times, after, they spoke about what they did: 'I snapped that guy's finger and heard that crack,'" Klaussen said. "They were boasting about it. They enjoyed it."

Klaussen was disturbed by their stories, even if he was uncertain how much to believe. Chris, after all, was an old friend. "I told him many times: 'What the fuck is wrong with you?'"

The money is good, De Meyer would respond. "It's not about the money. You never think that that guy may have actually done nothing wrong? Why would you do that?" It's fun, De Meyer would say.

Klaussen figured that as long as he wasn't ordered to commit violence himself, he could live with working for an organization that perpetuated it. His own duties often struck him as a pointless waste of his skills, like when Le Roux ordered him to the Comoros Islands, off the coast of Mozambique, to register one of his yachts, the Mou Man Tai. Klaussen was instructed to talk to a local law- yer, who took him to a government minister. Unable to locate a hotel on the island within Le Roux's standard $80-a-night budget, he booked one for $250. For a week, he waited for Smith to ap- prove the hotel and send funds by Western Union. Eventually they arrived, but in the meantime Le Roux had decided to register the boat in the Philippines. Klaussen returned home.

"Many, many times we did things, we were like what the hell are we doing here? We didn't see the point of it," he said. "You ask yourself why. But it's just something that comes up in his mind and only he knows the exact reason why. He just sends you."

Many days, De Meyer played video games on the large-screen TV in the house, waiting for Smith to send down a new job from Le Roux. "He tried to keep you busy, because he was paying you no matter if you worked or not. But sometimes you had a week or two weeks where you had nothing to do," Klaussen said.

The three housemates had little idea what the rest of The Com- pany was up to. They would see what they assumed were Le Roux employees hanging around Sid's, his bar, but kept their distance. They knew the boss liked his underlings siloed from each other.