‘I think that’s pretty clear, thank you, Philip, but if there are any questions, perhaps we could have them now?’
‘Yes.’ Jack Notley raised a hand with completely superfluous deference. Every exec in the room shut up on the instant, and pinned their gaze on the grizzled senior partner. Louise Hewitt folded herself back into her chair, and Philip Hamilton moved to take up the space she had left him. It was, Chris thought bitterly, choreographed tightly enough to be a Saturday Night Special dance act.
‘Yes, Jack.’
‘The Americans,’ said Notley with heavy emphasis that earned a sprinkling of laughter. The old man’s nationalist eccentricity was well known in the division. ‘We know from Mike here’s painstaking research that Echevarria junior has, shall we say, a predilection for our transatlantic cousins and they are, unfortunately, far closer to him, both geographically and culturally, than are we. I appreciate, Phil, that you’re factoring in Calders RapCap with the liaison work, and obviously, Martin Meldreck, well he believes in a free market about as much as Ronald Reagan did.’ More laughter, louder this time. ‘So the secondary contractors he brings in will be exclusively US firms. That much is clear. My question is, will this be enough? Will it hold off Conrad Rimshaw at Lloyd Paul, for example? Or the Saunders Group, or Gray Capital Solutions, or Moriarty Mills & Silver? Francisco Echevarria has had close dealings with all these gentlemen, or at least their Miami officers, at one time or another. Can we be confident he will not bring them into play as soon as a budget review fails to please him?’
Hear fucking hear, sleeted through Chris. Glad someone in this bunch of fucking sycophants spotted it.
Hamilton cleared his throat.
‘That’s a fair concern, Jack. I think it’s indicative that the firms you’ve just named, with the exception of the Saunders Group, are all fast, hungry players from the New York corner. Sure, they’ll all bear watching. But the point with Calders is that they have the US state department’s ear. That’s long-term relationship – in the case of Senator Barlow, we’re talking fifteen years, and there are others with ties almost as old. And of course, as you say, the secondary contractors Calders RapCap’s people will bring in should have their own lobby network in place. If we combine all that pull with the influence we have on our own Foreign Office here in London, I feel sure we’re in a position to repel any prospective boarders.’
He got the laughter too. He beamed round the table.
‘Any more questions?’
‘Yeah, I’ve got a question for you.’ Chris climbed to his feet, trembling slightly. He stared at Hamilton. ‘I’m curious as to why the fuck you’re throwing away a guaranteed regime change, with a leader who is guaranteed one hundred per cent proof against US involvement of any kind – in favour of this. Fucking. Carve up.’
Sudden slither of shock around the table. Gasps, shuffling, the shaking of wiser heads. At his side, Mike Bryant was looking up at him in disbelief.
‘Ah. Chris.’ Hamilton smiled briefly, like a comic to his audience just before the straight man gets it. ‘Now before you go and get Mike’s baseball bat, could I just point out that we’re trying for a non-violent model here.’
A couple of sniggers, but battened down. Officially, no one below partner level was supposed to know what had really happened to Hernan Echevarria. Nick Makin would have talked, Chris knew, he would have made sure word got out, but just how far they could all go along with Hamilton’s indiscretion was unclear. Once again, gazes sought Jack Notley for his reaction, but the senior partner’s features could have been pale granite.
‘You stupid fuck,’ said Chris clearly, and the silence that followed it was absolute. ‘Do you really think Vicente Barranco is going to be stopped by some pissant cokehead dressed up in his old man’s uniform? Do you really think he’ll just go away?’
He saw Louise Hewitt on her way to getting up. Saw Jack Notley lay a hand on her arm and shake his head almost imperceptibly. Philip Hamilton spotted the exchange as well, and his mouth contracted to almost anal proportions.
‘Might I remind you, Mr Faulkner, that you are talking to a partner. If you can’t show the proper respect in this meeting, I will have you removed. Do you understand me?’
Chris’s eyes widened slightly, and an unpleasant smile floated onto his face.
‘Try it,’ he said softly.
‘Chris.’ Notley’s voice cracked across the room. ‘If you have anything to contribute, I’d like you to contribute it now, and then sit down. This is a policy meeting, not the Royal Shakespeare Company.’
Chris nodded. ‘Alright.’ He looked round the room. ‘This is for the record. I know Vicente Barranco, and I’m telling you, if you try to fuck him over like this, he’ll fade back into the highlands like he has before and he’ll take the disenfranchised of the NAME with him by the thousand. And then, some day, maybe five years down the road, maybe next year, he’ll be back. He’ll be back, and he’ll do what we were going to ask him to do in the first place, and when he’s sitting in the Bogotá parliament chamber, and Echevarria junior is facing a firing squad somewhere for crimes against humanity, we’ll find ourselves on the wrong fucking side. He’ll go to someone else, maybe Nakamura, maybe the Germans, and he will cut us out. No GDP percentage, no enterprise zone licences, no arms trade, no supply side contracts, no commodities angle, nothing. We’ll just have a roomful of angry Americans, and nothing to feed them with.’
More silence, glances up and down the table in search of where this was going. Chris jerked his chin at Hamilton and sat down.
Hamilton looked at Notley. The senior partner shrugged. Hamilton cleared his throat.
‘Well, Chris. Thank you for that, ah, academic insight. Of course, I appreciate you taking the time to come and give your view on an account you’re no longer working on, but let me just say, I think we can handle one disgruntled marquista and indeed there are already initiatives in place—’
Chris grinned like a skull.
‘He won’t be there, Hamilton. I already called Lopez, told him to steer Barranco well clear of the beach. When the Cobain doesn’t show up, and junior’s pet thugs do, either they’ll find nothing, or better yet Barranco’ll catch them in an ambush and slaughter them. After that, he’ll fade like a fucking ghost.’
The room erupted before he finished. Uproar from the gathered ranks of execs, half of them on their feet, pointing and shouting, not all wholly opposed to Chris, it seemed, Hamilton yelling across the mêlée of voices, something about fucking professional misconduct, Notley bellowing for order. The door burst open and security rushed the room, wielding non-lethal weaponry. Louise Hewitt went to stop them, hands and voice raised to make herself understood above the noise.
In the midst of it all, Mike turned to Chris, face distorted with shock and anger. ‘Are you fucking insane?’ he hissed.
It took ten minutes to clear the conference room, and even then security weren’t happy about leaving the partners with Chris. They’d heard their own set of rumours about the Echevarria incident.
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Notley. ‘Really, Hermione. I appreciate your diligence, but we’re all colleagues here. Just tempers flaring, that’s all. A bit of misplaced road rage. Just keep a couple of your people outside the door, that’ll be fine.’
He ushered the guard captain out and closed the doors, then turned back to the table. In the places they had occupied when the room was filled, Chris, Mike, Louise Hewitt and Philip Hamilton sat staring at their respective patches of polished wood. Notley came back to the head of the table and stood looking at them.