“We endorsed them in the context of the war.”
“Yes. We even rationalized that they had a moral purpose.”
“Preventing millions of additional deaths, supposedly, had the war continued,” Jon said.
“Yes, supposedly. More recently, we have accepted that tens of thousands of civilians died in Iraq in the course of our war there.”
“That’s active endorsement.”
“Yes. Passive endorsement is different: Knowing an atrocity is occurring and making no effort to stop it, even if we have the capacity and the resources to do so. Or, worse, not bothering to think about it. Keeping our concerns narrow and close to home. Eyes closed.”
“Like Rwanda? Or Darfur?”
“Among many other examples, yes. This kind of endorsement, of course, has no moral purpose. Caswell used to say that as problems worsen, particularly in the developing world, we will become increasingly lazy in our response, as a kind of deflective mechanism. Otherwise, we would become too overwhelmed.”
Jon shrugged an acknowledgment. “Kind of makes sense.”
“Your stories are telling people things about a part of the world they know very little about. About countries they’ve never even heard of. Places that ninety-nine percent of them will never visit. I think that’s good, Jon. Let’s keep telling them things they don’t know. Maybe open some people’s eyes a little.”
Church turned to Jon, then. He was frowning. “So, anyway, what’s the snag?”
“Pardon?”
“You said you hit a snag.”
“Oh. My source disappeared.”
“Your brother.”
Jon nodded. Roger was the only person he had told about his anonymous sources—and only after some coercion; it was the only way the magazine would run his stories. He had revealed two of them, the only two he had: Big Gulp, a telephone source who lived in Silicon Valley and sometimes called Jon from pay phones outside 7-Elevens, and his brother.
“Disappeared how?”
“He was supposed to call yesterday.”
“And? …”
Jon showed the palms of his hands. “He didn’t. He was going to give me something.”
“ ‘New details,’ you said.”
“Yeah. But something happened.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. I know my brother.” Jon Mallory looked away, worried suddenly that something had happened to Charlie, that he might be dead. “Anyway, I think I’m going to travel for a bit. Thinking about maybe taking a little trip to Saudi Arabia. See some of the sights.”
Church tugged at one sleeve, then the other. “Joking?”
“Partly.”
Jon stood to go.
“Oh, by the way, if you haven’t seen Melanie Cross’s blog from last night, you might take a look.”
“Okay,” Jon said, wincing. “Thanks, Roger, as always.”
Jon left the door a third of the way open, as Church liked. His heart began to race as he walked down the hallway, thinking about Melanie’s blog, which he had avoided looking at today. He returned to his closet-sized office, booted the computer, hit his “Favorites” button. Clicked open her site. “Cross Currents,” she called it. In large letters under the name, in case anyone missed the pun, was her byline: “By Melanie Cross.”
He skimmed through her entry from the night before. This one seemed pretty straightforward: a Federal Trade Commission insider’s reaction to the proposed merger of a major online ad-serving company with one of the world’s largest search engines—a story she’d been covering in the newspaper. But then Jon’s eyes drifted to the bottom of the entry, to her “Etc.” section, and he saw what Roger was talking about:
“… And, on the West Coast, software pioneer Perry Gardner is reportedly less than pleased with the assertions that the Gardner Foundation’s investment policies in Africa are somehow in conflict with its mission.
“An associate of Gardner is reportedly considering a point-by-point rebuttal of assertions in journalist Jon Mallory’s Weekly American blog last week, but is still counting to ten.
“J.M.—who, in the interest of full disclosure, is an acquaintance—promised some ‘new details’ in his blog today. But sources speculate that these ‘details’ may be delayed. We’ll stay tuned.”
Mallory felt a chill race through him. “May be delayed.” Who would have told her that? Did she make it up? An “acquaintance?” He picked up the office phone and started punching in her number, but then stopped, remembering that he was supposed to be mad at her.
Instead, he went back to the computer screen to search for flights to Saudi Arabia.
Summer’s Cove, Oregon
Douglas Chase still felt a rumble of apprehension every time he made the journey to the waiting room in Building 67. It was a privilege, of course, to be summoned. But he had made this journey so many times that it seldom felt that way to him anymore.
It wasn’t only the inconvenience—the absurd layers of security and secrecy and the wait, which could surpass an hour. It was also the man himself: a cold, complicated person who rarely showed gratitude to the people closest to him. A man he was to refer to only as the “Administrator.”
The Administrator had done some nice things for Douglas Chase, paying him handsomely over the years for carrying out what had often seemed routine negotiations. He had also praised him in ways that no one else had. That was how the Administrator hooked people: he made them feel special. That had stopped some time ago, and yet the man still had an inexplicable hold over him.
When the door to the Administrator’s office finally slid open, Douglas Chase stood and his apprehension evaporated.
He silently took a seat in front of the familiar desk and waited. His boss was reading a report. He would not look up or speak for seven minutes.
Finally, the Administrator showed his thin, flat smile.
“I need you to arrange for an unusual payment.”
“All right,” Chase said.
“It has to be completed quickly. Before October 5. You’ll have to deal with your fellow in Johannesburg on this.”
“All right. A payment to whom?”
“Isaak Priest.”
Chase nodded. The Administrator then gave him the details, none of which Douglas Chase was permitted to write down.
As he stood to leave, Chase decided to ask one last question. Occasionally, the Administrator allowed him a glimpse of the larger picture. “What happens on October 5?” he asked.
“The wheel of history turns,” his boss said.
As he left the office, Douglas Chase felt exhilarated. Such was the power of the man known as the Administrator.
ELEVEN
Friday, September 18
JON MALLORY LAY IN bed blinking at the morning light. The air was cool through the window screen and he smelled something good cooking in someone else’s kitchen. Then he heard the sound again that had wakened him. He reached for his cell phone and saw the call was from Saudi Arabia.
Honi Gandera.
“Hello,” he said, sitting up.
Charlie had warned him to be careful, to use disposable phones and pre-paid calling cards. To avoid saying actual names during phone conversations. It had seemed a little paranoid to Jon at first. Not anymore.
“Jon?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s Honi.” Jon winced. “I’ve checked around a little for you.”
“Okay.”
“I made some inquiries. I was able to find someone who knows your brother.”
“Really. Go on.”
“Has done business with him, anyway. I don’t think you’ll find him here in Saudi Arabia, Jon.”
“No?” Jon walked to the window, suddenly wide awake.
“His company is based in Riyadh,” Honi said. “With an office in Dubai. But their contracts, their business, is mostly elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’m told he had an ongoing project in Kuala Lumpur. But I u
nderstand he is, or was, in Nairobi most recently. I’m told he may be renting an office there right now, as well as an apartment.”
Jon squinted at the sunlight in the trees, feeling a surge of hope. “That’s quite a bit of information. How did you get it?”
“Good fortune. I located someone who worked with him. A subcontractor. All in confidence, of course. But a reliable man.”
“Any indication that he’s there now?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m told. I can’t vouch for it, Jon. He’s quite a mystery, your brother.”
“I know that. Do you have a contact? An address? Anything else?”
“Yes, actually, I do,” he said, and gave it to him—a street address on Radio Road, twelve blocks from the twenty-four-hour Green and White Club, in downtown Nairobi.
Jon jotted down the street number on the pad beside his bed and began to memorize it. “What’s he doing in Kenya? Do you know who the client is?”
“I can’t give you a name. This is the rest of what I was told: His company has been setting up surveillance systems outside of the city. Possibly for a private business moving to the Rift Valley. Apparently, he may have a message for you there, in Nairobi.”
“Really. A message?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“That he may have a message for me there?”
“Yes.”
Jon waited a moment, not sure how much of it to believe. “Okay,” he said. It was, in fact, a lot more information than he had expected, and he wondered about its integrity—if this might in some way be a trap.
Don’t try too hard. The information will come to you. Learn to identify it and understand it. Pay attention. Among the last things his brother had said to him.
“Bettawfeeq, my friend.”
Good luck.
“Likewise.”
TWELVE
Saturday, September 19
OUTWARDLY, THE TALL, STURDILY built man with short-cropped blond hair and a stubbly growth of beard seemed no different from the other passengers on the Metro train hurtling toward the suburbs of northern Virginia, fifty feet beneath the streets of Washington, D.C. Eyes slightly glazed, looking toward an advertisement above the doors. Holding onto a pole for balance as the subway car lurched side to side through the underground tunnel at sixty miles an hour.
But Charles Mallory’s mind was not in idle mode this afternoon. He could not afford that. Not after what had happened to Paul Bahdru. He was using the time in transit to work through puzzles. To think about three people who were going to figure in his life over the next several days. And to wonder about a fourth.
Charlie was en route to a meeting with Richard Franklin, head of the CIA’s Special Projects Division, his only remaining liaison with the intelligence community and his sole point of contact on what Franklin called “The Isaak Priest Project.” It was Franklin who had sent him to Africa to find Priest.
Mallory and Franklin had weeks earlier established a private code, a simple system of communication based on numbers. Six numbers, six meanings. Valid for six meetings, during the span of this operation. A system known only to them—although that was what he had thought with Paul Bahdru, too. And somehow that had gone terribly wrong.
The message Franklin had sent began, “Thought this was interesting.” Four words. Corresponding with a number. The number representing a meeting place that the two men had agreed upon and memorized. A code that existed only in their heads.
Number 4 referenced a parking space at a shopping center garage in Arlington, Virginia, a five-minute walk from the Ballston Metro stop. Pasted in the window with Franklin’s message had been a news story about anti-government uprisings in Iran, something Franklin had evidently copied from The Washington Post‘s website. For Charles Mallory, the story contained only two pieces of pertinent information, and they had nothing to do with Iran. Two other numbers, agreed upon verbally, which corresponded to words in the story. Six and seventeen.
A date and a time.
Charlie had counted out the words in the story: The sixth was “protest,” the seventeenth “nullify.” One signified a day of the week, the other a time. The first word contained seven letters, translating to the seventh day of the week. Saturday. The second word corresponded to a number, also. “Nullify” began with “n.” The fourteenth letter in the alphabet. Which translated to 1400 hours.
So, Richard Franklin was asking to see him at 1400 hours.
2 P.M. on Saturday. Today.
The rest was up to Charlie. He was not obligated to accept the request or even to acknowledge it. That was the arrangement. If he wanted, he could let it disappear into cyberspace and move on. But this time, he would respond. He had to. This time, he needed to know more. After Kampala, there was too much at risk, and there was nothing, it seemed, that he could afford not knowing.
As the train snaked through the concrete tunnel below the Virginia suburbs, Charles Mallory glanced at a man standing by the opposite set of doors who had let his eyes linger on Charlie a moment too long. He took inventory of the others—a young man holding onto a pole, nodding to a beat playing through earphones; an older woman staring at a newspaper, then closing her eyes, then opening them, then closing them—and returned to the man. He was not going to look at him again, he saw. It was okay.
Charlie went back to his thoughts. To the three people:
A defense contractor named Russell Ott, who had helped coordinate the surveillance project code-named Tribal Eyes.
Ahmed Hassan, the assassin who had tried to kill him in France, whose organization was known as the Hassan Network.
And his father, whose final message about a shadowy African businessman named Isaak Priest included several questions, one of which might be answered by a former colleague of his father’s. A man named Peter Quinn.
CHARLES MALLORY EXITED the subway train and proceeded through the underground tunnel to the parking garage in Ballston Common Mall. He walked with the crowds as long as he could, then took a stairway into the garage. He found the designated spot, on the third level. An Escalade, parked earlier in the day, presumably, reserving the space.
Charlie looked at his watch as he approached the passenger door.
1:59 P.M.
He reached for the handle, pulled open the door, and got in. Behind the wheel was a familiar face: Richard Franklin, Ph.D. Head of Special Projects Division. Former deputy director for clandestine services. Former CIA analyst. A mentor to Charles Mallory when he had come to work for the Agency years ago.
“Greetings.”
“Richard.”
“I’m glad you decided to do this.”
“Not a decision I made, Richard.”
FRANKLIN GLANCED AT him but said nothing. Didn’t speak for the next twenty-seven minutes as he drove them through the busy suburban streets to the Beltway and then out toward Virginia farm country. Franklin was an unusual mix of intelligence and instinct. Silver-haired, in his mid-sixties now, he conveyed an air of knowledge and sophistication, yet he retained a robust physical presence, as well—an active man who, like Charles Mallory, understood the connection between mental and physical acuity. He was dressed in a tan sports jacket and open blue shirt, khaki slacks. Driving five miles an hour above the speed limit, he took them into the rural suburbs of northern Virginia, where the road became two lanes. Winding, hilly terrain. Horse country. Then he made another turn, onto a long gravel road, finally pulling up to a stone house set on a slight rise.
Franklin’s division, Special Projects, fell under the umbrella of the CIA’s Special Activities Division. Traditionally, the SAD had been divided into two sections, one for paramilitary operations and the other for political action. But the distinctions had blurred with the rapid development of new technologies and cybercrime. The division relied heavily now on “blue badgers”—private contractors like Charles Mallory, who were not officially part of the government and did not carry identification showing they were.
Frankli
n stopped under the carport, next to another vehicle, a Jeep Liberty with Maryland plates. This was a safe house, owned by the government. Its parameters were fenced off, the grounds protected by wireless sensors, monitored by camera towers and a guard station at the rear gate. A wide open, nearly flat space; no one could approach the house without being spotted from a distance.
No house is really safe, though, Charlie thought.
“Fly here from Nice?” Franklin asked as they walked to the side door.
“To Heathrow. Heathrow to Dulles.”
“British Air?”
“Continental.”
“How are their meals these days?”
Mallory shrugged. “Airplane food.”
“Get to see a decent movie, anyway?”
“Skipped the movies.”
Franklin unlocked the door and led Mallory inside. Neither man was much for small talk. It was a tidy, airy house, single-story, with antique furnishings, hardwood floors, a fireplace. Surprisingly warm. They walked into the living room, and Charlie stood by the picture window.
“Coffee? Lemonade?”
“No, thanks.”
Franklin went into the kitchen. He came out with a glass of lemonade for himself.
“Not a decision you made. Interesting.”
Franklin sat on an antique easy chair. Whether he was happy or in crisis, his face rarely changed. But it was like detecting seasons in the tropics, Charlie had found; the changes were there, they were just subtle.
“That’s right,” Mallory said, still standing. “But go ahead. Tell me why you contacted me.”
“Something of the same thing on this end, I suppose.” He waited until Charlie was looking at him. “We had a report that Frederick Collins was involved in a shooting death in Nice two nights ago. That may not have to get out to the media, if we’re fortunate. But the police are fairly certain Collins was the perpetrator.”
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