The second reason is that going through channels would likely result in me being accompanied by agents of Barrier—the UK’s most covert black-operations outfit—some CIA spooks, and a team of busybodies from Germany’s own off-the-record group of black-ops shooters, Der Leuchtturm. I wasn’t really in the mood for a party. Ghost was all the company I needed, and he was never all that chatty. And, let’s face it, with Toys reporting back about me shooting him, and Church evaluating all the intel on my—actions? Crimes? Hard to pick the right word—he’d likely make the calls to ensure that I’d be met by a platoon armed with Sandman darts and a big butterfly net. No, thanks.

And third, a very bad man told me—reluctantly, I might add—that a very highly placed member of the Kuga organization was incarcerated there. Not entirely sure if it was the Darkness or me who asked those questions. My mind is still clogged with mud. For now, I suppose, it’s enough to remember the answers I … we … got.

The prisoner was a Catalonian named Casanova. Actual name. Born Diego Casanova, but later dropped the given name. Maybe he thought that would get him laid more often, but from the surveillance photos I acquired, he was no charmer. Looked like Steve Buscemi, if someone had hit Steve in the face repeatedly with a one-by-three. And he was a brute. Six foot three, three-twenty, with the shoulders and arms of a mountain gorilla. A guy like that wasn’t getting laid unless he was paying for it, and even then, he could send even a hardened prostitute straight to therapy.

Casanova worked for Kuga. He worked with Rafael Santoro. Which meant that his ass was worth only what value I was willing to put on it. A chatty Casanova who could nudge me a step closer to getting my fingers around Santoro’s throat was likely to live long enough to see how good his retirement plan was. A reticent Casanova was going to have a very, very bad night.

What really sucked for Casanova was that he was the one person who might finally put me on the path to finding Santoro and Kuga. And by find, I mean tear to pieces so I could piss on their corpses. I didn’t need the Darkness to want to do that. Or to give me some kind of spiritual or existential permission.