The Consignment by Grant Sutherland Page A

work.

CHAPTER 4
    The Haplon offices were housed in a three-story aluminum-clad structure grafted to the front of the Haplon factory. The marketing department occupied most of the top floor, and Milton Rossiter had his office up there too. That gave us good access, but the downside was his access to me.
    “Ned!”
    My deputy, Gillian Streiss, was going through the leads from Springfield with me when Milton’s call came echoing down the hall. Arching her brow, Gillian flipped her notepad closed, then withdrew to her own office while I dragged myself out of my chair.
    “Ned!” he shouted again just as I put my head around his door. He beckoned me in, hitting the intercom and bellowing instructions to someone in a far corner of the factory. His jacket hung over the back of his chair. A fax in the corner was churning out paper. “Can you lay your hands on Trevanian’s wish list?” he asked me.
    I retrieved the list from my office.
    “Trevanian’ll be here in two minutes,” Rossiter said, running a pen down the list, making crosses. “He wants to see the gear in action, whatever we can lay on for him. But definitely this stuff.” He handed me the list.
    I remarked that it seemed like pretty short notice.
    “You wanna tell him it’s not convenient or you wanna sell him the damn guns?” Rossiter hit the intercom again. This time he spoke to Darren down on our test-firing range, telling him to expect some customers in ten minutes. “And set up some fresh targets. And while you’re at it, how about runnin’ a broom over the place before they get there. I was down there this mornin’, looks like a fuckin’ sty.” He flicked off the intercom and faced me. “The Lagundi woman’s comin’ too.”
    “Do we have any idea what name’s going to be on the End User Certificate? Presuming they place an order.”
    Rossiter turned aside, tearing off a fax. “Nigeria,” he said.
    I looked at him. An End User Certificate is attached to all arms transactions, it’s meant to guarantee the purchaser’s legitimacy and ensure weapons don’t end up in the wrong hands. In practice, the guarantee is frequently worthless. There are just too many corrupt public officials in impoverished countries who are willing to trade the appropriate signatures and rubber stamps for a relatively modest fee. And one of those impoverished countries, quite notoriously, is Nigeria.
    “So we don’t know where they’ll go,” I said.
    “They’ll go to Nigeria.”
    When I snorted, Rossiter lifted his eyes.
    “You wanna do this or not? Because if you don’t, I can always whistle Gillian in to handle it.”
    I folded Trevanian’s list into my pocket. Rossiter kept his eyes on me steadily as I retreated into the hall.
    Trevanian arrived in reception looking like he’d dressed for golf—checked pants and a green V-neck sweater. Lagundi was wearing a white slacksuit and a collection of heavy gold jewelry. She looked like a million dollars. I gave them each a pair of safety glasses, grabbed some for myself, then launched into the standard Haplon tour.
    The factory and office block were on a thirty-acre site, the rear five acres of which were a dumping ground for obsolete and terminally broken-down machinery, a legacy from the days of Milton Rossiter’s father. The exterior of the main plant didn’t promise much either. It was a collection of buildings cobbled together from each decade of the late twentieth century, an architectural eyesore, but the interior really wasn’t so bad. The Pentagon can’t afford to be seen purchasing from sweatshops, and guys like Rossiter invest plenty to retain their preferred supplier status. The factory floor was always spotless. I led Trevanian and Lagundi around the machine shop, where our engineers were working on prototypes for the next generation of smart mortars. I showed them Big Tom, the automated lathe that had once reconditioned worn barrels from U.S. Army tanks that Rossiter’s father later on sold