Viral

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.”

Mallory traced the top of a chair-back with his finger.

“No comment?”

“They’re probably right. Do they know who the victim was?”

“Unidentified,” Franklin said. “Nothing on his person. Nothing back yet on fingerprints or dental.”

“Do you want me to give you a name?”

“If you have one.”

“The victim’s name was Ahmed Hassan,” Charlie said.

Franklin’s mouth seemed to tighten.

“You know who he is.”

“Yes.”

“And you know why he was there.”

“No. I don’t. Tell me.”

“He was there to eliminate Frederick Collins.” There was a long pause. Charlie noticed the tension under his eyes. “How did it happen, Richard?”

“What do you mean?”

“No one was supposed to know about Frederick Collins. That was the arrangement. No one was supposed to know he existed. No one was supposed to know who he was or where he was.”

Franklin’s eyebrows arched very slightly. Both men knew that Collins’s identity, his passport, credit cards, and recent history, had been invented by the U.S. government. “It’s airtight, Charlie. No one has access to that information. It’s off the books, the whole thing. That was the arrangement. A single point of contact. You contact me when you want, I contact you. Your job is to hunt down Isaak Priest. Period. It’s your operation. We leave you alone.”

“And it’s not possible that the arrangement was compromised. At any level?”

“Not possible, no.” Franklin watched him. “Not from this end.”

Not from this end. Charlie understood the implication. From his end, maybe. Anna. Anna knew about Collins. She had visited him in Nice, to talk about his father, and the project he had overseen. The parts of the Isaak Priest operation he hadn’t wanted Franklin to know about. But he didn’t want to think that. Wouldn’t think that. Because he knew it wasn’t true.

Franklin said, “We also have a report that Collins may have been in Kampala recently. Which was surprising because there’s no indication Priest has any connection there.”

Charles Mallory didn’t let on his surprise.

“As you say, it’s my operation.”

“Yes. It is. But, frankly, Charlie, I’m afraid we may be at something of an impasse.”

“How so?”

He sighed. “I mean, Collins is useless now. And I’m having a hard time justifying this—”

“Give me ten days,” Mallory said.

“Ten days.”

“Yes.”

After a lengthy silence, Franklin lowered his eyes, nodding once.

“All right.”

“But there are two things I’m going to need to know, Richard. Before I leave here.”

“Go ahead.”

“First: I need to know what happened to Operation Tribal Eyes.”

Franklin showed nothing. He seemed to be waiting for the next question.

Tribal Eyes. A heavily funded signals intelligence project that Charles Mallory had worked on as a consultant, because of his experience in tracking targets in mountainous terrain. The technical coordinator had been Russell Ott, a smarmy, well-connected military contractor who spoke fluent Arabic. Ott had worked with several bad actors in the Middle East and Africa, people the government needed to know about. Charlie had never met Ott, but he’d heard things about him over the years; not good things.

The objective of Tribal Eyes had been two-fold: to aggressively develop and then implement satellite imaging technology more advanced than anything on the market—capable of seeing through a window and reading a note that someone was writing inside a house. In 2009, the government had managed to capture several video images of Osama bin Laden walking from a Mercedes sedan to what seemed to be a French-made armored transport vehicle on a low mountain road in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. But as with several of the government’s other efforts to capture Bin Laden prior to May 1, 2011, this one had failed to produce the prize. They had monitored the location for several weeks and found nothing more, determining that Bin Laden had moved on, almost as if he had known what was happening.

“Why?” Richard Franklin said, finally. Charlie answered with silence, feeling something stir deep within himself, a yearning he couldn’t articulate.

The things he was chasing were different from what Franklin’s branch was pursuing. Charles Mallory’s real clients, he reminded himself, were his father and Paul Bahdru. But there was an overlap. Priest was a name his father and Bahdru had also given him.

“I mean, Tribal Eyes is history, Charlie. Why would you want to know about it now?”

“Because I think it has something to do with Frederick Collins. With what happened to him.”

Franklin made a face. “I thought you said you wanted to leave everything else behind you when you got into this. You wanted to focus on this organization. On finding Priest—”

“I did. But I didn’t realize the two were connected.”

Franklin blinked once. “I don’t see how that’s possible, Charlie. Collins was created after Tribal Eyes was disbanded. Why do you think they’re related?”

“It is possible, Richard. I saw it.”

Franklin gestured impatiently with his right hand. “Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

“Yes. A man came to kill Frederick Collins, in Nice. I saw him. It was a man who had been approached by the American government two years ago. For Tribal Eyes. A Yemen-based wetboy named Ahmed Hassan. Also known as Albert Hahn. Two of his cousins are a pretty big deal in terrorism circles, as you know. Tribal Eyes made use of a process developed in part by Russell Ott, which had a lot of government bucks behind it. It’s probably the most powerful satellite imaging in the world right now. Ott, interestingly, also had a way of contacting Hassan when other people couldn’t. He’d done business with the network. That was one of the reasons he was kept on the government payroll. Two points of intersection, Richard, and I don’t think that’s just coincidence.”

Franklin pushed at the coaster under the lemonade glass. “So what are you asking for?”

“I’d like to know how Hassan might have learned about Collins. I need to know anything you have on Russell Ott and Tribal Eyes. I need every loose thread, Richard. I’m not taking a chance again until I know everything you