Viral

along, trying to force the pedestrians to part around it. Four elderly women pushed together with their heads down, walking right into them. Jon felt the man tug at his arm again, pulling left. On the next block, the walking space narrowed; cars were parked at the curb; a lamppost interrupted the pedestrian flow, causing a bottleneck. Jon felt a growing panic. But he also sensed that something about the other man didn’t fit; he seemed too polished to be doing this. The sidewalk became more congested, and for a moment they stopped moving. Again, he felt the man’s fingers tightening on his arm, forcing him around people. The sun was blocked by the tall buildings here, the air cool and stagnant. He felt the fingers gripping, steering him left, creating a passing lane. Then the man loosened his grip. That was the pattern.

He tightened his fingers when they came to another stop, this time at an intersection, standing on the curb. Then the traffic passed and they moved into the street again, and the grip loosened.

Only this time, in the instant that he let go, Jon jerked his arm away and spun in a circle. As the man tried to grab him, Jon barreled back into the crowd, the way they had just come, smashed through a clutch of people and kept running. As he had expected, the man turned and for an instant hesitated. It was all he needed. Jon Mallory was gone, making his way along the sides of the buildings, pushing through the stream of people, seeing an opening and breaking to his right, into an alley. He ran clear through the dark shadows to an adjacent street, then half a block to another alley. There he stopped, to catch his breath, crouching beside a dumpster, breathing the scents of garbage and urine and fresh pastries, listening for footsteps. But nothing came—nothing he could see or hear. He had a few minutes to make the right moves now, to find a taxi and keep his appointment. My brother’s appointment.

Jon stood. Gazed down the alley the way he had come; then the other direction. Nothing. He listened closely: restaurant sounds, silverware clinking, traffic in the next block, voices. What now? He had lost his bag. But he still had his laptop and the envelope from his brother. The carry-on wasn’t important. Just clothes and toiletries. He could buy more of those. He walked deeper into the alley, still catching his breath. A series of doors, he saw, opened into shops and restaurants. Delivery entrances, some latched, some not. Pick one. Jon opened a screen door and stood for a moment in the storage area at the back of a restaurant. Boxes of vegetables, shelves of cans and jars. He passed through the kitchen, smelled basil and spices, walked by a cubby office where a woman looked up, startled, but didn’t say a word, and into the public area without acknowledging anyone. Exiting out the front onto a busy street, he saw a cab stand in the next block. There. He jogged along the sidewalk toward the intersection, staying under the storefront awnings, head down, maneuvering through people, keeping an eye on the cab stand. He checked his watch: 1:08. He could still get a cab to the address on time. If he missed this appointment, what would happen?

Jon reached the corner and waited to cross. Two crossings and he would be there. A car horn bleated. Across the street, a man was shouting in Swahili. Two crossings. Jon stood at the front of a group of people. He stepped off the curb. The light changed, but the traffic kept coming. Pedestrians pushed forward around him, tentatively, into the intersection, forcing the buses to stop. Across the street, and then another wait. One more crossing. The traffic thinned and he decided to cross against the signal. 1:10.

He jogged out into the intersection but stopped as a speeding mini-bus hurtled by. For a moment, the sunlight blinded him. Just thirty steps and I’m in the cab.

But then something else got in his way—a vendor, a street merchant in an ankle-length robe, cutting across the road, toward him. What is this?

“Watch it!” someone shouted from the sidewalk.

A mini-bus horn blared. He heard the man shouting in Swahili, someone else in the background chanting “Safari! Safari!” Jon looked to his left, saw another car gunning at him from the glare of sunlight. He looked for the cab stand, stepped off. Another car coming at him, screeching its brakes. The cab he had been eyeing pulled from the curb. Jon turned in a half circle, and he saw the husky man in the olive-colored suit standing on the crowded sidewalk behind the cab stand. Watching.

Too late! He turned to cross back the other way, but the chaos of traffic was coming at him again. He was stranded on the island between lanes. No: a car in the curb lane stopped, and the driver seemed to be motioning him across. But the other two lanes of traffic were still coming, and a cacophony of car horns began to sound behind the stopped car. He stepped down, looked for an opening and suddenly felt something holding him—a hand hard against his face, pushing him down. A hand against his mouth. He smelled perspiration and something else, unfamiliar; he heard a car accelerate violently, a screech of tires. Saw another man’s large, dark eyes, looking down at him. Then nothing.

HE WOKE, FEELING nauseated, in a dark, humid, earthy space. His thoughts tried to catch up as his eyes began to discern shapes in the room. Two folding chairs. A ladder. Shovels.

He lit the face of his watch: 2:55. He had been unconscious for less than two hours, then. They had given him something fast-acting and short-term, an inhaled anesthetic, probably.

Why? Jon tried to piece together what had happened—the cab stand, the stocky man in the olive suit, the stopped car, the hand on his face. The man must have come up behind him and placed a cloth over his mouth. Was that what Sam Sullivan had meant by the gangs for hire? His mind flashed to images of hostages lined up in terrorism videos.

Minutes passed. He heard a crunch of car tires outside, the sound of an engine idling. The metal door slid open, and a bright light filled the room. Metal walls, a peaked roof. He was in an old tool shed, in a heavily wooded area.

“Are you awake? Time to go,” a voice said with a trace of a British accent.

Jon Mallory stood, trying to focus on the man who had spoken. A trim, dark-skinned man with fine facial features, wearing black clothing. He turned and let Mallory pass, then closed the door. The sun glared through the trees; the air was full of gnats. A Dodge van idled on a tire-track road, smelling of burning diesel fuel, side panel door open.

“Let’s go. Get in,” the man said.

Jon climbed in the back seat and the man slid the panel closed. His captor sat in the passenger seat, in front of him, and closed the door. The van began to slowly rock forward over the rutted road, which cut a narrow tunnel through the trees. The driver, he realized, was the man who had abducted him on the street—the stocky man in the olive suit.

“What’s happening?”

After a long silence, the man in front of him, resting his arm on the seat-back, said, “We’re getting you out of here. Are you all right? You look like you’ve been in a brawl.”

“I’m all right,” Jon said.

“You walked by Green Street early. Gave yourself away. Then you went back a second time,” he said. “We didn’t want you going past a third or fourth time. All right? This is for your protection. Just sit back and relax.” He sighed. “We have about a forty-minute drive to the airport.”

“Kenyatta?”

“No. We’re going to a cargo field to the north. We just got the clearance.”

Let the information come to you.

Jon took a deep breath and stared through the windshield. “What was it you gave me?”

The driver turned this time. “Sevoflurane,” he said. “Not so bad, is it?”

“Well, um.…”

“Sometimes used for women in childbirth,” the driver said. “Doesn’t get deep into the bloodstream. No side effects, other than nausea.”

Jon Mallory watched the sunlight flickering through the trees as the van bounced along the rutted road. The air conditioning was set a little too high, blowing into his face from the center console.

“My name’s Chaplin, by the way,” the other man said. “Joseph Chaplin.”

“Okay.” Chaplin reached back to shake his hand. His grip was surprisingly soft, as if he were handing him an object to feel.

“This is Ben Wilson,” he said. The driver turned and nodded.

As he sat back again, Jon felt something on the seat beside him and saw that it was his bag. They hadn’t intended to steal it, after all. Maybe the man in the olive suit had just taken it so Jon wouldn’t try to fight him—so he could whisk him out of there without attracting attention.