Upon A Pale Horse (25 page)

“Your box is in there. I hope you remember your code, yes? You’ll be unable to open it if you don’t have it.”

“I have everything I need.”

“Very well, then. Take your time. I’ll be here waiting for you. When you wish to exit the vault, press 22446 on the keypad and the door will open.”

“Should I enter that on this one, too?”

“Yes. We reset the code after each entry, and we don’t have many visitors, so that is your code for this evening. 22446. I’ve taken the liberty of writing it down for you so you don’t have difficulty exiting.” The banker handed him a business card with the digits printed neatly on the back.

Jeffrey punched in the code and another set of bolts clanked, then the ponderous slab eased open as if of its own volition. Jeffrey pushed by it and found himself in a brightly lit room with row after row of boxes, their red LED displays glowing in futuristic symmetry, a smaller alcove off to his right with a steel table and chair for his use. The door hissed closed behind him, the locking mechanism seated a set of bolts back into place, and he was alone in the room.

He moved along the nearest row, scanning the numbers, and then turned and edged to the far wall, where his brother’s box was near the center, at shoulder height. He coded in his secret password; for a moment nothing happened, and then something in the compartment whined almost inaudibly and a latch released.

Jeffrey extracted the long container and carried the metal box to the table, unsure what he was going to find. He lifted the lid, reached in, and removed the contents: a Canadian passport with his brother’s photo but the name Richard Muller embossed on the identification page; a glass bottle with an unreadable label; a sheaf of documents bundled together, held with a rubber band, a yellow note visible on the top. He slipped the note from beneath the binding and read it quickly, his brother’s familiar script as orderly as ever.

Memorize the contents of the documents and then soak them with the bottle of acid. It will dissolve everything into mush. Your photographic memory is one of the primary reasons I had to get you involved – sorry, bro, but that’s not a really common quirk, so you’re it.

There are three men you must meet to understand the whole story of what’s contained in these pages. I’m not completely sure about the contents myself, but I have a hunch, and if I’m correct it means the end of humanity. But you need to get it to someone who can analyze it and confirm my suspicion. There are only a couple of scientists I’ve been able to find who aren’t compromised, and who have sufficient skill to verify what this is. One is Antonio Carvelli in Rome – a professor. The other is Francois Bertrand, a scientist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who specializes in virology. The third is a German, but he should be considered hostile: Alfred Schmidt – an ex-Nazi who went to work for the U.S. on bio-weapons after the war. He’s now in Frankfurt, living out his last years in a nursing home. I contacted him in February posing as a journalist named Richard Muller, and he agreed to meet. You can pretend to be me and interrogate him. He may be completely senile, but he sounded fairly sharp, even at ninety-four. His address is below, along with Carvelli’s and Bertrand’s. Jeffrey, find out what this means. You’ll have to figure out what to do once you have confirmation. Be very careful – the group behind this will kill anyone who gets in their way. Good luck. Remember – don’t take anything from this box.

Jeffrey unwrapped the sheaf of papers and began reading them, taking his time – some kind of printout, page after page of columns of numbers. At the end were a diagram, a row of horizontally oriented bar charts, and a long sequence of seemingly random letters. Jeffrey wished at that moment he’d paid more attention in math and science class, because it was all gibberish to him and might as well have been written in Mongolian. Still, he committed the unintelligible strings of numbers to memory, closing his eyes after each page and verifying that he could instantly recall the whole document as if it were in front of him, the numbers and symbols clear.

Finished, he placed the pages back into the box and opened the bottle, taking care not to splash any of the corrosive liquid on himself, and carefully poured the fluid into the bottom, where it instantly began bubbling the gray paint as it soaked into the paper. An acrid chemical smoke drifted from the container, easily sucked away by the vault’s air purification system, and after a few minutes the sodden roll of paper had dissolved into a white, formless goo.

He debated taking the passport, but decided to honor his brother’s instructions and replaced it before lowering the lid and returning it to the open compartment. He closed the door, and the LED flashed and displayed the box number again.

Jeffrey punched in the exit code and walked into the outer vault, where Rundquist was sitting patiently. He rose when Jeffrey appeared and faced him with an impassive expression.

“I trust everything was satisfactory?” Rundquist asked.

“Yes, all was in order. Thank you again for agreeing to meet me. I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure. We are always available for our customers.”

The banker led him through the vault entrance and heaved the door closed, the locks securing with a muted thump after he’d inserted his card in the scanner. They ascended the stairs to the ground floor level, where another card swipe got them back into the administrative area. Rundquist showed him to his office and offered a perfunctory smile.

“So, Mr. Rutherford. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“No, thank you. Many thanks for accommodating me.” Jeffrey extended his hand and shook the banker’s, who then motioned for Jeffrey to accompany him to the entrance. The second man was standing there as if frozen in place. No sooner was Jeffrey on the street than the heavy barrier snicked back into place, and then he was alone on the darkened sidewalk, the cold his only companion as he walked to the nearest large intersection.

A shuffling from a doorway behind him startled him; just as he registered a fast-moving form approaching from the shadows of a nearby building, a starburst of pain shot through his head and he crumpled to the sidewalk, his vision already dimming before he hit the concrete, unconscious.

TWENTY-NINE

A Mugging

Jeffrey’s first tentative sensation of awareness came in the form of a corpulent man’s face only a few feet from his, the steam of his breath carrying with it a vague scent of cabbage and onions. He cracked his eyes open more and the man leaned away from him, yelling something in German. When Jeffrey struggled to push himself to a sitting position, the man returned his attention to him, barking a harsh command.

“
Nein!
”

Jeffrey reached to the back of his head, from which intense pain was radiating, and his fingers came away wet, sticky with blood.

“
Nein
,” the man snapped again, and then everything receded and Jeffrey closed his eyes, reasoning that it wouldn’t hurt to get a little rest while all the commotion was going on around him.

The next thing he knew he was being hoisted onto a gurney, a stiff brace around his neck, and he winced as movement caused agony to flare through his skull, which felt as he imagined it would if he stuck it into a car crusher. A burst of static sounded from a nearby radio, and then he was inside an ambulance and bouncing down the road, explosions of suffering greeting every bump and speed change.

It seemed like only a few minutes later that he was being wheeled into a hospital, the smell distinctively medicinal, antiseptic wafting through the air like astringent fog. A physician, Jeffrey guessed from his white exam coat and the stethoscope draped around his neck, young and earnest, appeared in his field of view, and quickly shined a small flashlight into each eye, issuing terse instructions to someone Jeffrey couldn’t see.

More movement, and then delicate hands were probing at the back of his head before pulling away.

An hour and a half later he was stitched and had been through his first-ever cranial CT scan, and was waiting for the attending physician to appear and give him the results. The pain had gradually subsided after a nurse gave him an injection, and he was now in a somnambulistic purgatory somewhere between full consciousness and oblivion, barely registering when a figure entered and approached him.

“Can you understand me?” The words seemed to arrive as though from a great distance, and Jeffrey knew that he needed to focus and wake up – this was something important. His eyes flickered and opened, and he saw the same young doctor looking at him with concern.

And speaking English, with a slight German inflection, the particular harshness of that tongue coloring his words.

“Mr. Rutherford. Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey croaked, his voice sounding like an old gate creaking open.

“You’re in the hospital. You were attacked. Mugged, yes, that is the word? Robbed. You sustained a severe blow to the head, and have a concussion. No intracranial bleeding, but serious, still. I’m admitting you, and you will need to stay for a day or two, yes?” the doctor said, the question more stylistic than interrogative.

“Mugged…”

“Yes. You’re very lucky someone found you quickly. You lost a lot of blood. The blow to the head was an ugly one. Only four stitches, but a bleeder.”

Jeffrey felt suddenly nauseated, the lights overly bright, his vision fuzzy. “How…how long?”

“How long will you be here, or were you passed out?”

“…Here…”

“That depends on your recovery. All concussions are different. Basically, your brain hit the inside walls of your skull, so it’s injured. The question is one of degree. You may be feeling better in a few more hours, or it could take days. We will keep you under observation until you’re improved. For now, all you have to do is rest and let your body heal itself.”

“What…you said robbed?”

“Yes. The police gathered your things and will be by later to speak with you, but not before I give my approval.”

“My…things…”

“I’m afraid your money was stolen, but they left your wallet and passport. And a key card from your hotel. That’s all the police told me.”

Jeffrey shut his eyes again, too much information hitting him, overwhelming him. “My hotel…”

“The police will notify them so that your room isn’t disturbed. Don’t worry. In the meantime, I’m going to leave you to rest. Once you’re feeling better, I can have one of the nurses make a call for you, if there’s someone you’d like to notify about your accident.”

“Um…no. I’m alone here…”

“Very well, then. They’ll be wheeling you to a room in a little while, and then you’re to stay put and sleep. Don’t try to get up. Right now, you need to remain immobile. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

The hospital noises drifted away as he closed his eyes, and soon he was back in a stilted dreamland, his last memory before he slipped into complete unconsciousness an image of a diagram and rows of numbers that made no sense to him, as alien as an artifact of an ancient, forgotten civilization.

“I’m telling you, he was clean. There was nothing on him.” The caller spoke in soft tones, his voice never rising above the level of a murmur.

“Then what was he doing at a private bank? At that hour? Are you absolutely sure?”

“We searched every inch of him. There was nothing – no notes, no flash drive, nothing. Look – he’s an attorney. He specializes in asset protection, right? Is it possible that his visit to the bank pertained to business?”

“Anything’s possible, but we aren’t paid for speculation. We need to be sure he doesn’t know anything that could compromise our effort. We’re far too close to implementation.”

“Then let me terminate him. Problem solved.”

“Not necessarily. If he talked to someone…no, we can’t just finish him. We need to continue surveillance and see what he does next. I don’t need to remind you how devastating it would be if we were discovered.”

“So we maintain our watch,” the speaker said resignedly.

“Correct. He likely doesn’t know anything, but this makes me nervous.”