“I’m fine with it,” Klay said.

“We’re not. We don’t care to be out.”

“We can’t, Tom. Not now,” Eady agreed. “I’ve been in place most of my career. So long I don’t know which came first. I’m proud of my service, and I want—”

“Not interested,” Klay said. “It would be inappropriate for me, for the work, to continue given this material change in circumstance, without you in place, Vance.”

Jesus, Klay thought. It came out sounding like Luca Brasi’s wedding speech.

“Tom—”

Barrow laughed. “Would it be inappropriate? Because I would hate to be goddamn inappropriate when it comes to the work.” Barrow raised his fingers and put air quotes around the word “work.”

“Excuse me?”

Barrow tossed another handful of nuts into his mouth.

Eady said, “Tom, we have a mission for you. It’s more than you’ve done for us in the past. You’d be in a complicated and potentially—”

“Vance,” Barrow interrupted, chewing, “why don’t you and I go around on this again. I’m not sold on this horse.”

“We are out of time, Will. I said I’ll handle this.”

“And I said we have another way into it,” Barrow challenged.

“We have no one positioned the way Tom is, and you know it.”

“You want to go on the record with him, then?” Barrow asked.

Eady looked at Klay. “I do.”

“With this man here?”

“He is our best chance. Tom, this is about Ras Botha. A chance to take down Botha for good.”

Klay sat back in his chair and waited.

“A South African prosecutor has gotten her hands on a cache of documents which,” Eady explained, “could unseat South Africa’s president. We want the prosecutor to succeed.”

Klay laughed. “You want to prosecute Gabriel Ncube?”

“We do,” Eady said.

“I thought Ncube was your lackey?”

“Predictability is what we value,” Barrow said, taking over. “Gabriel Ncube has grown less so.”

“You want regime change?” Klay said.

“We support the constitution of our long-standing ally,” Barrow replied.

“By unseating its democratically elected president?”

“Tom—” Eady interrupted.

“Vance, nobody fucking likes Ncube. He’s destroyed the country and the ANC. But what’s this got to do with Botha?”

“Botha’s been arrested again. Rhino horn this time. The same prosecutor has both cases—Ncube and Botha. It’s too much for anyone to handle, and too important to us. We need your help.”