Greed

Goddamn Africa thing a few years back, Mooney and his charity shindig. Last place on earth Fe

Then he ran into that fucker Hardin.

Leno and Letterman made him their steady punch for weeks after Darfur. The parts he was up for? Nothing. Then the producers on his next picture dropped him, everybody making all the right conciliatory noises, but Fe

Had to go under the knife for the nose twice, and it still wasn’t right. His agent kept telling him go with it, said it gave him some character. What the fuck did he know? When Fe

Some scripts that used to come to him first didn’t come to him at all. Finally, a director who’d had a couple of arty films tank on him called Fe

Fe

Just like that, Fe

Then Fe

Fe

Then he saw that fucker Hardin heading for the entrance to the luxury boxes. The one thing that had kept Fe

Fe

CHAPTER 5

It was just past 11pm when Hardin checked into the downtown Hyatt on Wacker. Lots of rooms, lots of people coming and going, lots of exits, and it co

Hardin had no illusions. It had been thirty-six hours since he bounced the couriers outside Kenema. He figured four, maybe five hours after that they were late in Freetown, and maybe another couple hours before their Hezbollah contacts had shit their pants. That meant some pretty bad guys had spent at least a day leaning on anybody who knew anything about the blood diamond trade – and those fuckers knew how to lean. Somebody would remember that Hardin had been nosing around. Hardin wouldn’t be the only name on their list, but he’d be on their list by now, so they’d be looking. For $150 million, they’d look hard.

At least he’d seen Stein. Stein set the meet at his luxury box at the Bulls game. Hardin waited until the game was almost over, watching Stein’s box for the crowd to clear out. When the Bulls went up big late and it looked like Stein was alone, Hardin made his way up to the suite.

Stein got up and shook Hardin’s hand as he came in.

“Long time,” Stein said.

“Yeah,” said Hardin.

“So, Hardin now?”

“My képi blanc name,” said Hardin. One of the perks of serving in the Legion – in fact maybe the only perk – was a new identity and French citizenship when you mustered out. Hardin had known Stein from his Marine days, riding shotgun on some weird-smelling Mossad deal in Kuwait (and well up into Iraq, though they weren’t supposed to have been there) just after Gulf War I.

“So, a drink? Some ribs?” Stein had quite a spread.

“Let’s just get to it.” Hardin had eaten breakfast at an IHOP somewhere on the way down from O’Hare earlier and still wasn’t hungry. His stomach was on Africa time, and the IHOP breakfast was more calories than your average African family might eat in a week.

“Straight to business with you, eh? OK, so you got some raw rocks, you got no Kimberley certificates on them, and you want to dump them on somebody who can cut them and get them papered up so they go from being useless gravel to being an actual asset. I’m straight on that?”