Market Forces Part 38

'No, but you could get access.'

Chris coughed. Bent it up into a laugh. 'Vicente, that's not how it works. I can't just walk into another executive's office and go through his client files. Quite apart from the security systems, it's a question of ethics.

No, seriously. I mean it. I could lose my job over something like that.'

Barranco turned away. 'Okay, never mind. Forget I asked. I realise you have a lot to lose.'

It didn't seem to be meant ironically, and Chris thought he was beginning to get the measure of Vicente Barranco enough to spot these things. Over the past two days, he reckoned he'd built some pretty solid scaffolding for his relationship with the Colombian. He'd had the man out to dinner at his home and actively encouraged Carla to reprise her solidarity of the night at the Hilton. He'd gone drinking with him in some semi-risky clubs at the edges of the cordon. And on the Sat.u.r.day morning after, at Barranco's insistence, he'd even taken him on a short tour of the eastern zones in the Saab. This last, the Colombian sat through in almost total silence until he asked the single question. Is this where you grew up, Chris?

It was the first time he had used Chris's first name on its own. A watershed. Chris considered a moment, then he spun the wheel of the Saab and made a U turn in the empty street. He headed southward through a maze of deserted one-way systems and roads he thought he would have forgotten by now, but had not. He found the abandoned, half-built multi-storey car park that overlooked the riverside estates to the west and drove up the spiral pipe to the roof. He parked at the edge and nodded forward through the windscreen.

'Down there,' he said simply.

Barranco got out of the car and wandered to the edge of the deck.

After a while, Chris got out and joined him.

Riverside.

The name was like a taste in his mouth. Metallic bitter. He stared down at the low-stacked housing, the s.h.a.ggy green of miniature park s.p.a.ces allowed to run wild in between, the oil-sc.u.mmed expanses of water the estates backed onto on three sides. It wasn't the Brundtland, he told himself, it wasn't the labyrinthine concrete expanse of homes never designed for any but the dregs. That wasn't it. Something altogether different had gone wrong here.'In my country,' said Barranco, echoing his thoughts with uncanny accuracy, 'you would not be considered poor if you lived here.'

'It wasn't built for poor people.'

The Colombian glanced back at him. 'But poor people moved in.'

245'Well, no one else would, you see. After the domino recessions. No facilities. No local shops, no transport unless you could afford taxis or fuel and a licence. Which, increasingly, no one could. You want to get anywhere?' Chris turned and pointed north. 'The nearest bus stop is two kilometres that way. There used to be a rail link, but the investors got scared and pulled out. When I was growing up, a few of the ones who had jobs used to cycle, but the kid gangs started throwing stones at them. They knocked one woman right off a dock into the river. Kept dropping stones on her 'til she went under for good.' He shrugged.

'Having a job, a real job, marked you out.'

Barranco said nothing. He stared down at the estate as if he could push the whole place back in time and spot the woman floundering in the oiled water.

'A couple of the kids I used to play with died that way too,' said Chris, remembering clearly for the first time in a long while. 'Drowned, I mean. No security fence along the wharf, see. They just fell in. My mother was always telling me not to '

He fell silent. Barranco turned to him again.

'I am sorry, Chris. I should not have asked you to come here.'

Chris tried on a smile. 'You didn't ask me, exactly.'

'No, and you brought me nonetheless.'

The obvious question hung there in the air between them, but Barranco never asked it. Chris was glad, because he didn't have an answer.

They got back into the car.

'Do you guys want to see this stuff, or what?'

It had dawned on Mike Bryant that Chris and Barranco were lagging behind and he'd come back for them.

Barranco exchanged glances with Chris and shrugged.

'Sure. Even if I don't buy much, I'll need to see what Echevarria might be deploying against me. Right?'

'Exactly!' Mike clapped his hands and snapped out a pointed pistol finger. 'That's the spirit.'

Inside the hangars, big air conditioning units blasted warm, spice scented air down from the ceiling. The exhibits sat in pools of soft light, interspersed with crisp repeating holos showing them in sanitised use.

Brand names hung in illuminated capitals. Logos badged the walls.

Bryant made for the a.s.sault rifles. An elegant saleswoman glidedforward to meet him. They seemed to know each other far better than Mike's visit yesterday with Echevarria would explain.

'Chris. Sefior Barranco. I'd like you to meet Sally Hunting. She reps for Vickers, but she's a freelance small-arms consultant in her spare time. Isn't that right, Sal? No strings.'

246Sally Hunting shot him a reproachful look. Beneath her Lily Chen suit and auburn tumbling spike haircut, she was very beautiful in a pale, understated fashion.

'Spare time, Mike? What is that, exactly?'

'Sally, behave. This is Sefior Vicente Barranco, a valued client. And my colleague, Chris Faulkner.'

'Of course, Chris Faulkner. I recognise you from the photos. The Nakamura thing. Well, this is a great pleasure. So what can I do you gentlemen for?'

'Sefior Barranco is fighting a highland jungle war against an oppressive regime and well-supplied government forces,' said Bryant. 'It's our feeling he's under-equipped.'

'I see. That must be very difficult.' Sally Hunting was all mannered sympathy. 'Are you relying on Kalashnikovs? Mmm? Yes, I thought so.

Marvellous weapons, I have clients who won't look at anything else. But you may want to consider switching to the new Heckler and Koch.

Now, it's a little more complicated to operate than your basic AK, but '

Barranco shook his head. 'Sefiorita, my soldiers are often as young as fourteen years old. They come from bombed-out villages where most of the adults have been killed or disappeared. We are short of teachers, even shorter of time to train our recruits. Simplicity of operation is vital.'

The saleswoman shrugged. 'The Kalashnikov, then. I won't bore you with details, they've been making essentially the same gun for almost a hundred years. But you might like to have a look at some of the modified ammunition we have here. You know, shredding rounds, toxic jacket coatings, armour piercing. All compatible with the standard AK load.'

She gestured across at a display terminal.

'Shall we?'

Barranco left the North Memorial armed - on paper - to the teeth.

Seven hundred brand new Kalashnikovs, eight dozen Aerospatiale shoulder-launched autoseek plane-killers, two thousand lightweight King antipersonnel grenades and two hundred thousand rounds of state-of-the-art ammunition for the a.s.sault rifles. They were unable, despite Sally. Hunting's best efforts, to sell him landmines or a complex automated area-denial sentry system.

'No big deal,' she told them while Barranco was with one of theclinical experts, having immune-inhibitor toxins explained to him. 'I'll get standard commission on the AKs. Not as much as the Heckler and Koch, obviously, they're still trying to break the lock Kalashnikov have 247on the insurgency market, and they're being very generous this year.

Still, with what I'll make off the Aerospatiale stuff and the grenades, I'm not complaining.'

'I'm glad to hear that,' growled Mike, 'because my impression was I ' t just handed you a crippled rabbit on a four-lane drag. You owe me big time for this, Sally.'

She twinkled at him. 'Collect any time, Mike. I'm a busy girl, but I .....

can always fit you in, you know.'

'Behave.'

On the drive back, Barranco was quiet. If his new acquisitions pleased '.

him, he gave no sign. For the whole journey he held a single jacketed ].

rifle slug in his hand, rolling it back and forth between his fingers like a cigar. His face invited neither conversation nor comment. He looked, Chris thought in one particularly morbid moment, like a man who has just been told he has a disease for which there is no known cure.

248THIRTY-TWO.

They dropped Barranco at the Hilton, and were about to pull away again when the security entry alarms went off in violently coloured LEDs and nasal braying. Still buried in his brooding, the Colombian had tried to walk through the scanner with the AK round in his hand.

Chris nipped up the steps to the entrance and unwrinkled things, clapped Barranco on the shoulder and told him to get some rest. He'd see him at nine the next morning to go over contractual stuff. Then he piled back in the BMW and they drifted out into the spa.r.s.e traffic.

Mike hooked around Marble Arch and picked up Oxford Street heading east. Still plenty of light in the sky.

'Want to get something to eat?' Mike asked him.

'Sure, why not.'

'Noodles?'

'Sounds good to me.' Chris jerked a thumb back the way they'd come.

'You think he's okay?'

'Barranco? Yeah. Just sh.e.l.lshocked. Probably never seen so much hardware in a single day.'

'I don't know. He didn't look happy.'

Mike snorted. 'Well he b.l.o.o.d.y should be happy. That's the biggest single credit-card payment I've ever made.'

'You didn't buy any toys for Echevarria yesterday?'

'On account.' Mike grinned at him. 'Sixty-day cancellation clause.'

'You route that stuff through Sally Hunting as well?'

'No way. Total account separation, remember. Anyway, Sally doesn't get her commission unless the money clears. Wouldn't want '

The BMW's phone lit up with a priority call. Mike made a quiet gesture at Chris, and answered.

'Yeah, Bryant.'

'Mike. It's Troy. That stuff about Faulkner you ran past me? Something came up.'

'Right, he's here with me, Troy. Tell us what you got.'.

There was a brief pause. 'It's better we meet. I don't want to talk on this line. Can you come out to my place?'Mike glanced across at him. Chris nodded.

'We're on our way.'

249Troy's house seemed strangely quiet in the early evening light. It took Chris a moment or two to understand that he was comparing it with memories of the last time he'd been here, when the party was in full swing. He got a determined lock on his creeping paranoia, and followed Mike up to the front door.

The worry must have shown on his face. Mike grinned encouragingly at him.

'Be alright,' he said.

Troy Morris answered the bell by securicam before he opened up, ushered them in as if there was a storm coming, and then threw every bolt and security device the door had before he spoke again. The anti tamper unit whined rapidly up to full charge. Mike looked at Chris and raised an eyebrow.

'Little jumpy, aren't we?'

'You'd better come through,' said Troy. 'Someone I want you to meet.'

In the lounge, a thin black man in his early twenties sat twitching restlessly in one of Troy's armchairs. There was a scar across his lower jaw and his clothes said zone gangwit. He surveyed the new arrivals without enthusiasm.

'This is Marauder.' Troy told them. 'Marauder, this is Mike Bryant.

Chris Faulkner. Friends of mine.'

'Yeah, yeah. Whatever.'

'Mike, Chris, you want to sit down? Get you a drink?'

Mike Bryant nodded, most of his attention fixed on Marauder. 'Some of that Polish vodka you keep in the freezer. Small one.'

'Chris? Single malt, right?'

'Yeah, if you've got it. Thanks.'

'Aberlour or Lagavulin? Or I've got Irish.'

'Lagavulin's good. No ice.'

'Marauder?'

The gangwit rolled his head once back and forth, slowly. He said nothing. Troy shrugged and went out to the kitchen. They sat and waited.

The silence stretched.'Who you run with?' asked Mike suddenly.

Marauder lifted his jaw. 'f.u.c.k's it got to do with you?'

Chris tensed. Neither he nor Mike were carrying, and Marauder looked street enough to be a problem in a straight fight. He checked Mike out of the corner of his eye, but saw no signs of impending violence.

250'just curious,' said Mike lazily. 'Just wondered what kind of f.u.c.kwit outfit lets its soldiers get strung out on the merchandise.'

Marauder sat up. 'Hey birds.h.i.t, you want to f.u.c.k with me?'