Eady crossed to a large standing globe beside his Resolute desk, split the globe in half, and withdrew two crystal whiskey glasses and a bottle of scotch, while Klay absently read for the hundredth time the lines from Kipling framed on the end table beside him.

NOW this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky,

And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back;

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack . . .

Eady was indeed leader of a pack of journalists, photographers, and explorers who circled the world and brought their discoveries home. Every wall and flat surface in Eady’s office held some exotic treasure of Sovereign men and women returned: A blue-green dinosaur egg fossil, five curare-tipped poison darts in a jaguar-skin quiver. Unidentified teeth, disconnected bones, pieces of gnarled fur. A stuffed zebra head hung opposite Klay with its Well, what’s your excuse? expression. Next to the Kipling, a gold-ringed Kayan necklace had been turned into a table lamp. On one corner of Eady’s desk, an inverted hawksbill sea turtle shell held Eady’s car keys.

Klay’s gift to Eady hung on the wall behind the old man’s desk, a wooden loom strung with Indonesian double ikat cloth, purchased for Eady the day before Klay struck the boy. On receiving it, Eady quoted Henry Ward Beecher. “‘. . . the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow . . .’”

It took Klay a few years to find his place at The Sovereign. He had thick wrists and fingers too broad for the Macs the staff used, so they bought him a PC and somebody dug up an old IBM keyboard from the basement as a joke, but the older design turned out to be easier for him to use, and the joke was on his colleagues. The keyboard clacked so loudly anyone on the east end of the third floor knew when he had an idea. He ignored the company dress code. Maybe it was the suits he’d worn as a boy, or the images of the bodies he’d dressed, but he couldn’t bring himself to wear khakis or a dress shirt. He dressed the way he did in the field.

No one asked him about his past directly. They scattered hints. “Did you see the piece 60 did on the Russian mafia last night?” Porfle might ask. Klay said no, whether he had or not. He didn’t share his personal story with anyone. They knew his name, where he’d grown up. They had Google.

“So where’d you study journalism?”

“I didn’t.”

“So where’d you learn to write?”

“My mother,” he answered, which was the truth.