The waiter knocked at that point, so I went and answered the door, tipped him, and brought the booze over to where we sat. After I was sipping another cold beer, I finally answered.

“I really don’t know,” I admitted. “The memories are in my head, but it’s almost like I’m recalling details I saw in a movie. They don’t feel entirely mine, if that makes any sense.”

“Yes,” he said, “it does.”

We drank.

“What was next?” he asked. “Back to Italy?”

“No. Kraków.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Poland? Really? I … don’t think RTI knows about that.”

“Kuga probably does,” I said.

“What took you there? A sudden jones for cabbage rolls and pierogies?”

“I hit one of their money men,” I said. “A banker named Wójcik. More of a bagman, really. He either arranges wire transfers or hand-delivers cash payments.”

“To whom?”

“Mostly people on the ground. Buyers working with terrorist groups, PMCs, and militias. A lot of his clients are in the States, and some in southern Canada. White supremacists, but not exclusively. Wójcik made over two dozen trips to the States over the last six years, making payments to radical fringe groups of all colors and all ideologies.”

“To what end? I mean, if they’re selling arms and providing cash to extreme white groups as well as, say, radical Black groups…”

“The hardest thing to remember about Kuga is they’re not political. They sell product, and they never stand in the way of the gunplay. From what I was able to get out of Wójcik, they’re not only selling the weapons but also stoking the fires via social media posts, mass mailings, published pamphlets, and all that. Funding transportation for rallies and counterprotests. Providing payment to help hire social media influencers to give them a bigger visible presence, and a greater potential threat, than they might otherwise have. Some of these groups were no more than half a dozen assholes sitting around in someone’s double-wide, drinking Budweiser and talking about how unfair the system was to them because it was trying to make things equal for Black- and brown-skin interlopers.”

“Interlopers,” said Toys, enjoying the word.

“He said the plan was to keep both sides on the edge of violence so that they’re each potential customers. Taking sides cuts your customer base in half.”

Toys sighed and nodded. “Somewhere in the great beyond, Hugo Vox is getting an enormous hard-on.”

“No doubt.”

“This thing with the radical groups in the States,” said Toys, “do you think Kuga’s trying to start another civil war? Wasn’t that a talking point before the last election?”