A Certain Kind of Power Read online

  The way clear, he exited his refuge and continued along Quintana. At the corner of Alvear he waited for the traffic. As a boy, he had been taught to look left, then right, and then left again. When he was sure the street was empty, only then could he cross. Now, he waited until the street filled with cars, bumper to bumper, horns blaring. Once they were all locked in place, an automotive game of Tetris, he could make his way through the stationary cars, safe in the knowledge that none would be moving any time soon. In this way, he crossed Montevideo and proceeded to the Palacio Duhau.

  Inside the Oak Bar he found his favorite summertime seat unoccupied, away from the fireplace and in line with the stream of cool air pouring from the internal cooling system. He decided that one more beer wouldn’t hurt. In this heat, he would sweat it out.

  He pulled out his cell phone. He had several calls to make. He tried to reach Alex Harper’s replacement at the British embassy but couldn’t get past an officious secretary. He would have to go down there himself.

  The afternoon ebbed by at a sluggish pace inside the Oak Bar. At one point the carnivorous lunch and the beers overtook him and for a moment his eyes closed and his head lolled backwards into the wingback chair. He awoke with a jerk, his arm flinging up to set the hook. Micro-naps were the closest he got to the river these days.

  He checked the time on his phone as the bar manager stopped by to close Mike’s account, letting him know that the evening manager would open a new one. He was surprised to see two beers on the account. Something a bit sharper would be required to chase away the cobwebs of his unplanned siesta.

  When Simon arrived, Mike was on his second whiskey.

  “It’s done,” Simon said.

  Mike didn’t feel relief, just a sensation that a giant ball had been set rolling down a hillside that had no bottom in sight. Simon seemed triumphant as if he had spent the intervening time analyzing his course of action and finding it satisfying. Mike longed for the younger man’s confidence.

  “Que será, será,” said Mike, raising his glass. “What can I get you?”

  “I think a beer will do nicely. A celebratory beer.”

  The beer arrived for Simon, Mike content to sit on his whiskey.

  “You should get out of here, Mike.”

  Mike fixed his eyes on the oak paneling trying to relocate the carved tiger he had spotted earlier in the afternoon. He waited for Simon’s words to fade. A warm gust came bustling through the open doors of the terrace, the vanguard of the approaching storm. It swirled around the Oak Bar. A waiter moved to close the terrace doors.

  Simon again attempted to bridge the silence. “What’s keeping you here?”

  Mike sniffed and pondered the question. He could feel the whiskey mixing with the beers from the early afternoon. It was a question he had often asked himself. Even at his happiest moments he could never settle on a definitive answer. Even now, when he had decided he would leave Buenos Aires he could still see the positives. Breaking up is difficult because it is easy to remember all the tough times but it’s impossible to forget the great ones.

  “There’s a realism here that’s attractive. You and I are sold this dream that we’re equal, can be whatever we want. No matter if you’re dealt a two and a seven, off suit, you work hard enough and some day you can be holding a pair of aces. Down here, you’re dealt shit and told to play with what you have. That’s your lot. If someone isn’t looking you can steal an ace and good on you.” He raised his glass to that.

  “Sounds like chaos, Mike.”

  “It is. Beautiful, natural, chaos. No point loving something for what it isn’t.” An empty smile hung on his face, like a sign left at the front of a store while he was out back taking inventory. He had loved it but it was unrequited love.

  A flash of lightning lit the windows. Mike counted in his head like his father had taught him as a boy. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, then the baritone of a thunderclap that seemed to emerge from the fireplace and shake the floorboards. Still out over the river, Mike calculated.

  “That’s how I got my apartment in Recoleta,” he confided unprompted. “Took an ace when I could. Was working for a banker, Executive Risk Adviser they called me. He wanted someone to boast of his exploits to. For some men, the fucking means nothing if they don’t have anyone to tell.

  “This guy had all the tricks. Kept a small bottle of gas in the trunk so he could splash his hands with it after a tryst. He was convinced that it was the only way he could get the smell of sex off him.” Mike laughed at the memory. “His wife always asked if we couldn’t get a better car, she was concerned about the fuel consumption.

  “He was out one night, right in the middle of the troubles. Shouldn’t have been out, and not in the Mercedes. Down to this girl he liked to visit. On his way home he runs into a mob, they see the car and try to stop him. He accelerates through and received a spray of bullets. Gets one in the gut. Managed to get to a clinic and called me. I get over there and he’s in the hallway on a trolley, bleeding out, trying to tell the nurses who he is.”

  Another flash of lighting. One thousand, two thousand, a rolling growl that turned well-groomed heads towards the windows. The door to the terrace slid open and the remaining customers came indoors, squeezing into spaces at the bar.

  “The nurses don’t care who he is, they’ve got another thirty people to deal with. I talked the triage nurse into bumping him up the line. He survived and his first day back at work I went in and asked for a loan for an apartment I’d been looking at. Zero interest..”

  “Sounds fair. You saved his life.”

  “Yes, but not at the clinic. From his wife. When you get shot, time starts at the point that those bullets impact your body. The context is lost. The press never bothered to ask what he was even doing on the street that night, where he was going to, or coming from. Well, the wife did.”

  A lightning flash and simultaneous thunder clap that rumbled the bar signaled the arrival of the storm proper. Giant rain drops beat against the windows. Mike sat back, deep in his chair, content to let the sound of the rain mix with the whiskey in his head. It had felt good to talk, better than it should have. He knew the price of feeling like a million dollars tonight was feeling like a dollar tomorrow. As the voices of the bar swirled around him he felt as if he was holding pocket aces.

  Identifying the time when he should be going, and for once translating that thought into footsteps, Mike said goodnight to Quinn and stepped out of the doorway of the Hyatt and onto Alvear. Torrents of water rushed down the street. Rippling puddles were lit from above by street lamps, the reflection creating the impression of giant, glowing orbs that dotted the sidewalk both left and right. Men and women emerged from taxis on the opposite side of the street, ran crouched across the road, before making ambitious leaps a meter out from the curb in the hope of clearing the worst of it. Success alluded them. Doormen from the Hyatt raced out to meet incoming guests halfway, umbrellas held aloft to shield them from the last few drops of rain. Their umbrellas could do nothing against the torrent of water that flowed at their feet.

  Mike splashed his way down Alvear and turned right on Montevideo. The floodwaters, streaming downwards, were shallower here. Even so, before he had turned on to Posadas his socks were soaked through.

  He approached his apartment and saw that the lobby was darkened. From the gloom, an unfamiliar silhouette appeared in the familiar uniform of the doorman. Mike waited as the man fumbled with the keys, tried one, then another before finding the right key and opening the door.

  “Mr. Costello?”

  Mike nodded. “Where’s Alvaro?” he asked, stepping inside and drying his feet on the mat.

  “Problems with the wife. I think she’s sick. An operation maybe. Back soon. Ten days maybe?” he said. It was half a guess and half a desperate attempt to get out of a sentence that he didn’t have the information complete.

  “Send him my best, if you speak with him please,” said Mike. He walked towards the
elevator.

  “Sorry, Mr. Costello. No elevator. No light.” By light he meant electricity.

  Mike swore under his breath. Just what he needed, a walk up unlit stairs.

  The doorman shrugged an apology.

  Mike made his way towards the staircase that was marked by the figure of a green man making a dash for it. He arrived at his apartment with his legs fatigued. He could feel the alcohol in his system. Hadn’t he been told never to exercise after drinking? He wondered if that applied to stair climbing. He unlocked his door and went in.

  It had the stuffy feel of the caravans he used to sleep in on summer holidays when his family would take him down the coast. After a day spent at the beach they would come back in the afternoon and he could still remember being hit by the wall of heat that had been baking all day long in the van. When the night cooled the caravan would groan as it shrunk back to its normal size. The noises had made sleeping difficult on those nights.

  He moved to the balcony, unclipped the lock and slid back the glass door. He repeated the process with the gauze door. The rain had stopped now and he sucked in the cool, night air. Above him he could see the stars of the southern cross. By tomorrow morning the temperatures would begin to climb again.

  He walked back inside and emptied his pockets onto the coffee table. He slumped into the sofa, not caring if he slept there and unbuttoned his shirt, happy just to take the weight off his legs and feel the night air blow across him.

  CHAPTER 34

  The morning dawned cool. A breeze rummaged through the tops of the trees outside Mike’s balcony. The kind of day when it was good to be up early. It was only going to get hotter. The next cool change could come through tomorrow or next month.

  He showered and got dressed in front of the oval, wood-framed mirror in his room. He leaned in close, studying his face for signs of aging. He had no baseline study to compare against, and there, an inch from the glass, he couldn’t recall what wrinkles had appeared or when. No doubt life in Argentina had taken its toll, a glance at his hairline confirming the fact.

  He still hadn’t heard back from the British embassy. He had spent the first hours of the morning staring at his ceiling, approaching the problem from various angles. Even the most borderline jobs from the Doctor could never be considered money laundering. It didn’t make any sense that Alex Harper would freeze his assets. He replayed in detail his relationship with Alex. Was Mike his target all along? How had they met? Mike had approached him, not the other way around. Alex always wanted something but Mike never got the feeling he was under investigation. He sometimes missed things but he was sure he wouldn’t miss that.

  Out on the street, he averted his eyes from the newsstands that would be carrying MinEx’s press release of the day before splashed across the front pages of the morning papers. He would go through the press coverage at the office with Andrea who would be waiting for him with the newspapers piled on her desk.

  He entered his office like a guilty man, knowing that Andrea would need only one look at him to deduce his whole night, even down to his poison of choice.

  “Andrea, grab those papers and we’ll go through them downstairs over coffee.”

  They found a quiet café with one or two other customers and they seated themselves near the front door. Andrea ordered two americanos without asking what Mike would like.

  “Right,” Mike said, hoisting aloft the first paper from the pile and handing it to Andrea. “What have we got?”

  As expected, news out of Cordoba dominated the front page, though the news itself was not what Mike had expected.

  Paula Saa, a wealthy socialite from the province of Cordoba, had been found murdered, sprawled naked across her teenage son’s bed, the belt of a cotton bathrobe fastened around her neck, semen splashed across her legs. Andrea read the story aloud and her face flushed with the revelation of each new, sordid detail. There was speculation that it was a sadistic sex game gone wrong, a lover’s revenge plot, or a straight rape and murder. The natural suspect, the well-to-do, playboy lifestyle-living husband was in Uruguay at the time of the murder, enjoying a golfing getaway with friends, one of whom was revealed as his wife’s lover.

  By the time Andrea had reached the final column of the front-page article she appeared to have forgotten where she was, who she was with, or the purpose of her reading. Her americano had sat untouched on the table, her eyes widening with each detail. A cough from Mike was enough to remind her. Her fascinated reaction told of the power of social scandal to captivate the local public.

  “What about MinEx, Andrea? Anything?”

  She abandoned the front page, blew a lock of hair from her brow—a clear sign of annoyance—and flicked through the paper. She reached the classifieds and returned to the front and repeated the process. She stopped two pages in.

  “There’s a piece here on the investigation.”

  “What’s it say?”

  Andrea read through the article. “The investigation into the death of Marcelo Decoud has led to more documents being recovered from the house of the deceased. These documents set out in detail a complex system of corruption between MinEx and the local contractor companies. It is believed that Mr. Decoud had been compiling a dossier on the activities of MinEx to be used to blackmail executives who were implicated in the scheme or turn it over to local police authorities. Either way, investigators speculate that it was the compilation of this dossier that got Mr. Decoud killed.”

  “Do they cite a source?”

  “Anonymous source with knowledge of the investigation. There’s more.” Andrea looked up, waiting for a sign to continue. Mike nodded.

  “A local contractor, again speaking on the condition of anonymity, has confirmed the details of the Decoud Dossier.” She looked at Mike. “That’s what they’ve dubbed the documents they’ve recovered, the Decoud Dossier.”

  She read on. “The source told this journalist that from the very start MinEx had placed pressure on contractors to cut corners and manipulate the bid process. By way of example, the contractor says that several companies were prevented from submitting bids.

  “Furthermore, he says that MinEx executives told the winning bidder what numbers to inflate in their financial bids with the excess to be returned to the executives via offshore accounts in Uruguay. Specific instructions and bank accounts were provided. When the contractors pushed back they were threatened with expulsion from the project.” Andrea stopped and looked across the table at Mike. “Shall I go on?”

  “No.” He had heard enough. “What about MinEx’s press release?”

  “I can’t find it here.”

  “Look in the others.”

  Andrea grabbed the next paper from the pile. The smiling face of Paula Saa plastered the front page. Andrea skimmed the article and opened the paper. She flicked through a few pages and put it back on the pile. She picked up the next paper and repeated the process. She stopped a few pages in and shook the spine of the paper out.

  “There’s something here. Just a column.”

  “What’s it say?”

  Her eyes flicked over the article. “MinEx have threatened to release documents that could compromise the Ministry of Planning. The documents relate to MinEx’s flagship project in Cordoba that has been financed with a government loan. The loan scheme, a first of its kind in Argentina, has been held up as a prime example of public–private cooperation and heralded as a way forward for Argentina’s construction sector as it continues to recover.” Andrea stopped reading.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Mike rubbed his face with his hand. Andrea watched him, the eagerness to return to the Paula Saa case oozing from her eyes.

  Over the following days they repeated this scene with americanos for company. Paula Saa continued to dominate the front pages in a way that no political scandal had managed to do. The public were enthralled, as first the local handy man was accused and then released and then Paula’s own son was ar
rested. Each morning Mike waited as Andrea updated him on the case’s latest twist, taking for granted that Mike’s fascination matched her own.

  After he had sat through the explanation of how the semen that was found on Paula’s legs had been tested and could only have come from her son or her doctor husband, who readers will remember was in Uruguay at the time of death, Andrea moved on, her disappointment evident to Mike, to more relevant matters.

  The flow of leaks from the MinEx investigation continued, each juicier than the last, each painting a picture of MinEx as the foreign invader, sent to corrupt the innocent locals and make off with the loot. Their own version of the Spanish colonial tale written for the twenty-first-century mass-media consumer.

  On Monday, an article appeared in Clarin carrying details of how MinEx had had Decoud followed by “an American spy” and intimidated before inviting him to Buenos Aires to meet and discuss a solution. It came as no surprise to Mike that the article provided no evidence, couched its revelations as allegations, and adorned the pseudo-facts with “supposedly” and “possibly” and all the usual journalistic ass-coverings.

  Two days out from the MinEx deadline, the press release, which Mike had considered a political and journalistic bombshell, had garnered no more than the solitary column the day after its release. Buried. There had been no government reaction, no curious journalist had called for more details. There was no indication that any of MinEx’s demands would be met. The last bullet in the chamber had been shot into the air as enemy forces approached their barricaded position. Mike was unsure of how to interpret the public silence. No news might be good news but it could just as easily be bad news.

  As Mike sat behind his desk his mind wandered to a nature program that he had watched one night in his apartment when the heat would have made sleeping difficult if the whir of the ceiling fan had not made it impossible. With the television’s sound turned down, the presenter, dressed in khaki shorts and outdoor boots, lay flat beside a snake that had coiled itself around a rat.