“I've got something,” Smith would tell him. “You've got to go and break a few fingers, and you've got to cut one off. You okay with that?”     What the fuck is wrong with these people? Klaussen thought.     Then, in early 2009, Le Roux himself called Klaussen to a meet- ing with a proposal. He had a different kind of job, a critical proj- ect for The Company that he needed someone responsible and ambitious to oversee. The goal, as Klaussen understood it, would later seem comical, unbelievable: Le Roux wanted to start a tuna- fishing business in Somalia.

    It sounded mental. But once Le Roux explained the logic, Klaussen grasped the power of the idea. For the previous few years the in- ternational media had been riveted by stories of Somali pirates, who ventured out into the Indian Ocean on rickety boats, armed with AK-47s, and stormed passing ships. Their business model was simple: Demand a ransom for the release of crews and cargo, and wait for Western governments and shipping companies to pay up. Less known was the origin of the piracy industry, which had emerged as an effort to drive away foreign fishing boats that were illegally trolling Somalia's well-stocked waters in search of tuna, sharks, and other valuable catch. The pirates had since moved on to hijacking more lucrative prey—oil tankers and cargo ships— although to Western media they still spun their mission as a kind of unofficial “Somali coast guard,” one the broken state couldn't supply. But they had also largely succeeded in their original goal of scaring off the foreign fishing boats that had been depleting fish stocks. Now the fish were thriving, with no one to harvest them. Le Roux showed Klaussen satellite photos of massive schools of tuna, just offshore, waiting to be scooped up. He reasoned that a locally based company, operating with the approval of the pirates but shipping their catch internationally, could make a killing.     Notwithstanding the fact that Somalia was considered one of