In the Company of Killers

by Bryan Christy

  Krieger’s father, the Colonel, had been an entrepreneur, too. He invented a synthetic shoe sole that was lighter and lasted longer than Vibram. Madison Avenue hated the material, but the US Army loved it and the Krieger Boot Company further compounded the family’s considerable wealth. “Because,” as the Colonel said, “the Army produces a lot of soldiers with two feet.”

  Krieger was not invited to work for either of his family’s businesses. It was a family rule, started by his puritanical grandfather and passed down: Kriegers accept no charity. You make your own way or you get nothing. After the Academy and the Marines, Krieger’s first invention was Raptor Systems, a privatized army to fill the gap between what Washington politicians promise and what they do. Raptor Systems had been an extraordinary success. “Because,” as Krieger liked to say, “Washington produces a lot of politicians with two moving lips.”

  Then came Iraq.

  “I said, beautiful ship you have here, Terry . . .” Tighe held up a cigar. “You mind?”

  “You’re my guest,” Krieger said.

  Mapes returned with a silver pot on a tray and poured Tighe’s coffee. Krieger watched, expressionless, as Tighe cut his cigar.

  “Here you are.” Tighe dropped his cigar cap into Mapes’s open palm. She accepted it, but glanced at Krieger deliberately. Krieger smiled, knowing what she could do to Tighe with that open palm.

  “Let’s get down to business, shall we, Admiral?”

  Tighe chuckled and considered his cigar. “This is just a passex, Terry. A courtesy call out of respect for all you’ve done for the services.”

  Krieger caught the condescension in Tighe’s voice. It was brass like Tighe who’d torpedoed Raptor Systems. Raptor Systems had gone in when the US military wouldn’t, protected Americans when the government couldn’t, given diplomatic cover to their military and military cover to their diplomats, and had gotten them out alive. Not some of them out. All of them. Not a single American client was lost on Raptor Systems’ watch.

  Instead of awarding him a medal, they crucified him. Dragged him to Washington and strung him up before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, where that overfed hedgehog called him a war profiteer . . . a mercenary . . . a paid assassin. The secular libtards wanted to make America safe again—no more 9/11s—but they didn’t want to pay for that retasking. They wanted it done, but they didn’t want to know how it was done, he told the committee.

  “The battle for America was won by mercenaries—like me,” he argued, and recited the names of the Revolutionary War heroes whose statues filled Lafayette Park directly across the street from the White House: “Von Steuben, Kosciusko, Rochambeau, Lafayette—German, Polish, French—each a foreigner hired by General Washington to fight for America’s freedom.” He concluded his congressional testimony with a single question. “In Baghdad, on your CODELs outside the wire, when your delegations ventured out into that violent unknown, who did you ask to protect you? Was it an overworked soldier on his third deployment? Or was it Raptor Systems?”

  The answer they gave him was Never Again. Never Again would Raptor Systems be awarded a US government security contract. Terry Krieger would have to go elsewhere for his supper.

  Thrown into the briar patch by men and women like Tighe, Krieger had emerged with an idea that made him more powerful than ever.

  He called it Perseus Group.

  Blackballed by the world’s biggest military and its government, stripped of his access, Krieger had needed a new business model. His years operating in conflict zones taught him that when it came to combat there was one resource that was more important than personnel, plant, or even firepower.

  Fifteen years later, peel back the complex network of Perseus Group enterprises—security services firms; high-tech and military design companies; surveillance systems providers; media and entertainment properties; logistics, insurance, and transport enterprises; even Krieger’s conservation and community stabilization efforts—and you would find one powerful idea. It was an idea as simple as car-door edging and as necessary as army boots: intelligence.

  Strategically useful information has one significant shortcoming when it comes to the individuals who possess it: intelligence is very difficult to trade. An individual with secrets to sell has to engage in a very risky process: identify a buyer; secure an audience; negotiate a price; arrange payment; make the handoff; and conceal sudden, unexplainable wealth. At each node, the seller is exposed, and the cost of a mistake could mean one’s life.

  Krieger established a series of funds to compensate an elite group of people for the secrets they carried. Membership in a fund was by invitation only. The minimum buy-in was 20 million dollars’ worth of intelligence, valued by Krieger alone. In exchange, an investor received a percentage of their fund’s performance.

  His fund system was more art than science, he told his investors. Often the Fund, as he referred to the collective, identified value where none had seemed to exist. Pakistani salt has little to do with Sri Lankan life insurance, until you look at the shipping lane that runs from Gwadar Port directly past Colombo, Sri Lanka, and take into account which families control the salt and insurance industries there. Tin is hardly as valuable as gold unless you can access it in quantities sufficient to monopolize its supply to the world’s makers of smartphones and rocket launchers. On it went. The algorithms Krieger’s people used to price intelligence ensured that investors got what they wanted, which is to say, ensured that they got more. And if one didn’t always receive top dollar for specific information, one did receive ongoing payments that were secure and reliable. For traitors, that was more than fair.

  Most of his investors were senior officials privy to top secret intelligence. Others had a single golden egg to sell. Like Fat Anthony Gatt, not all worked for a government. The Lockheed Martin engineer who stole plans for the F-35, the world’s most expensive fighter jet, needed both cash and an exit plan. Krieger’s people spent two years advising her on her investment portfolio, including a tip on a company that was about to fail disastrously. She shorted the stock and came out rich. Meanwhile, Krieger’s people laid a trail to Chinese hackers and sold the jet’s blueprints to the Saudis. The engineer still worked for Lockheed. The best exits didn’t require one to leave.

  By pooling intelligence and providing a return, Krieger incentivized his investors’ behavior. By compensating them for their transgressions, he bought their silence. Anyone who invested with Krieger understood the cost of betrayal. To say that you invested your life in the Fund was not an understatement.

  Krieger controlled a network of highly placed informant-investors around the world, making him constructive director of a meta-spy agency he used to package and deliver strategic opportunities to his extremely powerful clients. Commodifying intelligence worked. “Because,” Krieger liked to say with a modest smile, “I have more of it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Krieger looked at his guest. Admiral Everett Tighe was neither an investor in one of Krieger’s funds, nor a client. Tighe was a fool. Krieger was about to make him useful.

  When Krieger did not respond, Tighe shifted in his chair. “All right, Terry, all right,” he said, fingering the scales of the Lady Justice statuette on Krieger’s desk. “Have it your way. Shall we . . .” He waved Mapes away.

  “Shall we what?” Krieger asked.

  “. . . do this in private?”

  “This is private, Admiral.”

  Tighe blew out his cheeks, then gestured with his cigar for Krieger to proceed.

  Krieger leaned forward, placed his hands on his desk, and laced his fingers. He spoke calmly. “Admiral, the Seventh Fleet has been giving preferential treatment to Core F Services. That will no longer fly.”

  “Not sure I care for your tone, son,” Tighe said, coming about. “However, I’m not familiar . . .”

  Krieger looked at Ma
pes. His expression said, I have to put up with this?

  “Core F, Admiral.”

  Tighe’s expression remained blank.

  Krieger pinched the skin between his eyes. “I will indulge you because this involves embarrassing issues for you. Anthony Gatt. Fat Anthony.”

  Mapes placed a photograph of Tighe and Gatt standing together in a grip-and-grin in front of the Terror Club in Singapore, the British Navy’s watering hole.

  “Husbanding?” Tighe said through his cigar. “You’re talking about husbanding contracts, Terry? Chit? I didn’t realize Perseus was in that sector.” He picked a flake of tobacco from his tongue. “That’s oh-fives, oh-sixes. Your people should know that.” He looked at Mapes. “But I can tell you, if you have a beef with one of our contractors, one of your competitors, you file a bid awards protest with FLC Yoko. Off the record, in case you’re thinking of filing such a challenge, I’ll advise you that it’s my understanding Core F has provided the Navy excellent product, soup to nuts.”

  Tighe looked for a place to ash his cigar ash. He ignored the crystal ashtray Mapes had set before him and ashed his cigar on one of Lady Justice’s scales.

  As Tighe performed his little display of power, Krieger smiled to himself. Gatt had indeed come through. It was some twenty-five companies deep, but Krieger now owned Mindanao City Port. He would present the port to China, along with a rather sizeable bill. Another pearl for your string, Mr. President.

  “Admiral, I don’t care about you and your officers overpaying for port services in order to take a skim. Your men protect the Pacific flank of the Western Hemisphere. You offer your life to your country. I recognize that. I don’t care about a little graft. What I do care about is the national security of the United States.”

  Tighe set down his coffee cup and got to his feet, motioning for Mapes to open the door. “You’ve been in the sun too long, Terry. We’re done here.”

  “Sit down, Admiral. You’ve been passing Fat Anthony fleet movements, transit maps. Advising him in advance of your schedules, and those of our allies, in the Seventh AOR.”

  Tighe paused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Admiral,” Mapes said, stepping forward to take over, as planned. “You have a first-class petty officer emailing classified ship movements directly to Fat Anthony for you.” She placed printed copies of the emails on the desk next to Tighe’s coffee cup. Tighe ignored them, still standing.

  Krieger was thinking, Now’s when you say, “Do you have any idea how many sailors are under my command?”

  “Do you have any idea how many sailors are under my command?” Tighe barked.

  Mapes touched a button, and a screen descended to Tighe’s right. The office lights dimmed automatically. Another touch and a video began. It was a scene from the MacArthur Suite at the Manila Hotel. The video quality was excellent. Three slender Asian girls naked on a king-sized bed. Tighe naked, too, except for his admiral’s cap. The underage girls expressionless as they worked on Tighe. A girl on her knees allowing Tighe to do things to her. “Allowing” too strong a word . . .

  “All right. Point taken,” Tighe said, returning to his seat. “Turn that garbage off. Fat Anthony. Yeah, I know him.”

  Krieger could not get over how easily powerful men, men who should be leaders, could be led. Tighe had been altering the itineraries of the Seventh Fleet to patronize ports operated by Gatt, who then compensated Tighe in sex. Not millions of dollars and sex. Not hundreds of thousands of dollars and kilos of coke and sex. Just quality girls any creative petty officer could have secured for his commanding officer, no strings attached. The George Washington to Phuket when she should have been in Singapore. The Blue Ridge to Kota Kinabalu instead of Kuala Lumpur. Tighe moved the entire Seventh Fleet, including submarines, around the triangle that was the South China Sea all for a slice of high-end trim.

  Being a man was about learning to channel one’s drives, Krieger thought. Sure, he’d done the Four Floors of Whores in his day. But he’d been young then. Business was his woman now. To spread the world’s legs and assert himself was his objective. When he needed to blow off extra steam, he didn’t whore; he picked up his rifle and hunted.

  Tighe was wounded—Krieger could see that—but wounded was not enough. “I don’t judge your reasons, Admiral. Men have appetites. But when your business conflicts with mine, yours must end. And so, beginning today, you will cancel all outstanding contracts with Core F. You will control your appetites.”

  “You little punk. You think you can jerk my chain?” Tighe gestured toward the screen. “A little fucking R&R. There is not a single—”

  “Anthony Gatt,” Krieger interrupted, “was selling your ship movements to the Russians. To the Chinese! Don’t tell me you didn’t know. That’s treason, Admiral.”

  Mapes laid a sheaf of papers in front of Tighe. “Comms between you and Gatt,” she said.

  Tighe glanced coolly at the top document, recognized something, and began thumbing pages, increasingly unnerved. Krieger knew it wasn’t the content of the emails that shook him. It was the emails themselves. Tighe had communicated with Gatt using CAINA, the Pentagon’s network for communications among leaders in times of war. No one but the intended recipient could read comms sent in this way—or so they had no doubt told him. But Krieger had his Gatt emails. Tighe’s eyes moved through the pages. He had internal NCIS reports, too.

  Krieger watched comprehension dawn on Tighe’s horizon: Perseus Group had hacked the top secret communications channel of the head of the Seventh Fleet.

  “Treason, Admiral. So, starting today, this little sex ring of yours is over. Tell everyone involved you’ve found religion. Understood?”

  “What about . . . ?” Tighe pointed his cigar at the screen.

  “Taken care of.”

  “How do you know? If Gatt has copies—”

  “He doesn’t.”

  Gatt’s task had been to reserve the hotel rooms, select the girls, order the foie gras and Cristal. Mapes oversaw the cameras.

  Gatt had been a valued Fund investor. He had delivered critical intel on Australia’s finance minister in advance of the Darwin deal; on a Pakistani salt baron in secret control of Gwadar port; on the wife of a Malaysian sultan who would now be happy to allow arms through his state. But Gatt had been double-dealing. While gathering compromising information for Krieger, he had been simultaneously selling that same intelligence to the Russians. Not to the Russian government. Worse. To Krieger’s rival, Dmitri Yurchenko. Krieger wasn’t sure how much Yurchenko knew yet, but that was a separate issue.

  Mapes touched a button, and the screen filled with the image of Anthony Gatt, all 409 pounds of him, naked on a morgue table, his gigantic body swollen and pale after three days at sea. The commander of the Seventh Fleet ran his eyes over Gatt’s corpse. Fish had started on him. His eyes, fingertips, and most of his nose and lips were missing, a chunk of his thigh. His thickened tongue filled his mouth.

  Appetites, Krieger thought. The Fund depended on them. But the Fund had rules.

  Tighe glanced at the cigar ash that soiled his pant leg, but did not seem to see it. His eyes roamed the room, unfocused, calculating his exposure. Krieger gave him time, waiting for two words that took some men longer to come to than others.

  “And me?” Tighe said finally.

  Krieger got to his feet. He circled his desk and waited for Tighe to stand. “You, Admiral,” he said, walking Tighe to the door, “are exactly where I want you to be.”

  Moments later a helicopter lifted clear of Raptor and flew Tighe back to the Blue Ridge. A second chopper, bearing Krieger, took off in the direction of Donsol and Krieger’s family.

  ON ICE

  Sovereign Headquarters

  Washington, DC

  Sharon didn’t send Klay into the field. She put him on ice. He spent his days reorganizing his offic
e, attending conferences, reading. He labeled and filed the hundreds of documents that overwhelmed his tiny office. He wiped off his whiteboard, though some of the ink had bled in and refused to go. He opened a desk drawer and exhumed the pile of voice recorders that had accumulated over the years. They were nearly all Olympus brand, little black or silver jobs that ran on two AAA batteries. At fifty bucks, it was easier to buy another one than to upload, label, and file what was on them. He smiled as he spilled two dozen recorders across his desk.

  It had started as a grade school English project, going out with a cassette recorder the size of a schoolbook and recording family and neighbors’ oral histories. Klay began recording people the way a photographer might snap shots of strangers. He loved the rhythm of people communicating across geographic or ethnic space, between social classes, over generations of time. Funerals were a time of gathering. A dead person’s diaspora returned. He met mourners from Paris, Sicily, Nigeria, Staten Island. He took snapshots of their voices and studied them. He was writing short stories then. Ear was good, but not enough. To get sound onto the page, you had to be perfect.

  He continued the practice as a journalist, well aware that secretly recording a subject carried risks, not admitting he had recordings unless Legal pushed back on something in one of his stories. In those cases he might say, “You know, my phone might have been on during that exchange,” or some other excuse that didn’t make sense, but would nevertheless be accepted if his material was juicy enough, everyone compromising just enough to go to print.

  Klay picked up recorders at random and began listening. He was surprised how much he’d forgotten. He couldn’t recall many of the people he’d taped, or even be sure of the country where some of the recordings had been made. After a week he looked at the list of audio files he had created—manager, voodoo market, Togo, 2004; dry goods and dog smuggler, Mongolia, 1999; colonel, AU-RTF, Central African Republic, 2014—and realized none was likely to be of any use to him in the future.