Klay wanted to smash Eady’s head into the table, lean on his skull until his temples caved and his blue eyes leaked. But that was outside of scope, he told himself. “We were down there,” Klay said flatly, nodding out the window. “You looked at my fingers and said if I learned to tie a Parachute Adams and could catch a rainbow on a double-haul cast in a good wind, I’d know everything I needed to know about espionage. Wouldn’t need the Farm.”

“And you never did. Need it, I mean,” Eady said, adding, as he had those many years ago, “Make the fish see what you want them to see . . .”

“Well, you did that,” Klay said.

“We’re all the fish. Tom.”

“I’m counting on that,” Klay replied. He was done humoring this remorseless bastard.

Eady nodded, poured himself another, and looked across the kitchen at a framed photograph of himself standing beside Nelson Mandela. Eady had covered Mandela’s release from Robben Island for The Sovereign. In the photo Mandela, gray haired, dressed in a gold and brown silk Madiba shirt smiled fondly while Eady, still on assignment, cameras slung over both shoulders, beamed admiration.

“Both of my brothers are Wall Street bankers, 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.