“In this Sudanese aid camp, children are measured and given plastic bracelets. Blue means they are so underweight that they are fed twice a day. Red means once,” the MC said.
At a table across the dance floor Tom spotted a face from Tol-e-Khomri. He stared with fascination.
“Please welcome Dr. Ravi Agarwal from WHO, the World Health Organization.”
Tom clapped and pretended to listen, but the hum of anticipation made words hard to hear. The concealed pistol was snug against his back. The speaker’s self-congratulatory whine grated like nails on a blackboard. Americans converted suffering into entertainment. They did not send gladiators into arenas like ancient Romans did but pretended to care while they sipped vodka tonics and watched skeletal children on screens.
But where were the insects? Tom fretted. They should have been here. Had something happened to them? Had the vectors flown the wrong way? Tom turned this way and that, seeking movement in the air. Where are they?
Tom spotted a tall man walking in through the French doors, from outside, wearing a sports jacket, but it looked disheveled. The man stopped in the light and scanned the crowd, his attitude forceful. The man wiped his cheek with the back of his palm. Tom saw smeared blood there. A bolt of acid surged into Tom’s belly. He resisted the urge to jump to his feet. That face had been on the news. It was the man who had destroyed the laboratory in Brazil, and announced to the world Tom’s name. There was no way Joe Rush could have traced Tom here. But he was not going away or turning into someone else.
Tom glanced around the room but saw no police at exits, no men or women in dark suits, wearing earpieces. Only relaxation on all faces, except for Rush.
Rush asked someone a question, and the person pointed toward the table at which the woman from Tol-e-Khomri sat. Rush started walking toward that table.
At that moment, Tom saw the first mosquito wobble in from outside, through the bright gala light.
I made my way toward Christine Mahin as the band played the Earth, Wind & Fire oldie “Shining Star.” She was a large, moon-faced woman who looked ready to deliver her baby at any moment, swelled and sacklike in a maroon maternity dress. Her hair was up to keep her cool. A single strand of pearls lay around her neck. Tethered to her chair by pregnancy, she chatted with a man in a light blue sports jacket who held her hand. The husband. She looked up when she sensed my presence. The blue eyes were friendly, but they widened. Her hand went to her cheek. I must have a blood smear on my face. She took in my soiled jacket. She looked puzzled, but not alarmed.
“Ms. Mahin. I’m Dr. Joe Rush. May I speak to you? It’s important.”
Her confusion became recognition.
“Rush? You’re on the news. I don’t understand. I would have remembered your name on the guest list.”
“It isn’t there.”
“You’re affiliated with the charity?”
“Can we talk, ma’am?”
The husband was a thin man in white jeans, with banded green-and-pink socks, a shaggy haircut, artistic plastic glasses. Quirky guy, out of place. He wasn’t sure whether to be protective or curious. His eyes went from my face to hers. I said, “I got your name from Bob Welch. I need to talk to you about Tol-e-Khomri.”
Her mouth opened involuntarily and she started to rise but sank slowly back into her chair. The husband, alarmed, asked if she was all right. Christine nodded, but her eyes never left my face. The dance floor was clearing. Waiters were bringing chicken dinners. The MC tapped a finger against the mike. Time for more talk.
She’s afraid. But I can’t tell if she looks guilty.
She looked around to realize that others at her table were watching us. Between the chatter and clatter of dishes, if you wanted to be heard, you had to shout or lean into a listener’s ear. She did not want to shout. She grasped my wrist with a damp hand. “Can you help me up? Into the hall? Alan? Arghhhhhh,” she said, trying to rise.
This is why you always ask in person and never take a report for granted. You always watch the eyes.
Other than a face at a far table who I saw staring at us as we left the room, a man who quickly looked away, no one paid us any attention. Christine walked with difficulty, puffed and sweated and wiped her brow. In the hallway the noise instantly muted. It was cooler here, with glass cases filled with golf trophies, and old black-and-white mounted shots of past invitationals, even signed head shots of the greats: Palmer, Player, Woods.
“Was it us?” she asked, straight-out, a terrible urgency twisting her face. “Was our food responsible?”
“You’re asking me?”
“I need to sit. The chair. Thank you,” she said, sinking down, looking up. Tell me, her expression said.
“We think,” I said, using that we as if I was here officially, “that there’s a link between Tol-e-Khomri and the cities where black malaria has been introduced.”
Her eyes widened. “Link?”
I explained it. She did not know what to make of it. But it terrified her. The connections were obvious, yes, she said, “but nobody attacked the company. I don’t know if anyone who got sick even worked for the company. If you have a grudge against the company, why not hit it directly?”
“The grudge is bigger than one company,” I said, spreading my arms to include the club, city, state, nation. “The company? Maybe it’s just a way in. He could have picked anywhere. But I think he chose locations that had special meaning to him.”
She needed time to absorb it. Her husband tightly held her hand. She said, in a small voice, “But they told me it was jihadists. I didn’t even hear anything about food poisoning until later, when it showed up in jihad blogs.”
I waited.
“The UN people assured me, so did the head of the camp. And I checked! I tried to find out if our food sickened those people. It was impossible. The cans were burned up. The doctors said the deaths were from fighting. I went over our manifests. The expiration dates all looked okay.”
“Then why the expression on your face?”
“It was the worst day of my life,” she said, looking at her husband, who nodded at her, meaning, Tell him.
I pushed it. “Ms. Mahin, was the company taking tax write-offs on expired food?”
She looked down at the carpet. She looked back up, and this time I saw a glisten at the corner of her left eye.
“Not the company. One person in Memphis. One person was sending out expired stuff. I found other cans in the warehouse, ready to go. Damaged or expired. We fired him. He never admitted sending expired food to Tol-e-Khomri. I couldn’t prove it. He wasn’t making money off it. He just wanted a better balance sheet. He thought that expiration dates were stupid. Government overregulation. He’d shipped tons of expired stuff before that, without a problem.”
“That’s why you quit?”
“I was going to do that anyway.”
“The report you signed said there was no evidence of tainted food.”
She wrung her hands. “There wasn’t. Dr. Rush, Fresh Unity donates eighteen million dollars a year to feeding the hungry. Do you know how many people that keeps alive? Should I have put the program in jeopardy? Lawsuits? Headlines? Every year half the board — the lawyers — want to close the program because they’re afraid of this! Suits! What would you have done if you were me?” she asked. “No proof! Too late to stop whatever happened. In the end, I wrote the facts.”
“But not the truth.”
But the truth was, for all my cheap moralizing, I did not know what I would have done if I’d been in her shoes. She’d found the culprit. She’d gotten rid of him, and saved a program that fed thousands of people. A program that might have been shut down otherwise. Had she done wrong?