JON MALLORY LAY IN bed blinking at the morning light. The air was cool through the window screen and he smelled something good cooking in someone else’s kitchen. Then he heard the sound again that had wakened him. He reached for his cell phone and saw the call was from Saudi Arabia.
Honi Gandera.
“Hello,” he said, sitting up.
Charlie had warned him to be careful, to use disposable phones and pre-paid calling cards. To avoid saying actual names during phone conversations. It had seemed a little paranoid to Jon at first. Not anymore.
“Jon?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s Honi.” Jon winced. “I’ve checked around a little for you.”
“Okay.”
“I made some inquiries. I was able to find someone who knows your brother.”
“Really. Go on.”
“Has done business with him, anyway. I don’t think you’ll find him here in Saudi Arabia, Jon.”
“No?” Jon walked to the window, suddenly wide awake.
“His company is based in Riyadh,” Honi said. “With an office in Dubai. But their contracts, their business, is mostly elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’m told he had an ongoing project in Kuala Lumpur. But I understand he is, or was, in Nairobi most recently. I’m told he may be renting an office there right now, as well as an apartment.”
Jon squinted at the sunlight in the trees, feeling a surge of hope. “That’s quite a bit of information. How did you get it?”
“Good fortune. I located someone who worked with him. A subcontractor. All in confidence, of course. But a reliable man.”
“Any indication that he’s there now?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m told. I can’t vouch for it, Jon. He’s quite a mystery, your brother.”
“I know that. Do you have a contact? An address? Anything else?”
“Yes, actually, I do,” he said, and gave it to him—a street address on Radio Road, twelve blocks from the twenty-four-hour Green and White Club, in downtown Nairobi.
Jon jotted down the street number on the pad beside his bed and began to memorize it. “What’s he doing in Kenya? Do you know who the client is?”
“I can’t give you a name. This is the rest of what I was told: His company has been setting up surveillance systems outside of the city. Possibly for a private business moving to the Rift Valley. Apparently, he may have a message for you there, in Nairobi.”
“Really. A message?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“That he may have a message for me there?”
“Yes.”
Jon waited a moment, not sure how much of it to believe. “Okay,” he said. It was, in fact, a lot more information than he had expected, and he wondered about its integrity—if this might in some way be a trap.
Don’t try too hard. The information will come to you. Learn to identify it and understand it. Pay attention. Among the last things his brother had said to him.
“Bettawfeeq, my friend.”
Good luck.
“Likewise.”