James Lilliefors - Viral

“All right.” Franklin turned down the classical music on the stereo. “Well,” he said, sitting on a low-slung powder blue sofa. “Congratulations.”

“What for?”

“I understand you took out Isaak Priest.”

“No. I had nothing to do with it, actually.” Franklin watched him, not revealing anything. “What’s going to happen now, Richard?”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“The truth would be good. For a start.”

Franklin shook his head, as if he didn’t know what he was talking about. And that was when Charles Mallory saw that he hadn’t figured this quite right. Franklin was a step ahead of him.

“Unfortunately, Charlie, some things have changed since the last time we spoke. I wish they hadn’t. And it wasn’t my decision, believe me.” He took a deliberate breath. “You’re not going to be involved in the follow-up on this, okay? Your operation had very clear parameters. You succeeded. Your company will be compensated with a generous final payment.”

He seemed too assured, but in a mechanical way, as if reciting a script. He opened and closed his reading glasses.

“Whose decision?”

“Not mine.”

“McCormack.”

“Mmm. There’re some delicate negotiations ahead that won’t involve you.” He feigned a weak smile. “And, I hate to have to tell you this, but there have also been some ethical concerns raised. Some of which are reflecting on me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The fact that you handed the details of a classified operation to your brother to write about. That violates our agreement.”

Charlie opened the front of his shirt so Richard Franklin could see his gun. Franklin had given up his brother to Gardner. He was sure of that now. Franklin had created a fictitious identity for Jon, as Charlie had requested. But then he had given him up. To protect something. And to prevent him from writing the story. Why?

“What’s going on, Charlie?”

“Nothing. Let’s just talk, okay?” Charlie sat on the sofa arm. Franklin seemed to stiffen. “My father saw what was coming a year ago. He tried to warn the government, didn’t he?”

Franklin eyed him steadily. “I wasn’t involved in that, Charlie. I don’t know what happened a year ago.”

“You knew the real reason his inquiry was shut down, though. You couldn’t afford to have any of this come out.”

Franklin shook his head once, looking down at his glasses.

“You couldn’t just say no when I asked you for that report. Instead, you overcompensated. You redacted things that weren’t necessary to redact. Even the name of the person who wrote the memorandum. The person who signed off on it.” He watched Franklin, to see his reaction. Nothing . “Was it the government that invented Isaak Priest, Richard?”

“No.” He began to smile. “Of course not.”

“It makes a strange sort of sense if they did. An aggressive, shadowy African businessman who could go into poor, troubled countries, his pockets stuffed with almost unlimited cash. Buy up property and favors, help local businesses, cut deals with corrupt officials. Set up the groundwork for your investments. Start with the easiest, most vulnerable places. Unstable places like Mancala and Sundiata. Places we can’t get to any other way. That’s what we need, isn’t it? We need influence in the developing world, because that’s where the future is. That’s where future growth is going to be, and a lot of those places we can’t get in. We don’t have a single permanent military base right now in Africa, for example, do we? We’re still not trusted in a lot of places.”

Franklin’s eyes were steady. “I can’t comment, Charlie. But what you’re speculating on happened before we knew about it. Okay? That operation was already in place.”

Before we knew about it . Charles Mallory paused for a moment to process that. But couldn’t. Not yet. “Someone devised this, Richard. Someone saw the whole picture and still sees the whole picture, and it wasn’t Isaak Priest.”

“I couldn’t comment, Charlie. I wish I could. But, as I say, it’s not your concern anymore. You’re no longer involved. You’re going to have to accept that.” He sighed. “And let’s put our cards on the table. There are some people who think you can be indicted and imprisoned for passing along classified information. I’m not one of them, but I’m just telling you the score.”

“Don’t bluff me, Richard. This isn’t about what I told my brother.”

“It’s a story that can’t come out,” Franklin said, shifting his tone. Glancing quickly at the Potomac River. “Okay? It’s too dangerous. For a variety of reasons.”

“Why did you really want Isaak Priest taken out?” Mallory said, ignoring him.

“You know why. Look at what he was preparing to do. I mean, we had to stop that—”

“No. I don’t think that’s it, Richard. I think you needed him to set this up. But once it was operational, you needed him taken out because you wanted to weaken his hold. And to weaken his partner. Landon Pine’s partner.”

Franklin suddenly seemed trapped. He wasn’t going to deny this; he was going to steer the conversation elsewhere. And Charlie began to imagine a different end game: Why couldn’t the government just step in now and take over? What had Pine said? “I’m the target they gave you, aren’t I?”

“There are things you don’t know about, Charlie. Okay?”

“Really.”

“Yes. And things that I can’t talk about. But if I could, I’m sure you would agree they make perfect sense.”

“You think so.”

“Yes, I do. You would appreciate these things, if I was able to explain them to you. With your government and military background.”

“Like Covenant Division?”

His eyes froze for an instant. “What would you know about that?”

“These days, there are few real secrets anymore. I’m surprised Covenant has remained a secret this long.”

Franklin shook his head once. He said nothing.

“Was Priest a product of Covenant Division?”

“You’re fishing, Charlie.”

“Wasn’t he created by Covenant Division to expand American interests into the developing world? A wealthy, generous but unscrupulous African businessman, with control over a Third World banking network. Owner of a huge construction conglomerate and an import/export business. Who could go into these poor, troubled nations and buy up property and influence.”

“No.”

Charlie was fishing, making it up as he went along, but he kept going, waiting to be corrected. “It would be easy to justify, wouldn’t it? Just imagine a worst-case scenario—jihadists are already looking to infiltrate some of Africa’s most troubled countries, and to gain a foothold. To use them as a base, as training grounds for all sorts of atrocities. Atrocities ten times worse than 9/11. There’s a big fear about that right now in Washington, isn’t there? And the fact is, Americans can’t get in. Priest provided a different route. Your plan could have worked. It still might work.”

Franklin made a scoffing sound, but his face had paled.

“The trials in Sundiata were the first step,” Mallory said, “to see if it could be contained in a region. The government knew all about that. Mancala was to be next—”

“You’re fishing, Charlie,” Franklin said again, raising his voice to cut him off. “You’ve got a lot of theories, and I’m not going to comment on them because I can’t. But your basic premise is wrong. The government didn’t create Isaak Priest. He’d already been created. He already existed.”

Mallory heard in the tenor of his voice something new. A truth he desperately wanted to convey. Something Charlie didn’t know .