“When I was seven years old, my mother decided that we would flee from Mozambique, with the hope that she could find work in Jo’burg and that we could escape the famine and death of our civil war. The only way she knew to do this was to travel through Kruger National Park into South Africa. The borders there were sporadically patrolled by humans, but that didn’t mean that they were unguarded. The group of refugees we came with started out at fifteen. Only myself and one other—my future wife, Zarina—survived the crossing. And only by a miracle did we make it out alive. The lions ate the rest of our group. It’s a bit of a dirty little secret actually, since some estimate that more than 13,000 men, women, and children have been attacked and killed by lions in and around Kruger National Park in the last fifty years. Which is not a headline that’s great for tourism. My personal story did make some of the local papers however, since only myself and a small girl survived the crossing and were picked up by one of the patrols near the Timbavati reserve. They called us the Ghosts of Timbavati because we didn’t speak for days, and some felt that we had actually died in the park and were but mere spirits unable to find our way to the next world.”

“I don’t see how this is—”

“I begged my mother not to take us. I was so scared of the lions. I had seen one once when I was a boy playing on the outskirts of the village. Luckily, it had better things to hunt than a scrawny human child. It took down a gazelle right in front of me. I’ll never forget the power of the beast. It’s breath. It was like it owned the air all around us … The point is that I had seen a demonstration of what a lion could do up close. My mother had not. She had heard the stories and the warnings, but she ignored them. I hid in a termite mound while they devoured her. Lions like to eat your intestines first. While you’re still alive. But you see, she didn’t fear the lion. She didn’t respect the beasts as she should have, and the mistake cost her life. She needed a demonstration.”

Kruger stood and stepped around the desk toward Quentin Yarborough, the pruning shears still slicing rhythmically in his right hand. “I think that you also need a demonstration,” he said. “And with time, you’ll learn to fear the lion as well.”

He dropped the pruning shears on the desk in front of Yarborough. Then Kruger said, “You may want to take off your belt.”

“Pardon me?”

He shrugged. “It’s your choice, but I’ve heard that it helps.”

“Helps with what?”

“The pain, of course.” Kruger leaned down into Yarborough’s face, placing a hand on each armrest. “I’m going to give you a choice, Quentin. You know what I’ll need from you to access the real prize that your facility is protecting. The choice is simple. You can cut off one of your thumbs with the pruning shears. They’re sharp, and with the ratcheting system, it should go quickly. I’ll even let you take the left thumb.”