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When an obscure charity recruits Josh Hagarty to manage their activities in a war-torn region of Africa, he’s eager to sign on and atone for a past he regrets. After a lifetime of bad luck, someone is finally giving him a chance. All he has to do is not blow it.
He tries to lose himself in his new job, but soon the precariousness of his situation becomes impossible to ignore. Gideon, the man assigned to guide him through the dangerous and exotic world he’s been thrust into, is revealed to be a psychotic thug with ties to the country’s genocidal dictator. And Josh’s predecessor didn’t quit as he’d been led to believe, but was found dismembered in the jungle after asking questions that no one wanted answered.
When the life of his young sister in the United States is threatened, Josh is forced to face the fact that his employer may not be the benevolent organization it claims to be and that he’s become an unwitting player in a billion-dollar conspiracy with tentacles snaking across the globe. Escape is impossible—the only way out is to bring the whole thing down.
With the help of Annika Gritdal, a beautiful Scandinavian aid worker, and journalist JB Flannary, Josh pits himself against a shadowy New York crime organization backed by a dictator who is virtually omnipotent within the borders of his country. As his own survival becomes less and less likely, Josh realizes that his life is just one of thousands—perhaps millions—at stake.
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Africa has a dangerous edge that makes it an ideal setting for a thriller. I took a trip there years ago to research a novel but discovered that a few weeks wasn’t enough time to absorb such an exotic atmosphere. The idea went on the back burner, but I couldn’t get the place out of my mind.
The next winter I found myself living in Cape Town, South Africa, and since then I’ve spent many of my winters there, getting a perspective on the continent that can’t be gained by reading books or just passing through.
The first thing that struck me was that the problems of Africa are more widespread than I’d realized. Even the countries that never make the U.S. news struggle desperately with poverty, AIDS, violence, and a lack of access to education. As I drove through some of these places, I searched for the benefits of the foreign aid that’s been flowing into the continent for decades but could never find any.
In fact, I found the opposite: Bureaucrats diverting food aid from their political opponents to their supporters, dictators funneling donated money into weapons and Swiss bank accounts, and projects that were unsustainable without constant Western involvement. In the end, I began to wonder if the good intentions of aid agencies weren’t behind a lot of Africa’s problems.
Being a crook at heart, I couldn’t help noticing the opportunities all this provides. What if a criminal organization were to start a bogus NGO and partner with one of these corrupt regimes? They would be able to siphon tens of millions of dollars from U.S. and UN programs, fleece private donors, traffic in drugs and weapons, as well as charge the local government for helping to whitewash its genocidal policies.
It turned out to be an almost perfect crime. Aid agencies have very little oversight and what they do have focuses on things like efficiency and project sustainability. No one is looking for anything malignant. And even if they found it, they’d probably blame some corrupt local bureaucrat or the general state of dysfunction that plagues many countries in the region.
In the end, the question became not how you would do it as how could you stop it…
“I’m Stephen Trent. When I’m in the country, I run this place.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Trent,” Josh said. “I really appreciate you inviting me up here.”
“Stephen. And I appreciate you taking the time to talk to a little charity like us. We know you must have big money offers coming in from all over the country, but I think we might be able to offer you something unique.”
Trent led him through a narrow hallway toward the back of the building. The walls were lined with photographs of happy Africans in agricultural settings—sometimes working, sometimes posed with their arms around each other, sometimes in large groups with Trent’s relatively pale face hovering somewhere near the center.
“Have a seat,” Trent said, pointing to a comfortable looking leather chair. Josh did as he was told and Trent took the chair next to him instead of going behind the imposing desk that dominated the room. “So I assume you’ve done some research on us?”
“I have, but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert.”
Trent nodded knowingly. “We’re a small, focused charity and we like it that way. Our donors are sophisticated enough to understand that Africa is too complicated a place to fix with strategies that can be summed up in a sound bite. How much do you know about foreign aid, Josh?”
“Only what I’ve read. I don’t have any direct experience, if that’s what you mean.”
Trent didn’t seem concerned. “Foreign governments and aid agencies have been pouring money and people into Africa for decades. And if you criticize them, they’ll hit you with a bunch of excuses: This project didn’t work because of this extenuating circumstance or that project didn’t work out because of that extenuating circumstance. It’s really quite ridiculous. Do you know why?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Of course, you don’t. Why would you? It’s because there’s always an extenuating circumstance. And if there’s always an extenuating circumstance…” He paused, obviously looking to Josh to finish the thought.
“Then it’s not an extenuating circumstance?”
“Exactly!” Trent slapped the arm of his chair loudly. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Josh. If you ever become a millionaire and someone comes to you looking for aid money for Africa, ask them to take you on a tour of their projects.”
Josh tried to appear thoughtful, but mostly he was thankful that Trent was content to do most of the talking.
“But when you get there,” Trent continued, warming up to his subject. “Tell them you only want to see projects that are ten years old. Then watch them scramble.”
“But the newspaper articles I could find on you have been pretty complimentary,” Josh said. “They say you’ve been pretty effective.”
“Yes! But it’s because we’re different. Some people think we’re hard-asses, but if we think a project isn’t going to be productive in the long-term, we won’t touch it.”
“And other agencies will?”
“Hell, yes. Look, don’t get me wrong. They all have good intentions. But after they’ve hired a bunch of people, put infrastructure in place, started a donation campaign built around this project or that, it gets pretty hard to just pull the plug.”
“Everyone would be out of a job,” Josh said. “And they’d have to tell the donors that their money was wasted.”
“Precisely.” He leaned back in his chair and examined Josh for a moment. “Have you ever been involved in charity work?”
It was an obvious question that Trent almost certainly already knew the answer to. Josh had thought about it from every possible angle, but he had absolutely nothing to work with. He’d never even been in the boy scouts.
“I haven’t, Stephen. But I’ve been around it. I grew up in a pretty poor area of the south.”
Trent nodded but didn’t immediately speak. “Okay, then. Let me ask you this. Have you ever been the recipient of charity?”
With his ritual of meticulous interview preparation, Josh had never been surprised by an interview question and that left him with no canned reaction for the first time. He felt his mouth tighten and he ran a tongue slowly over his teeth, trying to decide if he should be pissed off and what he should say.
“You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want, Josh.”
“No, it’s okay. The answer is yes. I have.”
Trent jabbed a finger in his direction. “You see? That’s a unique perspective that no one here—not me, not anyone—has. It’s the kind of diversity that I believe can help make this organization even more effective. I mean, in a way, you’re the model of what we want for the Africans. You started poor and disadvantaged, and you overcame that.”  | |
