He thought of his little girl, back home in South Africa in the care of trusted servants. The girl needed her father, and yet, he didn’t know who her father was. How could he hold her tiny hand as the monster that was Kruger? How could he kiss her forehead and tell her that the world was safe and beautiful when he had killed so many, children as young as her, mothers, fathers, whole families. Kruger, the man who had once been his shield and armor, had now become a cancer that was slowly killing him. He feared that when he did return home to his little girl, that there would be no more Idris Madeira, no more Papa, only the monster.

Zarina was in the corner, doing some kind of elaborate yoga stretches, while Raskin played on her laptop, the dim light of the screen illuminating her pale, pouty features and red hair.

Raskin looked over and said, “Don’t you ever relax? Smile or something. We won. We’re multi-millionaires.”

“I’ll smile when the money is in my bank account, and I’m back home in my own bed.”

“I don’t have a home anymore, but I suppose I’ll have plenty of scratch to buy a new one. Speaking of which, why are we waiting to meet up with our buyer until tomorrow? Let’s just get it over with.”

Kruger sighed. They had been over this once already. “Because transport out of the country will not be ready until tomorrow afternoon. We’ll make the exchange tomorrow as planned. Patience, Dr. Raskin, is a virtue.”

She snorted a laugh. “My mother always used to say things like that. Be patient, Julia. You’ll hit a growth spurt and lose that weight. Your boobs will fill out eventually. Patience, the boys will notice you. Patience, someone will ask you to prom. It was all bullshit. If you want something in this world, you can’t just wait in patient desperation. You have to get off your ass and go get it. If I’d have been a little less patient back then, maybe I would have had a date for that prom instead of spending the whole night at home, crying with Ben and Jerry.”

Kruger rolled his eyes. “A very sad story. Let’s see, a girl goes to prom around age seventeen or eighteen, correct? Where were we then, Zarina? That would have been about the time of the Liberian civil war, we were working for a gun runner selling to a member of the Sarpo tribe who claimed that the Devil appeared to him during a ritual and told him he was destined to become a great warrior. But in order to do this, he needed to sacrifice humans and eat their flesh to fulfill his potential. He would typically sacrifice a child before entering battle. I watched him do this at least three times, my employer at the time actually found this baby-eater amusing, mainly because he would go into battle naked.”

Zarina signed something, and Kruger laughed. “You’re right. I had forgotten that.”