SEVERAL MINUTES BEFORE TEN, Jon Mallory dressed in jeans, a polo shirt and running shoes, pulled on his father’s old B-2 Air Force jacket and went out for a walk. He needed a change of scenery, and to make a mental list of people who might help him find his brother.
He improvised a circuitous route, heading up Yuma Street to Spring Valley, along the edge of American University, then to Wisconsin Avenue and the Tenleytown Metro Station, letting his thoughts wander as he tread through the quiet old residential neighborhoods. Remembering names, faces, pieces of conversations. People his brother had known or might have known.
Images from his father’s funeral flashed through his thoughts. Men gathered at a cemetery on a wet, frigid morning last January, heads down, collars upturned. Thick snow slanting white in a charcoal gray sky. Bare trees. The wind spraying the snow against their faces.
People he recognized, though some only vaguely. Important men, some of them, from the world his father had inhabited. One conspicuously absent. Oddly, inexplicably.
He focused his thoughts on the faces he had seen, the men and women he could name and those he couldn’t name.
A former CIA director.
A heavy-set man who had once been his father’s student.
A woman he had seen on talking heads television shows, but couldn’t name.
Someone from the State Department.
One face not there. The one that should have been.
JON TOOK THE Metro from Tenleytown station two stops to Bethesda, rode the escalator to Wisconsin Avenue, and walked seven blocks to Tidwell’s, the organic restaurant where he often ate breakfast. He was greeted by the familiar aroma of potato and vegetable frittatas, the signature morning dish, a delicious concoction that included Roma tomatoes, asparagus, Irish porter cheddar cheese, and mushrooms.
He was sort of hoping to see Melanie Cross, his former girlfriend and current journalism competitor. For a while, they had met here each weekday before work. But that had been several years ago. In a different life.
He took a window booth, pulled out a pen, and began to scribble names on the napkin. People who might help him find his brother: a couple of long-ago business clients; three men his brother had probably worked with at the National Security Agency; one at the CIA. A woman named Angelina whom Charlie had dated years earlier, in college—the only romantic link Jon had ever known about. He was struck again by how little he knew his brother.
He took the same approximate route home, then spent the morning and early afternoon running searches on the Internet, making calls and sending e-mails. Two of the eleven names came off the list quickly. Charlie’s old Princeton professor had died six years ago. One of the NSA contacts, too, was dead.
He was able to reach three people—two men and a woman—who still worked for the government, but none of them had heard from Charlie in years. He called his brother’s old college roommate, Mark Fuller, an engineer with Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California. But he, too, had lost touch with Charles Mallory long ago.
Then Jon remembered a name that went with a face. Herbert Pincher. One of the faces at his father’s funeral, a former CIA analyst. A compact, stolid-faced man with squinty eyes and an impish smile who had seemed to be watching him through the snow last January. Jon did an online search and found that Pincher was now deputy assistant secretary of state for political affairs. He was fairly certain Pincher had worked with Charlie at one time.
He called the number listed on the State Department website. He waited on hold, expecting one of Pincher’s aides to come back and tell him that he was in a meeting or away from the office.
Instead, a gruff voice said, “Pincher.”
“Mr. Pincher. Jon Mallory.”
He said nothing at first. Then, “A long time. How have you been?”
“Fine.”
“I hear your latest story on Africa ruffled a few feathers.”
“I heard that.”
“Some of the philanthropists thought you were picking on them.”
“I know.”
“How’s your brother?”
“That’s what I’m calling about.” He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid something might have happened to him.”
Jon listened to the man breathe. Pincher had served as an off-the-record source once for a feature he’d written about proposed constitutional changes in Turkey; he had only agreed to talk with him because he knew Charlie, though, and he suspected that was the only reason he had taken this call.
“Why do you think something might have happened to him?”
“He was supposed to call me this morning. He didn’t.”
“Not like Charlie.”
“No.”
“But then calling you at all isn’t like him, either. Is it? I thought you two weren’t in contact.”
“We weren’t.”
“You’re revealing something to me here, then, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
But of course, he was. Pincher could read the sub-text: that Charles Mallory had been one of his sources on the recent stories about Africa.
“I can’t say I hadn’t suspected that,” he said. “But why do you think I can help you on this?”
“Because you know my brother. You’ve worked with him, anyway.”
Pincher made a sound—what could have been a sigh or a laugh or a cough. His deliberate silences were a good sign, Jon thought, so he didn’t say anything.
“I haven’t done business with him in a while. But I know someone who has. Earlier this year.”
“Okay.”
“Someone who worked with your father, too. Here in Foggy Bottom. He’s in the private sector now. Satellites.”
Jon Mallory waited.
“Satellites,” Pincher repeated. “Okay? And that didn’t come from me.”
“Wait.”
But Herbert Pincher had already hung up.
IT WAS NINE minutes later when Jon Mallory thought of Gus Hebron. Another face from his father’s funeral. A large man with a big wide face and steely eyes. At the gravesite, he had clapped Jon once on the back and then walked away through the veil of snow to his car, not saying a word. He’d skipped the reception.
And Jon thought again of the face that should have been at the funeral but wasn’t.
His brother’s.
For some reason, Charlie had chosen to miss their father’s funeral.
There was no listing for Gus Hebron in the current year’s phone book, but Jon found a “white pages” listing online, with an address in Reston, Virginia. A new listing. He called the number and listened to it ring. Six times, seven, eight. No answer. No voicemail.
At 6:28, before going out to pick up some Chinese food for dinner, he tried again, and Gus Hebron answered. Jon Mallory immediately recognized the throaty way he said “Hello,” even though it had been close to twenty years since he had talked with him.
“Gus Hebron?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Jon Mallory. I don’t know if you remember me.”
He waited through a silence. Looked out at the old stone bench in the back yard, the place he liked to go to think.
“Jonny Mallory? Of course. What’s the occasion?”
“I’m calling about my brother.”
“Yeah?” Jon heard clicking sounds in the background. “What about him? What’s up?”
“I’m trying to find him.”
“Oh? Okay.” Hebron breathed heavily again, and Mallory remembered that even as a twenty-something-year-old, he had always seemed short of breath. “Hey, listen, Jonny. I’m sort of in the middle of something here. But why don’t you come on over to my place? All right? If we’re going to talk, I’d rather do it in person, anyway. Okay?”
“When?”
“Come on over.”