Okay, then, try to match the conglomerates with cities that have been infected.
It’s funny sometimes, because you can spend weeks on a problem, frustrated, trying to figure the answer. The problem seems like it will beat you. You don’t sleep. You can’t stop running over possibilities. You grope in the dark and tell yourself to give up. And then suddenly something, a person, a sentence, a photo, changes everything as if a floodlight has come on.
A small ping told me that Aya was trying to reach me. I could see the first words of her message in capital letters. “I FOUND.” This time I went to her message right away. She and I had hit the same point simultaneously.
“Fresh Unity Food and Beverage is one of the eight largest manufacturers and distributors of processed food products in the U.S., behind Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Kraft, and Smithfield, with sales topping $19 billion last year.”
She’d forwarded a Forbes magazine article.
“Fresh Unity grew from a small Arkansas poultry processing company in 1906, founded by the George Riverside family, which still controls a majority of stock. Fresh Unity’s mission statement, taken seriously by ‘employees who want to rise,’ CEO George Riverside IV has said, ‘is to give back to the world as much as we take.’
“Fresh Unity is now headquartered in New York and annually donates an immense tonnage of food to trouble spots and needy people around the world.”
I realized that the vibration that I had taken for the throb of engines was the accelerated beating of my heart. The flight attendant was passing with lunch. Aya had forwarded the “subsidiaries” list.
It took a few minutes of crisscrossing, but we found the connections together, on the online annual report, and they stunned me.
“Aya, Fresh Unity’s chili sauce is manufactured in Pittsburgh, with beef processed in Memphis. The trucking company that transports the sauce is based in Philadelphia. The airport for mercy flights is Newark. Corporate headquarters, New York City.”
Which links every infected city. Five out of five. That’s a 100 percent correlation.
Reading, I felt my lips form the names of other cities in which the conglomerate owned businesses. “Galveston for fish processing. Saint Louis for beer. Soft drinks in Columbia, South Carolina. Pork from northern Florida. Processed chicken from Little Rock, Arkansas.”
At least five cities here are within easy driving distance of Memphis, in all directions from it.
As I read, my mind wandered to those immense supply tents that Eddie and I had seen in northern Kenya, and the chartered planes landing on that aid base daily to disgorge tons of supplies. Most were donated by public-spirited organizations. But some came from cynically minded people or groups taking advantage of tax write-off laws. It was not hard to conceive of someone in a company, or a policy itself, sending expired or unsalable food on a supply plane, instead of into the trash.
I stared down at the map of company locations that Aya had forwarded. Tom Fargo could be in any of those cities. Or getting close to one.
“This is it! Yayyyyyy!!!!!!!” Aya typed giddily.
I agreed. It looked logical, hopefully solid.
We were wrong, though. Quite wrong.
THIRTY
Half the streets seemed to have the same name in this ridiculous city. Tom Fargo drove along commercial Peachtree Street, passing Peachtree Lane, Peachtree shopping center, Peachtree apartments, and a Peachtree hotel. The least imaginative person on the planet must have come up with these names.
From the highway, at dawn, Atlanta had loomed in the distance, its downtown towers jutting up, sparkling as the storm cleared. There was nothing gradual about the change from country to city. Not like up north. There, rural became suburb and suburb gritty outlying city. Roofs got higher, colors browner. Atlanta sprouted all at once, a mirage: Bank of America building, One Atlantic Center, Marriot Marquis Building.
Oz of the Southeast. It seemed to epitomize all the brash overconfidence of the nation.
Tom Fargo steered down Ponce de Leon Drive, made a right on Ponce de Leon Street near a Krispy Kreme shop, and entered suburban Druid Hills, near Emory University. After the escapes of the night he felt as if he floated forward in a capsule of inevitability. He was almost serene. The homes were quiet and well kept, the styles reflecting more lack of imagination; faux antebellum beside McMansion or Greek Revival. Lawns were extensive. The air smelled of magnolia and dogwood, knotty southern oaks, and the few old surviving pines that may have avoided Sherman’s fire.
He smiled when he saw clouds of gnats flitting in morning mist. Good! Either insecticides sprayed here had lost potency, Atlantans did not think themselves in danger, or the pesticide supply was, as in other cities, used up.
Airbnb, the terrorist’s best friend.
The house he’d rented with the Seth Pryce credit card — bills sent to a Brooklyn PO box — looked out of place even in the patchwork neighborhood. Architect’s dream home, the ad had read. Set between a fake Cape Cod and mini-Tudor, the three-story tower looked like boxes piled atop one another, with a sharply slanted roof slathered with solar panels. The skinny tower reminded him of a rook in a chess set. There was a single aquarium-sized porthole-style window set into the cinder block front. He saw a circular metal staircase through the window, as if in a lighthouse. Lush flower beds surrounded the attached two-car garage, sitting there like a motorcycle sidecar.
Three bedrooms. Quiet. Private. No smokers allowed.
Between the heated lap pool in back and screened-in porch, he found the rock garden and “Druid cairn,” three flat stones atop one another. He’d arranged for the key and garage access to be beneath the top one. He’d paid for four nights and a stocked refrigerator. Inside, a note in feminine script—Eat hearty, friend! — along with foods he had requested: store-brand hummus, bread, deli turkey, olives, eggs, and milk. The air was cold and the house smelled of air freshener. Oregon Forest. There was a wide-screen TV and blowup photos of a family, dad, mom, and kids, touring ruins. The Parthenon. The Sphinx. A site in northern Syria he recognized, as Tom had helped dynamite that particular Roman temple. The family played Frisbee at Peru’s Machu Picchu. They were probably, at the moment, gamboling through ruins somewhere else.
I’ll stay inside until tomorrow.
Tom felt his tension draining into exhaustion. Check the mosquitoes. They looked sluggish. He’d fed them before leaving, and they were supposed to easily survive a couple of days without food. But he didn’t like the way they sat there. He got the last container to a top-floor master bathroom, set it on the granite sink, replaced the plastic cover with Parafilm and got out the blood meals. He didn’t want to feed the mosquitoes too much, as he needed them hungry. A dozen insects flew up and attached themselves to the film.
Then he fed himself and sipped hot, sweet mint tea.
He took a shower, prayed, and unloaded the car, inside the closed garage: suitcase, weapons, golf bag.
Finally, he stretched out on the master bed.
He would stay here, invisible, all day and night, until tomorrow morning.
I can leave once I release the vectors, but this time I want to watch. I waited for this. Then I can get back to Brazil. Maybe Cardozo has made a new batch by now.