Upon A Pale Horse (Bio-Thriller)

by Russell Blake

  “Shit,” Jeffrey exclaimed, and sprinted into the hall, calling out for help. A female orderly came running at the clamor, and Jeffrey pointed her at Schmidt, then stood back as she rushed to him and quickly examined him. Her face was an expressionless mask, but he saw the anxiety in her eyes even as she tried to maintain her composure, and when she raced from the room to get help there was no wasted motion.

  Jeffrey retrieved the recorder and his notebook and packed them into his bag, uninterested in hanging around to see how the German did. Schmidt was almost a century old, and keenly aware that his days were numbered. If this was to be how he shed his mortal coil, then Jeffrey would leave him to do so in peace. A flash of guilt hit him, intensifying his already miserable headache, but he shook it off. The conversation and the old scientist’s agitation could well have triggered this, but so could a straining bowel movement or the flu he’d been battling. There would be time enough for recriminations on the train back to Paris.

  He glanced at his new Hublot and calculated that he could easily get to the station in time to make the ten o’clock train, which would put him back at the Gare du Nord at least two hours before his doctor’s appointment.

  The nurse returned with an older man in a white exam coat jogging behind her and another orderly in tow, and Jeffrey used the ensuing chaos to slip away, the frigid morning air nipping at his splitting skull as he strode briskly down the long block to find a taxi and be rid of Frankfurt for good.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Return to Paris

  Jeffrey tried to sleep on the trip back, but his headache had a different idea, as did his imagination as he cycled back through his amazing discussion with Schmidt and the information he’d gotten about bio-weapons.

  It seemed impossible to believe, and yet the German had been compelling and surprisingly lucid, if bitter at his lot in life and dismissive of everyone around him. That he’d actually helped develop an immunosuppressive agent was hugely damaging, as was his matter-of-fact description of how a powerful faction could twist the system to hasten the Apocalypse.

  Jeffrey wasn’t naïve, but he felt that way as the inside of his eyes pulsed with pain. He’d believed there were checks and balances to keep rogue groups from using their clout to pursue their own agendas, but he’d apparently been badly mistaken. Schmidt had done the forbidden since long before Jeffrey had been born; and judging by the virus diagram, he’d been replaced by others. A part of him wondered how many of those were complicit and understood what they were doing, and how many were cogs in the machine, doing their top secret work and not allowing themselves to know what happened to the fruits of their labor.

  His brother’s execution didn’t bode well for them in the long term. Jeffrey suspected that any individuals who knew about the virus would be eliminated once their usefulness was over.

  Then again, maybe not. Perhaps there were psychopaths who could watch billions die and be more interested in what they got out of it than what they had done. As forthcoming as the old man had been in his final hour, as apparently regretful, he’d still participated in a machine that was involved in the death industry, and had helped build better mousetraps that had already been used to kill tens of millions of innocents.

  Innocent people. He wondered if that term had any meaning to the group behind this. Did they even think of their victims as humans, or were they just numbers, a morbid crop to be harvested at the appropriate time, expendable resource sponges that had to go for the better of those remaining? Part of him tried to imagine the emotional makeup of someone who was willing to kill billions in order to further some cause, and he couldn’t. It was as alien to him as a reptile brain, as incomprehensible as a Hindi phone book.

  He cracked open a weary eye and watched the dizzying panorama of countryside whirring past, all green fields and pale stone houses jutting like tombstones up the slight rise of a pregnant hill. Was that all this was to them, were they all integers, interchangeable digits on a screen? The reality of an entire species an irritating inconvenience, the noise of them dying a temporary annoyance, their corpses grist for an insatiable mill?

  His senses were overloaded, the knowledge that he now possessed too much for his psyche. It was better to be ignorant of the evil that men could perpetrate; focused on the mundane, plebian day-to-day; scrabbling for a fresher crust of bread and a faster sports car for his commute; agonizing over which leather interior color was more appealing. Perhaps being a dumb animal was better than the evolutionary alternative. The real world sucked, and when he closed his eyes and shut out the light, a small part of him envied the old Nazi, if not now free of the ugliness that was reality, then soon to be.

  The rumble of the train lulled him to sleep eventually, and he was startled awake when it changed tracks and began to slow on the outskirts of Paris. He checked the time and saw that he had an hour and a half before his medical appointment, which at the rate he was going, he would actually need. The pain had retreated to a dull throb, the rest having caused it to recede enough that he could move his eyes without a piercing lance of agony splitting his head. It was still a far cry from normal, though, and part of him feared that he had done some real damage with the whirlwind trip. The Swiss doctor had been pretty clear about relaxing, and his journey had been anything but.

  The station was bustling, crowds of travelers jostling to make their trains like spawning salmon, intent faces filled with the ennui unique to Paris. Jeffrey slipped into the stream of humanity and wound his way to the station’s huge exit doors, where a line of taxis waited like penitents for confession. The hotel’s name elicited a grunt and an eye roll from the swarthy man behind the wheel, and then the Renault launched forward, narrowly missing a VW van that stood on its horn as the driver stoically ignored the commotion and made for the hotel like he was piloting a getaway car.

  Jeffrey had the taxi drop him off a block from the hotel, and then repeated his trip through the hotel service entrance. In the room, he noted with satisfaction that his bed hadn’t been made, so it appeared his ruse had worked. He figured he would know definitively if someone jabbed an ice pick into his spine in the elevator.

  He showered and changed, then opened the room safe and retrieved his cell phone and switched it on. He checked his messages and saw that Monica had called twice, and the office once. Scanning his email, he didn’t spot anything that required immediate attention, and forwarded most of it to his subordinates for responses.

  He called the office once he was in the elevator, and told them that he wasn’t feeling well and was en route to the doctor. With his headache, it didn’t take much acting skill for him to sound compromised, and the conversation didn’t last long. Jeffrey called Monica once in a taxi on the way to his appointment, which was not coincidentally only a block from the Pasteur Institute, where the French scientist had his offices and lab.

  “Jeff! Thank God you called. I’ve been so worried,” she answered, not waiting for him to say anything. “I tried to reach you a few times, but it went straight to voicemail.”

  The funny thing was that she really did sound concerned, and he marveled again at her powers of duplicity. Unless she really was worried – that he’d disappeared and hadn’t told her where he was going.

  “I’ve been vegetating at the hotel. This concussion took more out of me than I thought. I’m in Paris, on the way to the neurologist.”

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Like crap. I’m glad he’s going to see me. I really have my doubts about the doc in Zurich.”

  “Will you call me as soon as you’re through with him?”

  “Sure. But it kind of hurts to talk. That’s why I’ve been off the radar.”

  “I understand. I know I wouldn’t be chatty if my head had been used as a soccer ball.”

  “That’s about how it feels. Listen, I’m going to go now. Save my energy,” Jeffrey said, anxious to get off the line. His voice really did sound terrible, so he didn’t have to fake it much.
<
br />   “All right. Call me later,” Monica said, and he hung up, not wanting to hear her say anything more about her supposed feelings for him, which he could sense coming. He wasn’t sure how he was going to break off their relationship – or rather, her duty in his bed – but he would come up with a reason when he returned.

  Then again, with what he now knew about the virus, the end of the world might wind up being the perfect reason to want some time to himself. All he’d been able to think about since he’d woken up on the train were the German’s words and his shocked appearance when he’d seen the drawing of the virus.

  The thought that Jeffrey was the only thing standing in the way of the apocalypse was like a crushing weight on his shoulders, and the anxiety that had been nestling in his stomach returned with full force as he slipped the phone into his pocket and leaned back in the seat, the streets of Paris gliding by as the car made its way to the Left Bank.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Check-Up

  “Monsieur, the doctor will see you now,” the comely young receptionist said in delightfully accented English. Jeffrey stood and followed a second, equally fetching attendant, who led him to a sumptuous office with an en-suite exam room, the furniture high-end recreations of antique French provincial treasures. More than anything, the first impression Jeffrey had upon entering the room was of it being exquisitely tasteful.

  Which perfectly matched the stately man in his early sixties who stood in one corner of the room, his conservative Hermès tie loosened, staring out the window. When the doctor turned to face him, Jeffrey was immediately struck by the man’s presence, which emanated from him with a glowing aura, like that of a celebrity.

  “Monsieur Rutherford. Bon. You are here. Welcome. Please sit down, and tell me how I can help you,” the physician said, his English perfect, pointing to a chair in front of his desk.

  Jeffrey sat and the doctor asked him a series of questions about his symptoms, degree of discomfort, and so on. He told the doctor about his recurring headaches, not needing to exaggerate his discomfort and worry. The older man nodded and motioned for Jeffrey to join him in the exam room.

  Jeffrey knew what to expect and slid up onto the examination bed. The doctor approached and began probing his head wound.

  “It’s healing nicely. I see no complications. Swelling is almost completely gone, and your hair is long enough so it covers the area, so it is not obvious, you know?”

  “That’s not a huge consideration. I just want to know that there’s nothing they missed or that’s going wrong. Sometimes the pain is blinding.”

  “Mmm. Yes, I imagine it can be. Take hold of each of my fingers and squeeze as hard as you can with both hands, please.”

  Jeffrey complied, and then the doctor did a full neurological workup, taking him through the paces. At the end of the encounter the doctor waved him back to the desk, pausing to study Jeffrey as he made his way back to his seat. He wrote up some quick notes, humming under his breath, and then looked up at Jeffrey as if he’d forgotten he was still there.

  “Bon. I see no abnormalities, so that is good news. If the scan was normal, then I would say that the headaches are simply a residual effect of the trauma and will fade over the next few days. Have you been resting, avoiding stress and movement?”

  Jeffrey didn’t say what sprang to mind – that he’d been singled out to save the human race and traversed half of Europe over the last day.

  “Yes,” he lied.

  “Good. Then continue doing so and you’ll be fine. If you are still experiencing problems in a week, or if you start to experience any double vision, we will have another appointment, yes? Until then, we must let Mother Nature take her course.”

  Jeffrey thanked him for his time and left the suite, stopping to pay the receptionist before taking the elevator to the ground level.

  Outside, he glanced in both directions down the gray street. Clouds hung over the city, threatening rain. The sidewalk had a few pedestrians making their way towards the main boulevard, and Jeffrey joined them in their pilgrimage, his thoughts elsewhere, on retroviruses and global contagion and death, as well as on a woman who had cheerfully lied to him with the conviction of a Wall Street banker – and on a bitter academic in the Virginia countryside…and his beautiful daughter.

  So immersed was he in his inner world that when he stepped off the curb he was almost run down by a truck, its horn blaring as it narrowly missed him. The driver made an obscene gesture as the engine revved and the big vehicle blew past him. He froze in his tracks, and then carefully crossed to the far side and continued on his way, the thin line between life and death again reinforced, in case he’d forgotten the precariousness of his mortal state.

  THIRTY-NINE

  An Appointment

  Jeffrey rose as dawn’s first light seeped through the overcast lingering over Paris. His head felt marginally better, fifteen hours of rest having done him good after the prior two-day marathon. After the visit to the doctor, he’d returned to his room and made the obligatory calls to Monica and to his secretary, and after an early meal he’d locked himself away and forced himself to stay in bed so his body could have a needed opportunity to heal.

  Sleep hadn’t come easily, as he’d worried away at the issue of how to get to François Bertrand, the preeminent virologist in France and a legend in academic and medical circles, one of the top members of the team that had discovered HIV thirty years earlier. Now in the winter of his years, at seventy-two he still worked five days a week in his beloved laboratory, and was considered a national treasure by the French people.

  Jeffrey had eventually drifted off into uneasy slumber after taking a pill the Swiss had given him, but his night had been filled with vivid nightmares of himself walking slowly through a hospital ward with the dead abandoned in the halls, covered with stained sheets, anonymous women and children in rusting beds stacked together, gasping for their last breaths as their haunted eyes sought him out, drowning from their bodies’ immune responses to a hellish plague from which there was no defense.

  When he bolted awake he was shaking, adrenaline flooding through his system, and he cried out, for a moment still in with the sick, sentenced to impossible-to-imagine death. His bearings returned after a few panicked gasps, and his racing heart began to slow as he blinked and groped on the nightstand for his watch.

  Jeffrey groaned and pushed himself to a sitting position, and then forced himself to his feet and stumbled half-asleep to the bathroom, where it took seemingly forever for the water to get warm. Once in the shower he dismissed shampooing his hair and instead scrubbed himself vigorously with the provided lavender soap, as if he could wash away the lingering sense of dread that was now his constant companion. Even as he watched the suds swirl down the drain, the clock was ticking, and vials of global death could be on their way for dispersal. He was trying not to allow the size of the responsibility he’d been unwittingly stuck with to paralyze him, but it was hard, given what he now knew.

  He deliberately took slow, deep breaths as he toweled dry, regaining control of himself with a pronounced effort that set his head to throbbing again, the pain now as familiar as a favorite song. He needed to focus. How was he going to get to see the scientific equivalent of a rock star? The question nagged at him as he shaved, and then he realized he needed to do more research before he could come up with a coherent plan. Right now he was operating in the dark, and he needed to change that, quickly.

  Jeffrey called down to the front desk and asked for housekeeping to make up his room while he was having breakfast. He locked his valuables in the safe and took his phone with him, so his watchers would see normal movement. A table set for two near the hotel restaurant entrance afforded him a good view of the lobby, but either his newly acquired spy skills were dormant before his first cup of coffee or there was nobody watching him.

  Service was slow, and it took him an hour to finish up, which gave him more than enough time to plan his day. To anyone paying attent
ion he would appear to be bed-ridden, but as soon as he confirmed that his room had been serviced he’d be slipping out the service entrance and completing the tasks that had been accumulating in his mind like cords of firewood. He stopped at the front desk and told the clerk that he was not to be disturbed and to hold all calls until further notice.

  Back in the room he stashed his wallet and phone in the safe and peeled off a thousand euros, folding the notes into a thin wad and slipping them into his trousers. He’d been having second thoughts about the wallet since being mugged – it was conceivable a tracking device had been slipped inside it, although he hadn’t been able to find one. But he didn’t know everything that was possible, and as with his German trip, he’d decided to err on the side of caution and leave everything that could be compromised in the room while he went about his business on the sly.

  The service door was unattended, and Jeffrey had no problem easing it open and stepping out into the alley, heaping garbage containers signaling that it was trash day. Two minutes later he was a block away and making for an internet café, the smell of coffee drawing him as much as the computers. He ordered a cappuccino and bought some time at one of the terminals, and then spent the next hour researching everything he could find on Bertrand, which was plenty. The man seemed to enjoy the reputation he’d built, and there were literally hundreds of articles from the last decade, including a number of YouTube videos of him speaking at scientific gatherings.

  Jeffrey watched several as he sipped his brew, and the sense he got was of a charming figure who was somewhat ill at ease with the constant limelight. An academic more at home in the lab than on the stage, but still inexhaustible in his communication with the media.

  That made Jeffrey’s approach easier. He would again pose as a journalist, this time a freelance investigative reporter doing a series of articles on retroviruses. But unlike the case at the German nursing home, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to smile his way past the Pasteur Institute’s security, so he would need to get business cards printed up, at minimum, and go in through the front door with his act polished to a mirror gleam.