JON MALLORY FELT the cold concrete against his face and arms, and a throbbing in his head. A horrible, pounding pain. He opened his eyes again, had no idea where he was. His pupils tried to widen again, but there wasn’t enough light for him to make out anything. He heard something, though: a faint echo, of wind. Or breathing. Everything felt dreamlike, disconnected from reality, except for the odor and the pain in his arms and his ribs. As he tried to sit up, he became dizzy. Closed his eyes and tried to remember what had happened. Imagined he was at home in Washington. Knew that if he stood and walked left, feeling his way along the wall, he could find the front door.
But he wasn’t in Washington. And he wasn’t in the chalet where he had slept the first night, either. This was concrete, cold and dirty, the air damp and rank.
Sitting in the darkness, Jon conjured a jumbled recollection: an explosion, a sudden bright flash. Gunshots. Someone pulling back his arm, shoving his face into carpet. Smells of gunpowder, leather. Screams. A scream. No, that was what had wakened him. A scream. He heard it in his memory and knew it: a strained, agonizing sound, echoing off these stone walls. Had it been him, or part of the dream? He didn’t know. His head felt thick, as if he’d been drugged. His brain wasn’t working right.
And then later, much later, it seemed, he heard the footsteps. Solid heels on stone, coming closer in the darkness. Toward him. He tried to sit up again and felt the pain as he breathed, as if his ribs had been broken. The sound stopped, and when it started again, it seemed to be moving in a different direction. Away from him. Step, step. Step, step. Becoming fainter. Fading to nothing. To darkness.
FORTY-SEVEN
CHARLES MALLORY TOOK A cab across town to Stamford Park, a neighborhood of two- and three-story apartment houses, many with shops and food stalls on the ground floors. He asked the driver to let him out a half block from where Joseph Chaplin was staying.
He paid the driver with John Ramesh’s money and began to walk, scanning the windows and roofs for anything unusual. Young mothers and children were in the yards, a few older people sitting on porches. Nothing suspicious. Mallory knew Chaplin’s location was but was not supposed to go to him. Not unless there was an emergency. That was the directive Chaplin had given. Sometimes, he was not as adaptable as Mallory would have liked. But this time he would have to be.
Chaplin’s apartment today was a second-floor unit, in the rear of a concrete block building. Charlie knocked twice on the sturdy wooden door, waited, and knocked three times. Listened. “It’s me,” he said. Mallory saw the peephole darken. The door opened a crack and Chaplin looked out, a Glock in his left hand.
“Where have you been?”
“Unforeseen problem,” Charlie said. “Can I come in?”
Chaplin opened the door, closed it behind him, and latched the chain.
“What happened?”
“Ramesh. The good news is we don’t have to worry about any him anymore.”
“Why?”
“It was self-defense,” Mallory said, walking into the kitchen. “But they’re going to be after me now. I’m sure it was caught on cameras. Out near the pit. We may need to change plans again. To go after Priest earlier.” Chaplin frowned. “I know why Ramesh looked familiar, by the way. I’m pretty sure he used to work for Black Eagle Services, the American military contractor. He was one of the ones who got Landon Pine in trouble.”
“Really,” he said neutrally.
“I think so. He had a different name then. I can’t remember what it was. But I recognized him. I don’t think Priest is African, either, by the way. I just talked with him on the phone. He has a Southern U.S. accent. This is starting to make strange sense to me. Anyway, I need to see Nadra and Wells. We’ve got to change strategies. Where are they right now?”
Chaplin looked at the floor.
“I can’t,” he said.
“I know. But this qualifies as an emergency. Right?”
Chaplin hesitated. Mallory watched him deliberate, his chest rising and falling. Finally, he told him.
Mallory turned to leave.
“Oh, and here. This was hand-delivered,” Chaplin held out a well-worn, nine-by-twelve envelope. “Okoro gave it to me, to give to you.”
Mallory unclasped the envelope and glanced inside. More papers from Peter Quinn, in Asheville, North Carolina, as he had promised. Delayed a day. Hand-delivered from Switzerland, most likely. Not something he needed to worry about right now. He debated leaving it, decided not to.
“I’ll be in touch soon,” Charlie said. And then he left. There was something new driving him now. An energy he had to ride until Isaak Priest was found and killed. Part of it was the recognition that he was out in the open—and part of it was the ticking clock that he could almost hear.
He walked fourteen blocks to the apartment where Nadra was staying. Knocked.
Nothing. He looked up and down the street. Old concrete and brick apartment buildings, some boarded shut. He walked another seven blocks, toward downtown, to the address where Jason Wells was staying. No answer there, either.
Then he walked halfway back to Nadra’s address. Went into a small, open-front bar and found a table in a corner, facing the entrance. He ordered a black tea, needing a few minutes to think.
His eyes adjusted to the dark of the café. The tea relaxed him. A giant fan stirred the air, which was warm and dusty and spicy. After a while, he opened the envelope from Quinn and glanced quickly through the papers. They seemed extraneous now to the operation that was in front of him. He needed to stay focused on what was coming, on the next step. On Isaak Priest. But he also needed to calculate what had changed, what the repercussions would be for taking out Ramesh. He sipped the tea slowly. Watched the bicycles, rickshaws, and pedestrians in the sun. He opened the envelope again and took a closer look at the documents and notes Quinn had sent. A memo from his father to Colonel Dale McCormack. A page of Quinn’s handwritten journal, photocopied, hard to make out. And a copy of the memorandum that had shut down his father’s Lifeboat Inquiry—the same memo that Franklin had given him in Foggy Bottom, although unlike the copy Franklin had provided, this one had not been censored. It was all there. Vogel. Concerns about an “emergency preparedness plan.” His father’s warning about VaxEze. The unregulated trials. All the things that he wasn’t supposed to see.
Charlie read this last memo more carefully. If the report from Franklin had included these details, would he have gotten here in Mancala two or three days earlier? Maybe. What was so sensitive that they didn’t want him to see? Not clear. Then he came to the bottom of the second page. Saw the name of the man who had shut down the Lifeboat Inquiry. Who had signed his name to the memo. A name redacted in the other version, even though he knew who it was.
Colonel Dale McCormack. National Intelligence Director.
The man who had closed down his father’s operation, just days before Stephen Mallory died. Who was “threatened by it,” as Anna Vostrak had surmised.
Except it wasn’t Dale McCormack’s name that had been typed and signed at the end of this memorandum.