Kingmaker (11 page)

“I guess.”

“Emma,” Alexei says. The screen on his phone brightens. “Project the map of Xi Jinping Square. Satellite view.”

The pico projector in Alexei’s handset lights up. The image on the wall begins to glow as the particles react to the energy from the lasers. Alexei looks from the wall to the boy.

“What do you know about China?”

“I don’t know. I know they got a lot of people, and a lot of money.”

Alexei plucks one of his black cigarettes from the pack on the table and takes a moment to light it. As he exhales toward the ceiling, the smoke is drawn into the filter mounted above them.

“You know how they got all that money?”

“No.”

“Manufacturing.” He pinches a piece of tobacco from his tongue and deposits it in the ashtray. “China used to be the manufacturing capital of the world until its middle class got too big and there weren’t enough peasants to work in the factories anymore. That’s when the government started looking for cheaper labor markets. And guess where they found them.”

“Africa?”

“Africa. Specifically, the Republic of Sierra Leone. It’s rich in natural resources, it has plenty of coastline for shipping, and the government is easy to influence. Perfect for foreign exploitation.”

“Why didn’t they just build robots and machines and shit to do all their work?”

Alexei takes a long drag and rolls the ash of his cigarette into an orange cone. He exhales as he speaks. “As it turns out, it’s cheaper for humans to do the work of robots than it is to build and maintain robots to do the work of humans.”

The boy makes a face and shakes his head. “That’s fucked up,” he says.

“Yes, that most certainly is thoroughly fucked up.”

“How can the world let them get away with that?”

“Because it also turns out that there’s more profit in exploiting people than there is in liberating them. The world let them get away with it because most of the industrialized world—and in particular the United States—helped them do it.”

“What did they do?”

“They industrialized. They started with a seventy square mile region called the Western Area Forest Reserve, and once it was fully harvested and they’d built as many factories as they could, they started either buying up or otherwise appropriating the entire Freetown peninsula. You probably know that region today as New Guangdong—as in New Guangdong dollars, or NGDs.” Alexei gestures toward the wall. “That’s what we’re looking at right now.”

The boy squints at the projection. “Are those
people
?”

“About two million of them.”

“What are they doing?”

“Protesting. Demonstrating. Occupying. Basically trying to take their country back.”

“What’s stopping them?”

“Good question.” Alexei blows out a stream of smoke, tips his cigarette ash into the ashtray, and leans forward. “You see that curved line that runs all the way up along the left side of the map? That’s a wall about fourteen, maybe fifteen meters high—about fifty feet or so. On one side is over two million angry protesters ready to start a revolution, and on the other side is the presidential palace and parliament buildings. All someone would have to do is take out about a thirty foot section of that wall right about there, and by morning, New Guangdong would be Freetown again.” Alexei looks at the boy. “You want to know what’s stopping an
entire nation of over ten million people from being free? Nothing but a few feet of concrete and rebar.”

“What about the military? Wouldn’t they stop them?”

“There’s no way the Sierra Leone Armed Forces could stop a wave of two million people. I doubt they’d even try. My guess is that if the people got through that wall, the army would either step aside, or more likely, join them. There’s no doubt in my mind that within twenty-four hours, every last government official and everyone in their families would be shot, beaten to death, hacked to pieces, or hung from flagpoles.”

The boy appears startled as he looks from the map back to Alexei. “And you think that’s a
good
thing?”

“Good for the Sierra Leoneans. Good for justice and democracy, and for humanity in general. Admittedly, not so good for the people hanging from the flagpoles.”

The boy studies Alexei for a moment. “You want to blow up that wall, don’t you?”

Alexei’s cigarette stops on its way to his lips and he looks at the boy. “Andre, these things always happen in two distinct steps: gradually, and then all at once. They’re like earthquakes. It takes years to build up all that energy and then just a few seconds to release it, shaking everything around it to the ground. All the energy is already there. All I want to do is release it.”

“How?”

“By funding a revolution. One and a half million NGD can buy a lot in that part of the world. Favors, influence, weapons, explosives. It can make a lot of people look the other way when you need them to. And New Guangdong would just be the beginning. If the rest of Africa saw the people of Sierra Leone rise up, I think we’d see revolutions across the entire continent. I think it could be the beginning of the African Spring.”

“Why can’t they do it peacefully?” the boy says. “Why can’t the people just vote for a new president? That’s what a republic is, isn’t it?”

“Unfortunately terms like
republic
and
democracy
are a little more subjective than you might think. Have you ever heard of the Thirty-first Amendment?”

“I heard of it.”

“Do you know what it does?”

“Not really.”

“The Thirty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution legalizes the transfer of suffrage from a citizen to his or her economic sponsor, patron, or benefactor. In other words, it gives the company you work for the right to cast a vote on your behalf. Guess where the inspiration for it came from?”

“Sierra Leone?”

“Exactly. Corporations control over ninety percent of votes in Sierra Leone, and most of the corporations are controlled by foreign interests. Technically and legally, Sierra Leone and the United States are both democracies, but in reality, they’re more like plutocracies.”

“What’s that?”

“It means they’re ruled by the wealthy rather than by the majority. But since Americans probably wouldn’t put up with an
actual
plutocracy, the wealthy put a lot of effort into maintaining a democratic facade.”

The boy gestures toward the projection. “How long have those people been out there?”

“Months. And they’re going to stay out there until they either get what they want, or until they get put down. That’s why if someone’s going to knock that wall down, they need to do it soon. It’s only a matter of time before foreign militaries go in to protect their investments.”

The boy cocks his head and studies Alexei. “Why do you even care about the Africans?” he says. “They ain’t even your people.”

Alexei blows smoke through his nose as he leans back. The joints of the straight-back chair groan and creak under his weight.

“How’s your Russian history?” Alexei asks the boy.

“It pretty much sucks.”

“You ever hear of Chernobyl?”

“I heard of it,” the boy says, “but I don’t know anything about it.”

Alexei leans forward and crushes his cigarette out in the ashtray. He reaches for the pack, but does not light a fresh one. “If I were a history teacher, I’d probably tell you that Chernobyl was the site of the worst accident in the history of nuclear technology. I’d tell you that it killed forty-seven plant workers right away, but that it was eventually responsible for the deaths of
tens of thousands
.” He pauses and raps his miniature plasma torch against the polished stone surface of the table. “But as the child of two engineers who not only worked in the plant, but who actually helped design and build it, I’d tell you that the Vladimir Lenin Nuclear Power
Station operated for over two years without the ability to safely run cooling pumps in the event of a power outage. I’d tell you that the test that destabilized the reactor core violated multiple very basic safety protocols and should never have been allowed. I’d tell you that because of a design flaw so fundamental that a clever enough high school student could have probably spotted it—a flaw both my parents pointed out to their superiors, only to be reprimanded for insubordination—the emergency shutdown procedure actually increased the reaction rate rather than slowing it down. And finally I’d tell you that the only engineers who can explain exactly what happened there that morning were killed in the initial explosion—before they had a chance to talk to anyone.”

“You think there was some kind of cover-up?”

“Not a cover-up,” Alexei says. “What I’m saying is that Chernobyl wasn’t an accident at all. It was an experiment.”

“
What?
” The boy looks at Alexei with a combination of horror and skepticism. “What the hell for?”

“To see what would happen if well over half a million people were exposed to varying levels of radioactivity. But more importantly, to see what would happen to their children. And their children’s children. And the next generation after that. To see if it was possible to induce enough mutation over a large and diverse enough population that some of the results—even just three or four out of hundreds of thousands and eventually millions—might actually prove to be not
just viable mutations, but actually beneficial.”

The boy is looking down at the table. Alexei can see that his eyes are searching the veins of minerals running through the dark marble.

“I’m one of those children, Andre. And now, indirectly, so are you. And so is every other child I’ve brought into this house.
That’s
why I care about the people of Sierra Leone. We may be fighting different fights, but we’re on the same side.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Dre says. “You already got the money. Or if you don’t, you can get it. Just sell your jet, or this house, or a few of them cars you got. Shit, just sell that watch you got on and you’d probably be halfway there.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The money to fund this kind of operation has to be completely untraceable. You have to understand that the repercussions of punching a hole in that wall are tremendous. I’m not just talking about in Africa and Asia. I’m talking about right here in the US. Remember, we’re silent investors. We have almost as much tied up in Africa as the Chinese—as do the Russians, Japanese, Brazilians, Indians, Germans, and just about everyone else. An attack on New Guangdong would be seen as an attack on most of the global economy. Whoever knocks down that wall will have every intelligence agency and secret police organization on the entire planet looking for him, and that’s not something I can afford.”

“But even if I win the money,” the boy says, “it’s still coming from you, right?”

“You’re exactly right, Dre. It would be very difficult for someone like me to anonymously fund a revolution with such a massive global impact. I’d be risking everything I’ve built here. That’s why the money has to come from someone else. Someone untraceable. Someone with no family. No official address. No real connections. No public records, and barely any government documentation. Someone who nobody would ever suspect of having the resources, connections, or the incentive to start a revolution halfway around the world.”

The boy stands up so fast that he tips his chair back. He glares at Alexei through an expression of both fear and defiance.

“You want to know why you’re here, Dre?” Alexei says calmly. He stands and looks down at the boy. “You’re not just here to play video games and win some pocket change. You’re here to help me change the entire course of human history.”

Alexei considers it a bug in Emma’s notification heuristics that she waits until he is sitting in the spacious stacked-granite master bathroom shower with a buxom German nanny on his lap to inform him that Andre did not train at all the previous day, and so far has spent the entire morning in the gym. Ingrid actually covers herself and blushes when she hears the gentle female voice emanate from the ceramic speakers overhead. Alexei manages a sardonic and begrudging “thank you,” then proceeds to make his best effort to pick up where he left off; however he finds that the mood has been irreconcilably spoiled. When he finally accepts that he is too distracted by what he has just learned to continue, he uses the touch screen in the glass door to shut off the array of showerheads around them and then tells Emma to clear his calendar for the afternoon before activating the cyclonic driers. Ingrid is clearly in disbelief as Alexei prompts her to remove herself from his lap. This has gone on long enough, he mutters to himself as he finishes drying his scalp with a cut of cream-colored Egyptian cotton, tactfully silkscreened with subtle, brown tiger stripes. He leaves the towel on the floor and exits the bathroom amid a long string of German slurs issuing from the shower behind him.

He finds Dre downstairs in the gym. The boy has been working out at least once a day since he arrived and he has indeed started to fill out. He is wearing a T-shirt which he has either cut or torn the sleeves off of, and which exposes his well-defined deltoids, biceps, and triceps. His breathing is heavy and his braids are pulled back behind his head.

“You like watches, right?” Alexei asks from the door. He is wearing a fitted purple silk shirt with double-headed eagle cufflinks, black slacks, and substantial black pointed boots.

The boy shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I’m going watch shopping. You want to come?”

“You going someplace with Rolexes?”

“I’m going someplace with much more than Rolexes,” Alexei tells the boy. “It’s time we begin your watch education in earnest. Come on. We’ll grab some lunch while we’re out.”

“I gotta take a shower first.”

Alexei shakes his head. “I hope you have better luck with yours than I had with mine,” he says. “I’ll meet you in the garage in fifteen.”