In the Company of Killers

by Bryan Christy

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “Bad ear again? I’m saying we’ve got some concerns, that’s all. And I want us to get off on a fresh editorial foot. I’m sure you can understand that. I wanted to make the point to you in person.”

  “I appreciate that. But I’m not cutting off my ties to Vance. He’s got cancer, for Christ’s sake.”

  “It’s a lot to process, I know. Okay, we’ll put a pin in it for now. Oh, by the way, what’s your take on Alexander Porfle? As an editor, I mean?”

  “Porfle?” Klay said, steeling himself. “Extraordinary. Best editor I’ve ever had.”

  She nodded. “Good. Last thing . . .” She opened Eady’s coat closet and removed the curved white stick with a knot at one end. Klay suppressed a smile. It was Eady’s walrus baculum. She slapped the penis bone in her palm.

  “An ivory shillelagh is what I guessed at first.” She slid a hand along its curved shaft. “Turns out it’s a walrus penis bone.” She looked at him. “I can’t imagine a man leaving his dick behind by accident, can you, Tom?”

  She dropped it into her wastebasket. “We’ll come back to Mr. Eady another time.”

  There was a knock at her door.

  “Come!”

  Timothy wore a smile that wasn’t especially sunny. He tapped his Apple Watch.

  “Timothy will go over what to expect this morning.”

  “What to expect for what?” Klay asked.

  “Terry Krieger, Tom,” Reif said. “We want you to meet him.” She clapped her hands. “Chop-chop. Let’s go!”

  ONE BEAUTIFUL BATTLEFIELD

  Sovereign Headquarters

  Washington, DC

  Here’s where you sit,” Timothy said, pointing to an upholstered seat in the front row of The Sovereign’s auditorium, the kind with bottoms that fold up when not in use. A piece of paper with Klay’s name written on it was taped to the seat’s underside.

  “I see that,” Klay said. “What’s the agenda?”

  “Nope.” Timothy shook his head. “We want you totally natural.” He wiped a spot from Klay’s gray T-shirt. “So, act totally natural. Do you have a suit jacket here . . . ? Of course you don’t. You can wait in the green room until we’re ready to begin—we’ve got snacks and water back there for you. When Sharon calls for you, walk out that door and take this seat.” Timothy checked his watch. “We have about a half hour. We’ll start letting people in in ten. On my way,” he said into his headset, and hurried for the auditorium’s rear door.

  Klay left the auditorium. He took a service elevator to the basement and walked the old marble hallway to the staff cafeteria. When he first joined the magazine there had been two places to eat in the building: the basement cafeteria for staff and the males-only executive dining room on the eighth floor. Lunch in the jackets-only Humboldt Room included exotic main dishes inspired by explorations past served by tuxedoed black waiters. A shortage of space not prejudice led to change. When reality television emerged as the organization’s bread and butter, the Humboldt Room was converted to TV producers’ offices, and roast quail, raw oysters, and sauterne gave way to Savage Swordfish. Young Men and Fire. Cave In!

  Klay had done a reality television pilot once. The Investigator the series was to be called, featuring Klay, pitched as the Anthony Bourdain of wildlife crime. He’d been surprised at the number of takes each scene had required. Fit young associate producers dressed in the latest adventure wear asked him to step out of a helicopter again and again, or to greet a tribal chief over and over, gesturing repeatedly for the chief to look at Klay and not the camera. Months after the scene was shot they called Klay and said they didn’t like the way he had entered the chief’s hut and were flying him back to the Congo to shoot it again.

  “This is television,” they admonished him, nod more for the reaction shots, and would he please look more anxious? He was tracking dangerous poachers! They wore him down over time so that eventually he’d even agreed to stumble while on a contrived patrol with Bernard’s Green Guardians, Bernard reaching down to give him a hand, the way Bernard would later do for real on the last day of his life. It took nine takes for Klay to stumble acceptably, but by then his muddy clothes did not match the scene, and he’d had to change into identical clothes and do it again. The series was never made.

  The basement cafeteria was The Sovereign’s only eatery now. It was empty at the moment, everyone reporting to the auditorium for Sharon’s all-hands meeting. Klay got himself a prewrapped roast beef sandwich from the refrigerator, a bag of potato chips, and a cup of hot tea. He ate his sandwich alone, peeling off a bite at a time, thinking about the changes he’d witnessed during his career.

  He returned to the auditorium a half hour later to find it full. Fox was sitting in a back row. He had his brightly colored stockinged feet up on the seat in front of him and was twisting a coffee straw in his teeth. He lifted his feet, and Klay took a seat next to him.

  “So, if they make you an offer, will you take it?” Fox asked, chewing his straw.

  “Haven’t thought about it,” Klay said.

  “PGM’s doing it every place they acquire—keeping the storefronts and using a single backend for content. I think we’ll get offers.”

  Klay’s researcher, David Tenchant, paused to say hello.

  “Good to see you, Tench,” Klay said. “Join us.”

  Fox grudgingly lowered his feet to let Tenchant pass.

  The quiet younger man with greasy black hair was dressed as usual in black motorcycle boots, T-shirt, and tight black jeans. Tenchant had been Eady’s hire, a surprise to everyone because staff writers like Klay normally did their own research, but Eady said Klay’s criminal investigations exposed The Sovereign to lawsuits in ways its other journalism did not. “Let me introduce you to your stitch in time,” he said, introducing Tenchant to Klay.

  Klay had resisted at first, but it turned out Tenchant was a wizard with a computer, and a great asset.

  “I know, I know,” Fox continued. “Where else do you get to do this stuff, right? But if it’s good, you know? If it’s Perseus-money good, maybe it’s worth taking the buyout?”

  “Maybe,” Klay said.

  “Hit a beach someplace, write a book.”

  “You want to write a book?”

  Fox twisted his straw.

  “Mintz quit,” Fox said apropos of nothing. “Said he’d spent twenty years documenting the impact of warmongers and he wasn’t about to work for Perseus Group. Made a big to-do. ‘Blood on his hands.’ Threw his Hydro Flask across the edit room. You know how he is . . .” Fox punched Klay in his good arm. “Hey, look at that!” He pointed toward the front of the room. “Isn’t that your nemesis?”

  Klay looked across the auditorium. Porfle was making his way to a seat in a front row. Walking beside Porfle was Raynor McPhee, investigative reporter for the New York Times.

  “What’s Raynor McPhee doing here?” Fox asked.

  Klay watched as Porfle ushered McPhee into the second row. McPhee was physically unremarkable—short, pudgy, balding, wearing what looked to be his grandfather’s cardigan—but his reporting was legendary. His recent series on human slavery in the seafood industry had him embedded on a Thai fishing boat for five months, and had won him a Pulitzer.

  “Is he coming here?” Fox asked. “Do you think?”

  Klay didn’t have time to think. The lights dimmed, and Sharon Reif strode to center stage wearing a wireless headset mic. “Change, move, or die. That’s evolution, I like to say,” she began. “And no one knows evolution better than The Sovereign . . .”

  Erin arrived. “Sorry I’m late.” She swatted Fox’s toes, and he shifted to let her into the row. “I miss anything?”

  “She’s doing a TED Talk,” Fox said.

  Erin leaned across Tenchant and said, “Nice piece on the Philippines, Tom.”

 
“It’s still up?” Klay was surprised. He turned to Tenchant. “I thought Sharon pulled it?”

  Tenchant nodded and with exaggerated concern said, “Her people told Admin to take it down. For some reason they can’t do it.” He shrugged. “Computer glitch, what I heard.”

  “Jesus,” Klay said, studying him. “The talents hidden in this crew.”

  “No Jesus in that story,” Erin said. “Speaking of, I heard Terry Krieger’s making an appearance.”

  Fox chucked his straw into the aisle and sat up straight. Klay heard his name and looked up. The row in front of him had turned around. “Shit,” he said.

  Sharon was squinting into the audience. “Is he here? Tom?”

  Timothy appeared, looking down at Klay with disapproval. Klay sighed and followed him to the stage.

  “Okay, now stand there.” Sharon pointed to a small red sticker on the stage. “And voilà!”

  Lights flickered, and suddenly Terry Krieger rose from the floor and was standing on stage. “Hello, Tom.”

  Krieger wore a sweat-stained Chadwick Elephant Orphanage T-shirt, cargo shorts, and sandals. The billionaire was fit, five ten or so, tan, with a short Ollie North–style haircut. “I’m sorry we can’t actually shake hands, Tom. Soon, I hope . . .”

  Hologram Krieger turned and faced the audience. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person. But I’m pleased to have this opportunity to say a few words, using Perseus Group technology, to offer a hint of what we have in store as the new owners of this amazing institution. But first, I have someone with me who wants to congratulate Tom Klay on his recent work.”

  Hologram Krieger stepped back, and a baby elephant bounded across the stage, its little hologram trunk swinging loosely with joy. The baby stopped at Klay’s feet and reached its trunk toward his face.

  “Awww!” Sharon clapped. The audience clapped and marveled with her. Then the tiny elephant turned to the audience, waved its trunk farewell, and vanished.

  “You are doing unparalleled work saving elephants, Tom,” Hologram Krieger continued. “Thank you.”

  Klay stood motionless until he realized this fiction, and his colleagues, were awaiting a response. He nodded. The hologram nodded back and then turned to the room. “Now, Tom, let me demonstrate how the Perseus Group family of companies can take your work and the work of everyone at The Sovereign to a whole new level . . .”

  A large movie screen descended at the back of the stage. Timothy appeared at Klay’s elbow and quietly led him offstage. The room grew still.

  WE HEAR: Deep tribal drums.

  WE SEE: Tall grass, endlessly lush—day.

  VOICE-OVER (deep male bass, James Earl Jones–like): “Dungu, an ocean of green in the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ancient home to . . .”

  FADE IN: Elephants.

  “. . . ELEPHANTS!”

  A herd of elephants walking through tall grass transitions to giraffes running, hippos yawning, storks rising. Then an African village, shot from above, its red clay alleys swept smooth.

  Ground-level clichés begin: The happy-children-chasing-a-soccer-ball scene/The river-washing scene/The basket-of-heavy-charcoal-on-the-head scene/The stoic-men-tending-emaciated-cattle scene/The small-motorbike-carrying-an-entire-family scene.

  Then, WE HEAR GUNFIRE.

  WE HEAR EXPLOSIONS.

  CUT TO: Fire. Rebel militia. Terrorists. People fleeing, screaming.

  More gunfire.

  VOICE-OVER: “In a land ravaged by terrorist groups—Mai-Mai, M23, the Lord’s Resistance Army. In a country without governance, sharing borders with war-torn South Sudan, Uganda, and a lawless Central African Republic. On ground plundered by rapacious outsiders for centuries—there is WAR.”

  CUT TO: Burning grass. Skeletons of houses. Hacked bodies. Tearful faces. An amputated black forearm lying in the dirt.

  Then . . .

  CUT TO: Muscled men in cool sunglasses and short haircuts arrive. Out of helicopters. In armored vehicles. On foot. Private military contractors with Perseus Group logos on their shirts. They erect guard posts. They hand out food. They apply bandages. They build a church.

  VOICE-OVER (Terry Krieger’s voice): “The Sovereign has celebrated the world’s indigenous people and its wildlife for nearly a hundred fifty years. Perseus Group is committed to protecting these lives using the world’s best technologies, best equipment, and best people—so that a hundred fifty years from now, our descendants will be able to enjoy the natural and cultural heritage we have preserved for them.”

  CUT TO: Mothers washing laundry in a river look up. Children pause their soccer game and look up. Fathers tending cattle look up. Cattle look up, too. A flock of birds appears. The flock moves as one, then breaks into two, then three clouds, rolling over and around itself, a joyful murmuration. The birds sail above a herd of elephants. Then a car appears on the horizon. A portion of the flock peels off to examine the incoming vehicle.

  The birds are Askari drones, perfect house sparrow replicas. One drone flies to each of the car’s windows. The faces of the car’s passengers appear in boxes on the screen. Below each face is a full name, identity card serial number, biodata, and criminal history. An individual bird darts away from the vehicle and peers directly into the camera. It is inches away from the camera lens. Its eyes look REAL.

  The Sovereign audience appears on the large screen. An actual Askari drone is in the auditorium now. Then more. A dozen. The sparrow-sized machines hover above the stage, waiting. Faces from the audience appear on the screen along with employee IDs, home addresses, social media IDs, and birth dates with the years blurred. A drone approaches Sharon, who is standing next to curtains at the edge of the stage. She waves an embarrassed hand in front of her face. It is captured on the screen. People laugh and point. The birds respond. Each pointed finger or raised hand, every head that turns, calls a drone to it. The drones move quick as hummingbirds. They dart over the audience, taking in data, projecting it onto the screen. Then something in the birds changes, as if some communal decision has been reached. The drones whisk over the heads of the audience and disappear.

  The movie screen fills again.

  CLOSING MONTAGE: Black schoolchildren at tiny desks eagerly raise their little hands. A massive elephant herd strides calmly through green grass. The images turn global: An orangutan swings through trees. A toucan turns its eye to the camera. A humpback whale breaches for the heavens.

  MUSIC SWELLS.

  PULL OUT. Mother Earth. Home. Above, a satellite keeps watch. The satellite turns. Its dish bears The Sovereign’s silver globe logo, intersected by a Perseus Group sword.

  * * *

  • • •

  Krieger’s hologram returned to the stage, hands clasped. “From the beginning, my companies and I have focused on the task required. On 9/11 our job was to respond to the worst terrorist attack in history on American soil. In the years since, we have come to see instability expanding the world over. You know the locations. You’ve told their stories.

  “Beneath all of us lies one beautiful battlefield,” Krieger said. “Earth. As I’ve told the president, conservation of this planet must be an essential part of America’s defense strategy. We don’t hire botanists to police drug trafficking even though cocaine comes from a plant, and we shouldn’t put biologists and scientists in charge of policing crimes against nature. We need people who understand conflict and protection. Thirteen months ago, Perseus Group selected three of the worst hotspots in Africa and sent our people and technologies there with a simple mission: to add placekeeping to peacekeeping.”

  He ticked off the results of securing three African parks: Elephant and rhinoceros poaching down 70 percent. Kidnappings down 80. Theft . . . rape . . . murder—all reduced. Communities stabilizing. Class attendance up.

  “Response times to emerg
ing diseases are falling and will continue to fall,” Krieger said, “making it less likely that Covid-19 and other zoonotic diseases hiding in the forest will make it to our shores. Scarce resources produce famine, corruption, violence, war. We know how important this is now. By starting at the beginning—with nature—we believe we can prevent not only the next terrible pandemic, but also the next global conflict. We are proud to include The Sovereign in the Perseus Group family. Together, we will uncover secrets of the natural world and use them to protect this planet for all of us. Thank you.”

  A smattering of applause filled the room. Sharon returned to center stage and said there was time for a few questions.

  The Sovereign’s chief ornithologist pointed out that sparrows hovering was not natural at all and asked what testing had been done to determine its effect on community bird behavior. Someone from television said if drone birds could follow an elephant herd, like bodyguards, with park rangers wearing GoPro cameras, The Sovereign might want to do a film about it, “Through the Eyes of Sparrows” or something.

  “What’s in it for you?” someone shouted, causing some uncomfortable laughter.

  “Let’s keep this civil,” Sharon said.

  “No,” Krieger said. “It’s the right question. What’s in it for me? A lot. How many times have we heard, ‘We should protect a rainforest or a coral reef because we don’t know what benefits might lie hidden inside’? The technology you witnessed this morning was brought to you by hummingbirds. We attached sensors to hummingbird wings and let machine learning algorithms train our drones how to move. Among elephants, our drones fly like the sparrows they resemble. Other environments require the mobility of hummingbirds. We have built a UAV capable of both. By flying naturally we can get closer to wildlife, and protect it better. By flying faster we can protect it more quickly.

  “Nature is full of dual-use secrets,” he continued. “Hypertension medicine hidden in the poison of a Brazilian viper. Anticancer drugs locked inside Madagascar’s rosy periwinkle. Blood thinners coursing through Brazil’s tike uba tree. Adhesives under gecko pads. To unlock nature’s secrets, we first need to protect them. Not through charity, which demeans the recipient, but through markets, which enable nature to earn her keep. At Perseus Group we are disrupting legacy conservation to deliver the world a highly profitable conservation dividend.”