“He said it at the end. He started out bragging about smuggling diamonds and sable antelope. When I asked him about Kenya, he told me some story about Terry Krieger. Then he said you’d gotten your hands on a cache of files. He said the files were dangerous. He told me to ask you where you got them.” Klay paused, but she did not respond. Instead, Hungry’s inscrutable expression had hardened. “He said you were on the wrong branch of the tree,” Klay continued.
“What story?”
“What do you mean?” Klay asked.
“What story did he tell you about Terry Krieger?”
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Pretoria, South Africa
Tell me exactly what he said about Krieger,” Hungry demanded.
Klay sat on the edge of the hotel bed and looked up at her. “He said Terry Krieger took his daughter hunting in Zimbabwe. A place called the Kimber.”
“It’s a hunting property,” Hungry said. “We think Botha transferred it to Krieger in advance of one of his trials.”
“That makes sense. Botha said he sold it, but he talked about the property like it was still his. He said Krieger was angry because his daughter wouldn’t shoot the lion, she wanted to dart it instead. Krieger hit her, shot the lion himself, and sent her home. The next day Krieger missed a shot on a buffalo, then shot a boy to distract its charge.”
“Murdered him?”
“That’s what Botha said.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me this? Just another dead African child . . .” She rubbed her temples. “Julius said it couldn’t be coincidence, your coming here.”
“I don’t understand.”
She pulled a chair toward the bed, her voice was nearly a whisper. “I will share details with you because I think Julius was right. But this is not for your magazine and this is not because I trust you. We—Julius and I—must bring Ncube to justice. It’s the only way to stop this country’s cycle. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” he said flatly.
“No one, Tom, can know.”
“You can trust me, Hungry.” His words were just sounds in the air.
She responded with the sigh of a prosecutor who was long past hoping for the truth. She took a deep breath and began. “Okay. A year ago we received a tip on our corruption hotline. Go to a certain spaza shop. We went and we found a row of thumb drives taped beneath a shelf. The drives contained over a terabyte of documents. At first we assumed it was simply evidence of corrupt business deals. It turned out to be much larger. Each of the individual deals was a leg, a segment of a leg. There were multiple legs. We don’t know how many. They all connect to a single body.”
“Who?”
She waited. “No one, Tom, can know.”
“I won’t tell anyone, Hungry.”
“It’s an investment fund of some kind run by Terry Krieger. The partners are intelligence agencies from around the world. There’s MI6, Mossad, the Australians, our people. The CIA is an investor, Tom.”
Klay stood and started to pace, grinding a palm into his forehead. “CIA and Krieger.”
She continued, “Ncube is one of their . . . I don’t even know what to call it . . . one of their facilitators.”
Klay faced Hungry. “How do you know this?”
“We broke the code on one of the projects. A tin mine in Congo. There was an insurrection, Krieger’s people took it over. We identified the South African intelligence officer involved. That was our Rosetta stone. We’ve been slowly deciphering their operations ever since.”
“Kisie,” Klay interrupted.
“Kisie. Yes, that was the name of the mining town. How did you know?”
Had the Agency used him? Had Eady used him?
“I need to meet the intelligence officer you identified,” he said.
“Not possible.”
“You questioned him directly?”
“We did,” she said uneasily.
“Hungry, I need to see him. What’s his name?”
“His name was Mo Rademeyer. State Security Agency. And he’s dead.”
“Tied to this?”
“It presented like a home robbery, but he’d been tortured, beyond the usual.”
Klay processed the geometry of what she was telling him.
Hungry continued, “Your CIA and Terry Krieger are colluding with Ncube to prey on my country. Ncube holds the door open for them.”
Klay crossed to the window. He edged the curtain away from the wall and looked outside. Across the street was a Wimpy Burger and a KFC. Below the street was lined with cars; pedestrians going places like insects, leading normal lives. “When was it?”
“When was what?”
“When did they kill Rademeyer?”
“It was November. They put his death at November 12.”
His meeting with Eady and Barrow at the Confession Club had taken place a week later.
“I need to get you out of here, Hungry.”
She gave a short laugh.
“What’s funny?”
She pressed her thumbs to her temples. “It’s not funny, it’s just . . . When I told Julius The Sovereign was offering us two journalists to help with our investigation, he said, ‘That’s it! That’s the CIA’s plan!’”
Klay’s mind reeled. If Eady was part of this, he surely would have anticipated Klay would find out what Hungry knew about Krieger. But if the Agency, Krieger, and Ncube were in bed together, why send him to help her? In his mind, Klay heard the voice of his father’s defense attorney, Saul Kane, the famous Philadelphia mafia attorney who dispensed advice from behind a desk in his moldy cubbyhole office on South Broad Street. “When a client tells me his story, I ask myself, What is the opposite of this? And even though I am that one-in-a-million lawyer blessed with clients who never lie to him—so that I know they are all innocent, and the government is always a gang of jackbooted thugs—when I receive my answer, I say to myself, Now, Saul, what is the opposite of this opposite? And I ask myself this question again and again, Jack, until I see the fucking truth.”
Klay applied the old lawyer’s technique to the facts as he knew them. His assignment had been to help Hungry prosecute Ras Botha and to get her files on Ncube.
“I’m not here to help you,” Klay said.
“I understand that, Tom.”
“Get up.” He seized her arm. “We have to go.”
“Wait.” She pulled her arm away from him. A text had arrived on her phone. She read it, and Klay watched the blood drain from her face. She looked up at him. “Tenchant is hacking into our computers.”
He felt a cold spike shoot up the back of his neck.
There was a knock at the door.
Hungry looked down at her phone a second time, then at Klay. “What have you done?”
THERE’S ALWAYS A WHO
Pretoria, South Africa
The hotel room door burst open. Three black men wearing tactical gear rushed Klay, driving him backwards onto the bed.
They spun him around, pushed him facedown, and flex-cuffed him. Then they jerked him to his feet. A skinny white photographer began snapping photographs. Click. Click. The photographer shouted from behind his lens, “Are you Tom Klay?” Click. Click. “Are you Tom Klay, the CIA agent?”
Hungry drew herself up and declared, “I am Advocate Hungry Khoza, special prosecutor empowered by the Office of the Public Protector—”
One of the men seized her by the arm, turned her around, and began to cuff her.
“You have no authority here,” Hungry barked.
“Restraints won’t be necessary.” A fourth commando entered dressed in tactical clothes but without a vest or mask. He stood in front of Hungry and spoke with a slight impediment. “Our special prosecutor will surely obey the laws of the state.” He began straightening Hungry’s collar. She slapped his hands
away.
He took a step back to address her. “By the power of the president, Advocate Hungry Khoza, I arrest you on the charge of treason.”
The photographer was still shooting.
Hungry and Klay were led down a set of stairs and out the hotel’s rear emergency exit, where four black Chevrolet Suburbans waited. They put Hungry in the back seat of the first vehicle. Klay was sandwiched between two men in the back seat of the third. The vehicles sped off.
No one spoke. Klay used the time to run more opposites in his mind:
He had been sent to help Hungry Khoza’s corruption investigation.
He had been sent to hurt Hungry’s corruption investigation.
He would never intentionally harm her.
What was the opposite of that?
Unwittingly.
How?
Out him as a CIA agent.
If Hungry was shown to be in bed with the CIA, her case against Ncube would go away. She would be ruined. He would be ruined. Krieger, Botha, and the Agency would be safe.
Hungry Khoza had been in bed with the CIA . . .
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
In his mind, he ran more data:
Eady and Barrow had sent him.
The Agency was partnering with Krieger in some kind of investment fund.
Botha was in with the CIA. But Botha’s behavior didn’t add up. He claimed to have arranged medical care for Klay in Kenya. He had warned Klay about Krieger. Botha had helped him.
And Tenchant. What the fuck was Tenchant doing?
* * *
• • •
The SUVs stopped in front of Hungry’s building. He watched as Hungry was taken out of the first vehicle. Then his door opened and he was pulled out. They cut his zip-cuffs and led him and Hungry through the garage and up the metal stairs to the Wild Dogs’ office. Over the stench of grease and motor oil was another smell: gunpowder.
The big steel door was wide open. Klay put his hand on Hungry’s shoulder. “Let me go first.”
She jerked away and led them forward. Klay saw movement beyond the doorway. There were too many people inside the office and not enough urgency. Urgency meant life.
Two men holding automatic weapons stepped out of her way. Hungry crossed the threshold into the office and paused. Klay looked over her shoulder. The blood was everywhere. It spattered the walls. It ran like thick paint down the whiteboard. Miss Edna was at her desk, her chin on her chest, the back of her head on the wall. Minnie lay crumpled on the floor in front of her. Across the room, Sehlalo lay beneath the whiteboard. Hungry rushed to him.
Klay knelt beside Hungry and put his arm around her shoulders. She seemed not to know he was there.
“Hungry,” he said.
She responded as if he had electrocuted her. “GET—AWAY—FROM—ME,” she hissed.
Across the room Tenchant’s blue jacket hung on the back of his chair. Klay crossed the room and picked it up. Tenchant’s wallet was in the pocket. The dozen or so armed commandos ignored him as they went about their work. He glanced inside Hungry’s office. Her desk lay on its side, legs out stiff, like a dead cow. Its drawers and papers lay strewn across the room. The bookshelves had been stripped. Two men and a woman were still at it. They stuffed armfuls of files into black garbage bags, and yanked cables from the devices.
A bloody smear ran down the hallway toward the bathroom. Two men in tactical gear were talking outside the bathroom door. The blood trail ran between their boots and disappeared inside. As Klay started down the hall, the men stepped toward him and shook their heads, their weapons nosing up.
“Stay in the main room, please,” a voice said from behind him. Klay turned. This man was medium height, lean, with a bush-creased face and sandy hair. He was dressed in the same black tactical gear, including a pistol on his web belt. “Touch anything you like, Mr. Klay. Be my guest.” He pointed to a pair of computers and said, “Hurry up with those!”
“Yes, General.”
Klay returned to Hungry. She was still on her hands and knees beside Sehlalo’s body, holding the dead man’s hand, weeping. Blood covered Sehlalo’s face and chest. Hungry was red with it now. It covered her hands and her blouse. It was in her pearls. Klay gently laid Tenchant’s blue windbreaker over Sehlalo’s boots. “Hungry,” he whispered, lifting the jacket to show her what he wanted to do. She gave him some room. He pulled the jacket like a blanket over Sehlalo’s lower body and felt an ankle holster.
“Gen-er-al!” a voice called.
It was a familiar voice, and yet not familiar. Everyone stopped and looked toward the bathroom. Tenchant emerged from the hallway shirtless, a hand on his belly, the other carrying a pistol. Strips of T-shirt were tied around his abdomen to staunch his bleeding. Blood dripped from the bottom of his pant leg over his boot.
“General Visser. Take your men out!” Tenchant ordered.
“But—”
Tenchant waved the pistol. “Out, General! All of you!”
Visser hesitated, then nodded to his people. Garbage bags dropped and hard drives got one last kick toward a pile in the room’s center.
“Close the door behind you,” Tenchant said.
The general glanced at Klay. “We still have work to do here.”
“Close the door, General,” Tenchant said.
The mercenary pulled the steel door closed behind him with his eyes on Klay. Tenchant hobbled across the room and pressed the lock button. Klay heard the low hiss of the door’s steel bolts slide into place.
Tenchant turned and wiped his face with the back of his weapon hand. “You should really hear yourself sometimes.” He impersonated Klay: “‘Don’t worry, Tench. I never leave a man behind.’” He snorted. “And that ‘who’ obsession. You said it to me my first day, you know. You said it on three stories we worked together, and then you said it again on the plane over here like it was the first time.” Tenchant spat onto the floor and mocked Klay again: “‘There’s always a who.’
“Well”—Tenchant spread his arms wide—“HERE I AM!”
Tattoos raged over Tenchant’s upper body. A large sun on each pectoral. A double lightning bolt on his right shoulder, a Celtic cross on his left. His makeshift bandage did not hold. The bullet hole in his abdomen burped blood.
“You kill me. Just the fucking arrogance you bring to it, you know? And the whispering . . .” He mocked Klay’s low growl: “‘Back in a minute, Tench.’ Making me lean in to hear every goddamn word. Well, now’s your moment. You want me to tell her? Or you want to fucking mumble it?”
Hungry, holding Sehlalo’s hand, looked at Tenchant.
“He’s CIA, honey,” Tenchant said. “Always has been.”
Hungry shut her eyes and took a steeling breath.
“This is your mess, Klay. I tried to avoid it. I called you on your phone. Over and over. Tried to get you back here. I had them distracted looking for fucking addresses. You could have kept them going.” Tenchant pulled a desk chair to the middle of the room and sat down. “But you couldn’t be bothered. Miss Edna got hungry, wanted to go out. I asked her to wait, reminded her of her daughter’s wedding. But no. The fat bitch had to get her cupcake on. Asked what I was doing.”
Hungry glared at him. “She knew you were hacking us.”
“That right?” Tenchant seemed to consider that, then nodded at Sehlalo’s body. “I should’ve gone for the greatest risk first, but Julius was right-handed, and he was holding a coffee cup.” He grimaced. “He was faster than I expected.” He coughed and turned to Klay. “You weren’t supposed to get anywhere, but then, well . . .” He pointed his weapon at Hungry. “You got inside the very special prosecutor.”
“Let her go,” Klay said.
“Unnecessary. All of this,” Tenchant continued. He pointed to a red and black thumb drive lying on the floor. “I got a virus into their co
mputer system anyway. Everything’s destroyed.” He coughed again. “They’ll paper this up. ‘We regret to inform you . . . Assailant or assailants unknown . . .’ You take on corruption in this country, it could be anybody at all.”
Tenchant stood up, raised his weapon, and pointed it at Hungry. “He killed you, not me.”
Klay drew Sehlalo’s ankle pistol, surprising Tenchant. Their two shots sounded almost as one.
The revolver bucked in Klay’s hand, but he did not vary his aim. On the fourth shot, Tenchant went down. Klay crossed the room and kicked the gun away. He turned and saw that Hungry had been shot. “Hungry!”
Hungry ignored her wound. She picked up Sehlalo’s mobile phone and dialed. “You are going to prison,” she spat.
THE NEW ORANGE
Warden’s Office,
Kgosi Mampuru II Management Area
Pretoria, South Africa
Ras Botha leaned forward and tapped a blue visitor’s card on the conference table.
“I hear you had some trouble,” he said.
Klay did not respond. He wore an orange prisoner’s uniform. The knuckles on his right hand showed angry red bottle caps where skin used to be. He was being housed in a communal cell with fourteen other prisoners, not all of them welcoming.
Botha was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, open-collared white shirt, and alligator boots that matched his briefcase. He set his briefcase on the table, removed an orange, and rolled it across the table. “You’ll want that now.”
Botha was right. An orange did look different from this side of the table. Still, Klay didn’t touch it. Hungry was gone. He had no idea where. Officers loyal to her had surrounded the building and ordered the general and his men to surrender. The general’s men were private contractors, paid to fight but not to die. Hungry’s people loaded them and the photographer into white vans and disappeared. The team’s medic had hardly bandaged Hungry’s shoulder when she was on her feet again, issuing orders to secure the crime scene and gather up her team’s documents and computers. Once the work was in hand, she walked to a waiting car. She paused at the door and turned to Klay. “How many innocent people have died because of your lies?” She had not waited for an answer.
In the Company of Killers Page 20
