JON MALLORY SAT IN the Costa coffee bar in Terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport, waiting for his British Airways flight back to Dulles. He finished a panini and Italian coffee, then used his international calling card to reach Roger Church. It was eight o’clock in London—three o’clock in Washington.
His editor picked up on the second ring. “Church.”
“Roger, it’s Jon.”
He heard the familiar sigh—a little more drawn out than usual. “Jon. Where are you?”
“In transit. What’s the reaction been to the story?”
“Amazing. No words to describe it.”
“Good.”
There was something tentative, though, in his voice.
“Are you on your way home?”
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We’ll talk when you’re back.”
Jon clicked off. He walked the airport corridors for a while, browsing the shop windows, anticipating familiar surroundings and routines, but he also realized that he was heading toward a place he had never been before. He sat on a bench, closed his eyes, and tried to concentrate. But it wasn’t any good. Opened or closed, it didn’t matter. The images still flashed through his thoughts: the faces of the dead, eyes opened as if they were looking back at him, as if they were trying to convey some message to him.
“ALEC TOMKIN” CAUGHT the 11:34 A.M. American Airlines flight from Miami to Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport on the island of St. Kitts. He rented a Dodge Charger at the airport and drove along the coast road south of Basseterre.
It was Sunday, September 27. At 3:28, Tomkin was idling in front of a large, gated, walled home. Two minutes later, the gate opened.
Charlie drove forward, parking next to the house. Joseph Chaplin, the director of operations for Mallory’s firm, was seated at a desk in what had been the living room, but which had been divided into two enclosed offices. In the next office was Chidi Okoro, a lanky, long-legged West African man who served as his communications director.
It was balmy on St. Kitts, eighty degrees. The mountains of Nevis were visible five miles across the green Caribbean water. From a boat, this home looked like any other beachfront property, with deck chairs, umbrellas, a boat dock. But its actual function was as one of the bases for D.M.A. Associates, Charles Mallory’s company.
“How’s it look?”
He took a seat in front of Chaplin’s desk.
“A lot of movement. Your brother’s story is causing a stir. The government of Sundiata is adamantly denying it, of course.”
“What’s the public reaction?”
He pushed several reports across to Charles Mallory. “Not a lot,” he said.
Charlie sighed. “Is Sandra Oku okay?”
“Yes. She’s fine.”
“Good. Kip?”
“No.” Chaplin lowered his gaze. “He didn’t make it out.”
Charles Mallory turned away. Another casualty. Another witness gone. Another good man dead.
He stood and took Quinn’s packet into the next office.
“I’ve got something here,” he said. “Hard copy and disk.”
“Okay.” Okoro watched him through the thick lenses of his black, rectangular glasses.
“It’s called a ‘tri-county emergency preparedness report.’ Three townships in Western Pennsylvania. Something about it’s not right.”
He handed it to Okoro, who studied the map on the front of the report. He was a soft-spoken man, Nigerian, who didn’t talk much, but he was a brilliant computer technician. He had worked a succession of related jobs—imaging analyst, digital forensics researcher, digital security consultant—before Charlie had hired him as the company’s digital and communications director. It was Chaplin, though, who had recruited him, and Okoro still seemed more comfortable with Chaplin than with Mallory, or anyone else on the team.
“How long are you here?” Chaplin said. He was standing in the doorway.
“Not long. Just a few hours. I have an appointment overseas tomorrow.” He took a deep breath, thinking about Kip Nagame. “Think I’ll go for a swim.” He turned to Okoro, who was still watching him with his magnified eyes. “I also need to know everything you can find on Douglas Chase. He’s an attorney based in Houston who might have some connection with the Hassan terrorism network.”
His communications director did not acknowledge his request, but Mallory knew it had registered. Okoro just did things a little differently; that was okay.
“Oh, and Thomas Trent has been trying to reach you,” Chaplin said.
“Has he?” Charlie nodded, feeling again the burden of what had already been lost—his father, Paul Bahdru, Kip, a couple of hundred thousand innocent people in Sundiata—and what was potentially still ahead. He was reluctant to contact Trent again, though, knowing that Trent was under surveillance. And that they had agreed not to contact each other. They lacked the communications armor of the other side. It was why he was so guarded in his dealings with his brother. He had to be. He couldn’t jeopardize losing him. But he had to fulfill a promise, made to their father.
THE SEA WAS clear and cool, and it felt good to glide down through the water, to touch the grainy bottom and swim back toward the light. A brief interlude. Charlie had bought this waterfront property with his last government salary paycheck because St. Kitts was a place his grandfather had once come to do missionary work. That detail had stuck to his memory all of his life; he didn’t know why. It was the only piece of property Charles Mallory owned, although his company leased land in Africa and in Switzerland.
When Charlie came in from the beach, wrapped in a Carib Lager beach towel and wearing flip-flops, he saw Okoro standing in the doorway of his office, giant eyes watching him expectantly through his glasses.
“Encrypted,” Okoro said, sitting back at his desk. “Nothing to do with Pennsylvania.”
“I didn’t think so. What is it?”
“Steganographic code.” Charlie stepped closer, saw what was on Okoro’s computer monitors. Steganography was a form of encryption that hid messages inside the pixels of image files. Terrorists had used it for years to send messages through online pornographic sites and other websites. “Fairly simple. Meant for limited distribution.”
“So what does it show?”
“The payload,” he said, enlarging a corner of the image on his monitor, “is here.” At first, the aerial image of the three townships in Pennsylvania just became a blur. Then as it grew larger and blurrier, he saw something begin to form within the blur. “There’s a file inside this file. It opens into a second map here. The text is all encrypted. Fairly sophisticated. But here you can see the outline of the secondary map.”
Okoro dialed the hidden map into focus. Charlie stared at the shapes on his screen. Maps encoded within the pixels of the larger map. Three shapes that appeared to be townships or counties. But no. Not townships. Each was the shape of a country. Three small, little-known nations in Africa: Sundiata, Buttata, and Mancala.
And when he studied the map of Mancala a little more, he noticed something that he hadn’t been able to find in Sundiata. Or anywhere else: a river shaped like a backward “S.” The clue that Paul Bahdru had given him. It was in Mancala, not Sundiata. A country that he hadn’t even looked at. A river that ran near the capital city of Mungaza. The Green Monkey River, in Mancala.
That’s where he needed to go.
“What is it?” Chaplin said, standing in the doorway again.
“Mancala,” he said. “That’s where I think Isaak Priest is.”
Okoro frowned at him, then at the map. They all stared at the computer monitor.
“Really?” Chaplin said.
“Really,” Mallory said.
“Is that where you’re going?”
“No,” he said. “That’s where we’re going.”