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There was also another message in these items, Jon suspected, as he continued to examine them. Something he had considered before, several times, but had set aside with the directive to Kenya: His first story had focused on projects in two East African nations. It was only when he had reported on West Africa, and the tiny nations of Sundiata and Buttata in particular, that his stories had drawn fire. Now, Mallory’s brother appeared to actually be sending him there, to Sundiata. So it
had
been a valid connection.
The October project
, “the
ill wind,” would happen in West Africa, not in East Africa. Coming here, to Kenya, then, was also a diversion. But could he possibly leave without being noticed?

IN THE MORNING,
Jon zipped up his bag and walked out into the hallway. He took the stairs to the ground level and found a side entrance. Walked through the alley for several blocks, emerging at an intersection where he hailed a cab for downtown. He found the address on Green Street: a narrow lane of non-descript brick office buildings. But the designated address wasn’t an auto transport service, he saw, as he passed by several minutes before 9. It was a legal services firm. Jon peered in through the glass at the dusty office space, saw four desks in the center of the room, a separate office on one side. He walked up the street and bought a cup of coffee at a vendor’s stall. Drank it standing on the corner, soaking in the morning. When he finished, Jon walked past the address once more. This time the office was lit by a fluorescent ceiling light. He looked in, saw two women through the window, one sitting on the edge of a desk, the other seated.

At the next intersection, he hired a taxi-cab to Yaya Centre—a huge, American-style shopping mall with a hundred shops and offices. He had a leisurely brunch of tea and almond croissants at the French bakery there, then sat out front on a ledge and typed some notes on his laptop. Twice, the Renault passed, its driver pretending not to notice him.

At 12:50, Jon was on his way back downtown, to Green Street, walking among the crowded lunch stalls and merchant stands, staying among people, when he felt a hard object press against the center of his back, then fingers tightening around his left arm.

He looked, simultaneously trying to pull his arm away: a bulky dark-skinned man wearing a shiny olive suit and white shirt, about Jon’s height but much stockier.

“Excuse me, sir. Just keep walking.” Deftly, then, he took the gym bag from Jon’s left shoulder and slipped it over his own left shoulder. “Keep walking. Look straight ahead, please.”

The man’s grip remained steady, becoming tighter only when Jon resisted. He stayed slightly behind, so that oncoming pedestrians would not notice he was holding Jon’s arm, guiding him forward
through the crowds. Jon stole glances, saw that the man appeared to be smiling slightly—but it was a detached smile, as if he were remembering something pleasant. A device to make him seem on his own, not connected to Jon Mallory.

They came to an intersection and waited together at the curb. Traffic roared back and forth over the potholed street, spewing fumes: mini-buses, motorbikes, trucks, cars. On the other side, a group of schoolchildren waited to cross. Behind them, fruit and produce stands and a crowded marketplace.

The light changed, but several bus drivers sped brazenly through the intersection, honking horns. The men began to walk, part of the mass of pedestrians. Bicycle taxis rode through them, bells ringing. A mini-taxi inched along, trying to force the pedestrians to part around it. Four elderly women pushed together with their heads down, walking right into them. Jon felt the man tug at his arm again, pulling left. On the next block, the walking space narrowed; cars were parked at the curb; a lamppost interrupted the pedestrian flow, causing a bottleneck. Jon felt a growing panic. But he also sensed that something about the other man didn’t fit; he seemed too polished to be doing this. The sidewalk became more congested, and for a moment they stopped moving. Again, he felt the man’s fingers tightening on his arm, forcing him around people. The sun was blocked by the tall buildings here, the air cool and stagnant. He felt the fingers gripping, steering him left, creating a passing lane. Then the man loosened his grip. That was the pattern.

He tightened his fingers when they came to another stop, this time at an intersection, standing on the curb. Then the traffic passed and they moved into the street again, and the grip loosened.

Only this time, in the instant that he let go, Jon jerked his arm away and spun in a circle. As the man tried to grab him, Jon barreled back into the crowd, the way they had just come, smashed through a clutch of people and kept running. As he had expected, the man turned and for an instant hesitated. It was all he needed. Jon Mallory was gone, making his way along the sides of the buildings, pushing through the stream of people, seeing an opening and breaking to his right, into an alley. He ran clear through the dark shadows to an adjacent street, then half a block to another alley. There he stopped, to catch his breath, crouching beside a dumpster, breathing the scents
of garbage and urine and fresh pastries, listening for footsteps. But nothing came—nothing he could see or hear. He had a few minutes to make the right moves now, to find a taxi and keep his appointment.
My brother’s appointment
.

Jon stood. Gazed down the alley the way he had come; then the other direction. Nothing. He listened closely: restaurant sounds, silverware clinking, traffic in the next block, voices.
What now?
He had lost his bag. But he still had his laptop and the envelope from his brother. The carry-on wasn’t important. Just clothes and toiletries. He could buy more of those. He walked deeper into the alley, still catching his breath. A series of doors, he saw, opened into shops and restaurants. Delivery entrances, some latched, some not.
Pick one
. Jon opened a screen door and stood for a moment in the storage area at the back of a restaurant. Boxes of vegetables, shelves of cans and jars. He passed through the kitchen, smelled basil and spices, walked by a cubby office where a woman looked up, startled, but didn’t say a word, and into the public area without acknowledging anyone. Exiting out the front onto a busy street, he saw a cab stand in the next block.
There
. He jogged along the sidewalk toward the intersection, staying under the storefront awnings, head down, maneuvering through people, keeping an eye on the cab stand. He checked his watch: 1:08. He could still get a cab to the address on time. If he missed this appointment, what would happen?

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.”

“That’s the armor.”

He didn’t answer; he didn’t need to. The forest was thinning, Jon saw; ahead were rolling hills and fields of tall yellow grasses.

“And where is my brother? Why isn’t he telling me this himself?”

Chaplin exhaled dramatically. “I don’t know. I saw him two days before he disappeared,” he said, making eye contact again. “On Saturday. He disappeared last Monday. His office was raided on Friday.”