Viral by James Lilliefors

caused by a lack of calcium, he read, and also by a lack of regular mulching. The poster had found success using “red mulch.”
    He skimmed through the rest of the text, through references to verticillium wilt, catfacing, fruit rot, sunscald, organic fertilizers. And then, midway through the text, he found what he was looking for: a series of seemingly haphazard letters in the midst of the article, which might have had something to do with blossom end rot but which he was pretty sure didn’t: gheaeoorcrnategdrd.
    Jon copied down the eighteen letters. He then scrolled back through the posts to see if there was anything he had missed and logged off. He crossed the street to the Hilton. In the lobby, he picked up a copy of
The Daily Standard
from the concierge’s desk andentered the bar. He sat at a table and ordered a bottle of Tusker and a plate of almonds. On the newspaper, he began to figure out the message.
    Three levels again:
    GHEAEO
    ORCRNA
    TEGDRD
    Go 3C Garden Road.
    A direction, an address.
    It has to be a message
. More than that, it confirmed that his brother was still alive, still trying to give him information. And that there
was
something for him here in Nairobi. The other side knew his brother’s office address and knew that Jon was coming to visit it. But they wouldn’t know this
other
address.
    Jon scribbled over the words and began to work the crossword puzzle, sipping his beer, thinking. Finally his brother had gotten his attention, perhaps bypassing a sophisticated, multi-billion-dollar surveillance apparatus with a code only the two of them would know. If this had been a message, though, he wondered if there had been others he had missed. Probably, yes.
    While drinking his second lager, Jon got an idea—as he often did during his second drink of the evening. At a row of pay phones in the lobby, he tried the number for Sam Sullivan again. Still no answer. He returned to the bar and drank another Tusker, pretending to work the crossword but too excited to focus on it. What was it Honi had told him?
He may have a message for you there, in Nairobi
.
    Not on Radio Road.
In Nairobi
. Now he understood.
That
was the clue. Something he had missed. It was John’s task to keep up with his brother.
    On his way out, Jon tried calling again. This time, there was an answer.
    “Sullivan.”
    “Sam Sullivan?”
    “Yes.”
    “Sam, it’s Jon Mallory. From the States.”
    “Hello?”
    “I’m in Nairobi, Sam, for a couple of days. How are you?”
    “John
Mulroo
?”
    “Mallory.”
    He seemed uncertain who Mallory was, but they talked for several minutes anyway, Jon describing a long-ago evening of nickel poker and Tusker lagers in a colleague’s living room, arguing about the World Cup and George W. Bush. And another night at Kengele’s Club, where Sullivan had danced with a woman who must’ve been seven inches taller than he was. Once he was fairly sure Sam remembered him, Jon offered to buy him dinner. “I’ve got a proposition for you. A chance to earn some money,” he said, recalling Sam’s weakness for the quick payoff. “Can you meet me at the Norfolk Hotel tomorrow, say at seven? Hibiscus Lounge?”
    “May be busy at seven, mate. What’s it about?”
    “I can’t really say over the phone. Good money in it, though, for very little work.”
    “How much is good?”
    “Mmm. A few hundred dollars? Less than an hour’s work. Can’t really talk about it now, though. Can you meet me?”
    “Well, I could. If I wanted to, I suppose I could.” He cleared his throat and then coughed violently. “Forget dinner, though. Let’s just have a drink, cut to the chase.”
    “All right. And could you keep the appointment just between us?”
    “Pardon me?”
    Jon said it again. He had taken a chance using the phone, he knew, but there was no other way to do this. If they had intercepted his call to Honi, they could probably intercept the calls from his room. But they wouldn’t have traces on every