In the Company of Killers

In the Company of Killers

Blindsided from the start and never realizing it, Tom Klay an American journalist in Kenya writing about crimes against endangered species for The Sovereign. Criminals want to kill the heavily protected animal and smuggle his tusks to China which is the goal of everyone who wants that family elephant. From the moment you meet the staff of the Sovereign you realize that there is a definite undertone of deception and deceit. Klay is sent to take down Ras Botha a poacher who runs Africa’s ivory trade and looks at elephants as just property and hunted and kill for sport . Klay relates that an elephant has two gravestones one for himself and one for his species. But this story and his quest for justice or so he thinks is justice begins when his best friend is killed in friend of him. Klay is the son of a funeral director and is well acquainted with death and has viewed many bodies in his time. Falling in love with South African prosecutor Hungry Khoza will take him down darker roads and endanger his life. Klay is a great investigative journalist whose can track down criminals’ kingpins but not sure that anyone will get a warrant or wanted poster for these people. Some of these thieves are killers too and injustice wins when those that are guilty are too powerful to confront or put away.
Things change and the paper is suffering and sold to a private military company called Perseus Group Media whose owner is a rich and powerful and dangerous man. The goal deals with China’s Silk Road Project including  planning a huge highway through the center of Kenya. When the takeover was completed, and his immediate boy Vance Elad supposedly is gone things get interesting as you the new owner instead of meeting the staff in person delivers himself as a Hologram. Krieger is his name and his uses this means of using Perseus Group technology to offer a hint of what is in store for them as he deals with showing how they save elephants, hearing deep tribal drums, elephants shown in the grass, hippos and other animals even children playing soccer and people going about heir business,. The Sovereign audience appears large on the screen, but manipulation is behind this and Sharon is now in charge of her division. The screen shows drones that move quick as hummingbird, the dark over the audience date projecting onto the scene and the birds change. He talks about poaching and securing three African parks: elephant, rhinoceros poaching down but it is all  ruse. There is something you will not believe behind this and the wealth that this man amassed.

Krieger established a series of funds to compensate an elite group of people for the secrets they carried. The minimum amount to get membership was 20 million dollars worth of intelligence valued by Krieger alone. In exchange, an investor received a percentage of their fund’s performance. This fund system was more art than science, he told his investors. They believed what he said, and no one questioned him. Read page 149 to learn how it worked.

By pooing intelligence and providing a return, Krieger incentivizes his behaviors behavior by compensation them for their transgressions and their silence. Anyone who invested understood the cost of betrayal: YOUR LIFE in the refund was not an understatement. He literary controlled the world of his investors. Klay was no brought into the dangerous fold and realized that the one person that sent him searching for Botha and going after him was really setting him up.

Klay is being sent to take Botha  and Ncube down using South Africa’s courts/ Ncube is the President and owns it. No prosecutor will take on the case and he would   sell it to the defendants.  Take down the president of Africa you do not need a prosecutor . Hungry Khoxa is the prosecutor,  and he was involved with her before. Eady was setting him up but he did not know it. Meeting with her he meets her team and he even brings someone with him to help get the information and the story. But, no one is who they appear to be and Klay will learn the hard way about betrayal, deception and the real person behind what he is about to undergo. If Eady turned out to be part of what was happening he would find our what Hungry knew about Krieger  and his agency. And his relationship to Ncube. The plot thickens  and Ras Botha is the key. The chapter titled New Orange is where Klay gets enlightened. Klay sims articles and Hungry issues a press conference before disappearing. Intruders yet unidentified raided her office called Wild Dogs Anti-Corruption Task force and the office of special prosecutor killing several advocates, an investigator and the American journalist that he brought with him from the sovereign. Botha leads him to the truth about what this is all about.

His career in the CIA was hidden but no longer and Klay was sent to carry Tenchant into Hungry’ s office to destroy her files, hack into her system and not copy them. Botha seemed to know it all but there is even more as Klay pays a heavy price for what will happen next. He is agency property, and they own him. Just how high up does this go? What did he see in Kenya besides his friend getting killed? His father always told him to look at the opposite of what he hears or sees. An ending you will not believe and what happens to Klay might cost him his life and his freedom if he does not figure out the truth behind the group he works for, Eady who he trusted, and the result will shock you. The result is a story that would break it all wide open and reveal the truth about him. What happens to him has yet to be decided. What about Krieger does he get his just reward for what he did to a young child years before? Where does Klay wind up and what is next for him we will not know unless author Bryan Christy decides to bring him back again in another novel. A character with multiple personalities that are strong at times and vulnerable others. A dangerous encounter with Botha, getting arrested but why does this man help him and what will he gain? Politicians, warlords and a n agency that is not what it comes. As Klay realizes that he is working for a Company of Killers.

Fran Lewis: Just reviews