The war was close to an end. Everyone knew it. The Nigerians had run through the breakaway republic like knives through a piece of cloth. The Nigerians had MiGs and Kalashnikovs supplied by the Soviets, and money from the British to buy anything else. The Biafran army—what was left of it—went into the field with thirty rounds of ammunition and bolt-action rifles.

There were some who couldn’t run, of course. Cade saw the child watching them, hollow-eyed and wasted, from an open doorway.

No food or medical supplies had been allowed inside Biafra for almost six months. Even Red Cross planes were fired upon. Millions of people were left scrounging in the bush for food.

They weren’t very good at it. The Biafrans were shopkeepers, doctors, teachers and lawyers. They weren’t prepared to play Tarzan, any more than the Duluth Chamber of Commerce.

The whole country was starving to death.

A second later, Griffin saw the child, too.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

“We’ve talked about that, Agent Griffin,” Cade said. Griffin had been his liaison with the president for almost nine months now, fresh from the FBI, and before that, two tours of covert operations with the army. He was a strapping young man who used his brain like his muscles: apply enough force, problem gets solved. The only real change he’d made since taking the job was to let his hair grow. The shaggy sideburns he wore now reminded Cade of the last time they were fashionable, just before 1900.

“Sorry, I forgot your delicate sensibilities for a second,” Griffin said. “The kid looks like a skeleton.”

“You were in Vietnam,” Cade said.

“So what? This is different,” Griffin shot back.

Cade said nothing.

“You disagree, I take it?”

“Nothing humans do looks very different to me,” Cade said.

They walked in silence to the town center after that.

The United States was officially neutral in the Nigerian conflict. Nixon had no desire to get into another proxy battle with the Reds while still struggling to extricate America from Vietnam.

So Biafra was dying.

But Cade and Griffin went in anyway—taken by sub off the coast, then escorted by a navy team to the shoreline under cover of darkness.

They’d heard reports of something going on in the captured Biafran territory—something they couldn’t stay neutral about.

The town was the last outpost of the Biafran government. Only their contact waited for them, sitting behind the wheel of a jeep parked in the center of the main square.

They came closer. The man was asleep. Air strikes had hit the town just a few hours earlier.

Griffin tapped the man on the shoulder. His eyes flew open. He saw their faces—their white faces—and relaxed, as much as he could.

“Apologies,” he mumbled, wiping the exhaustion from his eyes. Like everyone else they had seen so far, he spoke English beautifully. It was the official language of Biafra. Cade wondered, for a moment, if that was meant to engender sympathy from America. If so, it didn’t work.

The man sat up, extended his hand toward Cade. “My name is Joseph—”

He stopped abruptly and drew his hand back as if scalded.

Cade saw it in his eyes. Joseph knew. Somehow, he knew what Cade was.

Cade didn’t care. “Where is he?” he demanded.

Joseph simply shook his head and got out of the jeep. He backed away slowly, never taking his eyes off Cade.

Griffin tried to get his attention. “Joseph, I’m Griff. We’re here to help.”

Joseph shook his head again. “No.” He turned and began walking quickly away from them.

Griffin sighed. “Bring him back,” he said.

Cade shifted, ever so slightly. Joseph was ten feet away—less than a hop for Cade. Suddenly he was in front of the Biafran man, who stopped, his shoulders sagging.

“You plan to kill me?” he asked.

“Not why we’re here,” Cade said.

“You called us, Joseph,” Griffin reminded him, as he crossed the distance between them. “You know what’s going on out there. You comfortable with letting it continue?”

Joseph glared back at Griffin. “You were comfortable with letting this happen to my country,” he said. “You let all of this happen.”

“Not our job,” Griffin said.

Joseph’s shoulders sagged even lower. For a moment, he looked ready to sleep, right there, on his feet. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

He walked back toward the jeep without Cade or Griffin forcing him. He appeared resigned as he started the engine.

“Get in,” he said. “I will take you there.”

Cade sat in the back. Griffin took the front seat.

“How did you know about Cade?” Griffin asked.

“We’re closer to the truth here.”

Cade understood what he meant. Griffin didn’t. “You some kind of witch doctor?” he asked.

Joseph gave him a weak smile. “I have a degree in economics,” he said. “I was the deputy minister of finance.”

They drove for an hour, the open country surrounding them on all sides. The jeep ran without a hiccup. Even without food, the Biafrans had gasoline. Their nation sat over a vast pool of oil, and as the war ground on, the refineries never stopped.

Griffin checked his watch. Sunrise would be coming in six hours.

Joseph read the gesture and understood. “We are almost there,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’re never far from the latest atrocity.”

He cranked the wheel of the jeep to the left, and stopped. They were suddenly looking over a long trench.

Corpses. Dozens. Hundreds. Men, women and children. Cade’s eyes fixed on a pair of tiny feet, jutting from under a woman’s torso. Perhaps she had tried to shield the infant with her body. Perhaps she had just fallen that way.

He leaped out of the jeep and began checking the bodies.

It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

He lifted the evidence for Griffin to see: one of the bodies, its limbs neatly severed with surgical precision at the places where the arms and legs terminated in the air.

“It’s him,” Cade said. Then he looked at Joseph.

“There is a camp,” Joseph said. “A few more miles. He should still be there.”

“How many men?” Griffin asked.

Joseph looked amused. Something had finally struck him as funny.

“They won’t be expecting a fight. Don’t you see? They’ve already won.”

They left the jeep a mile from the camp and continued on foot, taking great care not to make any noise.

But Joseph was right; the Nigerian troops were celebrating. They were gathered in a circle around a bonfire, electric lanterns casting harsh light on the center of their camp. A diesel generator churned in the background, blotting out most of their laughter.

Griffin and Cade watched as the Nigerians passed a bottle around.

The soldiers stood by a large metal trailer, a portable Russian field headquarters. The door opened, and a pale man with neatly combed white hair appeared. He wiped his hands on a towel stained dark with blood.

Cade recognized him from the last moment he had seen the man, wearing an SS uniform twenty-five years earlier. He had not aged a day.

Konrad.

Griffin took out his sidearm, checked the magazine. “Remember,” he said to Cade. “We take him alive.”

“What?” Joseph hissed.

“We have our orders,” Griffin said, giving the man an apologetic shrug.

“After everything he has done, you will—”

“Quiet,” Cade said, and they both shut up.

Two men in Soviet fatigues followed Konrad out the door. Military advisers. Or more likely, bodyguards. Konrad was a valuable asset.

Unlike the Nigerian soldiers, they were not drunk. They looked alert and competent.

“I didn’t bring you here to let him escape punishment,” Joseph said to Griffin.

Griffin’s voice held the last thread of patience, threatening to fray. “Look. I’m sorry your country got a shit deal, okay? But we have our job to do. And our job is to bring Konrad back alive, even if that means—”

“Agent Griffin. Look.”

It had taken Cade a moment to see it. Fire was not his friend, and he unconsciously avoided it.

But as he pointed, it became clear even to Griffin and Joseph what Cade had seen.

The bonfire wasn’t made of logs. It was constructed of old tires.

And the bodies of at least three people.

One of the Nigerian soldiers came from the bush, dragging another starved body. This one looked fresh. He hurled it onto the fire. Impossible to tell, in the firelight, if it had been a woman or a child, even for Cade’s night-vision.

The soldier took a metal can from near the trailer and poured more gas on the fire. A huge ball of oily smoke went up into the air, along with a cheer from the other soldiers.

Biafra had no food, but there was still plenty of gasoline.

“Cade . . .” Griffin said. Cade realized he was emitting a low growl.

The skin was almost gone from the corpses. White bone burned to black.

“Cade . . . Konrad is the priority,” Griffin said, his tone almost pleading. “I know it stinks on ice, but he could be finishing his weapon right now. He’s got the parts. Cade, are you listening? Cade . . .”

Griffin said something else. Cade pretended not to hear it. He was already gone.

The hot, still air parted in front of him. He hit the men in the camp like a scythe.

Only Konrad moved, running back into the trailer and locking the door. The Russians were too shocked. The Nigerians didn’t have time.

Out in the bush, he heard Joseph whisper, “My God.”

Then it was over.

Cade turned to the Russians, who were still gaping at him. One raised a pistol, arm shaking badly.

“Cade, damn it, stop!” Griffin yelled. He was panting. He’d run from the bush. His .45 was up, and he had the Russians covered.

Cade edged forward.

“That is an order, Cade,” Griffin said, his voice and the gun shaking. “We can’t touch the advisers. The last thing we need is another incident with the Soviets.”

Cade turned to him. “That’s the last thing? Really?”

Without waiting for a reply, Cade moved to the trailer and tore the metal door from its hinges.

Inside was what looked like an army field hospital, but one turned 180 degrees from saving lives. Blood leaked off a steel gurney from mismatched pieces of human flesh. A large, complex machine stood in one corner, shielded from the dust by long plastic surgical tubes trailing from tanks and pumps.

They led to a row of chairs, lined up against the trailer’s far side. In the chairs were young men—boys, really. Captured refugees from the war.

They were all dead. Desiccated. As if something vital had been sucked from all of them.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to spark life in the horror still on the table.

Konrad stood calmly by his aborted creation, hands in the air.

“You’re here for me, I assume,” he said.

Griffin had entered behind Cade. He looked around.

Konrad shrugged at the corpses. “Another failure. I thought they were healthy enough,” he said. “But starvation has its drawbacks.”

“You sick fuck,” Griffin said.

“Oh, do not judge me so harshly,” Konrad said. “After all, how different am I from your pet there?”

Cade wanted, very badly, to do what his orders forbid him from doing. “I am,” he said, “nothing like you.”

“Really?” Konrad smirked as he looked past Cade and Griffin, at the scene around the campfire. Bodies everywhere. Torn open, like burst sacks of blood. A mirror image to the carnage inside the trailer, the bodies like deflated balloons.

“You’d be hard-pressed to prove it,” Konrad said.

Griffin took a pair of handcuffs from his belt and locked Konrad to Cade’s wrist. “Don’t push it,” he said. “We could always make it look like an accident.”

The Russians only watched as they dragged Konrad out. “Dosvidaniya, comrades,” Griffin said.

Joseph drove them back all the way to the coastline. They arrived in plenty of time to rendezvous with the navy squad.

Griffin was speaking to the crew when Joseph approached Cade.

“What were you trying to prove back there?”

He meant the camp. Cade said, “I should have thought you’d want to see those men dead.”

“I did, yes. But this isn’t your country, or your war, remember?”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“No,” Joseph said. “You wouldn’t have, would you?” He pointed at Konrad, who was being shackled by the sailors and loaded into the boat. “What will happen to him?”

“I don’t know,” Cade said. He had no reason to lie.

“You should learn. Because it’s your responsibility now.”

Cade was, for once, caught off guard. “What does that mean?”

“The boy”—he meant Griffin, who couldn’t have been more than ten years younger than Joseph—“doesn’t understand what you did here tonight. He has the same disease as all Americans. He believes the world can be made to behave, provided one is strong enough. He believes in the lesser evil for the greater good. He believes monsters can be tamed.”

Cade couldn’t argue with that.

“But you know better. You know what will happen if he’s ever given the chance.”

“Why would I know that?”

Joseph gave him the same sad smile as before. “Because you know yourself.”

Griffin called to Cade then. The sub was waiting. Without another word to Joseph, he turned away and joined the others on the raft.

The air strikes began again as they paddled back to the sub.

Cade watched Joseph sit on the beach, as explosions in the distance tore the last of his country apart.