Hans Lesser, the Pishon rep, leaned forward in his chair. “Mr. Mwerla, we understand your concerns. The date change, though, is unavoidable and necessary. To truly guarantee the success of Project Eradication, dosing needs to be coordinated across the continent. All the target countries will be participating on the same day.”
“The same day? I do not see the importance of that. If our programs run a week or two apart or even a month, what difference could that make? I believe the timing is just a stunt you are doing for publicity.”
“I guarantee you, publicity is not our aim. Whether you get it or not, we don’t care. Ridding the planet of this deadly disease-that is our goal. According to our scientists, the best chance we have of doing that is by this coordinated effort. If need be, I can have one of them flown down here to give you a full technical briefing, but I’m hoping we can avoid that.” He paused. “The delay is only a few days, but we have no desire for this to be a burden on you. I have spoken with our team in Amsterdam, and have been able to pull together additional funds to cover whatever cost overruns the Kenyan government might incur.”
Mwerla calmed a bit. That was more than he’d been expecting. Still, there was much additional work that would need to be done because of this.
He stood up. “I will have to bring this up with the minister. He will have the final word.”
Lesser rose to his feet. “Of course.”
He held out his hand, and Mwerla reluctantly shook it.
As the Kenyan official turned for the door, Lesser said, “Please remember, Mr. Mwerla, what we’re doing here is a good thing.”
“Yes. I realize that.” Mwerla nodded grimly. “Good afternoon.”
Hans Lesser kept the smile on his face until the door shut behind the Kenyan. He then picked up the phone.
“Do it,” he ordered, and hung up again.
In all likelihood, everything would have gone smoothly and Mwerla would have played along, but taking that chance was not something they had time for.
Within the next thirty minutes, Lawrence Mwerla would be the victim of a tragic car accident, and his second in command-someone considerably more accommodating to the Project-would take over.
There would be no more talk of the date change.
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
School had come to consume most of Patricia Mendes’s time, and the long hikes through the city she used to take when she was younger were a luxury she could seldom afford anymore. But it wasn’t just school that was taking up her time. It was also her boyfriend, Sergio. Make that former boyfriend.
Sergio was pig, He knew nothing about what it meant to be in a relationship. Her friends had tried to warn her, but she hadn’t listened. She’d only gone down to the park a week earlier because she knew the latest thing they had told her was a lie. But instead of proving them wrong, she’d found Sergio right where her friends said he would be, hiding behind the old shack in the park with his tongue stuck inside Maria Blanco’s mouth.
She felt like a fool, like she had no worth at all. How could he have done this to her? She had been a good girlfriend-never fighting with him, always agreeing to do whatever he wanted to do. She had even let him put his hand up her shirt once, though when he’d tried for her skirt, she had quickly put a stop to that.
Was that Maria’s attraction? Did she let him touch her down there?
No. It’s not Maria’s fault, she told herself. It’s Sergio’s.
He was the one to blame.
Unable to focus on her homework in the days that followed, she had started walking through the city again, trying to work through the hurt and anger that had initially consumed her. On this particular afternoon, she had wandered into the old neighborhood where her family once lived. It was odd and yet comforting to be on the streets where she had played as a kid. Though she didn’t recognize any of the people on the sidewalks, the buildings were all the same, as if time had not passed at all.
Soon, she reached the corner of a dead-end street, and suddenly recalled with vivid detail the old abandoned building that used to be at the end of it. She decided to see if it was still there. It had apparently once been a small factory, but for as long as her family had been in the area, it had stood empty. She and her brother Rodrigo would play in it sometimes, pretending it was a secret fort full of hidden passages and buried treasure.
When the building came into view, her heart sank a bit as she realized someone had reclaimed it. Though she could only see the top of the building, the roof over the front area had been replaced.
She approached cautiously, assuming the building would be occupied, but the closer she got, the less likely that seemed. The layout of the old factory was such that there was a wide room in front where the work would have been done, and a row of rooms that had probably been used for offices with their own corridor in the back. The improvements she noticed appeared to be limited to only the roof over the front room. The brick walls looked just as rundown as before. The only other change she could see was the few windows that used to let sunlight into the front room had been sealed up.
She scanned the area. No cars around and no sign that anyone was there.
Partly out of curiosity, and partly because it was keeping her mind on something other than Sergio, she slipped into the narrow space between the end of the building and the property wall, and made her way to the area in back. There was another change here. Several large rocks had been placed in front of the hole she had used when she was younger to get into the building. This only made Patricia all the more curious about what was inside.
She continued around the building, and smiled when she saw that the missing bricks at the top of the back corner had not been replaced. She climbed up the wall like she had before and lowered herself inside. The room she was in was tiny. She and Rodrigo had assumed it was once a closet. Long ago its door had been sealed up and separated from the rest of the building. That was probably why the people who’d blocked the other entrance had not felt it necessary to do anything about the hole at the top of the wall. But did that mean they hadn’t discovered the other way in?
In the back corner of the room was a narrow wooden cabinet. One of its doors was jammed in place, but the other, a bit more resistant now than before, still opened. At the bottom, its presence mostly hidden by an empty shelf a foot above it, had been a hole in the wall. When Patricia knelt down to check, she saw that it was still there.
She crawled through. The other side came out under an old metal desk that had piles of junk all around it. She and her brother had put the desk there and piled the scraps around it as part of concealing the secret back entrance to their fort. Even if other kids had found it in the years since, they had left it that way, no doubt thinking it added to the allure of the place.
She moved out of the office and into the hallway. It was obvious the new owners had zero interest in the back part of the building. It was as ratty and dingy as ever. Each room she looked into seemed untouched from when she’d last been there.
Halfway down the hall, there was a passageway that led into the large front room, or would have if a new wall of bricks hadn’t been erected in the middle of it.
She frowned at it, thinking. There had to be another way into the front room. At least someplace where she could just get a peek. She was really curious now.
Then she remembered the weapons room.
It wasn’t really a weapons room, just what she and Rodrigo had called it. It was the old office where they stored anything that looked like a gun or a sword. It had a common wall with the main room, and as a result of one of Argentina’s many earthquakes, that wall had shifted slightly, creating a crack near the top. Though she’d never examined it closely, she thought she might be able to at least glimpse into the other room. The problem was that it was four feet above the top of her head.