St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

twenty million rounds of ammunition, at least a million antipersonnel land mines, fifty thousand heavy machine guns, give or take, and numerous military vehicles, including at least a hundred armored personnel carriers and twenty decommissioned Sovietassault helicopters. All of it was used to attack native villages in four separate African countries.”
    “That’s how he made his money? Running guns?” Kayla asked. “According to what he told the bank, he’s an oil broker.”
    “He is, now. Before that he was the gasoline that turned centuries of smoldering ethnic and tribal conflict into a hellfire that killed thousands of innocent people. They’re dead because Bertone poured a flood of modern military weapons into primitive tribal politics.”
    Rand started to say something more, then let John Neto’s voice talk over the savage images.
    “My people have been killing one another for a long time, yes, but Bertone and his ilk made it possible to murder with ruthless modern efficiency. The losses were horrifying. We were a primitive people delivered into the hands of modern warfare, warfare driven by gunrunning opportunists like Andre Bertone.”
    Kayla hit the pause button. “I thought diamonds were the bloody item of barter.”
    “Bertone took whatever was offered—exotic hardwoods, illegal ivory, minerals. His favorite was bargeloads of oil siphoned from government pipelines by rebel thieves.” Rand smiled thinly. “He is one smart son of a bitch. When other arms runners demanded cash, he pioneered the barter economy. Really widened the killing field.”
    Before yesterday, Kayla wouldn’t have believed it. Arms dealing in the upper crust of Phoenix? No way. That sort of thing was reserved for third-world outlaws.
    She hit a button on the controller and continued her unhappy education.
    “Bertone has a genius for turning a profit on a transaction with one group of combatants, then reinvesting that profit in more arms, which are then sold to the first customer’s enemies.”
    The picture on the screen changed. No longer a voice-over, the camera pulled back to reveal Brent Thomas and John Neto.
    “Yet today,” Thomas said, “Andre Bertone has UN diplomatic credentials and is a respected international oil dealer.”
    “Yes. Enough money buys respectability. As we speak, Bertone is an intermediary for shiploads of Eastern European weapons that will be paid for with long-term oil concessions the Camgerian rebels will grant to oil companies owned by Brazil and France. Even your own government deals with Bertone for oil.” Neto smiled thinly. “Like gold or diamonds or dollars, oil can be laundered to hide its source. Andre Bertone is brilliant at just that. Oil-hungry governments, or governments wishing to arm the enemy of their enemy, are willing to overlook Camgerian deaths. We are a pawn in the larger global game.
    “And we are being sacrificed.”
    More images of butchery, starvation, disease; vultures thick on the ground.
    Kayla didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to think she lived in a world where war was a commodity like any other.
    And worse, that she’d handled blood money for the bloodiest butcher of all.
    Rand grabbed the controller just before it dropped to the floor. He paused the DVD. “You okay?”
    “No,” she said. “I feel sick. Dirty.”
    “Bertone will do that to anyone with any decency in them.”
    She thought of the glitz and glamour of the Fast Draw, canapés paid for in children’s blood, politicians paid for the same way, everyone lining up like cattle to be serviced by the merchant of death. It had happened only hours ago, hours that felt like days, months.
    Another life she had lived in another time.
    And now she had hit the bottom of the rabbit hole hard enough to break her soul.
    Rand saw the tears streaming down Kayla’s face and wanted to swear. Only the decent felt another’s pain. Only the decent could be corrupted. Only the decent could be made to feel dirty.
    He didn’t think about smart or stupid, should or shouldn’t. He just gathered her into his arms, tucked her face against his shoulder, and held her. The hot silence of her tears reached him as nothing had since Reed’s death.
    “It’s not your fault,” he said, stroking her hair, kissing her eyelids gently, tasting her tears. “None of this is your fault.”
    “I helped him.” Her voice was as bleak as her tears.
    “You didn’t know.”
    “I do now.”
    “I’m sorry,” Rand