Carte Blanche - Jeffery Deaver [156]
‘You’d just sacrifice ten million dollars?’
‘Good insurance is expensive.’
‘I always wondered why Hydt kept going with his plan – after I turned up in Serbia and in March. I was careful to cover my tracks but he accepted me a lot more readily here, as Gene Theron, than I would have. That was because Dunne kept telling him I was safe.’
She nodded. ‘Severan always listened to Niall Dunne.’
‘So it was Dunne who planted the reference on the Internet to Hydt’s nickname being Noah. And that he used to build his own boats in Bristol.’
‘That’s right.’ Her anger and disappointment blossomed again. ‘But dammit! Why didn’t you let it go when you should have – after Hydt was dead?’
He was looking at her coldly. ‘And then what? You’d wait for me to fall asleep next to you . . . and cut my throat?’
She snapped, ‘I hoped you were who you claimed to be, a mercenary from Durban. That was why I kept on at you last night, asking if you could change – giving you the chance to confess you really were a killer. I thought things might . . .’ Her voice trickled to silence.
‘Work out between us?’ His lips tightened. ‘If it matters, I thought so too.’
Ironic, Felicity thought. She was bitterly disappointed that he had turned out to be one of the good guys. He must be equally disappointed to discover that she was not at all what he’d thought.
‘So what are you doing tonight? What is the project we’ve been calling Incident Twenty?’ he asked, shifting on the floor. The cuffs jingled.
Keeping the gun trained on him, she said, ‘You know about world conflict?’
‘I listen to the BBC,’ he responded drily.
‘When I was a banker in the City my clients sometimes invested in companies in trouble spots of the world. I got to know those regions. The one thing I noticed was that in every single conflict zone, hunger was a critical factor. Those who were hungry were desperate. You could get them to do anything if you promised them food – switch political loyalties, fight, kill civilians, overthrow dictatorships or democracies. Anything. It occurred to me that hunger could be used as a weapon. So that’s what I became – an arms dealer, you could say.’
‘You’re a hunger broker.’
Well put, Felicity thought.
Smiling coolly, she continued, ‘The IOAH controls thirty-two per cent of the food aid coming into the country. We’ll soon be doing the same in various Latin-American countries, India, South East Asia. If, say, a warlord in the Central African Republic wants to get into power and he pays me what I ask, I’ll make sure his soldiers and the people supporting him get all the food they need and his opponent’s followers get nothing.’
He blinked in surprise. ‘Sudan. That’s what’s happening tonight – war in Sudan.’
‘Exactly. I’ve been working with the central authority in Khartoum. The president doesn’t want the Eastern Alliance to break away and form a secular state. The regime in the east plans to solidify their ties to the UK and shift their oil sales there rather than to China. But Khartoum’s not strong enough to subdue the east without assistance. So it’s paying me to supply food to Eritrea, Uganda and Ethiopia. Their troops will invade simultaneously with the central forces. The Eastern Alliance won’t stand a chance.’
‘So the thousands of deaths in the message we intercepted – that’s the body count of the initial invasion tonight.’
‘That’s right. I had to guarantee a certain loss of life of Eastern Alliance troops. If the number is more than two thousand, I get a bonus.’
‘The adverse impact on Britain? That the oil’s going to Beijing, not to us?’
A nod. ‘The Chinese helped Khartoum pay my bill.’
‘When does the fighting start?’
‘In about an hour and a half. As soon as the food planes are in the air and the ships are in international waters, the invasion of eastern Sudan begins.’ Felicity looked at her demure Baume & Mercier watch. She supposed Gregory Lamb would arrive soon. ‘Now, I need to broker something else: your co-operation.’
He laughed coldly.
‘If you don’t, your friend Bheka Jordaan will die. Simple as that.