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

the final image of Krieger’s presentation, the accused poacher looking toward the camera. The man had been bleeding from the scalp, and he had lost a good deal of weight, but Klay had recognized his face and the raised coffee bean tattoos covering his torso. The man was not a poacher. He was Goodson Ltumbesi, the Green Guardian who’d saved Klay’s life.

CANDY FOR A WHALE SHARK

Manila, Philippines, and Cebu Strait

The day after making his hologram presentation to The Sovereign, Terry Krieger strode into the Champagne Room at the Conquistador Hotel in downtown Manila. Dressed in an open-collar Turnbull & Asser gingham check shirt and blue blazer, Krieger appeared less formal than most of those tucking into the hotel’s famous salad niçoise. The décor of the dining room in the city’s second oldest hotel could not have been less to his taste. French provincial chairs and tufted banquettes, white-clothed tabletops, tasseled chandeliers, gold curtains. Worse, it was very likely, given how many diplomats in Manila favored the Conquistador, that someone would recognize him with his host, the man at the far corner of the room who was now rising to welcome him, wearing a white jacket with gold epaulets, his obese arms spread wide.

“Terry!” Anthony Gatt beamed.

Krieger halted before Gatt could embrace him and took a seat with his back to the restaurant. Fat Anthony smoothed his pale blue ascot with his hands before retaking his seat opposite Krieger at the four-person table set for two.

Krieger looked at Gatt. Half Filipino, half Chinese, and somehow as big as two men, Fat Anthony was president and CEO of the number one in-port ship-servicing company in the South China Sea, the one to go to for everything a visiting warship or submarine might require. His company, Core F Services, operated tugboats, managed port authority and customs fees, sent divers down to demine harbors, provided food and fuel, hauled away trash and sewage, and shuttled crews into town for R&R.

Fat Anthony was also Krieger’s fixer, a wharf rat who knew every latrine, mess, frayed line, and flag officer in the region. Every whore and every bloodied knife, as well. Port service was a competitive industry. To stay on top, Fat Anthony oversaw a network of moles throughout the world’s armed services that ensured he won the contracts he wanted. A man like that was both useful and dangerous.

It galled Krieger to be in the same room with Gatt, but Gatt’s message had been urgent, and Krieger had too much riding on him to ignore it.

Krieger ordered the Dover sole. Waiters brought Gatt’s meal to their table as if they were supplying an expedition. Foie gras terrine . . . black truffle soup . . . goto congee . . . rock lobster salad . . . osetra caviar . . . pan-seared duck liver with pear and sunchoke . . . A5 Kobe Wagyu . . . Krieger watched it all disappear into Gatt.

“Mindanao City Port,” Gatt said finally, letting the words slip from his mouth syllable by syllable, while chewing the end of a lamb chop he held in his fingers. His extra-long thumbnails were manicured, coated in clear nail polish, and cut to a point. Like cockroach feet, Krieger thought, watching them flash over his food.

“As I predicted, that one was not easy to acquire. It required many months of negotiations. Many greased palms. But it turns out Moros can be capitalists, too.” Gatt smiled and reached for his napkin. “It surprised even me when suddenly it became possible. Do you remember the priest I told you about? The one who opposed our offers?”

Krieger did not respond. “The problem is a priest,” Gatt had said. “A peace negotiator who is trying to expand the Muslims’ territory to include a port, the same one you have your heart set on, I’m afraid . . .

“Well,” Gatt said, shaking out his napkin, “no matter. He decided to remove himself from our world and join our Father.”

“So. Why am I here?” Krieger said, and waited.

Gatt looked up from his pot de crème. “Yes, it is about the money, Terry. You have your deep-sea port now. I have provided you the other services. Now it is about the money.”

“We have a schedule for that,” Krieger replied.

His assistant, Mapes, had suggested this as a likely reason for Gatt’s urgent message, but Krieger had resisted accepting it. Gatt knew better. Or should have. He wasn’t just a fixer. Gatt was an investor. Krieger got to his feet. That was the problem with wharf rats: you had to either get used to them or kill them.

•   •   •

Later that week Krieger sat in his office on board his superyacht, Raptor. He closed his laptop and looked through the ship’s sliding glass doors onto the Sulu Sea. The Philippine sky was crystal clear. A light breeze caressed the curtains. If things went as planned, he could have his meeting this morning and still join his family, who were on nearby Cebu Island, diving with whale sharks.

To Raptor’s west was Palawan Island, and beyond that was the strategic heart of the maritime Orient: the South China Sea. Unless he was wrong, man’s next civilization-altering conflict would take place not in the deserts of the Middle East, or in the skies over North Korea, but out there on Asia’s most strategically important body of water. When the great conflict would kick off was very much up in the air. Maybe it would start tomorrow. Maybe it would not begin until after Krieger was dead. Tomorrow was too soon, and dead was too late. It was coming, and if it was coming, he wanted it to happen on his watch. History, he decided, needed scheduling.

In some ways he had already accomplished the hardest part. He had secured China as a client. “China can build overseas, Terry. But she cannot yet put her boots or weapons there,” China’s general secretary, Ho Jianming, had confided during a visit to Krieger’s hunting property in Africa.

“The longer your reach, Mr. President,” Krieger had replied, “the more vulnerable are your fingers.” Perseus Group was now China’s