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Afghanistan.

Hassan moved sideways a step, then another, slightly shorter, step. Charlie saw his dark, cold eyes, concentrating on the window. His eyelashes dropping and rising. He saw him lift the gun again and aim. Sighting his prey. He lowered it, moved another step. Focused, insanely focused. Charlie held his breath again. When the man moved once more, he raised his right hand and fired the Glock, seven inches from Hassan’s left temple.

The rifle fell to the asphalt first, then Hassan on top of it.

Charlie quickly checked the man’s pockets for a wallet, a cell phone, cash, anything at all. Nothing. His pockets were empty. He left him there and hurried through the alley to the north street end, then a block and a half to the Peugeot. He drove through the busy night streets toward the harbor.

They had surprised him in Kampala. This time, he had won. But Frederick Collins was going to have to disappear now. For good. And, for a while at least, Charles Mallory would have to disappear, too.

TEN

THE WEEKLY AMERICAN OFFICES were in the Foggy Bottom section of Northwest Washington, a few blocks from the State Department and about a half mile from the National Mall. The magazine occupied the first three floors of a small 1960s office building: advertising and circulation on the first floor, editorial on the second, executive offices on the third.

Jon Mallory kept a cubbyhole office on the second floor, which he shared with another writer. Jon visited the offices once or twice a week, mostly to talk with Roger Church, his editor. Offices made him uneasy.

Once he finished going through his e-mails, he knocked twice on Church’s office door, which was always one-third open. Church was a rangy, soft-spoken Brit with a mop of silvery hair, once an almost legendary international reporter who seemed trapped now in an editor’s job.

He looked up from his computer and motioned for Jon to come in and close the door. As was customary, his tie had been loosened three or four inches, his shirt sleeves rolled up below his elbows.

“Busy?”

“No. Please.”

Church, who always seemed willing to engage in conversation, had the restless energy of a twenty-five- year-old and the weathered, lined face of an old man. Jon Mallory admired him.

“A lot of e-mails about your blog this morning.”

“Or lack of it.”

“Yeah. People were expecting something.”

“I know, sorry. I hit a snag yesterday. Maybe I was a little premature in writing what I did.”

“No need to be sorry. As I said the other day, I’m with you on this. Nothing I’ve heard has changed that.”

Jon looked at him. “Okay,” he said. “What’ve you heard?”

Church showed a rare smile and shifted in his chair. “One of our board members weighed in,” he said. “Same concerns you’ve already heard. We’re creating ‘misleading impressions.’ Raising unnecessary questions.”

Jon could guess who: Kenneth Luskin. Billionaire investor. Executive board member of the Gardner Foundation. Colleague of Perry Gardner.

“People aren’t reading the whole story, he says,” Church went on. “They’re just seeing what the blogs and wire services pick up.”

“I hope that’s not true.”

“Some are, some aren’t.” Church stroked the sides of his chin. “I understand it, Jon. It goes with the territory. Any foundation that’s as large and influential as they are is going to be the subject of controversy from time to time. And considering all the good they do, they’re naturally going to be defensive. That’s business, and this is journalism.”

“Okay.”

“What I like about your stories is they don’t take a point of view. You’re writing about people. These larger issues are background. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with letting people know a little about how philanthropies operate. How charitable foundations invest their money. I’d like to see a third story.”

“Good. I would, too.”

Church looked out toward the State Department building rising above the university offices and a parking garage. “You know, Jon, there was a man I used to know called Arthur Caswell. A great reporter who once worked for British intelligence in Africa.” He absently tugged at his shirt sleeve. “One of his pet theories was that over the past several decades, the West—America in particular—has become overwhelmed by what he called moral laziness. He characterized it as an epidemic that worsened proportionally as the world’s problems worsened. He had this idea about active endorsement versus passive endorsement, and how we’ve increasingly come to passively endorse some very terrible things. He’d give the example of what happened at the end of World War II—the fire-bombings and the nuclear annihilation of Japanese cities, which killed tens of thousands of civilians—as active endorsement.”

“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.”