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

exchange,” or some other excuse that didn’t make sense, but would nevertheless be accepted if his material was juicy enough, everyone compromising just enough to go to print.

Klay picked up recorders at random and began listening. He was surprised how much he’d forgotten. He couldn’t recall many of the people he’d taped, or even be sure of the country where some of the recordings had been made. After a week he looked at the list of audio files he had created—manager, voodoo market, Togo, 2004; dry goods and dog smuggler, Mongolia, 1999; colonel, AU-RTF, Central African Republic, 2014—and realized none was likely to be of any use to him in the future.

He looked at the pile of Olympus recorders he had yet to upload and decided his memories, whatever they might be, weren’t that important, either. He snapped a few in half and tossed them into his trash, felt bad about it, plugged in his headphones, and listened some more.

Suddenly Bernard’s laughter filled his headphones. They were hiking, Klay realized. He heard the crunch of gravel, the swing of his pack, his breathing. On the recorder, he asked Bernard whether he thought the land was a living thing. “You don’t understand at all,” Bernard replied. He heard the scratch of rocks clicking together, his own rough voice saying, “It’s a long way down, brother.” He remembered that moment. Bernard had done a back flip off the cliff edge into a river three stories below. On the tape, Bernard called up to him inaudibly. Klay repeated his words for the recording: “Come. Celebrate the land.” The recording ended. Klay hadn’t jumped.

He removed his headphones and texted Bernard’s mother, asking about Goodson. Goodson had been roughed up, she responded, but he was safe. The Green Guardians had been disbanded. It was just Perseus Group rangers now, she wrote, “flying drones, rousting up villagers.”

He got more emails reminding him to set up his Twitter account. He was headed to the gym one afternoon when a rep from Development dropped by and reminded him about the fundraiser that night. She handed him a card with the names of three couples printed on it. “Chat with them. Make them feel welcome. Charlie Peterson is oil. The Merricks, too. Root is that Root. They’ve all been to Africa. They’ll love talking to you . . .”

It went on like that.

Meanwhile, each time he asked Porfle for a new assignment, Porfle would shrug and say he hadn’t heard anything. Klay tried to be patient, to follow PGM’s new procedures, but boredom and frustration were closing in on him. He did not do well bored. For the first time since he’d joined The Sovereign, he wondered if it might be time to move on.

One afternoon, desperate to get out, he decided to visit an animal shelter. His days “on the beach,” which is what the Perseus Group people called their unassigned hours, had him thinking he might get a dog. He would just be looking, he reminded himself as he hailed a cab. If he were actually going to get a dog, he wanted a Chesapeake Bay retriever.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look at the strays. Just the idea of getting a dog made him feel a little better. The taxi pulled away from the curb and a text appeared on his phone.

“Confession at 11,” it said.

It had been three months since he’d heard from Eady.

THE CONFESSION CLUB

Washington, DC

Two blocks from the White House there is a large brick townhouse with black shutters, a mansard roof of chipped slate, and a green front door so dark it might be mistaken for black. To the building’s left is a branch office of the General Services Administration, and on its right an office building owned by PEPCO, the electric utility. Countless government employees trudge past the townhouse each day, though few, if asked, could pick it out of a lineup. For more than 130 years, the Confession Club has hidden in plain sight. The tall, ground-floor windows, originally sized to let a dead body out without having to remove the front door, are always curtained. There is no number on the building to confirm its address. The club’s sole intercourse with the outside world is a marble front step, the color of an old tooth, worn in the center so that a doorman must sweep a puddle from the step after each rain.

Klay felt uncomfortable in his jacket and tie, but he was pleased with what was about to take place. In a few minutes, in a quiet room upstairs, Eady would tell him their Agency relationship was over. He was more than ready to hear it. And if that was not why Eady had invited him tonight, then he had something to tell Eady. He was quitting. And not just the CIA. The Sovereign, too.

He knew what Terry Krieger was. He had witnessed his work up close, in Congo. It had been the dry season, maybe eight years ago—he could not be sure of the year, only the season and the victims. Klay had been on assignment, doing a story on the environmental impacts of minerals mining. Bernard was his fixer. They stayed in Kisie, a remote mining town in North Kivu. A South African mining company owned the rights to the area’s tin ore.

Perseus Group had a training camp nearby. The camp was supposed to be training Congo’s military to fight the rebel groups that popped up around every mine, taxing commerce in and out. In reality, Perseus Group was security for the mines. He and Bernard had been in Kisie two days when rebels attacked, butchering their way through the town before seizing control of the country’s most profitable tin and cobalt operations. More than three hundred people—men, women, children—were slaughtered. Klay got a good look at the rebels’ weapons. They were PG-15s, Perseus Group’s version of the AR-15.

Six weeks later, Krieger’s people rode in on big South African armored personnel carriers called Mambas,