The Sovereign was famously generous when it came to travel expenses. His colleagues flew business class, stayed in four- and five-star hotels, sought out countries’ premier chefs and unique entertainment. But Klay, who measured himself by his work, secretly feared that failure might lurk around the next corner, and he might not get his story. He used his travel money to buy more field time. He flew coach, unless he had the miles, and slept in his bivy sack or in cheap motel rooms. He ate modestly and relied on Malarone dreams and his own dark thoughts for entertainment. He stayed in the field and reported—allowing his body to soften, his lungs to weaken—focusing his mind ever more firmly on his target.

Klay did some leg raises, then flipped over for more push-ups. When he got home, he’d hit the gym again. This was his last assignment, after all. Last for the Agency, last for The Sovereign, too. Once he nailed Botha, he was going to clean up his life. Eat more vegetables. Get healthy.

“Hungry’s system is a mess,” Tenchant said. “I pentested their internal system. Scanned the machines with Nmap, checked for vulnerabilities. Turns out their general network connects to the Public Protector’s office. They haven’t updated anything in months, so vulnerabilities everywhere. I fired up Metasploit-Framework using auxiliary scanners. First thing I checked for was BlueKeep and instant remote system shell. Bluekeep got leaked from the NSA, but you’d be surprised how—”

“Sorry. You did what?”

“Ah. I forgot. You’re illiterate. Nmap is a port scanner, but people have added a few vulnerability scripts so it can do double duty, at least on the more common problems.” Tenchant looked at Klay. Nothing. He waved his hands above his head. “I used some craaaazzzy computer code to perform a colonoscopy on the office’s general system—I don’t have access to their air-gapped machines—results were cancerous. Polyps everywhere. That help?”

Klay paused his push-ups. “Thanks,” he said dryly.

Tenchant smiled. “Point is, I’m staying off-line as much as I can in case there’s something devious lurking in their system. That’s why I took a cab over to the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission today. Botha has sixty-eight companies registered in his own name in South Africa. Nineteen in his wife’s. There’s a little of everything. Mining. Real estate. IT. Safari camps. Game breeding. Three golf courses. An arms manufacturer of some kind. About thirty companies called Alphan Investments. Alphan Investments 1, Alphan Investments 2 . . . He’s got websites set up for some of these, which will help me. I searched a few and found links to other companies outside of South Africa. Hey, how do you know so much about guns?”

Klay lay on the floor, his forearm over his eyes.

“Tom?”

“What?”