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

Christian Warriors’ . . . ” He dropped a copy of The Sovereign onto the table. “That was the first one, far as we can tell. Like a serial killer, he was cautious at first. Seeing if he had the stomach for it.” Barrow chuckled. “Turns out he did.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Klay would have stood if he weren’t trussed like an animal.

“Vance Eady couldn’t know what your stories were worth, no market price for propaganda, so he kept trying different angles. Fiddled the books a little and convinced the board to sell your magazine at a good price. Still”—Barrow tapped the photographs—“nothing a billionaire valued. Nothing worth the ante.”

Klay fought against exhaustion. It had been days since he’d slept. “You’re saying Vance used my stories to help Krieger and the Agency? You are the Agency.”

“Oh, we have our part to play in this, Tom. And I’ll get to that. But this here”—he indicated the photographs—“is something else. CIA? No, sir. A rogue group of treasonous bastards, that’s what I’d call them. Some of them ours—yes. But only some.

“Vance Eady didn’t use you to help Krieger, Tom. He used you to buy in. Terry Krieger runs a fund. Not really a fund, my people tell me, but that’s what he calls it. Or funds I guess is better.”

“The investors are intelligence agencies,” Klay said. “I know about it.”

Barrow’s eyes narrowed. “The buy-in for the South African was twenty million dollars. He’s dead now. She tell you about him, too? Mo Rademeyer?”

Klay nodded slowly.

“Vance Eady wanted into something bigger. Price, we think, is seventy-five million dollars. He didn’t have that, of course. Not even close. But he had you.”

Klay’s mind raced as Barrow picked up the photos from the table and laid them down again one at a time. “Your friend,” he said, laying down Bernard’s picture, “the Kenyan, got in the way of Perseus’s tribal-surveillance project. Your priest here, the peace negotiator, got in the way of Krieger’s plans to buy a deepwater port. Ms. Khoza’s value you understand. Eady was making Krieger’s problems go away, earning his way in piece by piece.”

Barrow cleared his throat. “Let me introduce myself to you properly, Tom.” He laid a thin leather wallet down in front of Klay. “I’m not working with Vance Eady. I’m hunting him.”

Klay didn’t recognize the credentials as CIA. Only a single blackbird on a blue-and-yellow background.

“IG?” Klay asked.

Barrow tapped an incisor with his fingernail. “Different set of teeth. I read a story one time how it’s all about teeth. Evolution, I mean. Who we are. What we want. Cows grind, lions tear. Humans do both. Your Hungry Khoza got her teeth into something big. Something that could hurt Krieger. Tear the meat right off his leg. We still don’t know who leaked those files to her. Maybe it was local. Maybe it was his competition. A Russian named Yurchenko fits that bill.

“We do know the cost. If it got out Terry Krieger was playing varsity for more than one team, well, that’s the kind of thing not even a presidential pardon can help with. Avoiding life in prison, or the death penalty—that would be worth $75 million to him. Yessir. Hungry Khoza’s intel put Vance Eady into a whole new class altogether.”

“I was your bait,” Klay said.

“You want a drink?”

Barrow pressed a button on the arm of his chair. A door opened in the back of the plane. A large man appeared. Klay recognized him as one of the men who’d subdued Thabo to enter his prison cell. “Sir?”

“Troy, bring Tom and me a couple of bourbons. Booker’s, isn’t it? And some picky things, nuts or something. And let’s cut him loose.”

Troy unlocked Klay’s restraints. Barrow didn’t speak again until they had been served their drinks and snacks, and Troy had returned to the back of the plane. Then he raised his glass. “To the Confession Club,” he said acidly.

When Klay didn’t touch his glass, Barrow set his own on the table, too. “Beginnings,” Barrow said. “Best place to start in my opinion. This whole thing begins with an accident. One of our people gets dragged by her husband to one of those Washington, DC cocktail parties nobody likes. Her husband’s a tax accountant, so it’s worse than usual. She’s had her fill of double declining balances or whatever those people talk about. She’s at the bar, getting herself another gin and tonic, when she overhears this British fella saying how he runs a sniper operation overseas. Says he picks the targets, his man over there in Africa pulls the trigger for him. Takes out bad men all over the world, he says. Goes on and on about it. Well, she doesn’t realize it’s just some magazine editor talking metaphorically. She files a report like she’s supposed to. We put some people on it, track down your Mr. Porfle. Find out he works at The Sovereign. Figure out his assassin is you.” Barrow ate a handful of nuts.

“I’m not an assassin,” Klay said, taking a drink of bourbon.

Barrow’s mouth was full. He nodded. “At Langley,” he continued, “everybody’s in their silo. You come up as Vance Eady’s asset. So does Porfle.”

To the look of surprise on Klay’s face, Barrow said, “No, no, no. It’s common. It’s the culture. First thing our people do overseas is register every foreigner they meet as an asset. You’d be shocked how many dry cleaners and housekeepers pose a class two threat to this nation’s security. Most never know they were listed. Eady’s got half the magazine down as his assets. Problem is nobody remembers Eady. Remembers? Hell, he’s been filing reports for so long, the guy who’s supposed to look at them is dead.

“So, our people take a look. They review Eady’s file and realize we don’t know what this Tom Klay is up to. They see a possible overlap with your work and the interests of one Terry Krieger, so they send the tickler up to me, as required. Because that’s