“Surely this is a coincidence,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said. On the walls were photos: His wife and two boys holding tennis racquets. An elderly woman in a beach chair, who had Riverside’s longish face. A shot of an aid plane landed in a dirt field in Sudan. A shot of the opening of a new high school for single mothers in Nepal. George Riverside picked up the receiver on his desk phone.
“Honey, get Bob Welch up here, will you?”
I must have looked surprised, because he said, putting down the phone, “Honey is my secretary’s name.”
“Oh.”
Seven minutes later a sweaty-faced middle-aged man entered, wearing an expensive pin-striped suit that did not hide his pear shape. His balding pate was sunburned. His lips looked rubbery, and his oddly small hand, in mine, was moist. The deep, cordial voice was confident, the voice of someone else. Either Bob Welch was a self-possessed man with a sweat problem, or a nervous man with a radio host’s voice.
“I found the business cards the FBI left, sir. Agents Mathew Friday and Roberta Weir. I also brought the file.”
“Tell the story, Bob. Leave nothing out.”
Dots of moisture beaded Welch’s upper lip. Possibly he was cursed to sweat all the time. He seemed more cooperative than fearful, more toady than secretive, excruciatingly aware of the proximity of the chairman.
“Yes, sir.” The story rolled out, pretty much along the same lines that I had heard from Aya. The food arrived without incident. It was successfully distributed with several tons of other supplies. There was no indication of trouble in the camp, then suddenly guns were going off, refugees were screaming.
“Later on the jihadists blamed it on us, but believe me, there was no problem with that food.”
“You were there then?” I asked.
“No, that was Christine’s job. Christine Mahin.”
“Is Christine here now?”
Welch shook his head. “She was so upset by what happened — afraid for her life that day — that she quit. She was with us for six years and did a great job. But she and her husband want children. Visiting trouble spots is a young person’s job.”
“Did Mahin follow up on the poisoning report?”
Welch nodded vigorously. “Of course! They’d blamed us! Christine was scrupulous. She checked with the doctors. They’d tried to find food residue in the empty cans, do tests. But everything was destroyed in the riot. Terrorists! They use any excuse to rile people up!”
“Where is Christine Mahin now?” Stuart asked.
Welch glanced at Riverside as if confirming that candor was what George wanted. George nodded as if to say, What are you waiting for? Tell them what they want to know.
“She left months ago. She’s with the NGO that runs that camp now, working stateside. Revolving door, sir. People go from companies to NGOs and back. She’s in administration. The only travel she does is to and from her desk.”
“Where?”
“Oh, I got a Christmas card from her. She went south,” Bob Welch said, and finally smiled as he passed the problem on to someone else. But he was still sweating as he held out a copy of the report. The manila folder was moist.
“She’s in Atlanta, Georgia,” Bob Welch said.
THIRTY-TWO
The Druid Hills country Club had changed management a year earlier, the sign at the entrance said. The magnificently kept clubhouse (established 1912) and links lay just off Lullwater Road, only half a mile from the house in which Tom Fargo had spent a comfortable night.
Tom arrived in an Uber, so his stolen car would not sit in the parking lot, visible to all. He’d walk back to the house when he was finished here, tonight. His chatty driver rolled them down a wooded access road to stop at a guard shack. Eric Englert was the name tag on the guard.
Tom showed his invitation through the back window. “I’m not a member. But I have an eleven A.M. tee time and was told that guests for tonight’s gala can get a round in first.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Pryce. Go right in.”
Hobart had taught Tom to use first names when talking to people. It made them friendlier. “Eric, I was told I can leave my clothes for tonight in the clubhouse.”
“Yes, sir. Just tell them inside. Have a nice round.”
In a widened pocket of his golf bag were the insects and his pistol. The pro teamed him up with three players here for tonight’s event: Jerry, a retired corporate pilot; Eddy, the vice president of marketing at a soda company; Howard, a divorce attorney. Howard was the oldest but most athletic, Eddy was a cigar smoker in his thirties, and Jerry smelled of alcohol at 10 A.M. “I’m not flying planes anymore, so if I want an eye opener, I have it. Played here before, Seth?”
Tom pretended this was like those diplomat meetings that Hobart used to describe. Chitchat, Hobart called it.
“I’m a duffer, put on earth to make you look good.”
Howard and Eddy smiled but clearly didn’t want the fourth man slowing their game down. Jerry roared, “I’ve heard that one before. Next you’ll want to make bets!”
Tom laughed and despised their garish clothes, expensive watches, and costly clubs, their air of prosperity and casual indifference while elsewhere people suffered. The assumption of the good life was so American. These people destroyed anything deemed inconvenient as they blundered across earth. Tom heard children splashing in the clubhouse pool.
Eddy winked. “Not worried about mosquitoes, are you?”
Howard said, “There’s not been a single case in Atlanta. That’s what I told my wife. Plus, we take Lariam.”
Jerry nodded. “I think this manhunt near Memphis? For that Largo guy? Or Fargo? Whatever? It’s bullshit. This whole outbreak will turn out to come from a government lab.”
Tom was grateful for his practice golf sessions on that jungle island and in Manhattan. In Brazil, sometimes low balls skipped across the water. “You’re a natural athlete,” the golf pro had told Tom at the Chelsea Piers range, in New York. There a huge cage had prevented balls from flying into the Hudson River. The city spewed toxic waste and sewage into the Hudson. But drew the line at golf balls.
You’re the ones who need a lesson, Tom thought now.
He’d tied the golf bag onto the electric cart.
“Tee up, Seth,” Jerry said. “By the way, watch out for sand traps on one. And water in the rough off Lullwater, especially after the recent rain, I heard.”
Tom eyed a catering truck pulling into the parking lot, and the maroon-jacketed waitstaff setting up tables for eight for tonight’s gala, on the stone patio overlooking the course. He noted large planters below the patio. They were filled with water from last night’s rain. He wondered if it might be possible to put the insects in the planters.
Tom asked the guys, as if nervous, “Do grounds crews spray against mosquitoes here?”
“Ah, don’t listen to those Chicken Littles at the CDC,” Eddy said, pointing to a series of rooftops three miles away. “Those guys get paid to scare you. All they accomplished by spraying was to kill off every bat, dragonfly, and bird within twenty miles before they ran out. If we ever get a real outbreak, nothing will stop it. Want to worry? Worry about the pond on hole two.”
Tom drove his first shot straight and true, almost three hundred yards.