Free Viral by James Lilliefors

afford that. Not after what had happened to Paul Bahdru. He was using the time in transit to work through puzzles. To think about three people who were going to figure in his life over the next several days. And to wonder about a fourth.
    Charlie was en route to a meeting with Richard Franklin, head of the CIA’s Special Projects Division, his only remaining liaison with the intelligence community and his sole point of contact on what Franklin called “The Isaak Priest Project.” It was Franklin who had sent him to Africa to find Priest.
    Mallory and Franklin had weeks earlier established a private code, a simple system of communication based on numbers. Six numbers, six meanings. Valid for six meetings, during the span of this operation. A system known only to them—although that was what he had thought with Paul Bahdru, too. And somehow that had gone terribly wrong.
    The message Franklin had sent began, “Thought this was interesting.” Four words. Corresponding with a number. The number representing a meeting place that the two men had agreed upon and memorized. A code that existed only in their heads.
    Number 4 referenced a parking space at a shopping center garage in Arlington, Virginia, a five-minute walk from the Ballston Metro stop. Pasted in the window with Franklin’s message had been a newsstory about anti-government uprisings in Iran, something Franklin had evidently copied from
The Washington Post
‘s website. For Charles Mallory, the story contained only two pieces of pertinent information, and they had nothing to do with Iran. Two other numbers, agreed upon verbally, which corresponded to words in the story. Six and seventeen.
    A date and a time.
    Charlie had counted out the words in the story: The sixth was “protest,” the seventeenth “nullify.” One signified a day of the week, the other a time. The first word contained seven letters, translating to the seventh day of the week.
Saturday
. The second word corresponded to a number, also. “Nullify” began with “n.” The fourteenth letter in the alphabet. Which translated to 1400 hours.
    So, Richard Franklin was asking to see him at 1400 hours.
    2 P.M . on Saturday. Today.
    The rest was up to Charlie. He was not obligated to accept the request or even to acknowledge it. That was the arrangement. If he wanted, he could let it disappear into cyberspace and move on. But this time, he
would
respond. He had to. This time, he needed to know more. After Kampala, there was too much at risk, and there was nothing, it seemed, that he could afford
not
knowing.
    As the train snaked through the concrete tunnel below the Virginia suburbs, Charles Mallory glanced at a man standing by the opposite set of doors who had let his eyes linger on Charlie a moment too long. He took inventory of the others—a young man holding onto a pole, nodding to a beat playing through earphones; an older woman staring at a newspaper, then closing her eyes, then opening them, then closing them—and returned to the man. He was not going to look at him again, he saw. It was okay.
    Charlie went back to his thoughts. To the three people:
    A defense contractor named Russell Ott, who had helped coordinate the surveillance project code-named Tribal Eyes.
    Ahmed Hassan, the assassin who had tried to kill him in France, whose organization was known as the Hassan Network.
    And his father, whose final message about a shadowy African businessman named Isaak Priest included several questions, one of which might be answered by a former colleague of his father’s. A man named Peter Quinn.

    CHARLES MALLORY EXITED the subway train and proceeded through the underground tunnel to the parking garage in Ballston Common Mall. He walked with the crowds as long as he could, then took a stairway into the garage. He found the designated spot, on the third level. An Escalade, parked earlier in the day, presumably, reserving the space.
    Charlie looked at his watch as he approached the passenger