by Patty Jansen
“And I guess that’s not what’s been happening?”
She chuckled, not in an amused way.
“Everything about this case is rigged. From the way the judges were allocated to which media were allowed to cover the trial to which witnesses were called. Dr Martens raised his concerns and look at what happened.”
“You have evidence that the murder is related?”
“No, but why else would he be murdered in cold blood? No, they won’t be able to find any proof, as with so many of these high-profile murders. The killers, if they ever get caught, will be nameless, faceless men without any form of valid ID.”
Damn, that sounded familiar. My heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean? Have you had more cases like this?”
“Not here, but in other countries, mainly in Africa. I came across all this when researching the influences of the Pretoria Cartel. You see, they’ve been buying up countries in financial trouble. They set up a shell company that takes on the country’s debt to other countries or Nations of Earth. And then they put in place administrators and other people to manage this debt while using the country’s resources to siphon off money for themselves. It started with the insolvency of the Solomon Islands. It has accelerated because Nations of Earth can afford to bail out a few small countries, but when you start talking about large countries, like Egypt, then there is no way they can afford it. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to all the other member states, so the private sector got involved.”
As it had gotten involved in so many other things, not always to the benefit of the people.
“Anyway, the companies also demanded a high level of involvement in the governments of the countries they bailed out. You might say, ‘Fair enough,’ but this control went far beyond financial management. People who protested disappeared. Sadly, a lot of those countries are so poor and disorganised that there is little avenue for the families of these people to report the disappearances. Until there were many, and political figures got involved, and many of them were shot. Usually in broad daylight, usually when going somewhere for a private gathering. In the few cases where culprits were caught, they were always without any form of identification and no record.”
“What did they have to say for themselves?”
“Nothing! They were all dead. None have ever been caught alive.”
I saw Thayu and Veyada in the dark, running after a man who had followed the tram. A cold feeling crept over me. “Tamerians.”
She frowned at me. “What?”
“Tamerians. That’s what they are. On the world of Tamer, people create a type of artificial human stronger than existing human types, but there is something wrong with them: they don’t communicate very well. You can’t hold a real conversation with them. They are very good at following orders. We almost caught one the day before yesterday.”
She stared at me. “You mean they are actually . . . from over there?”
Why did I have the feeling she’d wanted to say “aliens”? “We’re not quite sure where they’re from. The ones we’ve dealt with in Barresh came from Tamer. That’s why they’re called Tamerians. We’re not sure what they call themselves.”
Then she gave me a sharp look. “How did they get in? I thought they were really strict on who can travel through their Exchange.”
Oh, she understood gamra’s travel system well enough.
“We don’t know. Now that it’s clear that we’re dealing with some form of Tamerians, we should find out as soon as possible.” I was sure Amarru would have a thing or two to say about it. And that was, I realised, how gamra was involved in this case, through the implication that they didn’t police the Exchange well enough to stop these nameless spies and killers coming in. That was part of Amarru’s contract with Nations of Earth: that anyone coming in through the Exchange was known to them.
This was a huge implication that could blow the relationship between Earth and gamra right out of the water. I should contact Amarru about it as soon as I could.
“Have you seen any proof that these people work for the Pretoria Cartel?”
She laughed without humour. “Proof? These people don’t exist, how are they supposed to leave proof?”
I put my reader on the table and touched the screen to turn it on. Lenka watched with keen eyes as I flicked through the menus, all in Coldi. I sometimes tried to imagine what my life would have been like if my father hadn’t made the decision to apply for the job as Station Director at Midway Space Station, and I could not. Literally everything about my life would have been different, and I might have looked askance at Coldi text like Lenka did.
I found the maps that Devlin had made for me and showed them to her. I told her of the man Thayu and Veyada had almost captured and the reader we had found in his jacket. “These are the positions where they are spying on us, and these lines indicate channels of communication. This one here—” I pointed. “—goes to some sort of warehouse in South Africa.”
I showed her the satellite image.
Her eyes widened and she raised her hand to her mouth. “I wonder if that’s the same place . . .”
“What place?”
She pulled out her reader, and flicked through a number of menus. Then she held up the screen. The headline to an article said,
Execo storage warehouse linked to disappearances
Execo, of course, was Robert Davidson’s company.
I skimmed the first few paragraphs.
. . . warehouse, which has been linked as potentially suspect in a string of disappearances of mine workers employed by Execo, South Africa’s largest company for mining rare earths. It is not the first time that controversy breaks out over Execo’s conduct towards its workforce. In June last year, one of the company’s operations in Rwanda closed indefinitely. While the company cited poor returns, the closure came after continued protests by people from surrounding villages about exploitation of workers and mysterious deaths.
The article included a photo of a handful of buildings, two of which were quite tall. Nothing like the low sheds from Devlin’s image. This operation, whatever it was, spanned more than just a single location.
“There is obviously a lot of fishy stuff going on with Robert’s companies. The authorities could investigate and find something to pin on him. Why, of all things, do they choose to bring him to court over the one thing that’s hardest to prove?”
Lenka looked up at me. Her eyes were really disturbingly light. “That is the question, right?”
“Do you have any idea?”
“First up, the court case was initiated by Gusamo’s family who want justice.”
“Understandable.”
“They were told that the case had a very slim chance of succeeding, but as families often do, they became irrationally fixated on putting Robert in jail over Gusamo’s death. The judges said the case shouldn’t come before court and the family found no prosecutor to take it on for them. At that point, the case should have died, but someone came in with a lot of money and resources.”
“The Pretoria Cartel, clearly.”
“Yes, because they want Robert put away, but don’t want to shine the spotlight on any of their activities, is my guess. They don’t want us to investigate this building.” She gestured at her reader. “Or that building.” She gestured at my reader with Devlin’s picture.
“Because fishy stuff is happening there, and I hazard a guess that it involves Tamerians. Illegal Tamerians.” Highly illegal Tamerians, who Amarru would have a fit about if she knew. How the hell did they get Tamerians through the Exchange?
I blew out a breath. Amarru would be very unhappy about this. “By the way, I was contacted by a man by the name of Minke Kluysters. Do you have any idea who this is?”
She gave me a sharp look. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. He seemed quite kind. He has contacted me with a proposal that . . . does not sound unattractive.”
“No one will tell you in so many words, but Minke Kluyst
ers is considered to be the head of the Pretoria Cartel.”
So my gut feeling about him had been right. “Why would he so blatantly contact me?”
“Whatever you say about them, the Pretoria Cartel are mostly not evil and are not criminals. It would make life a lot easier if they were. But no, they are shrewd businesspeople, the most dangerous kind, who walk dangerously close to the dark side, test the limits, but don’t cross. They keep one foot in each camp until the world decides which way to swing.”
“But they hired Tamerians who murdered Conrad Martens?”
“No one will ever be able to prove that. The members of the cartel as such probably don’t know about it, and have not directly ordered this to be done. The militia who has done this will be owned by one of them, but this will be filtered through so many shell companies that it’s impossible to trace. That’s how dangerous these people are.”
“Which people in the court are aligned with them?”
“It would be quicker to mention which people aren’t affiliated with them.”
“The judges?”
“What do you think?”
A feeling of horror came over me. And now he was trying to pull me into his sphere of influence by giving me an interesting proposal, and offering to pay for the information. All so that the cartel could have more power and money.
I also realised that if I didn’t provide him with the information, the cartel might get Jasper or Huang Le to get it; and while they were not as high profile, they would do it. The cartel wanted an office in Barresh, and they would get it.
Lenka’s pale eyes met mine. “The scale of this is enormous. It’s been going on for many, many years, secretive and unhindered.”
“No one has ever questioned it?”
“Oh, they have, but they were unimportant people, minor clerks and assistants who could be moved aside or given lucrative positions in order to shut them up.”
She took another sip from her coffee.
“Or they were poor people from poor countries. The cartel has been very smart about building their influence. They started with places no one cared much about. Really poor countries all over the world. Then they gradually moved into bigger countries, and bigger businesses, until they could influence the assembly itself. And the court. There are not many people in the diplomatic circles who are not affected in some way.”
“What about Margarethe?”
“President Ollund and the elected officials are mostly clean. Mostly, because some are likely not to be. We don’t know which ones.”
A chill went over me. This was a nightmare. What was gamra going to say? What defence was Margarethe going to put up? Sorry, but the desire by Nations of Earth to balance our books has spawned an organisation that’s buying itself political support not just on Earth, but everywhere, probably wouldn’t cut it.
How much did Jasper Carlson have to do with them, and did the cartel simply hire the Tamerians to conduct its dirty business or was it involved in promoting the use of Tamerians? Did they—and a further chill tracked down my spine—have anything to do with that giant Aghyrian ship that was still out there in the galaxy somewhere, lurking and plotting trouble or revenge on the society they viewed as inferior.
How did one even begin to disentangle their influence from all levels of public life?
“Do they have a philosophy or political bent? A political party? I believe Fiona Davidson ran against Margarethe in the election?”
“They want free business everywhere. No regulations. In the countries where they control the government, they favour their own businesses for government contracts, and they don’t approve laws that would make those business interests more expensive or more difficult.”
She took another sip of her coffee.
“Their core premise is that business interests should always take priority over everything else. If business is strong, the people will be prosperous and healthy.”
“Except that doesn’t work unless business profits stay in the country—or planet for that matter—where the work is being produced.”
“That is right. Siphoning off business profits to other countries as a means to avoid tax is akin to exploitation. But they don’t believe in regulation, or taxation or legislation to protect groups of people, income streams or economies. They believe in the ultimate free trade in everything, including weapons.”
Oh, I could see where this was going.
She continued, “It is a grand scheme in a time when grand schemes have died. There is, in the cartel, an almost religious adherence to the free market trade principles as laid out last century by an economist named Lucas Wright.”
“I think I’ve heard that name.”
“His text books are still used in basic economics courses at most schools and universities. They’re not that controversial, just the religious way in which these people are applying the principles is. They’ve analysed every letter, every article he has written—and there are a lot—and they worship what he says almost to the point of being a religious sect. These people are everywhere, Mr Wilson. They control everything.”
For a very brief, utterly frightening moment, I became gripped by fear that the reason Margarethe wanted to see me was that she had her back to the wall and wanted to ask Ezhya for help.
Damn, no, she wouldn’t be that stupid. Ezhya liked her, and he would help, too, because on Asto, democracy was an undesirable brand of activism and helping soulmates was what people did, even if it involved armies.
Holy shit, no.
I licked my lips. “It’s interesting, and disturbing.”
“Interesting?”
“Sorry, that’s what my partner calls serious situations.” Thayu met my eyes, and I sensed through the feeder that she would indeed have thought this serious enough to call it interesting.
“Very serious. These people must be stopped.”
Was I overly anxious that I heard at all cost in her words and that at all cost involved gamra militaries?
Damn, no, I’d done that once, and was not going that way again.
This was a matter for Margarethe to sort out. I could talk to her, but I wasn’t going to get involved.
Deep breath, Mr Wilson. Concentrate on problems you can solve. “Are there any things I should know that directly affect the court case? How does it relate to Robert Davidson? How far into the cartel is he?”
“You know that he bought the property next to Minke Kluysters, right?”
No, I didn’t know.
“Well, they became friendly and a few years ago Minke made the mistake of allowing Robert Davidson into the cartel. Robert is a show-off loudmouth, gung-ho, anti-intellectual. He’d probably never heard of Lucas Wright and doesn’t have any time for discussions about tactics and economics. Instead, he started drawing attention to himself and, within a year or two, had gotten himself embroiled in a disagreement about a redevelopment plan for a suburb in Jakarta.”
“Wait—that’s how Gusamo got involved, right? Is Gusamo in the cartel?”
“No, not at all. He stands for everything the cartel does not: openness, creativity and art, conservation and national traditions, people power—having grown up quite poor himself. Having those two on a trip to a remote place was a recipe for disaster.”
“I thought you agreed that the evidence for murder is not strong?”
She snorted. “It isn’t. I believe that the cartel secretly put Gusamo’s family up to pressing for charges. I know that they paid for everything, including your trip.”
“But why, if the case is not strong?”
“Why? Because the cartel, and the companies associated with them, have gotten the reputation of being human supremacists. The rumour goes around that if their political candidates get the upper hand, they will expel the Exchange and declare war on gamra. A lot of people find that scary, so now they’re showing the world that, in the first place, they’re interested in bringing some of their own to justice and, in the second place, that th
ey have good relationships with gamra.”
And damn, that was where I fitted into the scheme as well. “So, we’re paraded out as show ponies.” Blood rushed to my cheeks.
“Pretty much. No one is really interested in what Abri has to say. Her function is to be seen in conjunction with the cartel so that they can point at her when they’re accused of being hostile to gamra.”
I was highly tempted to get up and tell her that we were going home and forget about the trial, but at that point I was sure that I would be reminded that they paid for our trip. That wouldn’t be such an issue had my accounts been healthy.
Damn, damn, damn.
Chapter 16
* * *
I ASKED LENKA several times if she was all right going home by herself.
“I have my husband there,” she said. “He’s into boxing. He’s very big and very Russian.” She attempted a smile but I didn’t think she was that comfortable.
I told her, “Do contact us if you need help.”
She nodded.
We left the cafe, and we waited while she walked to the tram stop, lonely and vulnerable. There were murderers out there, people who stopped at nothing to prevent the truth coming out. She knew a lot.
“Maybe we need to devote some resources to protecting her,” I said.
“Maybe when Sheydu comes back,” Thayu said.
And yes, we were down in numbers. We could use Sheydu, Telaris, Reida and Deyu. They were close by, I’d been told, but my team had stopped making predictions for when they would join us.
Back at the hotel, it was dinnertime. The hotel staff had taken a delivery of fish, which was served whole on big platters with parsley and lemon.
The Pengali sat on the other side of the room, but from what I could see, they enjoyed it. They were talking animatedly between themselves.
Jemiro sat at the table with Eirani and Karana, but the two women did all the talking. He stared into the distance, and had not yet touched his food. It was as if every time I looked at him, he behaved more strangely. The more I tried to understand him, the less I understood. He was like a robot, a translating automaton, because there was nothing else to his personality. If there wasn’t all this other stuff going on, I would have asked my team to spend more time checking him out. But as it was, he posed no threat and had done exactly as promised by Jasper.
