As Conway opens his mouth to speak, to object – because this is a direction he really doesn’t want to go in – his phone starts vibrating in his pocket.
He sighs and pulls it out in order to switch it off completely.
But then he sees who it is.
Lifting the phone to his ear, he looks over at Boyle, holds up an index finger. ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I have to take this.’
Boyle nods.
‘Larry?’ he then says into the phone, rising from his chair. ‘What… what’s the matter? Take it easy.’
It’s ironic.
Having read only yesterday in Vanity Fair how well he’s supposed to get on with his brother, Clark Rundle is now seething with anger and resentment towards him. He understands that J.J. had a rough time of it out there – he had his hand crushed in the door of an SUV and witnessed some scary stuff, OK – but how can the guy not be able to recall a simple conversation he had thirty minutes prior to that? It seems ridiculous.
Rundle is sitting at his desk, waiting for Don Ribcoff to arrive with the latest update.
Don has already tried to put it down to post-traumatic stress disorder, but Rundle isn’t buying. It’s too easy. J.J. is due back this morning and he’d better have his head sorted out by then or Rundle doesn’t know what he’s going to do. J.J. doesn’t appear to have any problem dealing with all the publicity they’ve inadvertently managed to whip up with this Paris thing – which is why he’s flying home so soon, and against, apparently, all medical advice – but one slip-up before the cameras, one hint that the senator’s ‘heroics’ might not be entirely on the level, and the man will be roasted alive in the full glare of the world’s media.
And that, of course, unlikely though it may be, would have unintended consequences – easily the least of which, as far as Rundle is concerned, would be the ignominious end of J.J.’s bid for a presidential nomination. More seriously, it would undermine Rundle’s own credibility as an unofficial power broker.
In the colonel’s eyes. In James Vaughan’s eyes.
Not that Rundle gives a shit what the colonel thinks. He doesn’t. Kimbela’s a deranged megalomaniac who just happens to be sitting on some very valuable mineral deposits.
Rundle leans back in his chair.
What James Vaughan thinks, though, is a different matter altogether. That runs a little deeper. Rundle has known Jimmy Vaughan since he was a small boy – back when Vaughan and the old man were knee-deep in Middle Eastern construction projects, building pipelines and refinery facilities, as well as networking and schmoozing.
The company and the Company.
As it were.
Rundle remembers a trip to Saudi in the mid-seventies, when he was a teenager – has this vivid image in his mind of old Henry C. in his short-sleeved shirt and wide tie, with his clipboard and his pocket calculator, Jimmy Vaughan standing next to him in a white linen suit, straw panama hat and dark glasses.
The weird thing is, and maybe it’s not weird at all, is that Rundle never put any effort into trying to impress the old man (if anything it was the opposite), but he couldn’t help himself when it came to Mr Vaughan. And now, ten years after the old man croaked it – right in front of him, in the study of the house in Connecticut – here he is, middle-aged, in his eight-thousand-dollar suit, still worried about how Vaughan will react to something he has done, or is doing, or is contemplating doing.
It isn’t that simple, of course. It isn’t just dollar-book Freud. It’s actually – when he thinks about it – just dollars.
Period.
Fuck the Freud.
As chairman of BRX, Rundle is little more than a bean counter, a storekeeper, like the old man was. And for his part, J.J. is a Beltway pol, a grafter, a ballot-box hustler. But Jimmy Vaughan is different. He’s one of those extraordinary guys, and there aren’t that many of them, who somehow float between the two, and it’s not that he’s both – businessman and politician – it’s actually that he’s neither. He’s something else again, something more evolved than that. For him, it’s not about making money and having it, or about having money and spending it.
It’s -
He’s -
Rundle doesn’t know.
It’s like he’s the very embodiment of money. Cash made carnate.
Flesh and the devil. Flesh of the devil.
And back then, even when he was sixteen or seventeen, Rundle caught a whiff of this, and it has never left him. It’s in his nostrils now, as he sits here, staring down through tempered glass at the gleaming white floor of his office.
When he looks up, he sees his assistant standing in the doorway, ushering Don Ribcoff in.
Ribcoff comes over, takes a seat and the two men exchange pleasantries. Ribcoff settles some papers in his lap. He’s here to provide an update on what they have taken to calling ‘the Buenke incident’. After another few moments, Rundle gives him the nod to proceed.
‘OK,’ Ribcoff says, leaning forward and placing a sheet of paper on the desk. ‘Nine dead, including the contractor. This is a layout of the village.’ He then indicates different points on the sheet of paper with a pen. ‘The two women and three children here, the man here, and the other two, who were elderly women, in the huts here. The contractor was Ray Kroner, twenty-eight years old, from Phoenix. Ex-army, two combat tours in Iraq. Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. No prior behavioural problems. Seems he just went postal.’
‘Goddamn.’
‘Yeah, look, it’s a hazard. These guys are well paid, but the pressure they’re under is phenomenal. Having said that, at Gideon we pride ourselves on the quality of our work, and in seven years of ops we’ve only ever had two incidents that might even vaguely be comparable to this one. Both in Nasiriyah.’
Rundle doesn’t believe this for a second, but he’s not about to argue.
‘What about fallout?’
‘So far we’re good. No witnesses, which means it’s a closed system, more or less.’ Rundle leans back a little from the desk. ‘And you know, to be honest, Clark, this is nothing. It’s a drop in the ocean. Village massacres are a dime a dozen over there.’
‘Right.’
‘If it weren’t for the senator being part of the equation we wouldn’t even be talking about this. But to the extent that it happened, and that we might have to address it? In some form? Our cover story would be that the convoy was responding to hostile fire.’ He shrugs. ‘After all, we have a body on our hands to prove it.’
Rundle nods. ‘And the contractor’s family?’
‘They’ll be informed. In due course.’
‘Which means?’
‘In due course. We have considerable latitude here, Clark. It’s not like a regular casualty situation. I mean, when a member of the armed forces dies, next of kin have to be informed within forty-eight hours. Then you’re talking Arlington, a twenty-one gun salute, taps, flag draped over the casket, the whole bit. It’s a little different for private contractors. There’s no fanfare. At all. There isn’t even an official list anywhere of contractor casualties.’
Rundle sits back in his chair and considers this. After a while, he says, ‘OK, no witnesses, but what about the others?’
‘The other contractors?’ Ribcoff shakes his head vigorously. ‘No. They’re the ones who took Ray Kroner out. Because they deemed the senator to be in danger. These are men of the highest calibre, Clark. Loyalty is their watchword.’ He shakes his head again. ‘This situation, this incident, is in effective lockdown, believe me.’