The Canadian shook his head. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not? What would be the alternative?’
‘Not to let you go.’
‘Shoot me down, then.’
‘I don’t know, Warren.’ Hanna shrugged. ‘Why do you have to act the hero on top of everything?’
‘I understand.’ Locatelli gulped. ‘So why didn’t you do that a long time ago? Or do you have some sort of quota? No more than three in a single day? You bastard!’ All of a sudden he saw the horses galloping away, with him running after them to catch them, because it probably wasn’t the best idea to annoy Hanna even more, but in the meltdown of his fury all his clear thoughts had vanished. He heaved himself up, managed to get into a seated position and glared with hatred at Hanna. ‘Do you actually enjoy this? Do you get off on killing people? What sort of a perverse piece of shit are you, Carl? You revolt me! What the hell are you doing here? What do you want from us?’
‘I’m doing my job.’
‘Your job? Was it your fucking job to push Peter into the gorge? To blow up Marc and Mimi? Is that your bloody job, you stupid idiot?’
Stop, Warren!
‘You fucker! You piece of shit!’
Stop it!
‘You fucking douche! Wait till I get my hands free.’
Oh, Warren. Stupid, too stupid! Why had he said that? Why hadn’t he just thought it? Hanna frowned, but it looked as if he hadn’t really been listening. His gaze wandered to the airlock, then suddenly he bent forward.
‘Now be careful, Warren. What I do has more to do with logging trees and drying marshes. You understand? Killing can be necessary, but my job consists not in destroying something, but in preserving or building something else. A house, an idea, a system: whatever you like.’
‘So what crappy system is legitimised through killing?’
‘All of them.’
‘You sick fuck. And for what system did you kill Mimi, Marc and Peter?’
‘Stop it, Warren. You’re not seriously trying to force a guilt complex on me?’
‘Are you working for some fucking government or other?’
‘In the end we’re all working for some fucking government or other.’ Hanna sat back with a sigh of forbearance. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you something. You remember the global economic crisis sixteen years ago? The whole world was gnashing its teeth. Including India. But there, the crisis also provoked a spike of activity! People invested in environmental protection, high tech, education and agriculture, relaxed the caste system, exported services and innovations, halved poverty. A billion and a half predominantly young, extremely motivated architects of globalisation pushed their way to third place in the global economy.’
Locatelli nodded, puzzled. He hadn’t the faintest notion why Hanna was telling him this, but it was better than being shot for want of conversational material.
‘Of course Washington wondered how to respond. For example they were troubled by the idea that a stronger India, if it got closer to Beijing, might forget about good old Uncle Sam. What bloc would crystallise out of that? India and the USA? Or India, China and Russia? Washington had always seen the Indians as important allies, and would have loved to use them against China, for example, but New Delhi was insisting on autonomy, and didn’t want to be talked round, let alone used, by anybody.’
‘What does all this have to do with us?’
‘In this phase, Warren, people like me were sent to the Subcontinent to make sure all the spin was going in the right direction. We were instructed to support the Indian miracle with all our might, but when the Chinese ambassador was blown up in 2014 by LeMGI, the League for a Muslim Greater India, Indo-Chinese relations darkened just at the right moment, favouring the finalisation of certain important Indo-American agreements.’
‘You are – hang on a second!’ Locatelli flashed his teeth. ‘You’re not trying to tell me—’
‘Yep. It’s thanks to some of these agreements, for example, that your solar collectors make such a huge profit on the Indian market.’
‘You’re a bloody CIA agent!’
Hanna gave a mildly complacent smile. ‘LeMGI was my idea. One of a huge number of tricks to offset the possibility of Chinese–Indian–Russian bloc formation. Some of those tricks worked, occasionally at the cost of human lives – our own, in fact. With all due respect for your genius, Warren, people like you get rich and influential under certain conditions that had to be put in place by other people, if necessary the bloody government. Can you rule out the possibility that your market leadership on the other side of the planet might have been bought with a few human lives?’
‘What?’ Locatelli exploded. ‘Are you off your head?’
‘Can you rule it out?’
‘I’m not the damned government! Of course I can—’
‘But you’re a beneficiary. You think I’m a bastard. But you only looked on while I did something that everybody does, and from which you profit every day without a thought. The paradigm shift in energy supply, aneutronic, clean fusion, that sounds good, really good, and the improved yield of your solar cells has revolutionised the market in solar panels. Congratulations. But when has anyone ever risen to the top without others falling? Sometimes you need a bit of help, and we’re the ones who provide it.’
Locatelli looked into Hanna’s eyes for the twitch that betrays the presence of lunacy, – tics, traumas and inner demons – but there was nothing but cold, dark calm.
‘And what does the CIA want from us?’ he asked.
‘The CIA? Nothing, as far as I know. I’m no longer part of the family. Until seven years ago I was paid by the State, but one day you realise that you can get the same job from the same people for three times the pay. All you have to do is go independent on the free market, and call your boss not Mr President, but Mr CEO. Of course you’ve always known that you were actually working for the Vatican, the Mafia, the banks, the energy cartels, the arms producers, the environmental lobby, the Rockefellers, Warren Buffets, Zheng Pang-Wangs and Julian Orleys of this world, so from now on you’re just working directly for them. It may of course happen that you go on representing the interests of some government or other. You just have to extend the concept of government appropriately: to groups like Orley Enterprises, which have accrued so much power that they are the government. The world is governed by companies and cartels, crossing all national boundaries. The overlaps with elected parliamentary governments are anywhere between random and complete. You never really know exactly who you’re working for, so you stop asking, because it doesn’t make any difference anyway.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Locatelli’s eyes threatened to pop from his head. ‘You don’t even know who you’re doing this for?’
‘I couldn’t tell you unequivocally, at any rate.’
‘But you’ve killed three people!’ Locatelli yelled. ‘You stupid arsehole, with your secret-agent attitude, you don’t do something like that just because it’s a job!’
Hanna opened his mouth, shut it again and ran his hand over his eyes as if to wipe away something ugly that he’d just seen.
‘Okay, it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have told you all that, I should be cleverer! It always ends up exactly the same, with somebody saying arsehole. Not that I’m insulted, it’s just all that wasted time. Annihilated capital.’
He got to his feet, grew to menacing, primeval height, two metres of muscle encased in steel-reinforced synthetic fibre, crowned by the cold intelligence of an analyst who has just lost his patience. Locatelli feverishly wondered how this ridiculous conversation could be held in check.