The musical accents of Brazilian Portuguese spilled out of the decoder and into Bertone’s ear. Despite the beauty of the language, what was being said made a red flush crawl up Bertone’s face. There were very few people in the world who could call him to task. Joao Fouquette was one of them.

For now.

“Naturally, you are impatient to-” Bertone cut in.

Fouquette kept talking. “-more than a quarter of a billion dollars American must be laundered to pay for the arms. The money is coming in from France, Liechtenstein, and Dubai. I counted on you to-”

“And I’ve never let you down,” Bertone interrupted. “Relax, my friend. All is well.” Besides, asshole, half of it is my own money.

A big gamble, but Bertone hadn’t gotten where he was by being timid.

“All is not well,” Fouquette insisted. “Neto hired St. Kilda Consulting.”

“What? I thought Neto was ours.”

“He was until he found out who we really backed in the revolution five years ago.”

Bertone shrugged. Allies were people you hadn’t screwed yet, and peace was bad for business. “I assume that’s why he refused to extend the oil contracts with us.”

Fouquette didn’t bother to respond to the obvious. “There will be a rise in oil prices soon. We want to sell Camgeria’s output at the new level. We’ve moved up the timetable for revolution. Do your connections have the arms we need?”

“As soon as they see the money, we see the arms. Arms are easy to find. The only problem comes in transportation and distribution.” That was Bertone’s area of experience. He’d seen the choke points in the arms trade, bought planes and pilots, and got very rich transporting cargoes no one else would touch.

“Whatever you do, don’t use the old laundry,” Fouquette said. “St. Kilda is probably watching LuDoc, waiting to pounce.”

“LuDoc is dead.”

Fouquette laughed. “So you finally discovered how much he was skimming.”