Lords of Corruption

by Kyle Mills

  "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 the wire 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."

  "Thanks," Josh said, jerking it away when Gideon reached for it. "But I'll deal with it."

  .

  "Give it to me," Gideon repeated, the smoke moving across his mirrored sunglasses. "It isn't for you."

  When Josh spoke again, he surprised even himself with the force of his voice. "I said I'd deal with it."

  Chapter 15.

  The pool area was empty, but Josh just sat there staring into it as though something profound was about to be revealed. Something that would put his life on track. Some hint that the universe wasn't laughing at his futile efforts to redeem himself.

  He didn't notice JB Flannary's approach until the reporter leaned over to sniff at the charred carcass of the cat lying on the table. "We could probably still get it stuffed. A little souvenir of your trip to the dark continent."

  "Screw you."

  "Too soon?" Flannary said, falling uninvited into a chair and waving at Luganda for drinks.

  "Not now, JB. Okay?"

  "Why not?"

  "Because I'm about to get fired, and all those people who were counting on me are going to starve."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Flannary responded innocently.

  "You're so full of shit."

  Flannary examined him, drumming his hands thoughtfully on the table. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. "The way agriculture has always worked here is that when farmers grow a crop, they eat part of it and save part of it as seed for next year's planting. Your engineered corn is tough as nails, but it's sterile. So now these people are dependent on you to provide seed. What happens when your donors get bored or you decide it's getting a little too dangerous to stick around?"

  Luganda arrived with their drinks, saving Josh from having to come up with an answer. What was it that Stephen Trent had said about providing sustainable solutions for Africa? But then, it was starting to seem like that was all Stephen was good for. Pretty speeches.

  "Did you have a good trip?" Luganda asked.

  "What?"

  "Your field trip. Where did you go? North? You know I grew up there."

  Josh accepted the beer the African was holding out to him but didn't answer. There was no reason for him not to like Luganda. He had been nothing but gracious and helpful, but there was also something not right about the guy. The overly wide grins, the endless procession of new-looking Hawaiian shirts, the downcast gaze. It all seemed a bit strained. And the fact that he hadn't so much as mentioned the fact that Josh's entire project and the food source for over a hundred of his countrymen had just burned to a crisp was downright bizarre.

  "It wasn't that interesting," Flannary answered. "Drove around, looked at a few animals. You know how it is."

  Luganda bobbed his head and just stood there. When the phone in the office started ringing, he was forced to retreat.

  Josh pointed to the cat. "Gideon says the fire was an accident."

  "Shit happens. Right, kid?"

  The silence between them stretched to thirty seconds before Josh spoke again. "Go ahead."

  "What?"

  "You know you pretty much live to show all of us how stupid we are. I'm saying go ahead."

  For once Flannary didn't seem particularly inclined and instead pointed to Luganda, who was striding toward them with a phone in his hand.

  "Shit," Josh said quietly as the African held it out to him. This was it. He was about to go from being an overeducated felon with a job that no sane person would want to being an overeducated felon who couldn't hold a job that no sane person would want.

  "Hello?"

  "Josh?"

  His brow furrowed at the unexpected voice. "Laura? Why are you calling me? Are you okay? Is everything all right?"

  "I just wanted to hear your voice. You haven't called in a long time."

  She didn't sound like herself. Her normally deadpan delivery had an audible hopelessness to it that he'd never heard before.

  "We talked a few days ago, Laura. What's going on?"

  "Nothing."

  He stood and walked out of earshot of Flannary and Luganda, stopping beneath a banana tree. "Is Mom okay?"

  "Sure. I --"

  "What's going on with Fawn?"

  Silence.

  "Laura? Are you still there?"

  "She's okay. She has a new boyfriend. I think you knew him in school."

  "Who? What's his name?"

  "Ernie Bruce."

  Josh swallowed hard and tried to stay calm. Bruce had been the quarterback of his high school football team, and despite playing together for three years, Josh had always steered well clear of him. Not that Josh and his friends had exactly been angels, but Ernie Bruce was different.

  "I want you to listen to me, Laura. You're too young to remember this, but when Ernie and I were seniors, he was accused of raping a cheerleader. It was his word against hers, and he was a hell of a good football player, so it kind of went away. But he did lt."

  "I wasn't too young. I remember."

  Despite the deep shade provided by the tree spreading out above him, the sweat began dripping from Josh's chin.

  "Is he living there?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Laura?"

  "Yeah. Most of the time."

  He gnawed on a fingernail, trying to think and barely noticing the taste of blood as he tore it. His little sister -- the only worthwhile thing in his life -- was living a half mile from their nearest neighbor with a rapist, a thieving bitch, and a mother who split her time between dead drunk and passed out.

  "Can you stay away from him?"

  "Yeah. When Fawn's around, he's okay. She's really jealous, you know? But when she's not, I go to the tree house. I've taken some stuff up there. It's real nice now.
"

  He continued to chew on the bleeding nail. It was bad enough that he'd left her there in that broken-down trailer, but now she was holing up by herself in an old shack in the woods.

  "You're going to have to get Mom to call the cops. Sit her down and --"

  "They're buying her vodka, Josh. And I heard Fawn talking to her about making a will."

  He'd obviously been in Africa too long because all his fantasies about killing Fawn now involved a machete.

  "Josh? Did you hear --"

  "I heard!" he snapped back, stalking deeper into the trees to get farther from Flannary, who he knew would be straining to make out his conversation.

  The only way they kept their mother from drinking herself to death was to make sure she drank only beer. Josh had known the owner of the liquor store almost since he was born and had arranged it so he would overlook Laura's age and supply her with just enough Bud Light to keep their mother from striking out on her own.

  The trailer and the land it sat on were owned free and clear -- his father had paid off the mortgage before he died. It was hard to say what it was worth, but it was probably nudging into the six figures. He'd always considered Fawn a complete scum-bag, but he'd never thought of her as a murderer. It made perfect sense, though. She and Bruce would get his mother to make them the beneficiaries of her will and then provide her with case after case of hard liquor. When she finally drank herself to death, they'd own the property and no one would be the wiser.

  "I don't want you to worry about this,"

  Josh said finally. "I'm going to deal with it.

  I'm going to figure something out, okay?" She didn't answer.

  "Laura? Answer me. Okay?"

  But she wasn't there anymore. The connection had gone dead.

  Chapter 16.

  The crumbling colonial building and rutted dirt road were luxuries completely lacking in the refugee camp. Flannary slowed the vehicle and proceeded tentatively into an oily puddle that came nearly to the bottoms of the doors before he gunned it out the other side. Homes were built of whatever was available -- plastic sheeting, old signs, baling wire -- and crammed together so tightly that it seemed to have been a conscious decision. As though the only thing keeping the makeshift buildings from collapsing was the fact that they were leaning against each other.

  "Still sulking about the fire, kid?"

  Josh continued to gaze out the window as they passed an aid agency building enshrouded in the smoke of the cooking fires of the people waiting to get inside. He scanned the faces but didn't recognize any as people he'd been working with. It could only be a matter of time, though.

  He'd gone to the project that morning to organize a cleanup and get things moving again but had quickly come to the realization that there was nothing left to fix. Everything of use or value had been incinerated, and none of the workers had even bothered to show up.

  Flannary had found him a few hours later, sitting alone in the dirt, trying futilely to get through to Laura on his sat phone. At that point, the offer of a tour of the refugee camp had been a welcome one -- an excuse to delay telling Stephen Trent what had happened and a way to divert his mind from the subject of Laura and Ernie Bruce.

  Now the trip was starting to look like a mistake.

  "I'm not sulking," Josh said. "And you're one callous son of a bitch."

  "You think? When you were crapping in your diapers, I was here. And after you and all the others run back home with your tails between your legs, I'll still be here."

  "You won't have to wait long."

  "What?"

  "I'm quitting."

  Flannary took his eyes off the muddy track, and Josh could feel him staring. "Because of the fire?"

  "Because of a lot of things."

  "And how do you feel about that?"

  "How do I feel about turning my back on these people after completely fucking up what little hope they had? I feel great, JB. Just great."

  "It wasn't your fault, Josh. That project was doomed a thousand years before you got here."

  "Because they're African?"

  Flannary grinned. "I've lived here too long to be prone to political correctness, Josh, but I'm not the racist kook you think I am."

  "Then why?"

  "It's disputed land, son."

  "What do you mean."

  "The people you have working for you are from two different factions of the Yvimbo tribe who have always lived here. They're not refugees from the south. That hill you're digging up has been disputed territory as long as anyone can remember."

  Josh turned away from the window to look at him. "If that's true, why would New-Africa have started a project there?"

  "It's a good question," Flannary said, reaching into the backseat and retrieving the charred cat he'd insisted Josh bring along. "Notice anything strange?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  "The wire on the cat's tail. You know what it's for?"

  "I thought it was to make it easier to carry around."

  "Nice that you haven't lost your sense of humor. Actually, they tie a gas-soaked rag to it, light the rag, and then set the cat loose in the field. Simple, cheap, effective, and not exactly a new trick, if you know what I mean."

  Josh didn't respond, not wanting to believe what he was hearing but also having a hard time ignoring the loud ring of truth.

  "Honestly, it's a miracle this didn't happen earlier," Flannary continued. "If anyone is responsible for that, it's Tfmena. He actually has support on both sides -- something that's virtually unheard-of here. Gideon's a Xhisa. And the brother of one of Mtiti's wives to boot."

  "Are you saying he had something to do with this?"

  "What I'm saying is that your project was never meant to succeed. Mtiti, for all his talk, isn't going to let a bunch of Yvimbo start feeding themselves in his backyard. How would that look to his people? I'm trying to think of an analogy here, and this is the best thing I can come up with: It would be like the American president closing down a U. S. orphanage and using the money to build free housing for al-Qaeda."

  "But he's been trying to reach out to the other tribes," Josh said. "Chaos isn't good for him, either."

  Flannary let out a condescending snort. "What if you succeeded, Josh? Hell, what if all the aid agencies succeeded and made this country some kind of middle-class utopia? That would be the end of Mtiti. A lot of his power comes from controlling who gets aid and who doesn't, and a lot of his money comes from siphoning off that aid money into Swiss bank accounts. And it would be the end of the aid agencies because you would have worked yourselves out of a job."

  "I don't believe people like Katie are that divisive."

  "No, I'd agree with that. But I think it's possible that people like Katie are blinded by their own idealism and seduced by their ability to help."

  The makeshift road continued to narrow, and the smell of the sewage flowing across it grew stronger. Faces they passed seemed less and less welcoming the farther they penetrated into the camp.

  "Where are we going?"

  "There's something I want to show you."

  Flannary steered around a group of soldiers unloading food from an armored vehicle. They stopped and stared at the Land Cruiser as it eased by.

  "You know, I read some of your articles. My sister printed them out for me before I left. They seem a little unrealistic."

  Flannary shrugged. "I did some negative pieces back in the day, but according to my editor, it was a little more truth than his readers wanted to deal with. No one likes complicated, Josh. People want to hear that if you give Africans food, they don't starve. So now I write happy stuff, and the charities love me."

  "And that allows you to stay."

  "It allows me not to have to go home." "Have you ever written something about my charity?"

  "No, you guys are different. You're a small, results-oriented organization, creating sustainable projects for the long-term benefit of the African people through a culturally sensitive partnership wit
h the government."

  Josh recognized the quote from New-Africa's most recent brochure. "Don't be patronizing."

  "Never!"

  "So have you written about us or not?"

  Flannary stopped the vehicle and pointed through the windshield at an open-air general store with shelves full of every imaginable product. Bags of food with "Donated by the People of the United States -- Not for Sale" written on the sides, tools, clothing, and, piled haphazardly in the dirt, the missing parts for the project's earthmover.

  "Gideon's little side business," Flannary explained.

  Josh threw open the door and jumped out of the vehicle, dodging when Flannary tried to grab the back of his shirt.

  "Don't get out of the car, Josh!"

  A woman appeared from around a pyramid of disposable diapers and chattered nervously at him. She made shooing motions with her hands.

  "One of Gideon's wives," Flannary said, coming up beside Josh but keeping most of his attention focused on what was going on behind them. "We should go. This isn't a part of town that a couple of crackers should be walking around in, you know?"

  Josh ignored him, wandering through the myriad products as the woman followed along, her voice getting louder. He stopped when he came to a table stacked with individual cans of hairspray. Nothing here made any sei.-16e. His impression at the airport had been right: He'd landed on another planet.

  "Josh, we should really get out of here. We're starting to attract attention?"

  Flannary's nervousness was starting to turn to fear, but all Josh could feel was anger. At Gideon, at Stephen Trent, at Fawn Mardsen. And at himself for being so stupid for so long.

  He reached out for a can, but Flannary snatched it from his hand and slammed it back on the table. "The American company that makes that stuff gets a huge tax break for donating their surplus, which goes on American freight ships that get paid four times the going rate to bring it here. Okay? Are you satisfied?"

  "And the Africans get hairspray."

  "Don't be so cynical, Josh. The kids love it," Flannary said, grabbing his arm and dragging him back toward the Land Cruiser. Up the road, a group of raggedly dressed men were approaching, talking among themselves but keeping their eyes locked on the two white men who had penetrated their territory. "They have this game where they throw it in a fire and see which one of them runs away last. Of course sometimes they stay too long and the thing blows up in their faces. But that's the way it goes, right?"