Viral

investigating the allegations. The government has stopped distribution of this vaccine pending the outcome.”

Jon read part of it, then looked up. “This says that Olduvai Charities was started by Trent.”

“Yes.”

“Was it?”

“Sort of. He cut his ties some time ago. He has nothing to do with the operations of it anymore.” Church sighed elaborately. “Frankly, Jon? I don’t quite believe this story, either.”

“Then what is it? What’s going on?”

Jon watched his editor think. A man who managed to see intricate scenarios others didn’t imagine. “Put it this way,” Church said. “Say this was some kind of elaborate diversion, which is what you’re thinking. That would be telling us something fairly significant, wouldn’t it?” Jon frowned. “In magic tricks, you create a misdirection when you want people to look away, right? So they don’t see what’s really happening.”

“Right.”

“So?”

“So this is telling us that they want us to look away right now? At something else.”

Church nodded.

“Meaning it’s imminent.”

“Yes.”

“Whatever’s going to really happen is imminent.”

“Exactly.”

THE COURIER FROM South Africa arrived in Mancala on a charter Learjet 35, which landed at a concrete airfield twenty-two miles from the capital city of Mungaza. The man’s name was George Adisa, and he was escorted from the plane by two armed guards to a Mercedes limousine. The car carried him four and a half kilometers to a fenced-in military-style compound. There, Isaak Priest was waiting in a small cinderblock office, seated behind a heavy metal desk.

Adisa placed the briefcase on the desk, then dabbed the sweat from his face with a handkerchief.

Priest nodded for him to open it. A forty-three-year-old man in a cheap dark suit, white dress shirt stained with sweat. Adisa had heard the stories about him, Isaak Priest knew. That working for Priest was like playing Russian roulette, although the rewards could be very lucrative. Priest had helped to spread those stories himself.

There were considerable risks in dealing with bearer bonds, and Priest had hired a man he could trust. A man with few personal ties. Who could disappear afterward, if necessary. He had sent a private plane and two security men to South Africa for him, to accompany him each step of the way.

In the briefcase were bearer bonds worth nearly $2 billion, delivered from a private bank office in Johannesburg. Unlike registered bonds, bearer bonds were cash certificates with no registered owner. They were owned by whoever held them. And unlike cash—which, at this amount, would have required more than thirty suitcases filled with hundred-dollar bills—bearer bonds worth millions or billions of dollars could be contained on a few slips of paper in a small briefcase.

Bearer bonds had been illegal in the United States since 1982 because they’d become the refuge of money launderers and tax evaders. But in several other parts of the world, they were still legal; still used by wealthy men who, for various reasons, desired to maintain anonymity. Whoever showed up at the end of the chain collected the money. That’s how they worked. There was no other record of ownership.

Priest examined the documents carefully. Then he nodded at the man, closed the briefcase, and handed him an envelope. The Administrator had come through. The final payment had been delivered.

George Adisa was escorted out by the two armed guards who had brought him here. Priest watched through the window blinds as the men walked in darkness back to the car across the gravel lot. He saw the chauffeur stoop as if to tie a shoelace. Then stand again, his hand now holding a handgun. Isaak Priest turned away from the window. It wasn’t necessary to see everything. As he lifted the attache case, he heard the gunshots. Three of them, fired from a police revolver in rapid succession. George Adisa would not be returning to South Africa. And his two escorts would not be returning to their bunkhouses. What they knew made them too risky. A rule of warfare.

Outside, the man who had posed as Adisa’s chauffeur—Priest’s lieutenant, a man named John Ramesh—sat behind the wheel of the Mercedes and waited for his boss.

THIS FITS WITH something you already possess.

The words played in Jon Mallory’s head as he drove in an aimless northeasterly loop around the Washington Capital Beltway. Words scribbled on a sheet of paper above a row of numbers and letters.

Possess.

Not have or know.

Possess. A very specific verb. An unusual one. Implying something tangible. Something physical that he owned. That, maybe, he had forgotten about. But what?

He thought of other things. His brother’s footsteps gaining on him as they raced the length of their childhood street. His father’s gentle blue eyes, watching him. Shifting. A summer afternoon when his brother had tried to teach him to throw a fastball—to throw “the perfect pitch.” Something Jon could never do. That was when it came to him.

He hit his turn signal, cut across two lanes, and got off at the next exit.

The phone number that Joseph Chaplin had written down for him at the airfield in Kenya.

He had never called it.

If you make it home, you may call this number.

Of course.

Jon Mallory reversed direction on the Beltway, heading back toward the city, switching lanes, speeding around the slower traffic. He got off at River Road and anxiously drove toward his house. Parked on the street in front, ran across the lawn and up the steps. The slip of paper that Chaplin had given him was in the upper drawer of his desk with other ephemera from his trip: airline and bus tickets, napkins, coins, fliers, a steno pad, and a couple of newspaper sections. After retrieving it, he drove to the mini-mart on Wisconsin Avenue, inserted two quarters in the pay phone, and used his international calling card.

011 44 20.

44 the country code for the United Kingdom, 20 the city code for London.

Three rings.

A recorded voice came on, an eerie mechanized sound. It repeated the number that Jon Mallory had just called, then said, “Please refer to 14672224.” Each number was painstakingly enunciated. Then the line went dead.

14672224.

Jon jotted it on the sheet of paper Joseph Chaplin had given him. He stood on the sidewalk, in the shadow of an office building, looking at it as traffic went back and forth.

467-2224 could be a phone number.

He dug two quarters out of his car and tried. Not a working number.

He drove a circuitous route through the Maryland suburbs for a while, thinking. Took Old Georgetown Road past Tidwell’s in Bethesda. He sat in an empty parking lot in the next block, took out the sheet of paper with the numbers and letters, and studied it some more.

Thirty-six numbers and letters in twelve-point type: 7rg2kph5nOcxqmeuy43siaw8bjf1tdlvo6z9. Beside that, the “V” circled.

Still, it made no sense. And yet the newer numbers looked vaguely familiar to him: 14672224.

Somehow they all went together. But knowing that didn’t really help him much. Start with the one that seems familiar, then, he thought. Figure out why.

What if the numbers corresponded with letters? He jotted the corresponding letters under each number: A D F G B B B D.

Think a little smarter. Something his brother used to say. Pushing him. He knew it had to be simple, though. Something that only the two of them would know. Restless, Jon pulled out his cell phone.