Tenchant stood up, raised his weapon, and pointed it at Hungry. “He killed you, not me.”

Klay drew Sehlalo’s ankle pistol, surprising Tenchant. Their two shots sounded almost as one.

The revolver bucked in Klay’s hand, but he did not vary his aim. On the fourth shot, Tenchant went down. Klay crossed the room and kicked the gun away. He turned and saw that Hungry had been shot. “Hungry!”

Hungry ignored her wound. She picked up Sehlalo’s mobile phone and dialed. “You are going to prison,” she spat.

THE NEW ORANGE

Warden’s Office,

Kgosi Mampuru II Management Area

Pretoria, South Africa

Ras Botha leaned forward and tapped a blue visitor’s card on the conference table.

“I hear you had some trouble,” he said.

Klay did not respond. He wore an orange prisoner’s uniform. The knuckles on his right hand showed angry red bottle caps where skin used to be. He was being housed in a communal cell with fourteen other prisoners, not all of them welcoming.

Botha was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, open-collared white shirt, and alligator boots that matched his briefcase. He set his briefcase on the table, removed an orange, and rolled it across the table. “You’ll want that now.”

Botha was right. An orange did look different from this side of the table. Still, Klay didn’t touch it. Hungry was gone. He had no idea where. Officers loyal to her had surrounded the building and ordered the general and his men to surrender. The general’s men were private contractors, paid to fight but not to die. Hungry’s people loaded them and the photographer into white vans and disappeared. The team’s medic had hardly bandaged Hungry’s shoulder when she was on her feet again, issuing orders to secure the crime scene and gather up her team’s documents and computers. Once the work was in hand, she walked to a waiting car. She paused at the door and turned to Klay. “How many innocent people have died because of your lies?” She had not waited for an answer.

They brought him into the prison through an underground tunnel left over from the Apartheid era. Klay had not been arrested or charged. He was simply caged.

Botha withdrew a second orange from his briefcase. He raised the fruit to his mouth and bit its skin. He worked his lower lip in and out, nodding as he peeled the fruit. “Wild Dogs dead. Advocate Hungry Khoza ruined. Ncube investigation terminated. My case dismissed . . .”

“Ras,” Klay said, “what can you tell me about Hungry?”

“Oh, she’s royally sorted. A masterful fucking you gave that one. She’s a CIA operative helping the Americans oust our legitimate president. Bring back white rule. Don’t you read the papers? Well, you couldn’t, could you?”

“Which is all bullshit,” Klay countered. “I did some interviews with her for The Sovereign working on a story . . .”