 Penguin Random House Audio presents The Truffle Underground, a tale of mystery, mayhem, and manipulation in the shadowy market of the world's most expensive fungus. By Ryan Jacobs. Read for you by Ari Fliacos. Authors Note All events, characters, and locations portrayed in this account are real. No names have been changed, but some sources have been kept anonymous. Time and vice are difficult to observe firsthand, so all scenes at which I was not present are based upon extensive interviews with victims, law enforcement officials, or other sources with credible knowledge about how they occurred. In a few instances, minor details lost to history, sources, memories, or industry secrecy have been supposed in a way that is consistent with other available facts. This is especially applicable to sections that focus on the early and mid-19th century, which are supported by contemporaneous but sparse accounts. These suppositions were considered carefully and always aimed to get the reader closer to the reality of what happened. Much of my reporting was conducted through French and Italian translators. In favor of avoiding distraction, distinctions between interviews conducted in English and those conducted in a foreign language were not made unless they were directly relevant to the story. Where does it ever say anywhere that only bad can come from bad actions? Maybe sometimes the wrong way is the right way. You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be, or spin it another way. Sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right. Boris in Dona Tarts The Goldfinch, 2013 Good food, good eating is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. Anthony Bourdain in The New Yorker, 1999 Prologue Underground Threads of fungus swirl through the heat and dark of the rocky soil. They spend years twisting, extending, contorting, in perpetual search of nutrients to bring back to their host tree. It took thirty years and a series of improbable incidents for the fungus to connect with the roots to begin with, and now it will take even more luck for the colony burrowing through the dirt to find a fungal mate. But if it happens, an invisible knot will bubble up from this fateful connection sometime in the spring. A primordium, a jumble of tissue that, under a microscope, resembles a ball. Sample complete. Ready to continue?