“You think you’re not part of a strategy?” The crowd jostled McPhee, and he had to work to stay in front of Klay. “This glimpse today,” McPhee continued. “You know what he’s doing with these drones. They’re already in western China. The technology they’re using to imprison Uighurs is coming here next. You see that, right?”

“I see it,” Klay said. “I don’t see what to do about it.”

Porfle appeared at McPhee’s side and clapped the Times reporter on the shoulder. “Ah. Good. You know Tom already. Excellent.”

For an uncomfortable moment no one spoke.

“Well. Raynor,” Porfle said, leading McPhee toward the elevators, “shall we continue our conversation upstairs in my office?”

McPhee left with Porfle, but after a few steps the Times reporter shrugged off Porfle’s hand and returned to Klay. He pointed toward the auditorium and said, “Our job is to recognize when history is about to repeat itself and sound the alarm. It’s not enough just to expose bad actors among us. We have to force the public to respond. You know what he is.”

Klay was only half listening. He was thinking about the final image of Krieger’s presentation, the accused poacher looking toward the camera. The man had been bleeding from the scalp, and he had lost a good deal of weight, but Klay had recognized his face and the raised coffee bean tattoos covering his torso. The man was not a poacher. He was Goodson Ltumbesi, the Green Guardian who’d saved Klay’s life.

CANDY FOR A WHALE SHARK

Manila, Philippines, and Cebu Strait

The day after making his hologram presentation to The Sovereign, Terry Krieger strode into the Champagne Room at the Conquistador Hotel in downtown Manila. Dressed in an open-collar Turnbull & Asser gingham check shirt and blue blazer, Krieger appeared less formal than most of those tucking into the hotel’s famous salad niçoise. The décor of the dining room in the city’s second oldest hotel could not have been less to his taste. French provincial chairs and tufted banquettes, white-clothed tabletops, tasseled chandeliers, gold curtains. Worse, it was very likely, given how many diplomats in Manila favored the Conquistador, that someone would recognize him with his host, the man at the far corner of the room who was now rising to welcome him, wearing a white jacket with gold epaulets, his obese arms spread wide.

“Terry!” Anthony Gatt beamed.

Krieger halted before Gatt could embrace him and took a seat with his back to the restaurant. Fat Anthony smoothed his pale blue ascot with his hands before retaking his seat opposite Krieger at the four-person table set for two.