energizing qualities of the afternoon siesta.”

“I do apologize for that unwarranted outburst, Mr. Chambers. How did you know I wasn’t Barbara?”

“She knows nothing about accounting, Ms. Glass. None of its mystery and awe.”

“And yet you call her talented. You should know better, Mr. Chambers. She’s completely harebrained.”

“Her thinking is …” long pause, “… non-linear, like many …” another ponderous pause, “… creative people. But she alone had the faith that we could challenge a corporation or topple a government. And her speeches … very powerful, Ms. Glass.”

“
She
organized all this?”

“Oh yes. None of us would have dared.”

Such counterintuitive information chipped away at the solidity of her knowledge, and the concretion began to disintegrate under the pressure until only the rubble of confusion
remained. Had the tilt-headed buffoon been capable of all this? Mary’s mind sped back to their childhood, shuttled back and forth in frenetic recall, desperately trying to reconstruct that which now lay in ruins. Nothing made sense.

At last Mary spoke. “All that energy devoted to one cause. And do you know what that cause was, Mr. Chambers?”

“Water, Ms. Glass. The welfare of the Nigerian people.”