A Certain Kind of Power Page 12

From the photos, Mike could track the progression of the youthful man that stood in some of the black-and-white photos to the man of more advanced years that looked out from the color photos. A hard, political life.

  “Can I offer you something to drink while you wait? The governor will only be a minute.”

  “I would accept a glass of water.” Mike was always left dry after a flight.

  “Certainly, Mr. Quinn.” The secretary left the room and returned with a glass and handed it to Mike. At once, the door behind the secretary’s desk opened and Governor Castelli’s large frame emerged. If the governor had ever seen a picture of Simon Quinn the game would be up in this instant. It wasn’t.

  The governor was a tall man. A good height for television, Mike thought. He must have been well over six foot with wide shoulders. His head was a little too big for his admittedly large body. From his ears, also in matching large size and set a little low as if they had slipped down, sprouted hairs that needed a trim. He had a robustness about him that bode well for the meeting. Only the governor’s hands were delicate, policy hands.

  “Mr. Quinn, please come through. I see Angelica has already given you some water. Can I offer you something else?”

  “The water is fine.” Mike picked up his shoulder bag and followed the governor back into his office. It was a cramped affair, the kind of office you chose if you didn’t want to spend large amounts of money on sweeping for listening devices, a service that Mike charged out by the square meter. A large, wooden writing desk that featured carved borders on all sides dominated the room. Mike ran a finger over the border in appreciation. The governor took his place behind the desk in a green leather chair, leant back, clasped his hands in front of him and studied Mike.

  “So, Mr. Quinn, as I have heard them say in the movies, to what do I owe this honor?” the governor asked in impeccable English. Mike thought he detected a slight British accent.

  Mike had his pitch well prepared. He lubricated his throat with some more water.

  “Thank you for seeing me at such short notice, Governor Castelli,” said Mike, keeping his mode of address formal. It was his experience that the further you got from the capital, the more respect these officials demanded. A president would be happy with “John”. The mayor of San Martin de los Andes would take offense at anything less than his “Esteemed Excellency the Mayor”.

  “I have been expecting you for some time, Mr. Quinn. I thought you may have paid me a visit by now.”

  “I apologize that I did not come sooner. I wasn’t sure of the welcome I would receive. There are some misinformed elements of your community that would prefer that I never came here at all.”

  The governor smiled and relaxed further into his chair. He raised a delicate hand to his head and took the tufts of hair protruding from his ears and gently, almost tenderly, rolled them between thumb and forefinger, clockwise then anti-clockwise, as if enjoying the sound of the fibers entwining and untwining, a tiny stringed orchestra that only he could hear.

  “You refer of course to Mr. Decoud. He is a passionate man though I am sure he means you no harm.” The fingers played on.

  “Even so, the advice from my security was to stay away until things had calmed down somewhat,” said Mike, believing he was making a more than passable impression of what Simon Quinn would say in the same circumstances.

  “Yet here you are, in my office and, as you say, at such short notice. A more cynical man than myself might be forgiven for thinking that you’ve come to ask a favor.”

  Mike met the eyes of the governor.

  “Of course, I have been following MinEx’s predicament, Mr. Quinn. The government has cornered you into using contractors of their choice. You are refusing to do so but you need to find a way to advance the project. So, let us not dance around the issue. How can I help you? Or more accurately, how do you believe I can help you?”

  “I think that there is an opportunity to work together here, Governor. MinEx were led to believe that your province did not have any companies with the capability to build the railway. Having reviewed the technical offers from the bid process I saw that the companies intended to hire their employees locally.” After the first lie it was easy to find more. “I will be open with you. You are correct in saying that the company that has tendered for the work on this project is connected to the federal government and is controlled by front men for the government.

  “What I’m suggesting to you, Governor, is that MinEx works with your office to cut out these middlemen and that MinEx hire these employees, on fixed-term contracts, for the duration of the project. We’ve already received the government loan; we have run the numbers and they make sense. A lot more sense than the financial bid we have already received. Importantly, we will be in compliance with our agreement to hire locally.”

  “Technically,” interjected the governor.

  “Correct, technically we’d be employing local contractors just not through a local company. The benefit to your province will be more direct, the money will be going straight into the pockets of your constituents.” Mike concluded his pitch. He was not sure of the business logic, but from a political point of view it had to be compelling for the governor. He studied the governor’s face for any reaction.

  “Mr. Quinn, I appreciate your offer. It’s an attractive offer. I can assure you it makes a lot of sense. In London or New York or Paris. Unfortunately, we are not in any of those places. We are in Cordoba. As you may be gathering, things work differently down here. Did you notice the roadworks on the way in from the airport?”

  Mike nodded.

  “Did you notice that while there were roadworks there were no road workers? If you had of flown in last month you would have seen the same sight. I can think of no better window onto politics than those roadworks. They are both the carrot and the stick that the Federal government uses to drive its agenda. My senators vote the right way, the government frees up the funds for public works; we vote a different way and the funds freeze, the works stall, the traffic backs up, people are late for work, a child can’t make an emergency medical flight, and my constituents come after me. They do the work of the government for them.

  “Look around the country, Mr. Quinn, look at the public works, the roads, the bridges, the tunnels, the infrastructure. Where is it progressing, where is it stalled? That is your political map of Argentina. What do you suppose will happen to me if I go along with this idea of yours and cut the government out of, what? A hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar business? Like I said, it’s a brilliant idea, but what would happen to me? I can tell you. I would never see another federal peso. Without money I cannot govern. I would not last until the end of the year.”

  “MinEx is the largest single investor in your province. That must count for something.”

  Castelli shook his head as if embarrassed by the suggestion. “That means very little here, Mr. Quinn. Your company will come and go, that will not change these things. We will not become the US or the United Kingdom because you build a railway. Not if ten MinExes build ten railways. This is how we are. I must deal with the realities of my situation.

  “The great mistake that people like yourself make is to think that your western countries are more advanced, more developed than us, and that one day we will catch up if only we can get the investment. It is an error. We are developed. We have developed on a different path, at a different time.” Castelli paused. “Look at the trees out that window Mr. Quinn.”

  Mike followed the governor’s order. Having played himself into the office as the naïve envoy of MinEx he realized he would now have to sit through the lecture.

  “That tree started as a seed. It grows, matures, and decays. That is the way of the natural world. The birds who make their home in that tree will follow the same path, as will the worms that those birds feed on. Nations, economies, democratic systems, all products of us humans, also of the natural world, why should they be any different? From where do we get this certainty that progress
is lineal, forever trending upwards? A country’s development can only follow that of the natural world, the same development path of the units that compose it. We are born, we grow, we have our glory years, and then we begin to decline, naturally, as it must be.”

  “And you just accept this decline?”

  “Of course. All nations of a certain age are in decline. We cannot be saved, Mr. Quinn. Your hope is that we will become like you, my certainty is that you will become like us. What you see here, you will see in all nations. Just like humans, in some the decline will be rapid, in others slow. But it will only be delaying the inevitable.

  “In that sense, education is like daily exercise that strengthens democracy, keeps decline at bay, even if only temporarily. Argentina was once a beacon of education, until we killed it. Strikes, politics, militancy, unions, stolen funds. And now we pay the price. A country that abandons the education of its citizens sickens. It has happened here, Mr. Quinn, and I see it happening abroad. It opens the door for populism, or in our case worse, Peronism. It won’t kill a country outright, just make it sick enough for something else to finish the job.”

  “You make it sound like HIV.”

  “A good analogy.”

  “If it’s so hopeless, why are you here? What’s the point?” challenged Mike, warming to his role of innocent questioner.

  “The decline can be rough, or it can be smooth. I like to think that I am performing a service. I try to manage the decline, comfort my constituents. Consider it palliative, political care.”

  Mike shifted tack, emboldened by his false identity.

  “If MinEx could make a change, Governor, at the very top? Could you not do more than just manage the decline as you put it? Show some leadership?” It sounded insolent to Mike’s own ears. He didn’t care, it wasn’t his reputation he was playing with.

  “How do you propose to achieve that change, Mr. Quinn? At the very top?” asked the governor, cocking his large head to one side.

  “I’m compiling a report on the minister for planning.” Mike paused to allow his words to bury into those large, low-set ears. “Our intention is to provide it to the media, here and abroad. We want to use MinEx’s profile to expose what is happening, Governor. People will listen. I don’t expect you to do anything beforehand. Afterwards I will need political support. If I can create enough of a bang there will be a political space that you can fill.”

  The governor pushed his chair back from his desk and stood up. A green, porcelain vase sat on the desk. He upended it. A small, bronzed key dropped into his palm. He turned to the cabinet behind him. In a practiced movement, he used the key to unlock the sliding, wooden door, jiggled it a little on its runners until it rolled back to reveal a row of folders of various thicknesses. He ran his finger over several binders that were neatly labelled. He paused over a large one before retrieving it from the cabinet. He returned to his seat and placed it on the table in front of Mike.

  “Here you go. Feel free to take it. It’s everything I have gathered on the esteemed minister for planning since he first raised his reptilian head in Rio Gallegos. It’s all in there.” He pointed over his shoulder to the still-opened cabinet. “The presidential inner circle is all in there too. The scandals, the cover ups, the fraud, the casinos, the hotels, the real estate. I don’t even have it all. These bastards are like Aloe Vera, the more you investigate the more properties you find.

  “Take it. It will do no good, it means nothing.” He waggled a smooth index finger at the folder. “These scandals, they are tiny bargaining chips at best, insignificant pawns in a game of Kings and Queens. Politics are won and lost on the streets, not in folders in an old man’s cabinet.”

  Mike leant forward and opened the folder. He flicked through a few pages. Newspaper clippings that had yellowed with age and neat typed paragraphs that had been produced on typewriters gave an indication of how far back the reporting went. Mike closed the folder and sat back in his chair. He imagined the price he would put on this for Simon. In Sicily it could pay for new floors or maybe even a whole new deck.

  “Are you familiar with Borges, Mr. Quinn?”

  A shake of the head. Another non-verbal lie.

  “One of our greatest writers. He wrote: ‘The best place to hide a leaf is in a forest’. Our political class has learnt this lesson well. Each scandal is covered up by another scandal, and another, and another. The people lose track, the courts can’t process them, the police can’t investigate them. I believe in English you have a saying: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Our local version would be: When you find yourself in a hole, dig another!”

  Mike laughed as expected and extended his hand across the desk. “Thank you for your time, Governor.”

  “Will you join me for lunch, Mr. Quinn?”

  “I would be honored, Governor.”

  “Mr. Quinn?” Angelica’s head had appeared around the door. “I have your office on the phone. They said to tell you that the reporters have arrived. They want to know if you will be much longer.”

  “My office?”

  “Yes, here in Cordoba.”

  No one could have known Mike was in Cordoba. It was his golden rule not to alert the press when impersonating clients.

  “Can you tell them that I will be having lunch with the governor. We may have to reschedule.”

  “I see you share my fondness of the fourth estate. Well their bad luck is my good luck. I am very keen to pick your brains on some of the engineering aspects of the project. I graduated in civil engineering, did my Masters in heavy infrastructure, and I have been fascinated by some of the things that you are intending to do with the railway around the Champaqui mountains.”

  Mike felt his face drop. “Yes, it is, it is, quite innovative,” he stammered. “What we are intending to do,” he said. “Though I must admit—” he broke off and dug into his pocket for his phone. “I am sorry, Governor, I have a hundred missed calls here from my office. Maybe it is best if I get over there. I forgot that we have a media call.”

  “That is a pity. Next time perhaps,” Castelli said, showing no obvious offence.

  “Yes, next time. I’ll look forward to it. I will take you through the whole project,” said Mike, grateful to have avoided a conversation he was nowhere near qualified to have.

  The governor picked up his dirt file from the table. “Take this with you. Consider it a gift. And look after it. I don’t want this coming back on me,” he said with a practiced wink.

  “Would you mind calling me a taxi?” asked Mike.

  “Nonsense. I will have my driver take you straight there. Safer and cheaper.”

  And no chance of diverting to the airport, thought Mike.

  When Mike emerged on the street the governor’s car was already waiting for him. Mike got in and without a word it took off. At the MinEx offices, once the governor’s driver was gone, he could catch a taxi to the airport. A short but necessary detour.

  CHAPTER 17

  On the car radio, tuned for the driver and not the passenger, Andres Calamaro was wondering who would write the history of all the things that could have happened but didn’t. To Mike it was a pointless, if beautiful question, and in Argentina’s case would have resulted in a formidable tome. Sad and unreadable.

  The streets passed by the window of the governor’s car. Mike disengaged his mind from the world outside his window, more concerned with replaying the governor’s conversation, examining it for any wormholes that he could follow down towards some kind of solution. None presented themselves. Impersonating Simon Quinn had been a risk but looking at the folder in his hands it had paid off in an unexpected way. That was Argentina, ready to give you something when you least expected it.

  The car pulled up in front of the MinEx offices. Mike recognized the building from the brochures that papered the coffee table in the Buenos Aires office. An example of MinEx’s commitment to being part of the community. A global company with a local presence, that was how it was s
old.

  Mike stood on the pavement and waited for the governor’s car to pull away. It didn’t. The driver loitered, waiting for Mike to go inside. With a quick glance around he crossed the gravel parking spaces and approached the glass door. MinEx was splashed across the pane in black lettering like a discount sale. The windows facing the street were stenciled with the same corporate messages that decorated the reception in Buenos Aires. Mike wondered who had decided to have them printed in English.

  He tried the door handle and entered the building. The reception was unoccupied. No reporters. No staff. He leant across the desk. The computer screen was lit. An Excel document was open, a few cells filled in with numbers. A window with a half-finished game of solitaire overlaid the excel document. A mustard-colored knitted cardigan hung across the back of the chair.

  “Hola,” Mike called out. No response. He could feel the silence in the building like a physical presence. He placed the governor’s dirt file on the reception desk and walked through to the offices to confirm what he already knew. They were empty.

  Noises outside the office snapped his attention. He checked his watch. The staff returning from lunch, he guessed. He was always too quick to judge, to think the worst. Andrea’s influence no doubt. He returned to the reception area. Through the window he could see a crowd of people forming on the other side of the gravel parking lot. Too many to be staff. Too hungry-looking to be arriving from lunch. He felt the saliva in his mouth dry up.

  He shuffled a few paces to his left to better see the group. Around twenty people stood on the footpath, the back rows were swelling with new arrivals. Most were men, bare chested with dirty T-shirts wound around their faces to form make-shift masks. As he saw the group they saw him, and a uniform chant erupted. He could have been in Lanus on a sunny Sunday afternoon awaiting kick-off. He could feel their voices even through the office walls.

  He looked at the telephone behind reception. Who would he call? The governor? He reached for the phone and held it to his ear. Dead. He looked again through the window to the mob outside. If they were looking for Simon Quinn he might be able talk to these people. Why would they suspect he had anything to do with MinEx? Just an unfortunate visitor. He took a step towards the door. The chanting grew louder. A visceral hatred carrying through the air. He turned and grabbed the dirt file from the reception desk and placed it under his arm. It gave him some comfort, some aspect of authority.