In the Company of Killers by Bryan Christy (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

“He is our best chance. Tom, this is about Ras Botha. A chance to take down Botha for good.”

Klay sat back in his chair and waited.

“A South African prosecutor has gotten her hands on a cache of documents which,” Eady explained, “could unseat South Africa’s president. We want the prosecutor to succeed.”

Klay laughed. “You want to prosecute Gabriel Ncube?”

“We do,” Eady said.

“I thought Ncube was your lackey?”

“Predictability is what we value,” Barrow said, taking over. “Gabriel Ncube has grown less so.”

“You want regime change?” Klay said.

“We support the constitution of our long-standing ally,” Barrow replied.

“By unseating its democratically elected president?”

“Tom—” Eady interrupted.

“Vance, nobody fucking likes Ncube. He’s destroyed the country and the ANC. But what’s this got to do with Botha?”

“Botha’s been arrested again. Rhino horn this time. The same prosecutor has both cases—Ncube and Botha. It’s too much for anyone to handle, and too important to us. We need your help.”

Klay laughed. “You want to take Botha and Ncube down using South Africa’s courts? Are you out of your minds? The South African judicial system is a joke. Ncube owns it,” Klay said. “You take a solid case to one of their prosecutors, and chances are he’ll sell it to the defendant. Hell, you can hire a prosecutor to bring charges if you want. To take down the president of South Africa, you don’t need a prosecutor, you need a superhe—” Klay felt his pulse accelerate. He sat up and narrowed his eyes. “Who’s the prosecutor?”

Eady smiled. “Hungry Khoza.”

“Hungry . . .” Klay let out a breath. “Hungry is going after Ncube?”

“She’s been appointed special prosecutor in the Office of Public Protector,” Eady said. “She is therefore—”

“—constitutionally protected,” Klay said.

“Yes. Fully insulated from politics. Ncube can’t stop her. And as you well know, the NPA can’t corrupt her. If she’s got the goods, she’s untouchable. But she’s also got Botha’s case. Now that she’s got him, she can’t let go of him. Her task force is under tremendous international pressure to prosecute Botha. You haven’t heard of it?”

Klay shook his head. His mind raced, appreciating the significance of Hungry’s appointment. Constitutionally protected or not, if she was prosecuting the president of South Africa, she was in very real danger.

“Ncube is using Botha’s case to delay Hungry,” Eady said. “He’s demanding, ‘as a South African rhinoceros lover,’ that she prosecute Botha fully and immediately.”

The old man patted Klay’s knee. “Help her, Tom. Behind the scenes. Free her up to pursue Ncube full bore.” Eady’s blue eyes twinkled ever so slightly. “Embed with her.”

Klay glanced at Eady sharply. Just because he was thinking of that possibility didn’t mean Eady could. Barrow remained silent. Barrow knew of his relationship with Hungry, of course. They wouldn’t be bringing this to him otherwise.

Eady shrugged. “Your goals, ultimately, will be consistent.”

Klay’s eyes returned to the Monet. The dark rock in the painting was shaped like a beckoning finger.

“Botha . . .” Klay said, considering Eady’s proposal.

“This is a real chance to bring him down, Tom. Consider it my last act as your handler.” Eady’s smile closed. “A gift.”

Klay looked hard, holding Eady’s eyes, seeing before him the mist and the rock. “Cache of secret documents,” he echoed skeptically. He turned to Barrow. “Any chance it was the Agency that happened to leak these secret files to Hungry?”

Barrow crossed his arms. “In a perfect world, can’t say I wouldn’t mind. But no, sir. I expect if we had those files ourselves, we wouldn’t need you. She got them on her own.”

“We don’t know what she has, Tom,” Eady said, shifting in his chair and folding his hands. “That’s your second objective. We need to know.”

“I won’t undermine Hungry.”

“Wouldn’t ask you to,” Eady said.

They knew they had him at Botha. But he sensed something else. These two old spies breathing out their pale fog were obscuring something.

“And Sharon?” he asked. “I don’t work for you anymore, remember?”

“I’ll have a quiet word,” Eady said.

“She’s had me on ice.”

“Of course she has. You were mine. She wants hers. I will take care of it.”

A harpoon hung lengthwise above the room’s fireplace. The plaque beneath it read, “Whale iron carried on board the Essex, 1820.”

Man hunting whales—that’s what Eady and Barrow were counting on.

“I have a condition,” Klay said.

“See a doctor,” Barrow grumbled.

“My condition is, I do this job and I’m out.”

Files destroyed, he continued. No record of his work with or for the CIA. Tabula rasa.

Eady turned to Barrow, who shrugged, leaving it to Klay to decide who to trust and what to hope for.

Klay had a rule about trust and hope. He trusted people to act in their self-interest. It was his responsibility to figure out what that was, not theirs to tell him the truth. Hope did not figure into it because hope was not certainty. Hope was certainty’s flirtatious cousin. Yet here he was, sitting with two men trained to lie, watching one of them study his hand and the other one shrug his shoulders, hoping he could trust them.

Eady started to wrap up their powwow. “You’ll go in as a knock, of course.” NOC—nonofficial cover—the Agency’s standard disclaimer. “But The Sovereign will support you. As always.”

Klay laughed. “Terry Krieger’s The Sovereign now, Vance. Are you speaking for him?”

Eady cleared his throat. “I was assured PGM will continue my policy of protecting any journalist in the field regardless of circumstance.” Eady paused. “Nevertheless, let’s not fuck it up.”

TWO-MAN TEAM

Arlington, Virginia

Klay stood in the kitchen of Tenchant’s home. A black SUV was waiting outside. He rinsed his coffee mug and set it in the sink. Eady had not only cleared the assignment with Sharon; he’d gotten Tenchant approved, too. Tenchant had often asked to work with him in the field, but Klay had always found a way out. He preferred to work alone. But Eady was right. This trip was records-based, and he could use Tenchant’s computer skills. The man had a gift.

Maggie Tenchant straightened the front of her husband’s new Patagonia windbreaker. “You take care of