“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.