Viral

is carrying out these vaccine programs. They’re funded largely through Western investors and are being implemented by so-called humanitarian organizations. He made arrangements for me to come here some time ago. He wanted me to be a witness, in case the worst happened. A back-up.”

“A human memory stick.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him, quickly.

“Why here?”

“Proximity. Temporary safety. There is a river on the other side of the next hill.” She pointed. “And past that there are dozens of cocoa farms. These people work in the fields when they can. When there’s work. But many of the farms have closed down. It’s moving this way.”

“I know about your cousin,” Jon said. “My brother was supposed to meet with him last week, wasn’t he?”

She looked outside again. “Paul had begun to find out who was stealing this country. He wanted to do something about it. But I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said, gesturing dismissively with her right hand. “There’s no need any more for polite sentiments.” She took a breath. “For a time, they thought they might be able to stop it. But they came to see that it isn’t so simple. So they decided to expose it instead. To maybe let opinion stop it. But that isn’t so easy, either. At least not so far. They have advantages that are difficult to overcome.”

“What did you mean when you said what happened was just a trial?”

“To gauge the potency. And the reaction. It’s been going on for a while, a few weeks at least, on a small scale, and then contained. A half dozen or so small trials, we think. At a cost of maybe two hundred thousand lives. In regions where it won’t get attention. Where no one keeps track. In countries many Westerners have not even heard of. Occasionally, it’s been reported. But the government always denies it. And it’s not something the Western media particularly care about—even if they believed it. The one in October, we think, will be different. A Game Changer, Paul said.”

Yes. A term his brother had used.

“How do you know this?”

“From the three people who were inside and managed to come back out. Who have seen the preparations. One of them is here now.”

Jon watched her eyes, the candlelight on her face. “And you think this area is ‘in the path.’ Why?”

“We’ve seen it. A little west of here is jungle. Several miles into the jungle is an airstrip. From the top of the hill behind us, with binoculars, you can see the planes land when it’s clear. That’s where the vaccine came in.”

“Who owns it? Who’s doing this?”

She shrugged, as if the questions were unimportant. “Intermediaries dealing with the government. The land was purchased on the condition that the tenants would be gone before the purchaser actually took possession. Something to that effect. There have been all sorts of land buys and leases in the past year. Many of them are supposedly facilitated by a businessman named Isaak Priest. But that is just hearsay. We don’t really know.”

“Where is it coming from?” Jon asked, making a mental note of that name.

“From airports north of here, Paul thought. The planes may be registered to a South African contractor, but their cargo originates elsewhere, possibly in Switzerland. They’re delivering both medicines and viral properties, we think. Let me show you.” She opened a small trunk, pulled out several layers of clothes—jeans, dresses, lapa skirts, scarves—underneath which was a loose-leaf binder. She scooted her cushion toward Jon and opened the binder, handed it to him.

Jon turned the pages. They were photos printed on twenty-pound paper, many of them blurry, shot at a distance with a high-powered lens. Their subject, though, was clear: crates being unloaded from the bellies of cargo airplanes and the backs of tractor-trailer trucks and what looked like fancy black crop-duster planes. “They unload these crates. Some of them say ‘Perishable Fruit’ on the outside. But what’s inside are these spray canisters. Viral properties in aerosol form, stored in four hundred gallon tanks. It’s part of a government project, carried out by a quote humanitarian group, under the heading ‘Malaria eradication.’

“This is supposedly the man in charge. Priest. The only picture of him.” It was a grainy photo of a large man standing on a strip of asphalt—what might have been a small airport—in front of a dark Mercedes sedan. The photo was shot at a distance. Too fuzzy to make out details.

Jon’s heart was racing again. He paged through the photos. Numerous similar images. Blurry reproductions. Nothing that really implicated anyone, or was especially useful. He closed the book and handed it back.

“Paul took these?”

“Yes.”

“So is it based here?”

“No. No, there are other airfields. We don’t know how many. Several dozen, probably. We believe it may be based in the Central Gonja Valley. Maybe elsewhere.”

“East of where you lived.”

“Yes. That’s where we think it hit the hardest. Which makes the region impossible to access now. The government has issued a ‘quarantine,’ supposedly. What’s going to happen next, though, will be here. All of this will be displaced.”

“Then what?”

She shrugged. “Someone will move in and clean it up. Contractors are already in place for that. You’ll see tomorrow.”

They exchanged a look. John decided not to ask her to elaborate.

“But I thought you had medicine.”

“Some. Medicine for what’s out there now, yes. Not necessarily for what’s coming. I’m afraid what’s coming will be different. What’s out there now is different from what came through Kaarta.”

She took the album from him and returned it to the chest, placed the clothes on top and closed it.

“In the hills, to the east and north of here, were several farming villages. Cocoa farms, mostly, also tea plantations and potato farms.”

“Were.”

“They were hit by the flu two and three days ago. They’ve all been emptied out. Some are burial grounds now.” The empty villages he had seen coming in. “Victims have been trucked in from the countryside, too. When the people from this area have finished their labors, it will move through here. All the way to the coast. Kip will show you tomorrow.”

“Who’s Kip?”

“Kip is one of the witnesses. He worked for the government’s Central Planning Division. He left six days ago to do this. He’ll get you closer. The medicine is a vaccine. It will help you for a day, maybe two. Tomorrow night we’ll leave together.”

She said it without a trace of emotion in her voice. Jon felt the burden of what she was telling him, of the responsibility that she was handing off. That his brother was handing off. “Here,” she said. “When you go outside, wear this. Keep your face covered as much as possible.”

Mallory looked at what she was holding: a straw hat. “Why?”

“A precaution. Would you like something to eat? You’re probably hungry.” She nodded to the entranceway. “In the pot out there is egusi. It’s a groundnut stew with sweet potatoes, cassava, onions, garlic, spices, and peanuts.”

“Sounds delicious.” Jon was hungry. The spices from the stew suddenly made his stomach rumble. But he was also sifting through the information that Sandra Oku had told him. “I feel like cleaning up first, if that’s possible.”

She looked at him and smiled for the first time; he had no idea why. “Take a towel and go down to the river, if you’d like. Then we’ll eat dinner and get to sleep early.”

Summer’s Cove, Oregon.

AT HIS OFFICE in Building 67, the man known as the Administrator read through the latest quantum- encrypted intelligence from Nairobi. Private satellite surveillance channeled through Ott’s firm in California, using the imaging models created by Gus Hebron.

Jon Mallory had left the Norfolk Hotel just before 9 in the morning. There were satellite feeds of him