In the Company of Killers, Bryan Christy [love story books to read .txt] 📗

Sally and her desk were gone. Her office was empty. Inside his office, Eady was talking to a workman with his back to Klay. On his walls were dark circles and rectangles where his artwork had hung. Bubble Wrap spilled from half-filled cardboard boxes. His desk was bare. Lamps and end tables were gone.

Klay knocked on the door jam. “Spring cleaning, Vance?”

Eady looked haggard. He wore blue jeans, moccasins, and a plaid shirt. “Oh, Tom. Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Instead Klay walked to Eady’s window. It was raining. A cold winter rain. Eady dismissed the worker and closed his office door. His globe bar had not yet been packed up. “Five o’clock somewhere,” he sighed, and fixed them a pair of drinks. Klay crossed the room and sat on the old leather sofa. Eady’s wingback chair was gone. He wheeled his desk chair to the couch, handed Klay a scotch, and took a seat across from him.

“I have good news and bad news.”

“I like my good news first.”

“I have cancer.”

“Jesus.”

“Treatable.” Eady waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll get through it. We’re survivors, you and me.” He leaned forward and clinked Klay’s glass with his. “Lemonade of it is I finally get to retire. Always promised Ruth I would, then one of my wolves would bring home another terrific story, and round it would go again. Now the doctors tell me it’s this place or my wife.” He took a drink. “So, no contest at all.”

“I’m sorry, Vance.”

“It’s been a good life, Tom.”

“That bad?”

“No. It’s not over for me yet. Not by a long shot. Just time for the more important things now.” He sighed again.

They sat silently for a while. Klay assessing Eady’s appearance, taking in the idea of The Sovereign without him at its helm.

“So, what’s worse than cancer?” he said. A copy of the magazine’s current issue lay on the floor beside Klay’s boot.

Eady swallowed his whiskey and got up to retrieve the bottle.

“It’s The Sovereign that’s dying, Tom.” He poured them another round. “It’s been hemorrhaging for years while I was focused on other things. You know that, and the board has finally decided. We need to make a change, get a transfusion—”

“You’re not the reason this place is in trouble, Vance.” Everyone knew The Sovereign couldn’t manage its finances. The institution delivered the exceptional. And paid for it. At every level.

On the cover of the magazine at Klay’s feet was a photograph of a red bird of paradise perched on a tree branch taken in West Papua, Indonesia. To get that photo, Snaps had hired a fixer-translator, a 4x4 and driver, a boat and pilot, forest guides, porters, a cook, and a float plane and pilot. He’d paid consulting fees to ornithologists in Indonesia, England, and the United States. He’d set up camera traps. He’d lived most of the year suspended 180 feet off the ground in a hammock blind specially built for his project holding a camera custom-designed by engineers in The Sovereign’s basement, waiting for the elusive bird to dangle its two tail wires just so. Three times during the year, he’d interrupted his work and flown back to DC to meet with a particular photo editor who insisted on reviewing his progress in person. All to get one exceptional photograph.

Start with the cost of publishing a hardcopy magazine in a digital age; throw in common excesses (print editors who characterized family vacations as fieldwork, staff scientists who approved research grants to themselves); toss in the odd whims of the Prendergast family (“Find me a giant squid!” “Locate Endurance!”); add to these the cost of such legitimate explorations as sending a custom-built titanium submersible to navigate Challenger Deep, the earth’s deepest point; and you had a recipe for epic bankruptcy.

Eady smiled patiently. “You’re not understanding me, Tom. It’s not about me. They’re selling The Sovereign.”

“The magazine?”

“All of it.”

“Fuck me,” he said softly. “Why?”

Eady laughed. “Why does anyone sell? You’ll continue to have a job, of course. They recognize quality. Unless you take a buyout. They’ll be extending those offers soon, letting others go . . .”

“Who’s the buyer?”

“The acquisition includes a billion-dollar endowment. That’s the important thing. With that kind of funding we secure The Sovereign for generations. We’ve ensured this institution’s mission, Tom.”

“There’s always a who, Vance.”

Eady sighed. “The acquirer is Perseus Group Media.”

“Perseus Group?”

“—Media.”

“Terry Krieger,” Klay said.

“I wanted you to hear about it from me, directly.”

“Jesus,” Klay said quietly.

“They had a piece of us already. It’s nothing we made public, but PGM has had a twenty percent stake in The Sovereign for some time. It was the only way to catch up to Discovery.”

“There must have been other buyers.”

Eady swallowed his drink. “They tried. I tried. Google. Bezos. Disney. We screwed ourselves taking that early money. He wouldn’t relinquish his shares, and nobody who could afford us wants Terry Krieger for a partner. We had no choice.”

“How much is he paying you?”

Eady went cold. “Check yourself, Thomas. This was not my decision. Krieger pitched the board in Davos. I was brought in after. For appearances, I expect. The family wants to cash out.” Eady cleared his throat. “In confidence, I did not support the sale.”

A phone rang. “Excuse me.” Eady reached into his jacket pocket. “I’ll call you back shortly,” he said, and hung up. “Wife worries about me day and night now.”

Klay’s sat in disbelief. Eady had cancer. The Sovereign had been sold to Terry Krieger and his mercenaries. From the corner of his mind he heard Bernard’s voice: Would you take Perseus Group money?

Klay was about to stand when he remembered why he’d wanted to see Eady in the first place. “I want to go back to the Philippines,” he said.

Eady sighed, and shook his head no. “I’m afraid that’s not—”

“I didn’t make the connection to Botha.”

Eady shrugged. “Perhaps you were right from the beginning: he’s not using the priest.”

“No,” Klay said. “He was there. I saw him in the airport.”

“Saw who?”

“Botha.”

Eady returned the nearly