In the Company of Killers Bryan Christy (good books to read for beginners .txt) 📖

what I do, Tom. I hunt the rotten apples. I sniff them, test the soft spots, and when it’s appropriate, I . . . well, you get it.

“I take a look at Eady’s reports and my little man goes off. You ever see that one? Edward G. Robinson? The insurance investigator with a little man inside tells him when something’s not kosher?”

Klay did not respond. He looked at the age spots on the top of Barrow’s balding head, the wrinkles along the buttons of his yellow dress shirt straining to hold his belly.

“It’s a helluva picture. Well, I look at what he’s got going, and mine goes off like a ten-year-old boy on the Coney Island Cyclone. Wooot!”

Klay leaned forward. “I don’t give a shit about you and your little man, Barrow,” he sneered. “Why should I believe a fucking thing you say?”

Barrow squinted at him for a long moment. “Okay,” he said, and dusted salt from his hands. “I’m going to tell you about it because I need your help, and I believe the best way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him. That’s the only reason I’m telling you any of this by the way”—his jovial tone turned cold—“instead of letting you rot in Gabriel Ncube’s prison.” Barrow took a sip of his bourbon. “Krieger’s focus is China. China’s Ultimate Silk Road Project. Biggest public works project the world has ever known. It began—”

“I know. Everybody knows about it.”

“Of course you do. Krieger follows the Chinese around like a cattle bird, providing security for President Ho’s investments, making his own moves. He’s got a thousand men running security for Chinese Development Bank oil interests in Angola. He’s the spear for China’s Djibouti base. He got them the Darwin port. Now he’s got them Mindanao. He’s locking up the coast from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. If that leads to conflict someplace, he sells one side, or both, the weapons—”

“I was in the Congo,” Klay interrupted. “I know how he operates.”

Barrow paused, assessing him again.

“It’s a modern world, Tom. You ever hear that? I always think what the hell else could it be—every day’s more modern than the one before it—but that’s me. You got High Tech. High Finance. Maybe now we got High Intelligence. I don’t know. I don’t have to know. My job, most of the time, is follow the money. Same as you.” Barrow adjusted in his seat.

“Krieger didn’t come out of nowhere with this fund idea of his. We’re in a race, Tom. Our spies have to keep up with their spies. But how do you do that? Our in-house engineers aren’t exactly Silicon Valley’s finest. And we can’t buy off the shelf. We need what hasn’t been invented yet. Our people put together a venture capital firm called Maven-Q. The company’s genuine—our people do trade shows, hand out Maven-Q ball caps and ink pens,” Barrow said with a chuckle. “It lets us invest in promising ideas, steer product development, lock up end products.”

“Let me guess,” Klay speculated. “The CIA with its own investment fund. You wouldn’t leave management of a venture capital firm to intelligence officers. You hired outside?”

Barrow nodded.

“Wall Street?”

Barrow waited.

“You hired Wall Street bankers, but you couldn’t pay Wall Street–sized bonuses with taxpayer dollars. You told them they had the opportunity to serve and protect, they said screw you, so you . . .” A bitter smile formed on Klay’s lips. “You told them they can eat what they kill, and they took you up on it . . .”

“Well, they’ve made some very good investments, so they tell me. But they did make one that put our ass in the jackpot.”

“They invested in Perseus Group.”

Barrow raised his glass in acknowledgment.

Klay sat back in his leather seat. The CIA had invested in Perseus Group. “So now Krieger has your money and your secrets,” he said, and laughed. “And now it’s your money funding those port acquisitions. Providing China’s security. Killing Congolese. Anything he does, you’re tied to.”

“Langley didn’t see that one coming,” Barrow said. “Too excited about the gadgets, I expect. We got out, of course. His fund program started right after. With nobody looking, a few of our people peeled off and went rogue. Sequence isn’t important really. Hell, number one search term our people type into Google these days is ‘Perseus.’ How many skew their work to audition for Terry Krieger I don’t know.”

Barrow sat back. “So that’s how it started. Those funds are made up of rogue intelligence officers from all over the world, working together, for Terry Krieger. Conspiracy. Bribery. Fraud. Murder. It’s a long list that ends in treason. I am no goody two-shoes. But treason I do not abide. Which brings us back to Vance Eady.” Barrow swallowed the rest of his drink and pressed the call button. “Leave us the bottle, Troy.” He topped off Klay’s drink.

Klay looked at Barrow, not really seeing him. Instead he pictured Eady in his office that last day. Around them Eady’s artifacts packed up, outside movers hammering shipping crates together. Eady talking about his cancer before explaining the sale to Krieger. “This was not my decision. Krieger pitched the board in Davos. I was brought in after. For appearances, I expect . . .” Klay felt his anger turning to rage, his stomach in knots.

“So, Tom—”

Klay spoke through a clenched jaw, “Tenchant.”

Barrow nodded. He opened the briefcase again, found the file he wanted, and withdrew a photograph. “Hitter. Kicked out of the Marines.” In the photo, Tenchant was loading bags into a Land Rover. There were camera bags at his feet, one bag especially long. The photo was date stamped. In the background was a Kenyan car rental agency.

Barrow laid out more documents and photos of Tenchant. “Started as a babysitter on you, we think.”

“You could’ve stopped him. You let my friends die.”

“Not ‘let.’ We didn’t let anything. And let me make this clear. There is no ‘we’ here, Tom. My God will judge me for my decisions, but anyone I took this up the chain