Viral

“You know my brother, then?”

Joseph Chaplin made an affirmative sound.

“You work with him.”

“Yes.” He half-turned to face Mallory. “I do. I run operations for him.”

Jon rubbed the bruise on his face. “I’m going to Sundiata?”

“Yes. Your questions will be answered once you get there. He wanted you to know that.”

“My brother did.”

“Yes.”

“So he set this up.”

“Mmm.”

“It isn’t based in Kenya at all, then, is it?”

“He wants you to write about what you see when you get to Sundiata. All right? But he wants you to be careful.”

“Meaning? …”

“You’ll learn more when you arrive, as I say. But just understand there’s an urgency to this. And also understand their armor. Understand that they are armored in ways that no one else is. So be careful.”

Jon watched the twisting road, waiting. “In what ways?”

Chaplin said, “Do you know what quantum encryption is?”

“Sort of,” Jon said. “It’s.… Isn’t it a theoretically unbreakable encryption communication system, based on the laws of quantum mechanics?”

“It’s the process of sending data by photons. The smallest unit of light,” Chaplin said. “The photons become polarized, and the messages they carry are impenetrable. It isn’t just theoretical, though. It’s been developed by your own government, but only over short distances—from the White House to the Pentagon, for instance. Someone in the private sector has developed it over somewhat longer distances. This network pooled its resources and, we believe, has managed to merge it with fiber optics and satellite communications. They’re operating it now in Africa. That’s how they’re bypassing us.”

“That’s the armor.”

He didn’t answer; he didn’t need to. The forest was thinning, Jon saw; ahead were rolling hills and fields of tall yellow grasses.

“And where is my brother? Why isn’t he telling me this himself?”

Chaplin exhaled dramatically. “I don’t know. I saw him two days before he disappeared,” he said, making eye contact again. “On Saturday. He disappeared last Monday. His office was raided on Friday.”

Friday. Two days after he was supposed to call. The day after Jon Mallory talked with Honi.

“My brother had a meeting with someone last week. Right before he disappeared.”

“Yes.”

“What happened? Who was he planning to meet?”

Chaplin looked to the road. Jon sensed that he was a cautious man who picked his words carefully. Finally, he said, “Paul Bahdru was his name.”

Bahdru. A name Jon recognized. The Ugandan journalist and political activist.

Chaplin was studying Jon Mallory now. “You know him.”

“I know of him. So that’s who was going to give him the ‘details?’ And the last you heard from my brother was two days before this meeting?”

“No.” Chaplin was facing forward again. In the distance, Jon saw rows of low trees that might be a tea plantation. “I said that was the last I saw him. I heard from him in the early afternoon. On Monday. The day he disappeared.”

“And? …”

Jon watched the back of Chaplin’s head, the taut muscles of his neck twitching as he scanned the road. “He told me that you were going to come to Kenya in a few days, he would see to that, and that he was going to need me to help you, to get you out of the country.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants you to go there and be a witness. He wants you to tell this story. Okay? To Sundiata. It’s a tragic, almost invisible story, and it needs to be told. He needs you to be a professional witness. Are you up for that?”

“I guess.”

But Jon felt his heartbeat accelerate. He imagined the size of all he didn’t know. Then he saw Chaplin’s shoulders tense. His head hunched forward and looked up through the glass. Ben Wilson turned off the air conditioning, took his foot off the accelerator. Jon heard it now, too: the rotors of a helicopter. Becoming louder and then lifting, turning fainter.

“It’s okay,” Chaplin said. Several minutes later, the driver steered onto a rough gravel road; he followed it alongside a dry creek bed for another kilometer or so, stopping in the shade beneath a canopy of mangroves. “The airfield is across the creek there. You’ll have to travel the rest of the way on foot,” Chaplin said. “Go to the middle terminal. There’s a hangar there, an office marked Hangar H-6. Show them your work visa, and you’ll be taken care of. If you make it home, you may call this number.” He handed Jon a folded scrap of paper. “Okay?”

Jon was speechless. He opened the door. Smelled burning oil in the breeze, heard the revving of an airplane engine preparing for takeoff. He stood in the shadows, about to ask another question, but saw that Chaplin was shaking his head. “Go on, we need to get back.”

Jon Mallory glanced at the number jotted on the scrap of paper, recognized the British country code. He closed the door and tried to wave thanks through the front window, but the van was already moving away, making a hard U-turn in the dirt, heading back the way they had come. Jon turned and, feeling a wave of nausea, made for the small terminal across the creek-bed.

If you make it home.

ISAAK PRIEST GAZED out at the setting sun through the birch and eucalyptus trees along the Green Monkey River, struck again by how smoothly things had gone. Everything was operational now. The land and airfields had all been secured. The vaccines delivered on trucks and trains, in hundreds of separate containers, to clinics along the perimeter. Already, 137 wind turbines had been installed in the countryside, the start of what would eventually be the world’s largest wind farm. President Muake had been surprisingly easy to work with.

Priest had long since earned a reputation in several African nations as a brilliant, behind-the-scenes “dealmaker.” In unregulated countries, deal-making was an art form. He had been good at it in his own country, until he ran up against too many rules. Unnatural, often arbitrary rules. Other people’s rules. Here, he didn’t have that problem. Here, he could speak freely, in languages that he and his clients understood.

For the right price, anything can be purchased. Even nations. He had said that to the Administrator once, before he had fully believed it. Before he had gotten to know President Muake. He felt humbled now by what they had done. By what they were capable of doing on October 5. He became gripped by a sudden nostalgic joy over the simple power of nature, the indifferent majesty of the fading light in the trees.

During the past seven months, Priest had literally purchased more than a third of this country from Muake. The president was expecting another payment within a week. The final transaction, he had called it.

Priest gazed out at the reflection of sunlight on the fast-flowing river, the wind rippling patterns in the water, and he recalled the last visit. Five armed guards surrounding him as he came through the doors of the Esquire Hotel, riding the elevator with him to the penthouse. For years, the Esquire had been the capital’s only “luxury” hotel, tended by uniformed servants, bellmen, and maitre d’s. But most of the shops in the neighborhood were shuttered now and the streets patrolled by government police. The Esquire had been taken over by members of the Muake Military Command and several cabinet members.

The president had met him in his private penthouse suite, where he often did business until early in the morning. He was an enormous man, dressed in a highly decorated military uniform, who smiled and slowly rose from his plush leather executive’s chair to shake hands with his new friend, smelling of musk cologne and rum and body odor. Priest set the briefcase on the desk and opened it. The transaction was quick, a foregone conclusion. Muake handed Priest a folder of deeds. A formality. Then they talked about soccer and hunting, as they drank Mancala rum from crystal goblets.