8
‘Look at me.’
He kept his eyes down.
I jammed my clip against the top of his ear.
He squealed, arched his back and collapsed again.
I leaned over him. ‘Look at me . . .’
He stayed where he was, but this time his eyes came up to meet mine. Rain streamed off my chin and onto his face.
‘This is very simple.’ I waved the jump lead in his face. ‘You talk, and I keep this away from you.’
He jerked his head to dislodge the crocodile clip from his neck, but it stayed right where it was.
I kicked his hand away as he tried to reach up and grab it.
When he started to talk, I could hardly hear him above the sound of the rain. ‘It was a simple operation that got f*cked up. We just needed those papers, no hassle, everything clean.’ He scrabbled in the mud and hauled himself back up against the wheel. ‘It’s out of my hands now. That’s why I was getting out of this shithole.’ He stared into the trees.
I moved the clip back into his line of sight, and held it no more than a centimetre away from his nose. ‘You’re not answering the questions. Who the f*ck are you working for? Who are these powerful friends of yours you said can make things happen?’
‘The politicos, man. Same old story. The guys Bazgadze was gunning for. That’s why they wanted what was in his safe. That’s all I know.’ He glanced up at me. ‘And all I wanna know.’
‘You still with the Bureau? Is this some covert FBI f*ckabout we’ve been sucked into here?’
He shook his head slowly and his gaze dropped back towards the mud. ‘Those f*ckers spat me out four years ago. Chewed me up and spat me out, with just enough of an annuity to buy myself a cigar every Fourth of July. Why do you think I ended up in this goddam shithole?’
I wasn’t buying the sympathy card, and brought the clip a fraction closer to let him know.
‘I was in the job thirty years, and for what? Jack shit, man. So when these guys step in and offer me a retirement plan—’
‘What happened at the house?’
‘The guys I work for, there are six of them, OK? Partnership for Peace isn’t high on their list of priorities; well, partnership gets their vote, but peace can go take a dump. They want to keep things exactly the way they are. US dollars are flying in by the planeload, and a lot of them get diverted their way. They pay the militants to threaten the pipeline, just to keep things on the boil. Nothing bad, nothing physical – just the occasional firework display. Nobody gets hurt. It’s just good, old-fashioned commerce. I’m just there to—’
‘Yeah, we know,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re just there to smooth the way . . .’
Bastard looked up at him and risked a smile.
I kicked him. ‘Get on with it.’
He slid his legs up as close to his chest as his gut would allow. ‘This Bazgadze guy, he’d been getting more and more of a problem. The whole sainthood thing wasn’t good for business. And neither was getting found out just before Bush arrives to rally the troops for the war on terror. So the plan was, steal the papers, find out what he knows. Lean on the guy. Warn him off . . .’
He raised a hand to the jump lead still clamped onto his neck. ‘Can I take this thing off? I’m f*cking helping you here.’
I shook my head. ‘You’re helping yourself. That still doesn’t explain what happened at the house, or at the cemetery. Who the f*ck were those guys?’
‘Bazgadze wasn’t any more popular with the militants than he was with my politicos. There’s this f*ck, Akaki, he runs them. He just couldn’t wait. If Bazgadze had proof he was on the take, he wanted him dead. He’s a f*cking psycho, he’s out of control. It’s not the way to deal with guys like Bazgadze – he’s a f*cking god around here.
It’s gotta be subtle.’
‘What, like you?’
The rain was so hard it felt like a madman with a staple gun was attacking the back of my neck.
Charlie wasn’t happy – and not just with Bastard’s explanation. ‘We better start getting a move on.’ He pointed beyond the trees, where mud and loose debris were breaking away from the side of the hill and gravity was doing the rest. ‘The road’s taking a pounding.’
I kicked Bastard to his feet.
‘So what happens now?’ he said.
‘What happens now is you shut the f*ck up, or we connect those jump leads to your bollocks. You’re coming with us, and later on, when we’re in Turkey and out of this shit, you’re going to call a few of your high-powered mates. We’re going to make a little deal, and this time you’re going to be the broker.’