Two blocks from the White House there is a large brick townhouse with black shutters, a mansard roof of chipped slate, and a green front door so dark it might be mistaken for black. To the building’s left is a branch office of the General Services Administration, and on its right an office building owned by PEPCO, the electric utility. Countless government employees trudge past the townhouse each day, though few, if asked, could pick it out of a lineup. For more than 130 years, the Confession Club has hidden in plain sight. The tall, ground-floor windows, originally sized to let a dead body out without having to remove the front door, are always curtained. There is no number on the building to confirm its address. The club’s sole intercourse with the outside world is a marble front step, the color of an old tooth, worn in the center so that a doorman must sweep a puddle from the step after each rain.

Klay felt uncomfortable in his jacket and tie, but he was pleased with what was about to take place. In a few minutes, in a quiet room upstairs, Eady would tell him their Agency relationship was over. He was more than ready to hear it. And if that was not why Eady had invited him tonight, then he had something to tell Eady. He was quitting. And not just the CIA. The Sovereign, too.

He knew what Terry Krieger was. He had witnessed his work up close, in Congo. It had been the dry season, maybe eight years ago—he could not be sure of the year, only the season and the victims. Klay had been on assignment, doing a story on the environmental impacts of minerals mining. Bernard was his fixer. They stayed in Kisie, a remote mining town in North Kivu. A South African mining company owned the rights to the area’s tin ore.

Perseus Group had a training camp nearby. The camp was supposed to be training Congo’s military to fight the rebel groups that popped up around every mine, taxing commerce in and out. In reality, Perseus Group was security for the mines. He and Bernard had been in Kisie two days when rebels attacked, butchering their way through the town before seizing control of the country’s most profitable tin and cobalt operations. More than three hundred people—men, women, children—were slaughtered. Klay got a good look at the rebels’ weapons. They were PG-15s, Perseus Group’s version of the AR-15.