forgot to say, you call that dog back, because I have a backup of all the information that I know about you: your family in the Netherlands, everything. And it's going to go out, if something happens to me." He'd heard something similar in a movie. He hung up, then called back a few hours later. "Okay, I apologize, I shouldn't have said that. But what did you find out about the money I took?"

"Well, I was going to apologize to you, because you're right, you didn't," Le Roux said. "It doesn't make sense." The dates on the reports Le Roux had received from the guys still in Somalia didn't match the originals that Klaussen had saved. The evidence that Klaussen had stolen the funds, in other words, had been forged. "I told Joe already, called him to come back," Le Roux said. Then the man who had just ordered a hit on Klaussen instead offered him a job, managing the pharmaceutical side of the business, at a salary of $40,000 a month. "Come to Manila and let's talk," he said.

Klaussen declined.

"Listen, you have my word nothing's gonna happen to you," Le Roux said. "You want a job, call me."

Klaussen wasn't naïve enough to trust Le Roux, but he felt hopeful that he had finally escaped the organization. "I walked out at the right time, without breaking too many laws, or serious laws," he said. At least for now he'd managed to wriggle out from under the hit. But he still seethed with a feeling that he'd been be- trayed, that after all he'd done and all he'd overlooked, his boss had ordered him dead on an ill-informed whim.

"He lost my respect by ordering a hit on me," Klaussen said. "When I threatened him that I was gonna give him up, I meant it. I meant every single word of that. Apparently he didn't take that seriously enough."