Jon reached the corner and waited to cross. Two crossings and he would be there. A car horn bleated. Across the street, a man was shouting in Swahili. Two crossings. Jon stood at the front of a group of people. He stepped off the curb. The light changed, but the traffic kept coming. Pedestrians pushed forward around him, tentatively, into the intersection, forcing the buses to stop. Across the street, and then another wait. One more crossing. The traffic thinned and he decided to cross against the signal. 1:10.
He jogged out into the intersection but stopped as a speeding mini-bus hurtled by. For a moment, the sunlight blinded him. Just thirty steps and I’m in the cab.
But then something else got in his way—a vendor, a street merchant in an ankle-length robe, cutting across the road, toward him. What is this?
“Watch it!” someone shouted from the sidewalk.
A mini-bus horn blared. He heard the man shouting in Swahili, someone else in the background chanting “Safari! Safari!” Jon looked to his left, saw another car gunning at him from the glare of sunlight. He looked for the cab stand, stepped off. Another car coming at him, screeching its brakes. The cab he had been eyeing pulled from the curb. Jon turned in a half circle, and he saw the husky man in the olive-colored suit standing on the crowded sidewalk behind the cab stand. Watching.
Too late! He turned to cross back the other way, but the chaos of traffic was coming at him again. He was stranded on the island between lanes. No: a car in the curb lane stopped, and the driver seemed to be motioning him across. But the other two lanes of traffic were still coming, and a cacophony of car horns began to sound behind the stopped car. He stepped down, looked for an opening and suddenly felt something holding him—a hand hard against his face, pushing him down. A hand against his mouth. He smelled perspiration and something else, unfamiliar; he heard a car accelerate violently, a screech of tires. Saw another man’s large, dark eyes, looking down at him. Then nothing.
HE WOKE, FEELING nauseated, in a dark, humid, earthy space. His thoughts tried to catch up as his eyes began to discern shapes in the room. Two folding chairs. A ladder. Shovels.
He lit the face of his watch: 2:55. He had been unconscious for less than two hours, then. They had given him something fast-acting and short-term, an inhaled anesthetic, probably.
Why? Jon tried to piece together what had happened—the cab stand, the stocky man in the olive suit, the stopped car, the hand on his face. The man must have come up behind him and placed a cloth over his mouth. Was that what Sam Sullivan had meant by the gangs for hire? His mind flashed to images of hostages lined up in terrorism videos.
Minutes passed. He heard a crunch of car tires outside, the sound of an engine idling. The metal door slid open, and a bright light filled the room. Metal walls, a peaked roof. He was in an old tool shed, in a heavily wooded area.
“Are you awake? Time to go,” a voice said with a trace of a British accent.
Jon Mallory stood, trying to focus on the man who had spoken. A trim, dark-skinned man with fine facial features, wearing black clothing. He turned and let Mallory pass, then closed the door. The sun glared through the trees; the air was full of gnats. A Dodge van idled on a tire-track road, smelling of burning diesel fuel, side panel door open.
“Let’s go. Get in,” the man said.
Jon climbed in the back seat and the man slid the panel closed. His captor sat in the passenger seat, in front of him, and closed the door. The van began to slowly rock forward over the rutted road, which cut a narrow tunnel through the trees. The driver, he realized, was the man who had abducted him on the street—the stocky man in the olive suit.
“What’s happening?”
After a long silence, the man in front of him, resting his arm on the seat-back, said, “We’re getting you out of here. Are you all right? You look like you’ve been in a brawl.”
“I’m all right,” Jon said.
“You walked by Green Street early. Gave yourself away. Then you went back a second time,” he said. “We didn’t want you going past a third or fourth time. All right? This is for your protection. Just sit back and relax.” He sighed. “We have about a forty-minute drive to the airport.”
“Kenyatta?”
“No. We’re going to a cargo field to the north. We just got the clearance.”
Let the information come to you.
Jon took a deep breath and stared through the windshield. “What was it you gave me?”
The driver turned this time. “Sevoflurane,” he said. “Not so bad, is it?”
“Well, um.…”
“Sometimes used for women in childbirth,” the driver said. “Doesn’t get deep into the bloodstream. No side effects, other than nausea.”
Jon Mallory watched the sunlight flickering through the trees as the van bounced along the rutted road. The air conditioning was set a little too high, blowing into his face from the center console.
“My name’s Chaplin, by the way,” the other man said. “Joseph Chaplin.”
“Okay.” Chaplin reached back to shake his hand. His grip was surprisingly soft, as if he were handing him an object to feel.
“This is Ben Wilson,” he said. The driver turned and nodded.
As he sat back again, Jon felt something on the seat beside him and saw that it was his bag. They hadn’t intended to steal it, after all. Maybe the man in the olive suit had just taken it so Jon wouldn’t try to fight him—so he could whisk him out of there without attracting attention.
“You know my brother, then?”
Joseph Chaplin made an affirmative sound.
“You work with him.”
“Yes.” He half-turned to face Mallory. “I do. I run operations for him.”
Jon rubbed the bruise on his face. “I’m going to Sundiata?”
“Yes. Your questions will be answered once you get there. He wanted you to know that.”
“My brother did.”
“Yes.”
“So he set this up.”
“Mmm.”
“It isn’t based in Kenya at all, then, is it?”
“He wants you to write about what you see when you get to Sundiata. All right? But he wants you to be careful.”
“Meaning? …”
“You’ll learn more when you arrive, as I say. But just understand there’s an urgency to this. And also understand their armor. Understand that they are armored in ways that no one else is. So be careful.”
Jon watched the twisting road, waiting. “In what ways?”
Chaplin said, “Do you know what quantum encryption is?”
“Sort of,” Jon said. “It’s.… Isn’t it a theoretically unbreakable encryption communication system, based on the laws of quantum mechanics?”
“It’s the process of sending data by photons. The smallest unit of light,” Chaplin said. “The photons become polarized, and the messages they carry are impenetrable. It isn’t just theoretical, though. It’s been developed by your own government, but only over short distances—from the White House to the Pentagon, for instance. Someone in the private sector has developed it over somewhat longer distances. This network pooled its resources and, we believe, has managed to merge it with fiber optics and satellite communications. They’re operating it now in Africa. That’s how they’re bypassing us.”