Lords of Corruption (13 page)

"You're a nun?" Josh said, immediately regretting the wide-eyed shock and disappointment in his delivery.

"In fact, I am not a nun. I was a novice for two years but never took my vows."

"The Catholics are scumbags," Flannary pointed out.

"The Catholics aren't scumbags, JB. You just --"

"Oh, come on. You ran out of that convent like your ass was on fire."

"I'll admit that they're a bit misguided on how to prevent the spread of AIDS here and gave too many orders for me. And then there's the sex . . ."

"Excuse me?" Josh said, again regretting opening his mouth.

"Sex. The idea of never marrying, never having children." Her expression turned thoughtful. "I felt as though I was closing doors at a time in my life when I should have been opening them." A beautiful smile preceded a sudden change of subject.

"Come with me, Josh. As an engineer you'll appreciate this. My church took up a collection and sent me a brand-new, very good welder." She paused for a moment. "Do you go to church?"

"Not really."

"Why not?"

"I guess I haven't quite reconciled the whole God thing in my mind yet."

"That's okay because He --"

"Believes in me," Josh said, finishing her sentence. "I know."

"Actually, I was going to say that He can get back at you by sending you to the fiery depths of hell for all eternity." Another one of those camera-flash smiles. "Anyway, like an idiot I asked for the welder instead of a new pump. I said, `Annika, you should lear
n t
o fix things.' You want to see it?"

"The welder? Uh, sure."

He was having a hard time concentrating and sounded increasingly stupid, even to himself. Flannary had obviously noticed and was enjoying himself immensely.

She pointed to a tarp lying next to a pile of junk, and Josh pulled it off to examine what looked like a car alternator with cables sticking out of it.

Flannary shook his head in disgust.

"Sometime after it entered the country, someone stole the one my church sent and replaced it with whatever that thing is," Annika said. "But do you know what really makes me mad? I know in my heart that right now my welder is being used to fix one of Mtiti's Rolls Royces."

Josh grinned and poked at one of the cables with his foot.

"What? You think this is funny?"

"Kind of."

"I wonder how you'd feel if you had to stand there by that pump all day in the sun?"

"Tell you what," Josh said. "Why don't you and JB go have a drink? In about an hour, come back and just try to resist asking me to marry you."

Josh finally understood the phrase "Africa hot." He was sitting in the full sun wearing one of Annika's old sweatshirts, gloves, and a welding helmet, basking in the glow of the molten metal in front of him. And to make matters worse, the Land Cruiser was idling only inches behind him.

"I feel so stupid!" Annika said as Josh continued to fuse the cracked pump.

The thing under the tarp actually had been a welder -- but one designed to be powered by a car motor as opposed to being plugged into an outlet.

"How would you know?" Josh yelled through his helmet. "Sometimes you just need a redneck. Nothing else will do."

" 'Redneck'?" she said.

He laughed. "JB, maybe you could come up with a good definition."

"I don't think she'd have a context. Most of the American NGO people she's met are more Ivy League types. Like Dan."

"Were you friends?" Josh heard her say. "Never met him."

"I liked him," Annika offered.

"Does anyone know what happened?" Josh said.

There was no immediate response, but finally Flannary spoke. "He got killed. It's Africa, kid. No reason to look deeper."

Even over the crackle of the welder, his tone suggested there was every reason to look deeper. Josh flipped up his helmet and looked back at Flannary, who was sipping from an expensive-looking martini glass.

"Africa can be a dangerous place," Annika said. "A beautiful place filled with wonderful people, but still . . ."

"I'm hoping to avoid getting killed," Josh said. "That's definitely not what I came here for."

"That brings up an interesting question," Flannary said. "Why did you come here?"

Annika sat down on the Land Cruiser's bumper and searched his face in a way that suggested she thought something was hidden there.

He flipped the helmet down and went back to work. "To help out my fellow man?" "Really?" Flannary said.

"Why not?"

"Come on, Josh. I'm the world expert o
n t
hose fresh little faces. You don't have one." "Okay, how about this: It's the best job I
could find, and I've got a lot of debt." "Better, but I still don't love it."

"Why not?"

"Didn't you say earlier that you have an engineering degree?" Annika said. "And don't you have an MBA, too?"

He stopped what he was doing. "How would you know that? Is someone passing out my resume in backwater African villages without telling me?"

"You've got to admit, though, it's a pretty impressive resume. One that would get you a job just about anywhere, I would think."

Josh didn't answer.

"Did you rob a bank or something?" Flan-nary prodded.

"What's it to you?" Josh shot back.

"In this part of the world, it makes sense to know who you're dealing with."

"I didn't rob a bank."

Annika had wisely decided to sit this one out, but Flannary wasn't so easily deterred. "Drugs? Stuffed a little too much up your nose? That can --"

"What the fuck's your problem?" Josh said, wrenching off his helmet and jumping to his feet to face Flannary. Annika pushed herself off the Land Cruiser, but instead of preventing a fight between them, she had to grab Josh around the waist as the sudden movement and heat caused the blood to rush from his head.

"So what, then?" Flannary said as Josh'
s k
nees collapsed and Annika lowered him to the ground. "You got caught cheating on your finals?"

"JB! That's enough!" Annika scolded. "Josh, are you all right?"

She pulled his sweatshirt off and then snatched Flannary's drink, dabbing the cool gin on his forehead. "Josh? Are you with me?"

By way of an answer, he held out a hand in Flannary's direction and lifted his middle finger.

Chapter
14.

Josh Hagarty found himself in an increasingly familiar position: lying awake in bed
,
watching the sun spike around the curtains.

It was hard not to turn the previous day over and over in his mind. Annika Gritdal may well have been the most amazing woman he'd ever met. Of course he'd known women in school who were forces of nature in their own right -- ones who would end up earning millions of dollars, dining with senators, and putting the fear of God into the financial markets. But they would also be in actual danger of perishing if the local Starbucks ran out of soy milk.

He closed his eyes and breathed the increasingly thick scent of smoke wafting in from hundreds of cooking fires burning in the refugee camps over the hill. Annika's image hovered in the darkness.

Not that he had a chance in hell with her. He had a not-so-vague feeling that Flannary's interrogation had been planned and that she'd been complicit. Why they would be interested enough to bother escaped him, but how he'd come off didn't: a violent jerk with something to hide. Or more accurately, a violent jerk prone to fainting spells with something to hide. Quite the chick magnet.

Josh coughed and opened his eyes. The smoke had become thick enough to put the other side of his room slightly out of focus. That had never happened before.

He slipped out of bed and was pulling on a pair of jeans when someone started pounding on his door. The muffled shouting was completely unintelligible, but the tone and volume made his breath catch in his chest.

His first reaction was that they were under attack, though he wasn't sure why or by whom. He managed to get his pants buttoned and ran to the door, finding Luganda on the other side, speaking in a jumble of his native language and English.

The column of smoke bisecting the horizon behind him bore no resemblance to the yellow haze that hung over the town. It took a moment for Josh's mind to process its distance and location, but when he did, he took off shirtless and barefoot toward his truck.

By the time Josh skidded the vehicle to a stop, the flames were rising more than twenty feet into the air, moving quickly across the field of corn toward the shed that housed the irrigation controls and tools. He jumped out and ran toward the shed, ignoring the rocks cutting the bottoms of his feet and holding a hand in front of his eyes to protect them from heat. Smoke billowed over him as he tried to work his way closer, but there was no way. The hair on his arms and bare chest was beginning to singe, and the derelict tractor next to the shed was already being engulfed. He was finally forced to retreat, backing away until the air cleared enough for him to see a few workers who had arrived early watching the inferno.

They weren't moving or shouting or even talking among themselves. Instead they just stood there watching the flames with blank expressions. One of the men was standing with his son in front of him, hands reassuringly on his shoulders as everything they had lived and worked for was consumed. The boy was too young to have learned the resignation displayed by his elders, though, and despair was clearl
y e
tched in his face.

Josh ducked involuntarily when the gas that hadn't been siphoned from the tractor exploded, causing the flames to waver for a moment before gaining even more strength. He ran behind his Land Cruiser and fell to the ground, pressing his back against the closed door and putting his face in his hands. These people had been out there every day for God knew how long, breaking their backs to try to turn their lives into something. To create something they could give their children. And now it was gone. Now they had nothing.

When he remembered that President Mtiti was scheduled to be there in a week for a photo op, he slammed an elbow into the side of the car in frustration. How the hell had his life turned out this way? Despite what the paperwork might say, he wasn't a bad person. He'd worked hard to make something of himself. And he'd been ready to work hard to help the people here do the same. But he couldn't. Everything he touched turned to shit. God hated him for some reason. And He hated him so much that He was willing to destroy everything and everyone around him.

Josh looked up when he heard the crunch of approaching footsteps and discovered Tfmena looking down at him with what he interpreted as a mix of disappointment and inevitability. The African was probably regretting saving his ass in that alley.

"I don't know what happened," Josh said, though he knew Tfmena wouldn't understand.

The African grabbed him by the arm and stood him up, taking hold of both his shoulders and looking him in the eye. "And what would you do if you did know?"

Josh blinked a few time trying to process what he'd just heard. "You . . . you speak English?"

"Enough," Tfmena said.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I had nothing to say to you."

"But now you do?"

"I begin to think you are someone worth saying things to."

Josh let out a bitter laugh. "You're wrong. A few weeks ago, I couldn't find your country on a map. And you know what my experience with farming is? When I was sixteen, I tried to grow pot behind my family's trailer and it died."

Tfmena's expression turned exasperated. "But now isn't a few weeks ago. You are here. And you know where you are now.

Yes?"

Josh nodded numbly, but it was just a reflex. Africa was breaking him. Turning him into someone who just sat around and whined about injustice instead of doing something about it. Even prison hadn't been enough to do that.

Tfmena opened his mouth to say something but fell silent when he spotted Gideon running in their direction.

"What has happened?" Gideon shouted. "What have you done?"

"I didn't do anything," Josh said as Tfmena took a step backward. "It was already on fire when I woke up this morning."

Tfmena shook his head in disgust and picked something up off the ground. It looked like a cat, but there was no way to be sure. It was completely blackened, the body twisted unnaturally, like the monkey Josh had seen in town. A thick wire, maybe a coat hanger, was wound around what was left of its tail, and it was by that that Tfmena held it out to him.

Josh screwed up his face in disgust and was about to take a step backward when Gideon made a grab for the burned animal. The urgency of his movement suggested that it wasn't just some witch-doctor talisman or African delicacy, and Josh lunged forward, cutting him off and snatching th
e w
ire from Tfmena's hand.

"Give me the animal," Gideon said as Tfmena walked back to the people silently watching what was left of their hope being carried off by the wind. "I will dispose of it."