The Manuscript

Chapter 3

Michael spent the remainder of the afternoon at his apartment scanning the manuscript for Abe, while trying to arrange the handoff of the Turkish delegation to Aldous — which didn’t go as he would have liked. They wanted a night on the town, complete with security, so he was going to be on deck with them from when their meetings ended until at least eleven in the evening.

Circumstances having conspired against him, Michael called Abe apologetically, and they deferred the electronics sweep to the following morning at ten. Abe was appreciative and understanding — Hey, it happened. See you tomorrow; don’t stay out too late.

Michael hardly had time to glance at the manuscript as he juggled the cumbersome task of manually scanning each page with making his telephone calls — though his native curiosity had been aroused by Abe’s description of the contents. Abe would let him peek at it once it became apparent his office was clean and there was no scheme to censor his e-mail. If so, super — and if not, also fine by Michael. Hell, he didn’t even have time to write his own masterpiece let alone pore through someone else’s. Still, a part of him was intrigued, which was one of the reasons he’d offered to scan the doc and give the office the once-over.

Finally finished at five p.m., he compressed the document and copied the file to a flash drive for Abe and then put it on his keychain — that way he wouldn’t lose it. It stood to be a late one, so Michael grabbed a couple of energy bars and guzzled a bottle of orange juice before leaving the apartment to keep New York safe from the Turks — or perhaps it was the other way around.

He talked to Jim, his electronics security contractor, and they agreed to meet at Abe’s building the following morning. Michael explained that it would be a quick one, as it was just Abe’s small office and a few cubicles and reception area. He also made a mental note to touch base with Abe’s tech guy to get a feeling for his acumen and background.

Which reminded him to call Koshi.

“What do you really think happened to the e-mail, Koshi? I mean, can you think of any scenario that doesn’t involve voodoo or internet Gestapo?” Michael asked.

“Yeah, the most likely is that he accessed his e-mail account from another computer at some point and it stored his password or had spyware on it. Or someone knows the password because he told them, and he forgot he did. That happens as you get older, I hear…” Koshi’s jab was obvious, but Michael ignored it.

“But then why delete only that e-mail?”

“Dude, you don’t really know what else is missing at this point. You just know that he noticed that one is gone and freaked. He could have a third of his logs wiped and I get the feeling he’d never register it. I really wouldn’t want to go down the alternative theory road. It’s a little far-fetched, and frankly kinda nutty — ninjas stole my best seller?”

Koshi was right.

“It does seem odd, doesn’t it?” Michael agreed.

“Look, here’s what we know. There’s an older gentleman, very nice, but still, older, who’s insisting that the spirits stole his e-mail. On the one hand, we have military-grade encryption, complete lack of any realistic explanation, and a universe of alternative theories — maybe his tech consultant logged his password or maybe it’s just not that tough to guess for someone close to him, for example. On the other hand, we have insistence it’s none of those, and that only this one e-mail is missing. Somehow, this is way more complicated than anything I’ve ever seen.” Koshi paused, allowing the silence to underscore his point.

“I know, I know…” Michael agreed.

“Where would you put your money, if you were a betting man?” Koshi asked.

“Okay then, don’t waste a ton of time on this, but do probe around and see if you can find any holes in his security, just to be thorough. We’ll run a check on his office tomorrow, and assuming that comes up clean, we’ll spare him any embarrassment and this will remain one of life’s unsolved mysteries,” Michael concluded.

That seemed the best approach. And that’s why it paid to keep a level head and maintain perspective instead of buying into the client’s possibly distorted view, and also why Michael was willing to tolerate Koshi’s eccentricities and sometimes brusque attitude. Though his tingle still jangled under the surface.

It had been a long day, and Abe felt every day of his sixty-eight years. Sometimes the business could wear you down, what with the egos involved and the sheer volume of tasks that required his attention when things got jumping.

Mona poked her head in as she shut off the main lights in the outer offices. “You going to stick around a while, or want to walk me out?” she inquired.

Abe considered the proposition. Given all the excitement today, he figured he’d keep normal hours for once and get home at a reasonable hour; maybe play with his two fur-balls some and get to bed early.

“I think I’m going to call it a day too, Mona. I’m right behind you,” Abe told her.

They parted ways at the curb, he to catch a cab and Mona to ride the subway.

Abe lived in a six room walkup flat on the upper West Side a few blocks off Central Park, in a comfortable but not ostentatious building. He’d lived there with his wife Anne for twenty-eight years before she passed on, having lost a battle with spinal meningitis three years earlier. They’d tried for kids, but it was never meant to be, so they’d adopted the two Yorkies — the little rats, as Abe fondly dubbed them — and had a good, if all-too-short life together. His only regret was not spending more time with her while she was alive. At first, it was because he was making a name for himself in a tough, competitive business and building his client roster and reputation. Later, it was because the workload and obligations of operating a successful enterprise had taken over so much of his life.

If he’d known how quickly the years would flit by, and how precious their moments together were, he would have done things a lot differently, that was for sure. But nobody gave you the final pages to how your life would turn out, and those were the breaks — you had to play them as they came.

Still, at nearly four years after her passing, it was days like today he missed coming home to her, missed their partnership and the intimacy of a lifetime’s history together, even if it just amounted to sitting and having a quiet dinner at home with ‘the kids’ and opening a bottle of decent Chianti. Abe had lost his soul-mate and, from that point on, his life would be filled with books and work — he had no appetite for anyone but Anne, and now she was gone, he would remain one of the genteel aged widowers who acknowledged one another as they walked their various pooches around the block every morning and evening. He told himself it wasn’t so bad.

Mostly.

The cab pulled up to his building. He paid and got out. Taxis were one of the few luxuries he allowed himself; he really wasn’t much of a people-person, preferring books to flesh and blood, and the subways made his skin crawl. Ever since he’d made some real money, cabs were one of his dizzy extravagances — he rationalized that he could get work done on the way to and from his office if he wasn’t on the train, so it was really an investment in his career.

When he opened his front door the two dogs, Timmy and Congo, came running across the hardwood floor, excited that Daddy was home. This was one of Abe’s favorite moments, when the two little bundles of unconditional love joyously greeted him as though he was the center of the universe. He’d always given Anne a razzing about the dogs, mocking their small size and anemic barks, but now she was gone they were all he had for a family, and as a reminder of their life together — he’d grown to adore them.

He puttered around the house, busying himself with feeding them dinner and attempting, in vain, to bring some semblance of order to the kitchen. After eating some re-heated spaghetti from the previous night, he leashed them up for their evening constitutional. This was the brightest point of their canine existences, twenty minutes of pure dog heaven as they roamed around the street, and often, along the park for a block or three before returning home.

Abe double locked the front door of his flat, as he always did, and set out for his walk. It was dark by this hour in early autumn, but there were still occasional pedestrians hurrying home or to wherever, so he had plenty of company.

He nodded at an older woman who always walked her schnauzer around the same time as he did every night. She returned the courtesy. Amazing that after seven years of walking the little beasts and passing each other almost every night, they’d never actually spoken a word, preferring to limit their interactions to a modest head gesture.

What a town.

Their necessities accommodated, the unlikely trio returned to their building, Abe absently wondering at the teeming hordes of people in the city, most living as complete strangers from one another, pelting through their lives at breakneck speed, racing towards a destination that was as certain as Pythagoras’ theorem while oblivious to their fellow travelers — except as conveniences or annoyances. He supposed he was waxing philosophical because of the revelations in the manuscript, and the questions they naturally raised about his core beliefs in everything; including mankind’s future as a species.

The thing would outsell Harry-Fucking-Potter if it was verifiably true.

Abe had a nose for these things.

He opened his front door and the dogs went crazy, tearing down the entry hall and barking like a cat party was being held in the dining room.

Something hit him in the kidneys and he found himself falling face-forward onto the floor, his arms oddly useless and his legs unable to support him. He registered the door closing behind him, and then a figure in a Planet of the Apes mask standing over him.

The pain hit a split second later. His jaw shot lightning bolts of agony through his head, and his left arm throbbed like he’d dislocated it. He barely noticed that his pants were soaked, his bladder having failed. Abe struggled to breathe, but it was as though his rib cage was in a vice that had compressed his lungs to the point where there was no room for expansion. His back felt like a car had hit him.

Tiny dots swirled on the periphery of his vision as the pain coursed through his entire being, before slowly receding until all that remained was a sensation of drifting off to sleep.

Abe’s last thought was that the books had it all wrong.

“A fucking heart attack? You’re kidding me, right?” Sid hissed into the phone.

“Sir, it was instantaneous. I’d say he was dead within seconds of our arrival. There was nothing we could do,” said a detached, calm voice with a slight southern drawl.

“And no information? Nothing?”

“He never made a sound, and we never got a chance to ask him anything. Again, it happened so suddenly it took us all by surprise. The best we could do was sanitize the area and verify there was nothing incriminating. The bad news is there was no sign of the document,” the voice reported.

“We have to find out what he did with it, or who he gave it to. We know he printed at least some of it — so what’s the plan to figure out how to move from here?” Sid asked.

The situation report from that morning had verified that the printer queue had contained instructions to print the attachment, or part of it, before they’d neutralized it along with the communication.

“This is a dead end,” the voice said.

Sid wondered if the man was trying to be amusing. His sense of humor wasn’t in the best shape tonight.

The voice continued. “As I see it, we’ve got two choices, neither of which I particularly recommend over the other. We can either move to the next level of his work circle and try to shake something loose, or we can monitor chatter and wait to see what presents itself,” the voice advised. “The first option could get very messy, and there’s no guarantee anyone was exposed, so it could also be pointless. And there’s a slim likelihood that an entire firm meeting with untimely demises would arouse interest, should anybody later come forward and expose the document.”

“You can’t allow that to happen,” Sid snarled.

“I understand. I do need direction, though. Which option would you like us to explore?”

Sid considered the situation for a few moments, then made his decision.

“I think you need to shake some trees and see what falls out,” Sid advised.

“10-4, sir. I’ll alert you when we have something to report.”

After terminating the call, Sid paced in front of his desk, his footsteps thudding on the hardwood floor. What a nightmare. His team had tremendous resources, and yet they couldn’t neutralize something as simple as a few pages in some geriatric’s inbox.

He ran scenarios, slowing his redlining thoughts until the fuzzy outline of a plan took shape. It wasn’t a great plan by any means, but it was better than nothing.

Sid hit redial, and issued instructions.

It was going to be a long evening.