Exit 9 (10 page)

That didn’t mean he wasn’t hopeful. To rid his country of malaria would be a miracle. Nearly every fifth child born in the country died from the disease. An unacceptable loss in itself, but deaths weren’t only limited to the young. Adults, too, were susceptible. That’s why any chance to curb the disease had to be tried.

But now the project was delayed.

“This is not acceptable,” he said to the representative from the Pishon Health Initiative. They were in the man’s office at Pishon’s temporary headquarters in Nairobi. “My government has already contributed significant amounts of money to facilitate Project Eradication. We have arranged for thousands of volunteers across the country, based, might I remind you, on a timetable
you
gave us when you brought the project to us. To change the date like this will necessitate further costs. We cannot afford to do this. We are not a rich country like yours.”

Hans Lesser, the Pishon rep, leaned forward in his chair. “Mr. Mwerla, we understand your concerns. The date change, though, is unavoidable and necessary. To truly guarantee the success of Project Eradication, dosing needs to be coordinated across the continent. All the target countries will be participating on the same day.”

“The same day? I do not see the importance of that. If our programs run a week or two apart or even a month, what difference could that make? I believe the timing is just a stunt you are doing for publicity.”

“I guarantee you, publicity is not our aim. Whether you get it or not, we don’t care. Ridding the planet of this deadly disease—
that
is our goal. According to our scientists, the best chance we have of doing that is by this coordinated effort. If need be, I can have one of them flown down here to give you a full technical briefing, but I’m hoping we can avoid that.” He paused. “The delay is only a few days, but we have no desire for this to be a burden on you. I have spoken with our team in Amsterdam, and have been able to pull together additional funds to cover whatever cost overruns the Kenyan government might incur.”

Mwerla calmed a bit. That was more than he’d been expecting. Still, there was much additional work that would need to be done because of this.

He stood up. “I will have to bring this up with the minister. He will have the final word.”

Lesser rose to his feet. “Of course.”

He held out his hand, and Mwerla reluctantly shook it.

As the Kenyan official turned for the door, Lesser said, “Please remember, Mr. Mwerla, what we’re doing here is a good thing.”

“Yes. I realize that.” Mwerla nodded grimly. “Good afternoon.”

__________

H
ANS LESSER KEPT
the smile on his face until the door shut behind the Kenyan. He then picked up the phone.

“Do it,” he ordered, and hung up again.

In all likelihood, everything would have gone smoothly and Mwerla would have played along, but taking that chance was not something they had time for.

Within the next thirty minutes, Lawrence Mwerla would be the victim of a tragic car accident, and his second in command—someone considerably more accommodating to the Project—would take over.

There would be no more talk of the date change.

__________

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

S
CHOOL HAD COME
to consume most of Patricia Mendes’s time, and the long hikes through the city she used to take when she was younger were a luxury she could seldom afford anymore. But it wasn’t just school that was taking up her time. It was also her boyfriend, Sergio. Make that
former
boyfriend.

Sergio was pig, He knew
nothing
about what it meant to be in a relationship. Her friends had tried to warn her, but she hadn’t listened. She’d only gone down to the park a week earlier because she knew the latest thing they had told her was a lie. But instead of proving them wrong, she’d found Sergio right where her friends said he would be, hiding behind the old shack in the park with his tongue stuck inside Maria Blanco’s mouth.

She felt like a fool, like she had no worth at all. How could he have done this to her? She had been a good girlfriend—never fighting with him, always agreeing to do whatever he wanted to do. She had even let him put his hand up her shirt once, though when he’d tried for her skirt, she had quickly put a stop to that.

Was that Maria’s attraction? Did she let him touch her down there?

No. It’s not Maria’s fault
, she told herself.
It’s Sergio’s.

He was the one to blame.

Unable to focus on her homework in the days that followed, she had started walking through the city again, trying to work through the hurt and anger that had initially consumed her. On this particular afternoon, she had wandered into the old neighborhood where her family once lived. It was odd and yet comforting to be on the streets where she had played as a kid. Though she didn’t recognize any of the people on the sidewalks, the buildings were all the same, as if time had not passed at all.

Soon, she reached the corner of a dead-end street, and suddenly recalled with vivid detail the old abandoned building that used to be at the end of it. She decided to see if it was still there. It had apparently once been a small factory, but for as long as her family had been in the area, it had stood empty. She and her brother Rodrigo would play in it sometimes, pretending it was a secret fort full of hidden passages and buried treasure.

When the building came into view, her heart sank a bit as she realized someone had reclaimed it. Though she could only see the top of the building, the roof over the front area had been replaced.

She approached cautiously, assuming the building would be occupied, but the closer she got, the less likely that seemed. The layout of the old factory was such that there was a wide room in front where the work would have been done, and a row of rooms that had probably been used for offices with their own corridor in the back. The improvements she noticed appeared to be limited to only the roof over the front room. The brick walls looked just as rundown as before. The only other change she could see was the few windows that used to let sunlight into the front room had been sealed up.

She scanned the area. No cars around and no sign that anyone was there.

Partly out of curiosity, and partly because it was keeping her mind on something other than Sergio, she slipped into the narrow space between the end of the building and the property wall, and made her way to the area in back. There was another change here. Several large rocks had been placed in front of the hole she had used when she was younger to get into the building. This only made Patricia all the more curious about what was inside.

She continued around the building, and smiled when she saw that the missing bricks at the top of the back corner had not been replaced. She climbed up the wall like she had before and lowered herself inside. The room she was in was tiny. She and Rodrigo had assumed it was once a closet. Long ago its door had been sealed up and separated from the rest of the building. That was probably why the people who’d blocked the other entrance had not felt it necessary to do anything about the hole at the top of the wall. But did that mean they hadn’t discovered the other way in?

In the back corner of the room was a narrow wooden cabinet. One of its doors was jammed in place, but the other, a bit more resistant now than before, still opened. At the bottom, its presence mostly hidden by an empty shelf a foot above it, had been a hole in the wall. When Patricia knelt down to check, she saw that it was still there.

She crawled through. The other side came out under an old metal desk that had piles of junk all around it. She and her brother had put the desk there and piled the scraps around it as part of concealing the secret back entrance to their fort. Even if other kids had found it in the years since, they had left it that way, no doubt thinking it added to the allure of the place.

She moved out of the office and into the hallway. It was obvious the new owners had zero interest in the back part of the building. It was as ratty and dingy as ever. Each room she looked into seemed untouched from when she’d last been there.

Halfway down the hall, there was a passageway that led into the large front room, or would have if a new wall of bricks hadn’t been erected in the middle of it.

She frowned at it, thinking. There had to be another way into the front room. At least someplace where she could just get a peek. She was really curious now.

Then she remembered the weapons room.

It wasn’t
really
a weapons room, just what she and Rodrigo had called it. It was the old office where they stored anything that looked like a gun or a sword. It had a common wall with the main room, and as a result of one of Argentina’s many earthquakes, that wall had shifted slightly, creating a crack near the top. Though she’d never examined it closely, she thought she might be able to at least glimpse into the other room. The problem was that it was four feet above the top of her head.

She scoured through the back half of the building for something she could use to boost herself up. In one of the offices, she found an old tabletop that she thought she could lean against the wall and use as a ladder. Not wanting the thing to slip out from under her, she piled several loose bricks along the bottom until she felt confident they would anchor the table in place.

Once everything was set, she put her hands against the wall, and carefully inched her way up until she reached the top. The table was actually longer than she’d needed, so she ended up having to hunch down to both see through the crack and avoid knocking her head against the ceiling.

She peered through the opening. It definitely went all the way through. The problem was, since there was very little light in the other room, she could barely see anything.

She slipped her fingers into the crack. If she could widen it just a little and let more of the light from her room filter through, she’d be able to see better. She worked at one of the boards that didn’t seem to be holding on to anything, but it held stubbornly in place. Determined, she pulled harder.

“Come on,” she said, trying to rock it back and forth.

With a sudden snap, it broke free and her hand flew backward, shifting her weight away from the wall. Without even thinking, she grabbed the opening with her other hand and pulled herself back, but she yanked too hard and the change in momentum caused her to slam into the wall. Gasping for air, she held on as tightly as she could with both hands so she wouldn’t fall. After several seconds, her breathing started to return to normal. She glanced down, and saw that the table had slipped sideways to the ground. She would have to drop onto the uneven terrain.

Just as she was psyching herself up to do this, she heard a snap, and then something in the wall groaned. Her gaze shot upward toward the break in the wall, but before she could even see it again, there was a crack, then another and another.

A groan, this one loud and sustained. She pressed her cheek against the wall, knowing there was little else she could do. She felt a part of the wall begin to tilt away from her as the groan increased. Then, with a final ripping of wood, it crashed into the other room while leaving her still dangling above the ground.

Dust billowed up and engulfed her, but it was thin enough for her to see that the wall below her chest level was gone. At first she couldn’t believe it, but it was right there in front of her—a good chunk of the wall was missing, and
she’d
done it.

She searched the ground, chose a spot where she could avoid twisting an ankle, and leaped toward it. As she stood once more, the only thought on her mind was to get the hell out of there. But then she caught a glimpse through the new hole into the other room.

What’s that?

She walked over to the missing wall. There was something large on the other side, taking up a good portion of the room. The air was still filled with enough dust that it was hard to make out exactly what it was.

Her curiosity returning, she stepped through the break. The item was about ten feet in, and went left and right like a wall. In the low light it was hard to tell for sure, but it seemed to be blue in color, and appeared to be corrugated in wide strips. It didn’t go all the way to the ceiling, though. Earlier, when she’d been peering through the crack, she must have looked right over the top of it.

She followed the wall to the left, because all the debris from the wall was to the right. The corrugated wall stopped about fifteen feet from the far end of the room. She turned the corner and saw that the new side was maybe only a fourth as wide as the long side had been. The moment she saw that a set of doors almost completely made up the short end, she knew what it was.

A shipping container.

In the middle of a walled-up, deserted building?
That didn’t make any sense.

The doors were locked by some kind of device that seemed to be mostly
inside
the container. There were also two red bands around each handle. If someone opened the doors, they would break. Weird, she initially thought, but then quickly revised that assessment. The bands were seals, weren’t they? A way to
tell
if the doors had been opened or not.

She went all the way around, but found nothing else that could possibly explain what it was doing there.

Maybe her brother could figure it out. He was good at puzzles like this.

Carefully, she worked her way back out of the building. As she headed home, she didn’t even give Sergio a thought. Her mind was completely on the shipping container, and on the millions of possible reasons it was inside the deserted building.

Their old fort really did have a treasure in it now.

12

T
HERE WERE TWO
Suburbans waiting for the flight from the Ranch when it landed at the private airfield just west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.