Viral Read online

  “But how could I?” she had said and smiled at him, thinking of her patients and of Michael and their plans for after the rainy season. “These people depend on me.”

  There was a reason he couldn’t tell her more just then. But he had said he would contact her again and send her a message. Three days ago, it had happened. She had received his instructions and the box of medicine. She stared now through the wiper-streaked windshield and stroked the boy’s head again. Is this what Paul meant? How could he have known?

  Dr. Oku closed her eyes. Death could be very peaceful, she realized, listening to the ragged rasp of human breaths, the sound of death on a cool late afternoon in West Africa.

  FIVE

  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.”

  SIX

  GUS HEBRON LIVED IN the Virginia suburb of Reston, the first planned post-war community in the United States. His house was a large brick colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac with lots of oaks and elms behind it. Three stories, tall French windows. Much too much house for one man living alone, which Jon Mallory suspected that Gus Hebron was.

  He had found a bio of Hebron online, along with some personal details. Eight years ago, he’d become partner in a commercial satellite business known as Sky Glass Industries Inc. It was sold last year to Boeing. Hebron’s division worked on defense and intelligence contracts, including surveillance projects for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense. Before that, he had helped develop satellite programs for NASA and the National Security Agency. Born in upstate New York, Hebron had received his master’s degree from Georgetown, where he’d taken a class from Jon Mallory’s father. He’d served as a combat engineer officer in the U.S. Army, then worked for Raytheon and United Technologies Corporation before taking a post with the government.

  The neighborhood where he lived was new and felt oddly uninhabited. The sun had set, but orange-gold afterglows burned through the shedding trees as Jon pulled in. Hebron greeted him at the front door wearing baggy, faded jeans, fuzzy slippers, and an oversized Washington Redskins jersey. Number 8. He was a big man—six-one, 250, Jon guessed. Full face, easy grin, short-cropped curly hair, with age lines on his forehead and around his eyes. It was a face that didn’t reveal much, although Jon sensed that he was a complex man. The last time they had spoken, Gus had been a student of his father’s. He always wore short-sleeved buttoned shirts in those days and grinned a lot but never said much.

  “Come on in, Jonny. Get you a beer?”

  “All right.”

  Jon stood in the doorway and surveyed the living room. The house was elegantly appointed and seemed brand new. Two-story foyer, hardwood floors, a mantled fireplace. A sixty-inch television played C-SPAN on mute. The room was cluttered with a half-dozen beat-up cardboard boxes stuffed with papers, notebooks, and file folders. Two computer monitors sat side by side on an old wooden work table. The chandeliers were set too bright.

  Gus Hebron handed Jon a sixteen-ounce can of Bud Light in a Redskins coolie. He returned to the kitchen and came back with a fruit bowl filled with Chex mix, setting it on the large glass coffee table between them.

  “So, what are you doing with yourself these days, Jonny?”

  “Nothing real exciting.”

  “Yeah.” Hebron grinned. “Still writing, I guess?”

  Jon nodded.

  “And what prompted you to look me up?”

  “Trying to find my brother, as I said.”

  Hebron sat on the edge of the sofa, reached for the bowl and popped some of the Chex mix in his mouth, keeping a reserve in his hand. “Why call me?”

  “I have a pretty limited number of options at this point.”

  “Well. The first question I’d ask is whether or not he wants to be found. If Charlie doesn’t want to be found, you’re wasting your time looking for him.”

  “I’m not sure if he does or not,” Jon said. Both men sipped their beers, watching each other. Gus’s face became expressionless, but Jon saw that he was still looking at him. “I’m really just seeking some direction. If you needed to find him, who would you go to?”

  “Well. I’d set up an investigation,” Gus said. “I’d have him tracked. And, of course, I could do that, for a price. Why are you so concerned?”

  “Just a hunch. He was supposed to call me this morning. He didn’t.”

  Gus nodded, then moved his jaw from side to side. Something about him wasn’t quite right, Jon sensed, though he couldn’t figure just what it was.

  “Can I ask what the nature of the call was?”

  Jon shrugged.

  “Do you have a number for him? An e-mail?”

  “Nope.”

  “Street address? Any way of reaching him?”

  “No. He contacted me.”

  “What I thought.” He drank his beer. “You two haven’t been particularly close for a while, have you?”

  Jon raised his eyebrows but said nothing, surprised that Gus would know this.

  “Falling out?”

  “I can’t really give you a good reason.”

  “Other than Charlie.”

  “Right.”

  He feigned a laugh. “Well. Look. If you think I’ve got a pipeline to him, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Jon. In fact, to be honest with you, I think the reason I invited you over was because of what you might tell me.”

  Jon Mallory frowned. “Really. Does it matter to you?”

  Gus’s face became very serious, an expression Jon hadn’t imagined was in his repertoire. “Your father mattered to me. Your family does, sure.” He gazed at his beer can, tilting it for a moment as if reading the letters. “When I worked with your dad, we were part of an exclusive community. Weren’t allowed to discuss the shit we were working on with anyone. A lot of it, we weren’t even allowed to tell our spouses. I guess it goes back to that. And, I mean, I knew you and your brother when you were kids, after your mom died.” He grinned, and it made Jon feel like an outsider, as he sometimes had as a teenager, unable to enter the closed world where his father and brother lived. “Couldn’t have been two kids more yin and yang than you two, could there?”

  Jon Mallory allowed a quick smile. It was true, he supposed. Jon had been the more predictably rebellious one, interested in rock music and TV shows that Charlie and their father thought frivolous. But he’d also wanted to live a different sort of life, a life out in the open. Charlie had stayed close to the more concealed path cut by their father. “But I understand you may have had some contact with my brother recently,” Jon said. “That you may have even worked together earlier this year.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Jon shrugged. “Source told me.”

  “Yeah?” Hebron drank his beer, then ran a forefinger in a semi-circle over the rim of the can. “You know, it’s funny. I’m older than Charlie and younger than your dad. And there was a big gap there, between those generations. Your father was a gifted man, but he was old school. He drank the Kool-Aid like a lot of the brightest people of that generation. He said his prayers to the government each night because back then the U.S. government really was the almighty. The leading edge in science, space exploration, weapons systems. Charlie’s more like me, I guess. We saw opportunity shifting elsewhere. Did you know seventy percent of intelligence work is subcontracted out now?”

  Jon nodded. He sipped his beer.

  “Both of us got out of government, graduated to the real world. Taking what we were doing for the government and doing it better on the outside. And, in some cases, selling it back to them.” He winked, pulling his right leg up.

  “Satellite imaging, in your case.”

  “Yeah. Source tell you that, too?”

  Jon smiled. “Nope, all I had to do was Google your name and the company came up. It’s hardly a secret. Big business now, isn’t it? Satellite imaging.”

  “Has been, sure. Ten, twelve years or more.”

  “You changed the subject, though.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yeah.”

  He made a snorting sound, let his leg go, and leaned forward, as if gathering his strength to stand. “Here. Let me get you a cold one.” He took Jon’s can, which wasn’t empty. Returned to the kitchen
. Jon heard him open the refrigerator, pop two more beers, pour out and crunch the old cans. He took inventory of the room, trying to figure what was wrong. For one thing, the house wasn’t lived in. He was pretty sure of that. No, this couldn’t be Hebron’s home.

  “What changed ten or twelve years ago?” Jon asked, as Gus returned.

  “What?”

  “You said satellite imaging has been big for ten or twelve years. What changed ten or twelve years ago?”

  “Oh.” He reached for a handful of Chex mix and leaned back. “Well. The law changed. Back in the early ’90s, actually.”

  “Did it? How so?”

  “It’s sort of an interesting story. Government started to get a little worried back then, afraid that foreign competition for satellite technology was going to knock the pegs out from under us. So, in ’94, Washington decided it would allow private companies to launch satellites with high-resolution sensors—stuff that was available only to the intelligence community before then. That changed it, opened it up. After that, you could provide information to anyone who was able to pay for it. That’s how our company got started.”

  “And my brother was working with you on something recently.”

  Hebron turned his head, seeming to fend off the question. “The thing about your brother: he sees things that other people don’t. Sometimes, it almost resembles paranoia. Although in a funny way, I understand it.”

  “When did you last talk with him?”

  “Last winter. Not long after your dad died.” He took a slow drink, his face impassive. “He was here, in the city, for a few days.”

  “Really. Business?”

  Hebron snorted. He ran his finger again in a semi-circle over the top of his beer can. “We never had any dealings that weren’t business, Jonny. Okay? He was helping you on those stories about Africa, wasn’t he?”