St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

million dollars?”
    “Profit after bribes and kickbacks are paid, yes,” Steele said. “That’s why some very powerful and influential people in Paris are unhappy. They don’t want St. Kilda to interfere in a revolution that will enrich them so well.”
    “You can prove this, I suppose,” Carson said skeptically.
    “Not at all, Counselor,” Steele said, “which is why I advise you not to include any of this in your program. These kinds of charges are made only in intelligence briefings and later, much later, in history books. But that doesn’t matter.”
    “It does to me,” Carson said.
    “Why? All your station has to prove is that Andre Bertone is, or has been, an international arms dealer, a ‘merchant of death,’ as Mr. Thomas calls him. Your reporter has already laid the groundwork for the story. Now I’m offering you the centerpiece for that program.”
    Steele reached into the leather saddlebag that hung beside his wheelchair and pulled out a heavy manila folder. He sent it sliding down the sleek table. The folder came to rest directly in front of Prosser.
    The executive producer hesitated, then opened the folder. Inside were computer copies of color photographs. They had about the same resolution as pictures printed on the inside pagesof a newspaper. The first photo showed a burly Caucasian man in a white safari suit standing in the doorway of a transport aircraft on a dirt strip somewhere in a scrubland. The man was scowling directly into the lens.
    “Bertone?” Prosser asked.
    “Yes,” Steele said.
    “Deb, you have our only photo of the guy. Is this him?” He shoved the first print over to the researcher, who produced another file from her leather folio.
    “It could be,” she said. “This shot isn’t much cleaner than the one we have.”
    “St. Kilda’s photo was taken from a blind near a dirt strip in what was then the endless civil war/ethnic cleansing of the King’s Republic of Uhuru and is now the New Democracy of Camgeria,” Steele said. “The photo is five years old.”
    “Okay, our photo is a decade old,” Martin said. “In truth, we aren’t even sure it’s Bertone. It’s a possible rather than a probable ID. A pal of mine down in Langley got the photo for me. He said there was one positive ID photo taken five years ago, but he couldn’t get it for me. Looks like this could be the one.”
    Steele knew it was.
    Prosser was already sorting down through the other prints. Each one of them told a story—the loading of bags of contraband and the unloading of what were clearly cases of weapons.
    Then he flipped over a picture showing Bertone with a long sniper’s rifle in his hands, staring through the scope.
    “Mother,” he said, startled. “Looks like he was scoping the photographer.”
    “He was,” Steele said. “Notice that his hand isn’t on the trigger.”
    “Still, glad it wasn’t me.” Prosser blew out a breath. “These will make a great photomontage, if we can authenticate them.”
    “Look at the last photo.”
    Prosser turned over the last one. Everyone at the table except Steele crowded around to look over his shoulder.
    Bertone was somewhat shadowed inside the aircraft, but it was clear that he had shifted from watching to acting. His finger was on the trigger.
    “He fired a few seconds later,” Steele said. “A good young man died.”
    Prosser blew out another breath. “Shit.”
    “Pictures are easy to fake,” Carson said. “Remember the CBS National Guard memos.”
    Steele laughed out loud. “Those were badly done counterfeits. No intelligence agency would have bought them and no self-respecting journalist should have.”
    “The point is—” Carson began.
    “Photographic prints can be doctored, particularly in this day of digitization,” Steele interrupted. “The prints I brought are computer reproductions. I have the original prints in my safe.”
    “Talk to me about negatives,” Prosser said. “You can screw with prints, but negatives are real hard to fake convincingly.”
    “When and if UBS agrees to my terms,” Steele said, lying with the ease of the diplomat he’d once been, “I’ll produce the negatives. I’ll also see that you get an on-camera interview with the photographer.”
    “You told us he was killed,” Carroll said.
    “I said someone was killed. It was the spotter. The man who snapped the photos is still alive.”
    Martin grinned. “Okay! When can we have the interview?”
    Steele looked at his cell