A Certain Kind of Power Read online

  Mike had come to the same conclusion. If Decoud’s lifeless body was a message then the biggest danger now was Quinn.

  “What do you suggest I tell Quinn?”

  “He can’t be intimidated by this. If they sense weakness we’re all fucked. If they accuse MinEx of this and Quinn caves to the pressure, cuts himself a deal, then the government will still need to fit someone for the murder. No guesses who that will be.” Julian slowed for a red light but didn’t stop and the Golf rolled through the intersection. “The president has called it a suicide. No mention of any investigation, no mention of any suspicious circumstances. That’s a good sign. The door is open, for now.” Julian turned and looked at Mike. “Your client must be proactive. He cannot allow the government to shape the narrative on this. If he is accused, he must fight back. They only respect strength. And Mike, I will say this now. If it comes to a situation of us or Quinn, you know what I will do.”

  “I know,” said Mike. He would make the same decision. The difference was that he would feel some guilt.

  The Golf crept along Posadas.

  “I just realized I have no idea where you live.”

  It was no coincidence and Mike had no intention of rectifying the situation tonight.

  “You can drop me out the front of the Duhau. I think I’ll take a nightcap.” The lack of invitation to join him was as audible as any spoken invitation would have been. Mike wanted to be alone. To think. Taking Julian’s advice was just one option, he wanted time and whiskey to think through others.

  As they pulled up to the curb Mike considered giving voice to what he had wanted to say to Julian since the day he had sat in Mickey Mouse’s smoke-filled office. He had no doubt that Julian would have spoken to Mickey Mouse and pieced together what had caused Mike to sever relations. Rather than broaching the subject Julian was happy to play along, content to pretend that nothing had occurred. The ability to subjugate short-term personal emotion to the larger stakes at play was a key skill if one was to survive the murky world that Julian had inhabited all his life. That Julian played it so well angered Mike more than the initial betrayal.

  “Good night,” he said and got out of the car. He closed the door with a gentle click and watched the tail lights of the red Golf disappear around the corner of Alvear.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mike stared out over the waters of Puerto Madero as he waited for Simon Quinn. The wind ruffled the surface. Thoughts of sails came to mind. It occurred to him that during all the times he had visited the port not once had he seen a sail, or a ship, or a boat, or any port activity at all. The Puerto Madero seemed a port only in name, its commercial activity restricted to the bars and restaurants that dotted the shoreline.

  A young couple strolled along the edge of the dock and stopped by the railing on the water’s edge. He watched them until he felt uncomfortable at his own voyeurism.

  When Quinn arrived the two men walked along the docks, side by side, in silence. The heat of the day slumped heavy on Mike’s shoulders as if it were a physical object hanging from his body. Mike hauled behind him the weight of the heat plus the years he had lived, each multiplying the effects of the other.

  The Doctor was right, as he so often was, when it came to the ways of the Argentine. Mike’s future relied on Quinn making the right decisions. Mike would have felt more comfortable if his future hinged on the spin of a roulette wheel. The Doctor’s confidence in Mike’s ability to persuade Quinn to act in their interest was, at best, misplaced. The first step was to convince Quinn of what had happened. If he couldn’t do that there would be no second step.

  They stopped at a small café, taking a place at an outside table. They were alone except for the waiters and a few seagulls, neither would bother them unless called.

  “The government?” Simon Quinn exclaimed from across the table. “You come here, you tell me Decoud has been murdered, with not a shred of evidence except for some shady meeting in a hospital parking lot with a doctor you’ve paid off, and you think this is going to be pinned on me?”

  “I think he was a nurse actually. But I get your point.”

  It was the reaction that Mike had expected. He knew how crazy it would sound.

  He had to accept that Simon was right, the physical evidence was not overwhelming. A deep understanding of Argentina was required to give meaning to the events as outlined by Mike. Would Mike even have believed what had happened and what it meant without the aid of the Doctor, his shadow cipher?

  He changed tack. “Who knew you were meeting with Decoud?”

  “Just you, and my assistant, Cecilia. She set the meeting up.”

  Mike pursed his lips. “I suggest you start restricting information to Cecilia. The leak could have been at Decoud’s end. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be taking any chances.”

  “How am I supposed to proceed with my work if I can’t share information with my assistant? How is that supposed to function? Or should I just have her rubbed out? Is that how things work here?”

  Mike ignored the petulance. “Proceed? I told you how to proceed. I told you to start the work. You chose to ignore that advice.”

  “You are blaming me for Decoud’s death?” asked Quinn, his voice rising in pitch.

  “Of course not, I’m only saying, it is quite clear how you must proceed. If you are unable to do so or are uncomfortable doing so, then my advice is for you to leave the country. Whatever consequences await you back home cannot be worse than what lies ahead here. I don’t understand how you can be asking me about the future of the project when what I am telling you is that your life is in danger. This was a warning. They were prepared to kill a man just to send a warning. Do you get that?” Mike paused to allow his interpretation of Decoud’s death to sink in.

  Simon’s head bowed and he studied a stain on the table, rubbing it with his thumb. He took a deep breath and looked out over the water. It appeared that Mike’s message had found its mark.

  “You know what I think, Mike? If these people are prepared to kill someone, an innocent man, to send a message to me, then I think they’re desperate. They know their time is running out. And when it does, when they are thrown out, I will still be here and I will build this fucking railway if it is the last thing I do.” He slapped the table hard with a force that startled Mike.

  “You’re wrong, Simon. They’re not going anywhere. They’re going to come to you to make a deal. If your number-one priority is to finish the project, which given the circumstance appears to me quite fucking ridiculous, then my advice is that you take that deal. Pay them whatever the fuck they want. On their terms.” Free of the shadow of Alex Harper it felt good to give some good honest, unencumbered advice.

  “It was also your advice to play the long game, wait them out. How did that go? I’ll tell you how. I am in a forced conciliation. I am being forced to pay those bastards for doing nothing while the courts consider our case! Forgive me if I am a little reluctant to be receiving more advice.”

  Mike had no desire to defend himself. Like a man lost in a forest he saw no utility in wondering how he got there or attempting to justify why he went left or right, only an urgency to find the right path out. It was curious how priorities can change in an instant, like a wind change on the water. His thoughts were no longer preoccupied with planning the next twenty years of his life, finding the perfect trout stream, imagining the coarseness of Mediterranean sand beneath his feet, the color schemes of kitchen and patio, wondering if he would have to rent a parasol or could take his own to the beach that he imagined in front of his villa. It was as if his imagination had retracted from a panoramic wide shot of the future to zoom in on nothing more than the next twenty-four hours. He had lost all right to look farther ahead than that.

  He returned his focus to Quinn. “I gave you the best advice I could at the time. I didn’t expect dead bodies to start turning up. I can only advise you based on the information I have to hand and in light of yesterday’s events this is now my advice.”
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  Simon got up from the table. “I think I might just follow my own instinct for a change on this one. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  Mike watched his client walk off down the docks. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think.

  CHAPTER 29

  Mike stood on the pavement in front of his office waiting for the Doctor. He preferred to meet him on the footpath than receive him in the office and play intermediary between the Doctor and Andrea. Both seemed to want to protect Mike from the other. Mike had never bothered to share with Andrea the news that her suspicions of the Doctor had proved correct. It was a “told you so” that he didn’t need. Her face had brightened when she asked why Mike had stopped making the monthly payments to the Doctor and received a grunt for a reply.

  The Doctor had called ahead saying he was five minutes away and Mike had come downstairs. That had been fifteen minutes ago. Accepting the Doctor’s help, deferring to his decision-making, still didn’t sit well with Mike but it was better than jail. For now he was able to swallow his pride.

  He folded his arms and leant against the window of the stationery shop, taking his weight on the sole of one shoe that he had cocked behind him, careful to keep his clothes from contacting the dusty window. A security guard from the building next door, shotgun slung over his shoulder, patrolled the footpath, keeping a watchful eye on Mike. The shotgun seemed out of place with the urban street populated by suited workers. Alerted by a greeting behind him, Mike turned his head. The Doctor was ejecting himself from the back seat of a taxi.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” the Doctor apologized, extending his hand for Mike to shake. “One of those days.”

  “There’s a little place around the corner. Shall we?”

  The Doctor extended his hand, indicating that Mike should lead the way.

  The door of the small café on Arenales rattled as the men pushed through it. They moved to a table at the back of the room. On the television a replay of last night’s game was showing. Lanus were down 0–3. Mike took the seat facing away from the television.

  “Again, sorry for leaving you on the footpath. I have had some excitement this morning. They’ve published my article!”

  The blank look on Mike’s face demanded an explanation.

  “Environment and Modern Man. They published my article on Decoud.” The Doctor seemed rapt with his publishing success. “A kind of posthumous homage. It’s on their website.”

  Mike nodded as he thought he should in the presence of a writer but made no move. The Doctor insisted. “You can see for yourself on your phone.”

  Reluctantly Mike drew his phone from his pocket. “How do I find it?” he asked.

  The Doctor grabbed his phone and began interrogating the buttons.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. Mind if I join you?”

  The voice was recognizable, but Mike swung around for visual confirmation. Luis Lopez stood over the table. Through the front window of the café Mike could see a man dressed in a dark suit, white earpiece snaking from his ear, standing beside the passenger door of a parked vehicle. The driver remained behind the wheel. Luis followed Mike’s eyes back to the car.

  “Nothing to worry about, Mr. Costello. Just a couple of friends. Can we talk?”

  Not waiting for an answer, Luis sat down.

  “Not very smart for us all to be seen together,” Mike observed.

  Luis smiled. “All that exists is what history records. I doubt very much that history will bother to record this little meeting. Just a chat between allies.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I was briefed by the minister this morning, who himself had been briefed by the president. The investigators have turned up,” Luis paused for effect, letting his words hang in the morning air, “certain inconsistencies around Decoud’s death.”

  Mike shot a glance at the Doctor, willing him to intervene. Surely this was his territory to navigate.

  “You see, it has come to our attention that a certain ex-naval intelligence officer was in contact with Decoud.” He nodded at the Doctor who remained statue still. “We have reason to believe that that was done on your behalf, Mr. Costello. We did a little more digging and it appears that you had taken quite the interest in Mr. Decoud. It was revealed that he was to meet with your client here in Buenos Aires, a meeting which we now know he never made it to.” Luis clicked his tongue in mock disappointment and looked at Mike, awaiting an objection that was not forthcoming.

  “Two theories are being pursued. The first, and I hope that this is the case, is that Marcelo Decoud had become an irritant to the MinEx project. Understandably, you wanted to find out what made the man tick, what was his price, or how you could make him go away. You hired one of our ex-spies—” another glance at the Doctor, not so deferential “—to do some checking for you, ask a few questions, get a measure of the man. No harm in that. Indeed, it keeps our retired intelligence officers occupied. God knows there hasn’t been much for them to do since the eighties and we’d much rather have them running around looking at activists on your behalf than sticking their noses into politics. We saw how that ended last time.” Luis gave a humorless chuckle at his own joke. Mike looked at the Doctor expecting a reaction but saw only the tic of a blue vein above his temple.

  “Having got a handle on the problem, or should I say the man—and let’s be honest, gentlemen, the problem is always the man—you make him an offer, he accepts, and you invite him down to Buenos Aires to finalize the details. The night before you meet, he has the classic ideologue’s crisis. Alone in his apartment with just the betrayal of his colleagues, the betrayal of his ideals for companionship, he takes the only noble path left and places a bullet in his brain.”

  Luis waited as if in expectation of applause at the theatre he had laid out.

  Mike expressed no opinion.

  The Doctor asked, “And the second theory?”

  “Ah, the second theory, I am afraid is a little more complicated. For you two, that is. The second theory begins much like the first. Marcelo Decoud made the mistake of becoming an irritant to the advancement of MinEx’s interests in Argentina. An honest man, whose only intention was to defend his lands against foreign predators. You could not abide that; you could not understand a man who placed passion and ideals above money and profit.

  “So you send your spy to investigate the man. You discover that Decoud has information that proves that MinEx has been engaging in corrupt practices, forcing companies to inflate their prices and pay the excesses back to your client. Maybe to an offshore account in Uruguay. You pressure Decoud to stay quiet, but he does not buckle. His resolve only strengthens. He threatens to go to the press. He sets fire to the MinEx offices in Cordoba.

  “Desperate, you hatch a plot to lure him to Buenos Aires. You tell him that you are ready to make a deal. He agrees to meet with you, unaware of the trap that has been set for him. In his apartment, he has one last chance to cooperate. He doesn’t, he holds tight. So you give the only order left to give: Dispatch him and make it look like a suicide”

  The Doctor looked not at Luis but through the front window and Mike followed his stare. The man with the earpiece was speaking into his sleeve.

  Listening to Luis, Mike realized that he was in the presence of organized crime dressed up as government.

  “I have a theory of my own, Luis,” Mike said. “I think your transport minister is about to go to jail. Your top navy officials are off to jail. Your union mates are about to be thrown in jail. Your finance secretary is under investigation. Your president’s election campaign financing is under the microscope and when it comes into focus I think they are going to find that a hell of a lot of drug money went into getting elected.”

  Luis made no sign of interrupting, content to listen.

  Mike continued. “Sorry if I’m a little skeptical or a little reluctant to cooperate with your schemes. What I see is a desperate man. An emissary of a money-grubbing government on its last legs.
I can smell it on you,” he added, trying to provoke a response. “Why go to all this trouble? You said yourself, if you wanted to you could just nationalize MinEx.”

  “You are right, of course we could. But it takes time. Law changes, debates, approvals. Even applying the veneer of due process on such a maneuver takes time. And that we don’t have.”

  “My message to you, or to the minister, or to the president, you can tell them all. MinEx came here to build that fucking railway and that is what they’re going to do. And you are not going to see another cent of their budget. You think you’ve got this special way of doing things down here, Luis. It’s not special. You’re just like every other government prick I’ve had to deal with from every other tin-pot country I’ve ever had the misfortune to set foot in.”

  Luis arched his back in his chair, stretching, appearing to enjoy the time out of the office. “I came here today as a friend, Mr. Costello, to advise you of your true situation. You don’t seem to grasp the desperation of your position.”

  “You forget, Luis, that the president has already declared it a suicide.”

  Luis laughed, indicating the importance he placed on that. “Even presidents can be misinformed. I can assure you that the president’s next announcement will be much better informed. I am not here to debate you, Mr. Costello, or even explain the way of the world to you. I am here to deliver a simple message which I think I have done. For your benefit, I will repeat it: Ensure your client stops fucking around. Start building and start paying the contractors and you will have no problems with us. If you don’t, Mr. Costello, you have seen what we have done with Decoud. You will be next.”

  The words carried a threat disproportionate to the physicality of the speaker. Luis stood and left the café. Mike and the Doctor watched as the man with the earpiece held the back door of the car open while Luis slid inside. The bodyguard closed the door, looked left and right, and entered the car. The car slipped from sight, lost to the morning traffic.