“Fuck . . .” Knight paused, taking inventory of just how far off track he had gotten. He had told himself that the tigers were going to be farmed whether he liked it or not—at least, if he participated, he could help them harvest the animals humanely and safely. But this was different. A man was going to be murdered.

Knight tried to convince himself that Cobus’s imminent death was Cobus’s fault alone. He chose to go to war with the syndicate. He had signed his own death warrant when he poisoned the supply. But Knight was an expert bullshit detector, and he knew that the voice in his head was full of it.

He fished through his jacket pocket and found Kevin Davis’s business card. He studied the card, considering what he was about to do. The cars behind him honked, and Knight looked up to see that the vehicles ahead of him had moved forward.

Back at Langley, Davis sat on the floor of his demolished office, catching his breath. He knew that gossip of his little meltdown would travel fast, adding more insult to more injury. He was a dead man walking at the agency. He had also missed his window for a career on Wall Street—no private equity firm or hedge fund wanted a forty-three-year-old who hadn’t worked in finance in eighteen years.

Fuck it. Fuck all of them. He sank back against the wall and cracked open a can of soda. For the first time since he could remember, Davis suddenly felt like a free man.

As he let the high-fructose corn syrup run down his throat, the phone rang. He rose to his desk, which had two phones and two computers (one for internal comms and one for external). He answered the external phone. “This is Davis.”

“It’s Knight. I need your help.” Knight rushed to get the words out. “If I give you a cell phone number, can you locate it for me?”

Still basking in the catharsis of his outburst, Davis responded to the absurd request with oddly polite detachment. “Sorry, Knight. I’d love to help out, but it doesn’t work that way.”

“Trust me, I’ll make it worth your while.” Sun Tzu. The battle was always over before Knight set foot on the field.

“I can’t use agency resources to do personal favors,” Davis explained.

“What if I told you I could get you your connection between trafficking and terrorism?” Knight had a strong hunch Davis was like the mammal curator he’d met at SafariWorld. People in need were generally willing to turn a blind eye to provenance.

“It only matters if it’s connected to Sumatra, and I’m guessing that’s not what you’re calling about.”

“And what if I could deliver your Sumatra connection?” Knight countered enigmatically.

Davis lowered his voice. “If you’re talking about falsifying evidence, that’s a federal offense . . .”