Which took a lot of time and effort to set up.
So many headaches along the way, and right from the get-go.
Rundle moves the binoculars back over the scene, sweeps across it, slides it into a blur. There must be a couple of hundred people here. Then he finds himself doing it again, going back, but this time slowly, scanning, searching for something.
What?
That open mineshaft.
He finds it.
A small, rough hole in the earth.
The three children he saw climbing out of it earlier are around it now, squatting, examining the contents of their tin cans. They are stripped to the waist and covered in a dirty brown dust. He zooms in carefully, and goes from one to the other, studying their faces.
Their big, blank solemn eyes.
He closes his own for a second or two, and then zooms out again, just a fraction.
But when he refocuses, the children have stopped doing what they were doing, all three of them. They’ve put their tin cans down on the ground and are peering up, looking – he realises – in his direction, at him.
He stares back, but only for a moment, before dropping the binoculars. He presses the automatic switch to close the window. Then he turns sideways, towards Ribcoff, and says, ‘Get me the fuck out of here.’
Conway pulls his forehead back from the grimy window and turns to face Jimmy Gilroy. Now that he’s started this, he realises how far there is to go, and he’s exhausted.
‘Triobium-thanaxite,’ he says, with a sigh. ‘It’s a rare metallic ore. Congo is full of them, niobium, cassiterite, cobalt, uranium. You’ve heard of coltan, right? It’s used to make capacitors for cell phones and games consoles, every bloody thing, camera lenses, surgical implants. Well, this one is extremely rare. It has a unique chemical composition and until about four years ago had only ever been found in a remote part of Brazil. Then they discovered a deposit of the damn stuff in the mine at Buenke.’
‘Who’s they?’
Conway looks at Gilroy and almost laughs. ‘Well, at least you’re asking the right questions.’
This Jimmy Gilroy is young and inexperienced and has just admitted he’s unemployed, but Conway is fine with that. He doesn’t feel he’s made a mistake or anything by talking to him. Besides, Phil Sweeney said he was smart, and Phil would know. Phil also said he’d worked with Gilroy’s father. Conway never met Dec Gilroy, but he’s vaguely aware of his reputation – aware that anyone who ever did meet the man really liked him.
So while it might be overstating it to say that Conway likes the son here – they did only meet half an hour ago, and the circumstances are hardly ideal – he is comfortable with him. Curiously, as well – and this is crucial – he doesn’t seem to resent him.
All in all, he’ll do.
He’s fit for purpose.
Because this is it, isn’t it?
Conway’s already gone way too far to turn back now, and while he’s not quite prepared to admit it to himself yet, he’s almost relieved.
‘They,’ he says, ‘is an advanced satellite imaging company owned by BRX and the Oberon Capital Group. Obviously, given how rare the stuff is, and how valuable, they decided to try and keep it a secret.’
‘What’s it used for?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know. More of the same, I suppose, only bigger and better. Next generation apps.’ He shrugs. ‘Aerospace, defence turbines, jet engines. Nanotechnology, biotechnology. Who the fuck knows with these people.’
There is silence for a while as this sinks in.
‘And Gianni Bonacci discovered your little secret.’
‘It wasn’t my secret, Jimmy. Believe me. I was just trying to flog an old copper mine. But yeah, right after Bonacci dropped his bombshell I won’t deny that I put the squeeze on Rundle. He wasn’t too happy with that and pointed out to me that unless Bonacci was reined in there wouldn’t be any sale.’ He puffs up his cheeks and then exhales loudly. ‘The thing is, because Bonacci had used the words We need to talk, Rundle figured that that meant it was a shakedown. Which in turn meant that he probably hadn’t told anyone else yet.’
‘Right.’
‘Which meant there was time. In theory. A window of opportunity. To do something. But when I sat down with Don Ribcoff a while later, at Rundle’s request, and fed him every little titbit I knew about Bonacci, everything I’d heard or picked up on in conversation – about him, about Susie, about the two of them, about the coke, about the proposed helicopter trip the next day – I had no idea what I was doing, no idea that there’d be…’ He pauses, struggling, reluctant to say it straight out. ‘Consequences. I mean, it might sound disingenuous now, but at the time I didn’t really understand how serious it was, how seriously they were taking it. I didn’t understand how high the stakes were. Looking back, sure, but -’
‘What did you think?’
‘That they’d, I don’t know, pay him off. I was fully expecting them to pay me off, to hike up their offer, which they eventually did, of course.’ He then makes a sweeping gesture with his hand to indicate their surroundings. ‘It paid for this bloody place. Got it up and running, anyway.’ He shakes his head. ‘Look, there was a lot of frantic activity that night, a lot of back and forth, so my assumption was that some contact was made with Bonacci, and that therefore discussions would be ongoing. Besides, it wasn’t really any of my business. Whatever this thanaxite was, I didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to even think about getting involved in the extraction process myself. I was just delighted that the mere mention of it was apparently going to lead to a financial bonanza for me.’
There is another silence, during which Conway thinks to himself, that was pretty lame. Isn’t this meant to be some sort of confession? He looks at Gilroy and actually feels sorry for the poor bastard – having to stand there, having to listen to this.
‘Jimmy,’ he says after a while, a knot tightening in his stomach. ‘I don’t know what happened exactly, or how, but I can tell you this. Late on the Saturday night, Don Ribcoff came to me with a bag of cocaine the size of a pound of fucking sugar and told me to deliver it to Susie with instructions for her to babysit Gianni Bonacci, that’s the phrase he used, babysit him. She wasn’t to let him out of her sight, she was to go with him on the trip to Donegal. If she did that, there’d be another bag the same size waiting for her when she got back.’
‘And did you deliver it?’
A pause. ‘Well, what do you think?’
‘Then what did Susie ask? I mean’ – Jesus, the look on his face – ‘what did she imagine was going on, if she’d been the one who pushed Bonacci into -’
‘Remember, that was just speculation.’ He pauses. ‘And no, she didn’t ask anything. I’m afraid all Susie could see in front of her was this big fat bag of toot.’
Gilroy stares at him, in silence, no doubt trying to picture the scene. Conway can picture it all too vividly himself. He remembers thinking at the time, this is fucking insane.
‘So,’ he says, ‘she did what she was told. Exactly how she went about it, no one knows. Did she go to Bonacci straightaway? Did she go to his room? Did she fuck him? Maybe. What she definitely did do, the next morning, was inveigle Niall Feeley and Ted Walker into letting her go along on the helicopter ride. They probably took a bit of convincing, a lot of convincing, but no one ever said no to Susie Monaghan.’