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“Yes,” she said, in English. “Can I help you?”

“I’m not sure.” Jon looked out at the trees and fields. Listened to the wind.

She watched him with clear, intelligent-looking eyes. A woman almost his height, slender, with the beginnings of gray in her thick, clasped hair. “You are looking for your brother,” she said softly.

“Yes. How do you know?”

“Okay. Please.”

Jon followed her down the winding trail among tropical bushes and wild banana trees to a mud-and-sisal home that had been built against a rocky hillside. His throat caught the spicy scent of a stew, which was simmering outside in a black pot braced on a triangle of wooden supports.

“Please. Come in.”

The woman gathered her dress and ducked into the archway. Jon went in behind her. A sweet, pleasant smell of rooibos tea filled the low-ceilinged, cave-like room. Three squat candles cast shadows on the walls.

“I go by Kaya,” she said, extending her hand. “Come in. Have a seat.”

The barefoot woman, crouching, slowly poured out cups of tea from a copper pot. They sat on two old foam chair cushions on the dirt floor, facing each other, not saying anything at first. The tea’s nutty flavor was delicious, the first thing he’d had to eat or drink since the day before.

“Did you come through the village?”

“Through several, actually.”

“Do you think you were followed?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Everything seemed abandoned, all the way in.”

“Yes.” Her eyes lowered. “You can stay here tonight. One night only. That’s Marcus,” she said, when the little boy appeared momentarily in the doorway.

“Your son.”

“No.” Her eyes moistened for a moment but stayed on his. “He has become my son, yes. Since several days ago.”

Jon sipped his tea, letting his eyes adjust. He felt grimy, unshaven and unclean. The woman who called herself Kaya watched him, holding her cup above the saucer. Her steadiness intrigued him, made him feel drawn to her. She was probably in her late thirties, he guessed, although at certain angles her face seemed much younger.

The room smelled earthy, musty, human. Against one wall was a single shelf stacked with tins of food and a small, generator-powered refrigerator. A large wooden crucifix rested on an empty fruit crate
between two of the candles.

“There’s some nice country out there,” he said, to make conversation.

She grimaced slightly. “Not so nice anymore. Have you been to Sundiata before?”

“In the south. Briefly. The border area. Below Kuseyo Valley.”

She nodded. “I lived in the south. For seven years, I ran a clinic in the village of Kaarta.”

“Southwest of the valley?”

“Yes. It was.”

“ ‘Was.’ ”

“Yes.”

“How do you mean?”

“The village is gone now. Everyone died, in a single day.” Jon saw something change in her face, her eyes glistening but no less firm. “Marc’s parents died, his brothers and his sisters. His grandparents.” She lowered her voice and looked to the slant of light in the entranceway. “He still goes out some mornings, thinking he will find them. He still talks to them sometimes. He calls their names in his sleep. Everyone died. There aren’t even any graves for them.”

“But you didn’t. You survived.”

“Yes, I survived. But more than that. I witnessed it. There were not supposed to be any witnesses.” Her eyes, unblinking, seemed wise to him, and Jon felt a flare of curiosity.

“I still see them at night when I can’t sleep,” she said. “I remember people I knew, looking at me.” Her eyes, reflecting the candlelight, seemed to retreat for a moment. “As I say, there weren’t supposed to be any witnesses. But now you have one. Three, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

“Three reliable witnesses. At least three. Isn’t that enough for you to tell a story?”

Jon studied her face, trying to grasp what she was telling him. Wondering if this was the information—the
details
—his brother had promised.
Witnesses
. Yes, that was what he had said.
Be a witness to things that haven’t happened yet
.

“Witnesses to what, exactly?”

She looked toward the arched mud doorway where the boy had been. A corner of her mouth twitched. “Witness to the elimination of more than a hundred thousand people, maybe a lot more, in a
single morning. Quite an accomplishment.”

“
What?
” The woman sipped her tea, the shadows mimicking her motion on the mud walls. She returned the cup to its saucer, her eyes leaving his for only a moment. Hands steady. “How?”

“How did I survive? Because I had warning. What happened was a trial. One of several that have already occurred. The next wave, we think, will be for real. Much worse. We think it will be in early October.”

“The next wave.”

“Yes. That’s what we think.”

“The flu?”

“It is called something else, though,” she said. “Something that has a different meaning. That changes it from bad to good. They are calling it a vaccine now, the ‘aerial vaccine.’ They’re spraying ‘vaccine’ to ‘contain’ it, along with pyrethroids to eradicate mosquitoes and tsetse flies.”

Jon set his teacup back in the saucer.

“You know my brother, then.”

She nodded once but looked away. “We had been waiting for you,” she said. “It’s almost too late now. This region may be taken in a few days, maybe sooner. We’re in the path here. We need to get out right away. But he wants
you
to be a witness, too.”

“My brother does.”

“Yes.”

“Is he here?”

“No.”

Her eyes shifted. Jon felt his heart racing, and he thought again about logistics—how would they get back to the airport, out of this country?
Don’t try too hard
. “Is that what he told you? Is that who gave you the warning?”

“No,” she said. “My cousin did.”

“Your cousin.”

“Yes. He came to visit me shortly before it happened, and he told me what might be coming. His name is Paul. Paul Bahdru.”

“Paul Bahdru!”

“Yes.” Her eyes went to the entranceway, as they seemed to do instinctively every few moments, as if she were keeping sentinel. “My real name is Sandra Oku,” she said, speaking more softly. “I survived
because my cousin gave me warning, and because he provided me with medicine. Now I have a great responsibility, something that is very humbling and requires a great deal of faith every day. My own needs are not important anymore.” The candlelight flickered on her face. “We have a colleague, a very organized and resourceful man who is an engineer. He arranged to get you here.”

“Chaplin.”

“Yes. Joseph.”

“Tell me about Paul. What he told you. What happened.”

The calm steeliness in her eyes was arresting. “We don’t know,” she said. “We know that Paul had gotten inside. He had been hired by the government, for the Ministry of Health for its new research institute. The institute is carrying out these vaccine programs. They’re funded largely through Western investors and are being implemented by so-called humanitarian organizations. He made arrangements for me to come here some time ago. He wanted me to be a witness, in case the worst happened. A back-up.”

“A human memory stick.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him, quickly.

“Why here?”

“Proximity. Temporary safety. There is a river on the other side of the next hill.” She pointed. “And past that there are dozens of cocoa farms. These people work in the fields when they can. When there’s work. But many of the farms have closed down. It’s moving this way.”

“I know about your cousin,” Jon said. “My brother was supposed to meet with him last week, wasn’t he?”

She looked outside again. “Paul had begun to find out who was stealing this country. He wanted to do something about it. But I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said, gesturing dismissively with her right hand. “There’s no need any more for polite sentiments.” She took a breath. “For a time, they thought they might be able to stop it. But they came to see that it isn’t so simple. So they decided to expose it instead. To maybe let opinion stop it. But that isn’t so easy, either. At least not so far. They have advantages that are difficult to overcome.”

“What did you mean when you said what happened was just a trial?”

“To gauge the potency. And the reaction. It’s been going on for a while, a few weeks at least, on a small scale, and then contained. A half dozen or so small trials, we think. At a cost of maybe two hundred thousand lives. In regions where it won’t get attention. Where no one keeps track. In countries many Westerners have not even heard of. Occasionally, it’s been reported. But the government always denies it. And it’s not something the Western media particularly care about—even if they believed it. The one in October, we think, will be different. A Game Changer, Paul said.”

Yes. A term his brother had used.

“How do you know this?”

“From the three people who were inside and managed to come back out. Who have seen the preparations. One of them is here now.”

Jon watched her eyes, the candlelight on her face. “And you think this area is ‘in the path.’ Why?”

“We’ve seen it. A little west of here is jungle. Several miles into the jungle is an airstrip. From the top of the hill behind us, with binoculars, you can see the planes land when it’s clear. That’s where the vaccine came in.”

“Who owns it? Who’s doing this?”

She shrugged, as if the questions were unimportant. “Intermediaries dealing with the government. The land was purchased on the condition that the tenants would be gone before the purchaser actually took possession. Something to that effect. There have been all sorts of land buys and leases in the past year. Many of them are supposedly facilitated by a businessman named Isaak Priest. But that is just hearsay. We don’t really know.”

“Where is it coming from?” Jon asked, making a mental note of that name.

“From airports north of here, Paul thought. The planes may be registered to a South African contractor, but their cargo originates elsewhere, possibly in Switzerland. They’re delivering both medicines and viral properties, we think. Let me show you.” She opened a small trunk, pulled out several layers of clothes—jeans, dresses, lapa skirts, scarves—underneath which was a loose-leaf binder. She scooted her cushion toward Jon and opened the binder, handed it to him.

Jon turned the pages. They were photos printed on twenty-pound paper, many of them blurry, shot at a distance with a high-powered
lens. Their subject, though, was clear: crates being unloaded from the bellies of cargo airplanes and the backs of tractor-trailer trucks and what looked like fancy black crop-duster planes. “They unload these crates. Some of them say ‘Perishable Fruit’ on the outside. But what’s inside are these spray canisters. Viral properties in aerosol form, stored in four hundred gallon tanks. It’s part of a government project, carried out by a quote humanitarian group, under the heading ‘Malaria eradication.’

“This is supposedly the man in charge. Priest. The only picture of him.” It was a grainy photo of a large man standing on a strip of asphalt—what might have been a small airport—in front of a dark Mercedes sedan. The photo was shot at a distance. Too fuzzy to make out details.

Jon’s heart was racing again. He paged through the photos. Numerous similar images. Blurry reproductions. Nothing that really implicated anyone, or was especially useful. He closed the book and handed it back.

“Paul took these?”

“Yes.”

“So is it based here?”

“No. No, there are other airfields. We don’t know how many. Several dozen, probably. We believe it may be based in the Central Gonja Valley. Maybe elsewhere.”

“East of where you lived.”

“Yes. That’s where we think it hit the hardest. Which makes the region impossible to access now. The government has issued a ‘quarantine,’ supposedly. What’s going to happen next, though, will be here. All of this will be displaced.”

“Then what?”

She shrugged. “Someone will move in and clean it up. Contractors are already in place for that. You’ll see tomorrow.”

They exchanged a look. John decided not to ask her to elaborate.

“But I thought you had medicine.”

“Some. Medicine for what’s out there now, yes. Not necessarily for what’s coming. I’m afraid what’s coming will be different. What’s out there now is different from what came through Kaarta.”

She took the album from him and returned it to the chest, placed the clothes on top and closed it.

“In the hills, to the east and north of here, were several farming villages. Cocoa farms, mostly, also tea plantations and potato farms.”

“Were.”

“They were hit by the flu two and three days ago. They’ve all been emptied out. Some are burial grounds now.” The empty villages he had seen coming in. “Victims have been trucked in from the countryside, too. When the people from this area have finished their labors, it will move through here. All the way to the coast. Kip will show you tomorrow.”

“Who’s Kip?”

“Kip is one of the witnesses. He worked for the government’s Central Planning Division. He left six days ago to do this. He’ll get you closer. The medicine is a vaccine. It will help you for a day, maybe two. Tomorrow night we’ll leave together.”

She said it without a trace of emotion in her voice. Jon felt the burden of what she was telling him, of the responsibility that she was handing off. That his
brother
was handing off. “Here,” she said. “When you go outside, wear this. Keep your face covered as much as possible.”

Mallory looked at what she was holding: a straw hat. “Why?”

“A precaution. Would you like something to eat? You’re probably hungry.” She nodded to the entranceway. “In the pot out there is
egusi
. It’s a groundnut stew with sweet potatoes, cassava, onions, garlic, spices, and peanuts.”

“Sounds delicious.” Jon
was
hungry. The spices from the stew suddenly made his stomach rumble. But he was also sifting through the information that Sandra Oku had told him. “I feel like cleaning up first, if that’s possible.”