Assignments followed. A drink with a Gabonese security minister. A quick sketch of a Malaysian politician’s desk, dates read upside down from her appointment book. A visit with the chairman of the Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority to request dive permission. “Skimming the cream,” Eady called it.

Their method for communicating was simple and effective. When “the public had an interest,” Klay’s early drafts, copied to Eady and more fulsome than normal, became his Agency reports. He and Eady communicated through the Comments and Track Changes features in Microsoft Word, just like any far-flung magazine writer and his editor. No need for a throwaway encryption system; no risk to the Agency’s covert platform.

Eady’s edits and comments were Klay’s instructions: “Could use more detail here.” “Get contact address for fact-checkers.” “Do you have supporting documentation?” “Photos?”

Above all, nothing he wouldn’t otherwise do.

THE CREVICE

Sovereign Headquarters

Washington, DC

The elevator door opened onto the tenth floor, and before Klay could exit, a long wooden tribal mask with grassy yellow hair and bulging eyes lurched into the gap. Klay stepped back.

“Hey, Charlie,” Klay said, and held the elevator’s door.

Charles Hawthorne, chief archivist at The Sovereign, peeked his soft face out from behind the Dan mask he held with both hands. “Oh. Hey, Tom. Sorry about that.”

Hawthorne slid his generous belly and the tribal mask past Klay onto the elevator and set the chin of the mask on the toe of his shoe. “Didn’t expect to see anyone up here on a Sunday,” he said, holding the door. “Where you been this time?”

“Bangkok,” Klay said. He always said Bangkok. No one ever noticed.

“Must be nice.”

“He in?”

“Much as he can be.” Charlie hit the button for basement. It was a strange answer, but Charlie was an unusual guy. As the elevator’s door closed, he stuck out his tongue and bugged his eyes, his impression of a tribal mask. Klay laughed. He heard hammering coming from the next room. Eady was updating the floor’s exhibits. It was about time.

That it was Sunday made little difference for Eady. Sally would be at her desk until noon. Vance would be in his office well beyond that.

Klay rounded the vestibule into Eady’s gallery and was nearly run over by two men carrying a zebra head.

“Coming through,” said a workman.

Eady’s great photographic collection lay stacked along the room’s perimeter. In the middle of the room workers hammered a crate around the bathysphere. Like the belly of a gigantic housefly, Klay thought, wending his way among dozens of empty black support wires as he crossed to Eady’s corner office.