Bloodland

by Alan Glynn

  ‘That depends.’ He clears his throat. ‘Notwithstanding all the work we’ll have completed here by, with any luck, Sunday night, your best chance with these people will actually be down to something else entirely, something quite intangible.’

  Conway has just learnt there’s to be a make-or-break meeting with the Black Vine people on Monday. A team at McGowan Boyle is trying to come up with a convincing business model – which is what Boyle insists on calling it, having issued a blanket ban on the term ‘survival plan’.

  Conway looks at him. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You. The Conway Holdings brand.’ Boyle leans forward and plants his elbows on the desk. ‘Black Vine aren’t stupid, they see what’s going on. You’ve overextended, the market’s dead, it’s a simple equation and if they were a bank they wouldn’t give you a second look, but they’re not a bank, they’re an equity fund, they play a smarter game than that, they look five, ten, fifteen years into the future. They look for value in the long term. And I’m convinced that when they sit down with you that’s what they’re going to see.’

  ‘Hhmm.’ As Conway gives this some thought, he glances around the office, at the messy piles, on every surface, of folders, lever-arch files and back numbers of law journals. The window behind Boyle’s desk is slightly opaque, long made grimy by the Dublin rain.

  ‘Look, Dave, I know you might be a bit disheartened at the moment, but believe me, Conway Holdings has a serious track record. This is the first real speed bump you’ve ever hit, and everyone else is hitting it at the same time. With a little luck, you’ll recover. Most of them won’t.’

  Maybe Boyle has a point.

  For thirty years, under Dave’s late father, Conway & Co. was a solid, profitable operation that had started out in cement and building supplies and then diversified into mining and property development, with interests in the UK, Eastern Europe and Africa. When Conway took over he expanded the development portfolio, but he was always fairly cautious. A turning point in the company’s history came when he sold First Continental Resources, a virtually abandoned copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the multinational engineering giant, BRX.

  For a huge profit.

  That freed things up and the newly named Conway Holdings just mushroomed. If Conway was ever guilty of being reckless, it was only at the end of the boom.

  In its last five minutes.

  And only with Tara Meadows.

  He pumped everything he had into it, and when he needed more, he started borrowing.

  Like everyone else.

  Like every other pig at the fucking trough.

  ‘The thing is,’ Boyle goes on, waving his hand in the air, indicating the surrounding offices, ‘this business plan we’re drawing up here, the new accountants’ reports, the fresh valuations, it’s all smoke and mirrors, it’s for show. You’re what counts. Dave Conway, the serious businessman, the dealmaker. Not some flash git who lost his head in the boom. I’ve met these Black Vine guys and I know how they think. They’ll look at the record. They’ll want to talk about stuff like that First Continental Resources deal – which, by the way, I don’t mind telling you, they are very curious about.’ He sits back in his chair. ‘Go in there and talk about that, tell them that story, and you’ll have them eating out of the palm of your hand.’

  Conway flashes Boyle a look. What does he know about the First Continental deal?

  McGowan Boyle only came on board afterwards – new solicitors, new accountants, new arrangements. A lot of things changed for Conway around that time.

  New house, new lifestyle.

  ‘OK,’ he says, ‘but it’s still a crapshoot, right?’

  ‘There’s always an element of the crapshoot to these things. But go in there and explain to them how you got a multinational corporation to bend over like that, how you got them to shell out a hundred million dollars for an abandoned copper mine in some godforsaken shithole, and I think the odds just might tilt in your favour.’

  As Conway opens his mouth to speak, to object – because this is a direction he really doesn’t want to go in – his phone starts vibrating in his pocket.

  He sighs and pulls it out in order to switch it off completely.

  But then he sees who it is.

  Lifting the phone to his ear, he looks over at Boyle, holds up an index finger. ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I have to take this.’

  Boyle nods.

  ‘Larry?’ he then says into the phone, rising from his chair. ‘What . . . what’s the matter? Take it easy.’

  *

  It’s ironic.

  Having read only yesterday in Vanity Fair how well he’s supposed to get on with his brother, Clark Rundle is now seething with anger and resentment towards him. He understands that J.J. had a rough time of it out there – he had his hand crushed in the door of an SUV and witnessed some scary stuff, OK – but how can the guy not be able to recall a simple conversation he had thirty minutes prior to that? It seems ridiculous.

  Rundle is sitting at his desk, waiting for Don Ribcoff to arrive with the latest update.

  Don has already tried to put it down to post-traumatic stress disorder, but Rundle isn’t buying. It’s too easy. J.J. is due back this morning and he’d better have his head sorted out by then or Rundle doesn’t know what he’s going to do. J.J. doesn’t appear to have any problem dealing with all the publicity they’ve inadvertently managed to whip up with this Paris thing – which is why he’s flying home so soon, and against, apparently, all medical advice – but one slip-up before the cameras, one hint that the senator’s ‘heroics’ might not be entirely on the level, and the man will be roasted alive in the full glare of the world’s media.

  And that, of course, unlikely though it may be, would have unintended consequences – easily the least of which, as far as Rundle is concerned, would be the ignominious end of J.J.’s bid for a presidential nomination. More seriously, it would undermine Rundle’s own credibility as an unofficial power broker.

  In the colonel’s eyes. In James Vaughan’s eyes.

  Not that Rundle gives a shit what the colonel thinks. He doesn’t. Kimbela’s a deranged megalomaniac who just happens to be sitting on some very valuable mineral deposits.

  Rundle leans back in his chair.

  What James Vaughan thinks, though, is a different matter altogether. That runs a little deeper. Rundle has known Jimmy Vaughan since he was a small boy – back when Vaughan and the old man were knee-deep in Middle Eastern construction projects, building pipelines and refinery facilities, as well as networking and schmoozing.

  The company and the Company.

  As it were.

  Rundle remembers a trip to Saudi in the mid-seventies, when he was a teenager – has this vivid image in his mind of old Henry C. in his short-sleeved shirt and wide tie, with his clipboard and his pocket calculator, Jimmy Vaughan standing next to him in a white linen suit, straw panama hat and dark glasses.

  The weird thing is, and maybe it’s not weird at all, is that Rundle never put any effort into trying to impress the old man (if anything it was the opposite), but he couldn’t help himself when it came to Mr Vaughan. And now, ten years after the old man croaked it – right in front of him, in the study of the house in Connecticut – here he is, middle-aged, in his eight-thousand-dollar suit, still worried about how Vaughan will react to something he has done, or is doing, or is contemplating doing.

  It isn’t that simple, of course. It isn’t just dollar-book Freud. It’s actually – when he thinks about it – just dollars.

  Period.

  Fuck the Freud.

  As chairman of BRX, Rundle is little more than a bean counter, a storekeeper, like the old man was. And for his part, J.J. is a Beltway pol, a grafter, a ballot-box hustler. But Jimmy Vaughan is different. He’s one of those extraordinary guys, and there aren’t that many of them, who somehow float between the two, and it’s not that he’s both – businessman and politician – it’s actually that he’s neither.
He’s something else again, something more evolved than that. For him, it’s not about making money and having it, or about having money and spending it.

  It’s –

  He’s –

  Rundle doesn’t know.

  It’s like he’s the very embodiment of money. Cash made carnate.

  Flesh and the devil. Flesh of the devil.

  And back then, even when he was sixteen or seventeen, Rundle caught a whiff of this, and it has never left him. It’s in his nostrils now, as he sits here, staring down through tempered glass at the gleaming white floor of his office.

  When he looks up, he sees his assistant standing in the doorway, ushering Don Ribcoff in.

  Ribcoff comes over, takes a seat and the two men exchange pleasantries. Ribcoff settles some papers in his lap. He’s here to provide an update on what they have taken to calling ‘the Buenke incident’. After another few moments, Rundle gives him the nod to proceed.

  ‘OK,’ Ribcoff says, leaning forward and placing a sheet of paper on the desk. ‘Nine dead, including the contractor. This is a layout of the village.’ He then indicates different points on the sheet of paper with a pen. ‘The two women and three children here, the man here, and the other two, who were elderly women, in the huts here. The contractor was Ray Kroner, twenty-eight years old, from Phoenix. Ex-army, two combat tours in Iraq. Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. No prior behavioural problems. Seems he just went postal.’

  ‘Goddamn.’

  ‘Yeah, look, it’s a hazard. These guys are well paid, but the pressure they’re under is phenomenal. Having said that, at Gideon we pride ourselves on the quality of our work, and in seven years of ops we’ve only ever had two incidents that might even vaguely be comparable to this one. Both in Nasiriyah.’

  Rundle doesn’t believe this for a second, but he’s not about to argue.

  ‘What about fallout?’

  ‘So far we’re good. No witnesses, which means it’s a closed system, more or less.’ Rundle leans back a little from the desk. ‘And you know, to be honest, Clark, this is nothing. It’s a drop in the ocean. Village massacres are a dime a dozen over there.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘If it weren’t for the senator being part of the equation we wouldn’t even be talking about this. But to the extent that it happened, and that we might have to address it? In some form? Our cover story would be that the convoy was responding to hostile fire.’ He shrugs. ‘After all, we have a body on our hands to prove it.’

  Rundle nods. ‘And the contractor’s family?’

  ‘They’ll be informed. In due course.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘In due course. We have considerable latitude here, Clark. It’s not like a regular casualty situation. I mean, when a member of the armed forces dies, next of kin have to be informed within forty-eight hours. Then you’re talking Arlington, a twenty-one gun salute, taps, flag draped over the casket, the whole bit. It’s a little different for private contractors. There’s no fanfare. At all. There isn’t even an official list anywhere of contractor casualties.’

  Rundle sits back in his chair and considers this. After a while, he says, ‘OK, no witnesses, but what about the others?’

  ‘The other contractors?’ Ribcoff shakes his head vigorously. ‘No. They’re the ones who took Ray Kroner out. Because they deemed the senator to be in danger. These are men of the highest calibre, Clark. Loyalty is their watchword.’ He shakes his head again. ‘This situation, this incident, is in effective lockdown, believe me.’

  Rundle nods. The nightmare scenario here would be disclosure, some kind of inquiry, prosecution even. It would be in no one’s interests – not BRX’s, not Gideon’s. And if J.J.’s presence at the scene were to become public knowledge the consequences would be unimaginable.

  But Don appears to be on top of things.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘What about Kimbela?’

  ‘That’s not so straightforward. He’s a hard man to pin down. He won’t use a phone, as you know. He plays video games online, but he won’t do e-mail.’ Ribcoff makes a face. ‘Plus, he’s always on the move. Our man on the ground over there is doing his best to make direct contact, but it could be a day or two, and you know how cagey he is, even at the best of times.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Rundle gets a sinking feeling in his stomach. Sending J.J. down there on a lightning trip from Paris to suss out the colonel’s position vis-à-vis the Chinese seemed like a good idea at the time – sprinkle a little political stardust into the mix, play to the man’s vanity – but it doesn’t feel like such a smart move now.

  Inevitably, Rundle will to have to go and see Vaughan later on, to give him an update, but his plan is to have cornered J.J. by then and extracted an account of the meeting.

  He and Kimbela sat down together for over an hour.

  He has to remember something.

  Rundle shifts in his chair. ‘Don,’ he says, ‘what time does the flight get in from Paris?’

  Ribcoff looks up from his papers and then checks his watch.

  ‘Around midday. Twelve fifteen, I think.’

  ‘Don’t let him out of your sight. I want a piece of him before he starts talking to CNN and Fox.’

  Ribcoff nods. He shuffles his papers together and stands up. ‘I’ll keep you posted, Clark.’

  Rundle watches as Ribcoff crosses the office and leaves. Then he swivels his chair around and sits for a while staring out of the window.

  *

  It’s late in the afternoon before Jimmy starts to slow down. He remembers at one point that he hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast and goes over to the kitchen to make a sandwich. As he is drizzling olive oil over mozzarella, he runs a reconstruction of the morning’s events through his head.

  This is maybe the hundredth time he has done this.

  There are variations, but each time it’s essentially the same.

  He arrived at the hotel as arranged and met Larry Bolger. They started talking. It quickly became apparent that Bolger was drunk. Bolger then dropped this incredible bombshell.

  And after that, it was pretty much downhill.

  Jimmy tried to pretend that nothing had happened, but it didn’t really work. Bolger knew he’d said something he shouldn’t have, and though he seemed to be a little confused about what that was exactly, it didn’t take him long to turn the tables and start accusing Jimmy of having tricked him.

  Jimmy said he hadn’t tricked anyone, that they were just talking.

  Bolger grunted and sidled over towards the corner of the room.

  Jimmy did his best to get the conversation back on track, thinking that maybe in a while he could broach the subject again, but within minutes Bolger was pointing at the door and shouting at him, ‘Get out, you bowsie.’

  Jimmy left without protest.

  On the way down in the elevator he was too stunned to think of writing anything in his notebook. But then outside, walking along Merrion Road, his heart pounding, something would come to him that he didn’t want to forget – a name or a phrase Bolger had used – and he’d stop to jot it down.

  When he got back to the apartment he took his notebook out and got straight to work. Names: Clark Rundle, Don Ribcoff. Who were these people? Phrases: collateral damage; a nice piece of misdirection; not the only one. Could these really mean what he thought they meant?

  He’s been hard at it ever since, rearranging all the material on his desk, but factoring Susie out this time, trying to reconfigure the narrative, to find a new pattern, an alternative meaning.

  Because . . .

  He takes his sandwich and a bottle of water back across the room.

  Because Bolger implied – fuck it, he more or less said – that the helicopter crash three years ago hadn’t been an accident. Bolger was drunk, at least as far as Jimmy could tell, and the conversation was off the record, fine, so he can’t prove Bolger said it.

  But –

  T
he thing is, if it somehow turns out to be true, then it won’t matter that Bolger said it. It won’t matter who said it. Who said it won’t be the story.

  If it’s true.

  But how does he prove that?

  Jimmy eats the sandwich, barely aware of its taste or texture. He chews, swallows, takes occasional sips of water, at the same time casting his eye over various open notebooks, printouts, the computer screen.

  His phone.

  From which, to his surprise, there hasn’t been a peep all afternoon. There will be, though. He knows that. Because it’s inconceivable that Phil Sweeney hasn’t already been alerted and fully briefed. Inconceivable that there won’t be significant fall-out from this.

  He finishes the sandwich, brings the plate back over to the kitchen and puts on some coffee. As he’s waiting for the water to heat up, he stares at the wall.

  And if it is true, of course, he’ll have to alert and fully brief Maria.

  Which he’d be more than happy to do.

  But then he thinks . . . this is insane, he’s insane. Larry Bolger was drunk and barely coherent. Why would anyone think for a second that a claim like the one he made even might be true? In vino veritas, sure, but also a lot of the time in vino bullshit. In vino paranoia and delusion. Because if the claim is true, if the crash wasn’t an accident, then what was it? Some sort of a conspiracy? Involving who? These names that were mentioned? And why? Something to do with one of the other passengers?

  Suddenly, it all seems a bit far-fetched.

  As he makes the coffee, Jimmy considers the possibility that what has happened here is pretty simple: he has just blown a good job prospect.

  Maybe Larry Bolger likes to tie one on in the mornings and tell stories. So fucking what? Winston Churchill used to have champagne for breakfast. And anyway, wouldn’t that have made the job – and the book – infinitely more interesting?

  Or maybe it’s just that Bolger was testing him, seeing how he’d react.