“So, this scientist in Texas named Henks—or Hacks? He packs up three thousand grapefruit buds, flies them to the Brookhaven nuclear lab on Long Island, stuffs the branches into a nuclear reactor, and fucking nukes them with thermal neutrons.”

“Is that true?”

Tenchant laughed. “He grafts irradiated buds onto healthy rootstock, comes up with something five times redder than the Ruby Red. You know what they call it?”

“No.”

“Me, neither. I mean, I forget what it was. I never fucking wanted to know any of this. But that’s what I get paid for: to figure out what variety of grapefruit could possibly swing between a bull’s—Rio Reds! That’s what they called them. It goes on and on for weeks like this with Porfle trying to decide which reference to use. Maggie and I stop eating grapefruit. I can’t stand looking at them.”

“You were Porfled,” Klay said.

“I was Porfled!”

Klay was pleased. He and Tenchant were laughing together. His little bonding mission had been a success. It was the most basic spycraft: nothing brings people together better than a common adversary.

“So, in the end, the sentence Porfle came up with—and God help me—I agreed to it—was—”

“Wait,” Tenchant said. “Wait! I remember it verbatim because it came back to me to fact-check. The final sentence was ‘A bovine, probably of the zebu or Sanga variety, with prominent male features walked in front of me.’”

“Which . . .” Klay prodded.

“Tweedledee excised.”

“Circumcised.”

“Castrated.”

“So that’s the grapefruit story,” Klay said. After a moment, he leaned forward. “So, Tench, one tip I can offer before we get into this is, no matter what the data looks like, drill down to find individuals. If you start to get distracted, keep in mind there’s always a who. If you get off track, or the information seems overwhelming, come back to that, okay?”

“‘There’s always a who’?” Tenchant echoed.

“Yeah. You know, I find it helps me.”

“Okay. Thanks, Tom. Yeah. I appreciate it.”

“Any questions?”

“Just one.”

“Shoot,” Klay said.

Tenchant sat up. “It’s serious, though, okay?”

“Sure, Tenchant. Okay.”

“If you add it all up on that story, from the very beginning, I mean, what would you estimate is the total time you spent with your balls in Porfle’s hands?”

REUNION

Pretoria, South Africa

Klay raised his glass, drinking in Hungry’s deep-set brown eyes. “To catching up on four lost years.”

“Five,” she corrected, not lifting her glass from the tablecloth.

“Ah,” he said. “And to your new appointment. Congratulations.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”