Viral

No messages. He called his office phone. Waited. Pressed in his code.

He heard, “You have one new message.” He punched in his four-digit code. Listened. The recorded voice of the caller immediately sent a chill through him. It was a voice he had heard many times over the years, but never addressing him. A man he had seen on television often—and watched repeatedly on YouTube the day before.

He wrote down the number and pressed the repeat prompt. Listened again:

“Jon, this is Tom Trent calling. I’m in Washington. Call me as soon as you get this.”

Jon crossed the street to a pay phone and called. It was turning breezier and cooler. A voice answered after the third ring.

“Yes.”

“Tom Trent, please.”

“Okay, good. Good, I’m glad you called.” He sounded winded, and sort of weird. Jon wondered if it was him. “Can you meet me in half an hour?”

“Okay. Where?”

“I’m just off the Mall now. I can meet you by the merry-go-round in front of the Smithsonian castle in thirty minutes.”

THIRTY-ONE

THOMAS TRENT WAS SITTING on the end of a bench in the creeping shadows, staring blankly toward the giant Smithsonian museums across the Mall. He wore an old brown leather jacket, jeans, and scuffed cowboy boots. His collar was upturned, his hair mussed. At first, Jon didn’t recognize him and walked past.

“Mallory!”

It was only when Trent stood that he became recognizable: long-legged and limber, his jaw jutting forward slightly. A face he had seen on television countless times. He was older in person, his silver hair thinner, but the trademark pencil-thin mustache and restless blue eyes were unmistakable. He perfunctorily shook Jon Mallory’s hand, and they began to walk. Trent motioning the direction of the Capitol.

“Your phone message said you wanted to ask me about this so-called TW Report,” he said. “And about Stuart Thames Borholm.”

“Yes. What can you tell me about them?”

“Nothing. That isn’t why I came here.”

“It isn’t.”

“No.” Trent’s eyes scanned the Mall as they walked—families strolling toward the museums and monuments, people sitting on benches, tossing Frisbees in the grass. “But it was curious that you called. I’ve been working with your brother. You know that, right?”

“I don’t. No.”

“Actually, I hired him to help me on something. I’ve since remembered a detail that I need to convey to him. Something he’d want to know. I need to get in touch with him. It’s quite important.”

“I wish I could help you,” Jon said. “But I haven’t seen my brother in ten years.”

Trent gestured impatiently with his left hand. “Could you get a message to him for me?”

“I wish I could.”

They walked in silence for about two dozen steps, their shoes crunching the gravel. Trent walked with an easy bounce, not the step of a man in his mid-sixties. Finally, he said, “You’ve seen these so-called excerpts of the report online, then, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think about that?”

“I don’t know. The whole thing doesn’t feel right to me.”

“It’s not. Believe me.”

“Why not? Tell me about it. Who did write it? For what purpose?”

There was a tension in the silence, their footfalls crunching loudly. “I’m not sure how much I should say. Bottom line, someone’s setting me up here, okay? Very ingeniously. In fact, it may already be too late to do anything about it.”

Jon Mallory remained silent.

“This morning, a couple of reporters contacted my office. After you did. They’d received tips or inquiries about this so-called paper.” He said “paper” with an inflection of disdain. “Funny how the news business works, isn’t it? The day before, no one had even heard of this goddamn thing. Now, they’re demanding a comment from me.” They were walking east again, directly toward the Capitol. Trent waited for a jogger to pass on the crosswalk. “They had another lead, too. Something that didn’t exist a few days ago. It’s going to be the next story. It’s what the goddamn African wire services are reporting: that Olduvai Charities was funding vaccine trials that maybe were actually causing this flu. That’s the allegation. It’s all bullshit.”

“I just heard about that. So? You’re no longer involved with Olduvai, are you?”

“No, of course not. It’s bullshit. But I was involved in founding it, and that’s going to be used against me. These people are capable of almost anything. There’s evidence now. Manufactured evidence. And it’s going to be spread all over the Internet.”

“Including that name,” Jon said.

“What? What name?”

“Stuart Thames Borholm.”

“What do you mean?”

He stopped walking. He looked directly at Jon Mallory for the first time. So he hadn’t seen Melanie’s blog. The familiar features of Thomas Trent’s face became unfamiliar. His skin seemed to tighten and age.

“It’s an anagram,” Jon said. “For one of your heroes. For Thomas Robert Malthus.”

Trent’s eyes went to the tree-tops. “Jesus,” he muttered. He turned toward the Air and Space Museum, then the other way, facing the Washington Monument. “Son of a bitch! I never imagined that,” he said, his eyes refusing to meet Mallory’s. He smiled for an instant. “Goddamn son of a bitch! So that’s what they’re going to do. That’s how they’re going to do it.”

“Who? Who’s ‘they’?”

“It’s a complete ruse, Mallory. Okay? But only in the last day or so am I beginning to understand it. I’m afraid I’m going to have to defend myself publicly now. In any way I can. Son of a bitch!” He took a deep breath. His voice had turned quivery. “The Olduvai Foundation was set up with a goal of quote unquote uniting Africa, okay? Creating business opportunities, improving health care, developing infrastructure and technology.”

“Not exactly the scenario outlined in the TW Paper.”

“No.”

“Explain it to me. What’s going on?”

“It’s obvious to me now,” Trent said. He motioned again and began to walk, directing them back toward the merry-go-round and the bench where they had met. “You have to understand. This was all done to leave false fingerprints. That’s all it is. It’s a goddamn ruse. A very clever ruse. My own idea coming back to bite me.”

Jon Mallory felt a chill of recognition. False fingerprints. The words his brother had used.

“Whose phrase is that?”

“What?”

“ ‘False fingerprints.’ Whose phrase is that?”

“The person who started this,” he said, laughing bitterly. “I should have remembered that. Jesus Christ! That was part of the idea. One of the safeguards. Create a false story. Pour millions of dollars into making it seem real. Feed it to the media, they’ll eat out of your hands. Pick and choose who to release it to. People will repeat it and eventually believe it. Meanwhile, they entirely miss the real story.”

“Whose idea?”