‘My mistake,’ he said quietly, not looking at Chris. ‘I shouldn’t have let you get to me like that. In a Cambodian enterprise zone, that kind of giveaway’d get me a bullet in the back of the head.’
Chris stood there, blinking tears. Vasvik sighed heavily. His voice was dull and weary.
‘As an operational ombudsman, you’ll earn approximately a hundred and eighty thousand euros a year, adjusted. That includes a hazardous-duties bonus, which you can reckon on getting for about sixty per cent of the work you do. Undercover assignments, swoop raids, witness protection. The rest of the time they keep you on backroom stuff. Admin and forward planning. That’s so you don’t burn out.’ Another deep breath. ‘Housing and schools for your kids are free, accommodation and expenses while on assignment, you claim. I’m sorry for that crack about your mother. You didn’t deserve that.’
Chris coughed a laugh. ‘Told you I made more than you.’
‘Yeah, well fuck you then.’ Vasvik’s voice never lifted from the tired monotone. His gaze never shifted from the corner of the workshop.
‘Do you like it?’ Chris asked him finally.
The ombudsman looked at him. ‘It matters,’ he said, pausing on each word as if English were suddenly difficult for him. ‘You’re doing something that matters. I don’t expect you to understand that. It sounds like a bad joke, just saying it. But it means something.’
They faced each other for a while. Then Chris reached into his jacket and pulled out a plastic sheathed disc.
‘This is a breakdown of the accounts I service for Shorn. There’s nothing here you can use, but anyone who knows the ground will be able to work out what I know. Take it back and ask them if I’m worth extracting. I want the package you just talked about, plus a million-dollar or -euro equivalent payout on extraction.’
He saw the look on Vasvik’s face. He heard his own voice harden.
‘It’s not negotiable. I’m losing heavily if I pull out now. I’m plugged in here. Comfortable. Stock options, executive benefits. The house. Industry rep, client connections. All of that’s worth something to me. You want me, you’ve got to make it worth my while.’
He tossed the disc across. Vasvik caught it and examined it curiously. He looked back up at Chris.
‘And if we don’t want you that badly?’
Chris shrugged. ‘Then I’ll stay here.’
‘Yeah? You sure you’ve still got the stomach for that?’
‘I’m not like you, Vasvik.’ Chris wiped at the gouge in his cheek and his fingers came away specked with blood. ‘I’ve got the stomach for whatever they can feed me.’
Vasvik left in the back of a covered truck, supplied by Mel and on its way to Paris for Renault parts. Jess drove, no shotgun rider along. UNECT operatives would vanish the ombudsman at the other end. No questions. Carla had sold the whole thing to Mel as wrangling over preferential supply contracts, a new covert bid from Volvo coming in to upset the BMW status quo at Shorn. Both Mel and Jess hated BMWs with a deep and abiding passion, and as far as they were concerned anything that might reduce the number of them on the streets of London just had to be a good thing, dear, just had to be.
Carla came in a couple of minutes later, a welding mask still pushed up on her head. Chris was trying to assess the damage to his face in a propped-up fragment of mirror he’d found on the floor.
‘What did you say to him?’ she asked angrily.
Chris pressed at his cheek, peering at the gouge in the mirror shard. ‘I told him our terms. And I gave him the disc. Went like swimming.’
‘You had a fight, didn’t you.’
‘We had a minor disagreement.’ He gave up on the mirror and turned to face her. ‘I said some things I shouldn’t have. Then he said something he really shouldn’t have. Took a while to straighten out.’
‘He’s trying to help you, Chris.’
‘No.’ He couldn’t keep the snap out of his voice. ‘He’s looking for benefits, Carla. Just like every other fucker in this world. Quid pro fucking quo.’
She stared at him, wordless for a moment, then turned away and walked out of the workshop. He let her go.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It rained hard most of the next week, and the roads turned treacherous. As usual, patchwork repairs hadn’t stood up to the summer weather, and the various service providers were still squabbling about whose responsibility it was to put it right. Chris drove the Saab at careful velocities, getting in to Shorn later than usual and doing a lot of his phone work from the car. The datadown ran remote scrambling and patched through flagged callers on automatic.
Back to work. Back to the pretence.
It was easier now he was committed. Two weeks of jittering uncertainty, of not knowing if they’d get away with it, knowing even less what would come of the meeting - now it all gave way to solid data. He knew they wanted him now, knew at a level he could trust more than Carla’s wishful thinking assurances and his own mixed feelings. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if they could afford him. A no-lose situation. They could afford him, he went. They couldn’t afford him, he stayed. Either way, he had work, he had guarantees. He had income.
A small part of him knew that he would lose Carla if he stayed, but somehow he couldn’t make that matter as much as he knew it should.
Back to work.
Wednesday morning, turning onto the Elsenham ramp, he heard from Lopez. Confirmation of Vicente Barranco’s arrival date.
‘It’s good,’ said the Americas agent through the crackle of the scrambler and a bad satellite link. ‘The way I figure it, you’ve got North Memorial on. You could show him round, maybe buy him a few assault rifles.’
‘Yeah, that’s. Fuck.’ His foot came off the accelerator as the realisation hit. He nearly braked.
‘Chris?’ Lopez sounded concerned. ‘You still there?’
He sighed. The car picked up speed again, down the ramp. ‘Yeah, I’m still here. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can set that date back about a week?’
‘A week? Jesus, Chris, you said as soon as possible. You said you’d move things around to—‘
‘Yeah, I know.’ The rain intensified as he came off the ramp. Chris turned up the wipers. ‘Look, forget it, send him anyway. My problem, I’ll deal with it here.’
‘Is this something I need to worry about?’
‘No. You did the right thing, it’s fine. I’ll be in touch.’ He cut the connection and redialled.
‘Yeah, this is Bryant.’
‘Mike, it’s Chris. We’ve got—‘
‘Just the man. You in yet?’
‘On the way. Listen, Mike—‘
‘How about lending me some of that old Emerging Markets background you don’t like to talk about these days, huh? You wouldn’t fucking believe what happened in Harbin this morning.’
‘Mike—‘
‘You remember that thing we were putting together with the guys in EM? The transport net sell-off?’
Chris gave up and searched his memory. The north-eastern end of the former People’s Republic of China wasn’t his sphere of interest. Outside the tendencies of ethnic Chinese where Tarim Pendi was concerned, he didn’t pay the area much attention. And his dealings with Shorn’s Emerging Markets division had been minimal so far. They were a hard enough bunch, but still pretty urbane by CI standards.
Still, listening to Mike’s tale of woe might help take the sting out of the minor fuck-up he had to report.
So think.
He recalled a late night wine bar bitching session a week back. Mike and some elegant Chinese woman from Shorn EM. Crossover with an old CI account, guerrilla figures from the last decade, now snugly installed as political leaders. Privatisation schematics and character assassination of the major players. Who could be trusted further than they could be thrown. Macho stuff. The wine had been crap.