Hidden Agendas

Well, well. Interesting how things worked out. With any luck at all, he'd have a new project car pretty soon. Sure would help that empty garage. And having a goal outside of work was always good.

Time for the teriyaki…

Thursday, January 13th, 9 a.m. Bissau, Guinea-Bissau

Hughes rode in a bullet-proof Cadillac limo from his hotel toward the new Presidential Palace, and the ride was not particularly impressive. Even though the former President, Joao Bernardo Vieira, and his African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, had dragged the locals kicking and screaming into the modern era, it was still a third-world country. Actually more like a fourth- or fifth-world country. Half-dressed natives worked and shopped in outdoor market stalls that dotted the streets among office buildings. There were open sewers just off the main roads, and a lot more dirt roads than paved ones. Finding a working public telephone was a rarity.

Agriculture and fishing were the main economic activities — ninety percent of the million and a half souls here worked on farms or boats, or processed the crops or fish that came from the land and sea. The primary exports were cashews, peanuts, and palm kernels, and they imported four times more goods than they shipped out — which wasn't saying much. The main local non-agricultural products were soft drinks and beer. National debt was high, exploration of minerals was minimal, and Guinea-Bissau was quite simply among the poorest countries on the planet. Most people here ate rice, and not much of it, and considered themselves lucky to have that. If they lived to be fifty, they were well ahead of the game. Less than forty percent of the population was literate, most of those men. Education was not wasted on women here — maybe one in four could read more than her own name.

There were no railroads, only a couple thousand miles of badly paved roads, one airport big enough for international flights to land at, and it was cheaper to use local pesos for toilet paper than it was to buy toilet paper. You didn't offer a left hand to greet people here…

Given a choice, almost nobody civilized would choose to live in Guinea-Bissau. Unless they were at the top of the food chain. The very top.

At least it was the dry season. During the monsoons, you didn't walk, you waded.

Hughes leaned back in the car seat and stared at the multicolored swatches of pitiful humanity walking or standing along the street, staring at the passing limo. He was on his way to meet President Fernandes Domingos, a not-particularly-bright man who had somehow lucked into the job. Fortunately, Domingos was bright enough to know a good deal when he heard it. The Presidente had been out of the country, had spent much time in Johannesburg and London and Paris, and had developed a taste for things nearly impossible to enjoy in his own country without a lot more money than he could currently steal. These things included fine wines, finer women, and expensive evenings at the casinos in Monaco.

If things went as planned, Hughes would make Domingos richer than he had ever dreamed of being, and able to indulge his tastes in more pleasant circumstances than the dirty streets of Guinea. Domingos in turn would make it possible for Hughes to — for all practical purposes — eventually own the entire country.

Even a third-world pit such as this one currently was had an inestimable value — or it would, in the right hands. Political asylum alone was worth a fortune, not to mention what was hiding under the ground. Yes, Guinea- Bissau definitely had potential, in the right hands.

In his hands.

'The Compound is just ahead, sir,' the driver said. He was large, white, and had a clipped, posh-English accent. On the seat next to him lay a submachine gun, and Hughes knew that under his chauffeur's coat the driver also carried a large-caliber pistol, and from what else he knew, the man had the ability to use both weapons expertly. He was an ex-British military operative of some kind, hired to make sure the President's special guests got where they were supposed to get in one piece. There wasn't much chance of being assassinated by locals, but the neighboring countries, such as Senegal and Guinea, were always wrangling with Guinea-Bissau or each other, sending ratty armies across ill-defined borders to loot and rape, and there was some small possibility of terrorism from saboteurs.

Since he was not officially supposed to be here, it would hardly do to have too high a profile — like a shoot-out with some half-baked crazed spy. Fortunately, the U.S. ambassador in this backwater owed Hughes several large favors, and if the man wasn't exactly in Hughes's pocket, he was circumspect in the extreme. You didn't get to be a full ambassador without learning which way the wind blew, then setting your sails accordingly.

Hughes turned his attention to the palace compound. The main building was big, ostentatious, three stories tall, and made of some slightly pink native stone, with glazed blue tiles on the roof. The architectural style looked to be a bad blend of Mediterranean and Spanish-style villas. The compound was maybe ten acres and a dozen buildings, and surrounded by a fifteen-foot-high matching stone wall topped with what looked like broken glass.

Hughes shook his head. This kind of spending fit a pattern he'd seen all over the world. The less wealth a country had, the larger the extravagances the top dogs lavished upon themselves. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. What a surprise.

The limo arrived in front of a big electrically operated metal gate in the pink stone wall. A pair of guards with assault rifles outside the gate drifted over and bent to look inside the limo. The Brit nodded at them, and it was obvious they knew him, but he offered his ID anyway. The guards checked the ID, then waved at a third armed guard inside the gate at a small kiosk. The gate swung outward to admit the limo.

The driveway was circuitous, and wound around several sharp-angled turns bounded by ponds or dirt mounds covered with grass. Platt had explained that to Hughes. If you managed to get a car full of explosives through the gate, you weren't going to be able to build up enough speed to ram the palace hard enough to put your vehicle inside before you set it off.

The President was largely beloved — but apparently not universally so.

Eventually, the limo arrived at the entrance to the main building.

Standing in front of a set of tall, carved wooden doors was President Fernandes Domingos, along with a pair of bodyguards and a large-busted but otherwise willowy blond woman in a white blouse, a short black skirt, and three-inch heels. Very attractive, the woman. Domingos's mistress, perhaps?

Hughes alighted from the limo as the driver held the door. He smiled at Domingos, who flashed a set of perfect teeth in return.

'Ah, Thomas! How good to see you again!' Domingos spoke good English with an accent from South Africa, the country to which he had been sent for his university education. A university at which, apparently, Domingos had majored in sex, gambling, and drinking.

The two men shook hands. The President was short and heavyset, with a webwork of spidery veins across his nose and cheeks, visible despite his dark complexion. The broken vessels were probably due to incipient alcoholism. At fifty, he had a dissipated look, an aging rake who needed a magic picture in the attic, but unfortunately didn't have one. His namesake ancestors had been Portuguese, and somewhere along the way they had obviously taken a dip or two into the native pools, for he was darker than most Europeans, and what was left of his thinning, dyed-black hair was very curly. But Domingos's features were otherwise not Negroid, despite Plan's racist slurs.

'Mr. President. I am honored.'

Domingos waved that away. 'No, no, none of that, we are friends! Please, come into my humble home. And I would like you to meet Miss Monique Louis, who has just recently returned from Paris. I am sure you two will get along famously!'

Hughes eyed the blonde, who smiled lazily at him, a hint of come-hither in her expression. 'Bonjour,' she said. 'So nice to make your acquaintance.'

Ah…

Unless he was terribly mistaken, the good President had apparently provided him with a… companion. Well. She was attractive enough. And Domingos certainly had enough practice in such matters to have selected an expert trull. Why not? Negotiations could sometimes be arduous, and Hughes might as well relax after they were done — but only afterward.

The tall doors were carved in bas-relief, images of native people, proud faces and young bodies, most of them nude, a kind of gallery of tribal Africa. Platt must have loved that when he'd seen it. Hughes could almost see the cracker shaking his head in disgust. Except for the naked black women, of course.