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

did I ever tell you that, Tom?” Eady said, still looking at the photograph. “Eight figures a year. My sister, a heart surgeon. You know what they’ve got?”

Klay didn’t trust himself to respond. Rage was coursing through his body.

Eady tapped his glass, nodding at something on his mind, and looked at Klay. “Satisfaction,” he said, drawing out the word. “They’ve been rewarded for their dedication. Their children respect them . . .” Eady held an imaginary camera and moved the tip of his index finger. “I took photographs. Snapshots of extinction on four legs.” He laughed. “On two legs,” he said with a bitter glance toward Mandela. “I thought I could make a difference. Were they grateful? Did they change? I was a fool. A naïve fool.”

He drank. “There’s always a who, you like to say. Who am I? That’s what you want to know. Well, I’m a man who stopped pretending things would get better, that the cream always rises, that we’ll see more enlightened times. I stepped off that two-bit amusement ride and invested in the amusement park instead.”

“You fucking smug . . .” Klay fought to control himself. He checked his watch. Almost time.

Eady ignored him. He continued his monologue, drinking and looking toward the window. “At the Agency, we did exactly what Terry Krieger is doing. Or tried to. And who benefited? No one! We fucked it up, over and over. Say what you will, but Terry Krieger has vision. War is octagonal now. A multidimensional puzzle. Krieger versus Krieger versus Krieger. What value do I have in a world like that? What legacy do I leave?” Eady smiled. “But then I found one. I gave the puzzle master a piece he didn’t have.”

“You sit here on your gentleman’s farm ordering the murder of innocent people to pad your fucking bank account? To feel meaningful? You recruited me with that song and dance about taking on Hitler, doing good in this twisted world. You are one of them, no better than the leg breakers I grew up with. Worse. You deserve what’s coming to you.”

Eady leaned forward in his chair and peered out the window. “You came alone?”

“Nobody’s in my truck, Vance.”

“But I haven’t much time?”

Klay stared at him.

Eady got to his feet, then bent over slowly and picked up his fishing hat. Beneath it a Browning Hi-Power pistol lay coiled like a rattlesnake.

Eady looked down at the pistol.

He put the hat on and crossed to the sink, leaving the pistol on the chair. He picked up a bottle of orange juice from beside the sink and returned it to the refrigerator. He put a loaf of bread back in the bread box. “You could have your Pulitzer for this, Tom, if you play it right. It’s not too late. This story could have a different ending. Nobody would need to know. I’d support you, and Barrow would find a way to make it disappear. PGM will make you a hero. We can celebrate Hungry . . . her sacrifice. You’re a damn good journalist,” he said, with a question in his face.

Klay picked up his backpack. “It’s over.”

Eady sighed. The old man walked into an alcove beside the refrigerator, sat down on a bench, and began removing his loafers and socks. He reached for his waterproof boots. His hands were trembling.

“You didn’t kill him,” Eady said, getting to his feet.

“I know that. You did.”

“Not the Kenyan,” Eady said. “The boy.”

“The boy?”

“The woman in Jakarta was one of ours. She drugged you. We found a body at the morgue, tossed it under your car.”

Klay felt life rush from his body like a tide. His heart dropped, his stomach fell, his legs turned as flaccid as seaweed. He saw the broken body of a dead boy lying on a damp street. The loss was real but it had not been Klay’s fault. In place of darkness, Klay felt a sublime emptiness. He had not killed that child.

Klay looked into Eady’s eyes as he considered what Eady had done and why. The old man had staged the boy’s homicide to destabilize Klay, opening him to his CIA offer, ensuring that either way Klay would keep it quiet, leveraging Klay’s guilt over his mother’s murder to manipulate and control him for years.

Klay struck Eady then, connecting just below the older man’s cheekbone. Eady went down, taking a net and fishing rods to the floor with him. He could have killed Eady with one punch, but he didn’t have to.

“You become what you kill,” Bernard had warned him once. “So choose wisely.”

Klay lifted Mandela’s photo off its nail and threw it across the room.

Outside, he started his Toyota. In his rearview mirror he watched Eady emerge from his house wearing a fisherman’s vest and make his way unsteadily down the grassy slope, a fly rod in one hand, trailed by a pack of dogs.

Klay adjusted his rearview. On the opposite slope two men descended toward the pond.

He put the Land Cruiser in drive. After a few yards he stomped on the brake. The mutt with the bull’s-eye on its leg was sitting at the edge of the driveway, watching him with an expression that reminded him of a little chicken-stealing Kenyan dog he’d seen looking down at him from a rooftop.

Klay opened his door and gave a short whistle.

The dog didn’t jump in. It flew.

WE BURY THEM ONE AT A TIME

Kimber Conservancy, Zimbabwe

Krieger’s G650 made another low pass to scare off a few stubborn waterbuck before circling wide and touching down on the Kimber’s airstrip. Pete Zoeller waited beside a freshly washed dark green Land Rover, his big sleeveless arms crossed over his thick chest.

“Howzit, Pete?” Krieger said as he descended his jet’s final step.

“We got the boys on him, Mr. Krieger,” Zoeller said, taking a duffel bag from Krieger, knowing well enough not to ask for his briefcase. Knowing enough to erase Krieger’s previous attempt at Minotaur from his memory, too.

“Mr. Krieger is it?” Krieger said, and quick-scanned the perimeter.

Zoeller, the deaf