Upon A Pale Horse

NINETEEN A Feint

The following day, Jeffrey went to work and slogged through his morning, meeting with his staff, responding to emails. At lunchtime he deliberately forgot his phone at the office — he would begin establishing a pattern of being forgetful, starting now. He left his car in the garage and walked to get lunch, trying to detect any surveillance without success. Perhaps after weeks of nothing, he was only being passively watched. After all, he couldn’t have displayed any awareness or suspicion so far, and they were probably convinced that he was exactly what he seemed — Keith’s clueless younger brother, self-involved and self-important, strutting like an ignorant peacock, inflated by his recent success and overblown sense of self-worth.

He bought a sandwich at one of the packed delis a few blocks from the office and quickly ate it, then ducked into an office supply store that had internet access and paid for half an hour of time. His first errand was to do a search on the mysterious professor. It didn’t take long to find mentions of him, but it was more involved to find a physical address or phone number. Eventually he got lucky, and he committed the information to memory before going back to the articles the man had authored decades before.

The professor was principally associated with cattle mutilations from the seventies — a very odd period when thousands of animals had turned up drained of blood, many with their organs missing, and with surgically precise incisions that had been lavishly documented. They’d caused a furor, with public speculation about UFO experimentation and the FBI investigating the possible involvement of Satanic cults. Like most mass hysteria media events, the story had died over time and eventually faded from the public consciousness.

He thought back to the discussion with Becky, about Keith researching the cattle mutilations and becoming obsessed. He’d left the professor’s name, and that was the man’s only claim to fame, so whatever it was that he’d been involved in must have been related. Jeffrey did a quick internet search on relevant sites and found himself swimming in crazyland — every possible variation of conspiracy theory on the planet seemed to have found a home for a while in the savaging of livestock.

Jeffrey browsed through a few, and then navigated to the FBI’s site and read the documents that had been archived, which were exclusively newspaper articles from the period, and of no help other than historical perspective. The investigation had gone nowhere and been quietly closed in the early eighties, when the unusual rash of mutilations ended just as abruptly as it had begun. Apparently the little green men with enough sophistication to build intergalactic spacecraft grew tired of dissecting cows and sheep after a decade, and presumably moved on to abducting trailer park residents.

Try as he might, he couldn’t see any smoking gun, but he was out of time for the day — he didn’t want to raise any eyebrows by deviating from his normal behavior. He stopped at a pay phone on his way back to the office and called the professor’s number, unsure what he was going to say when the man answered, but found himself listening to a message announcing that the number he’d dialed was no longer in service. A part of him wondered whether the professor had also been killed, but he put it aside. It was unlikely that the government was killing retired academics with an interest in cattle. Then again, he mused as he returned to the office, it was also unlikely that it was shooting planes out of the sky and covering it up.

Was that what was happening with Keith’s flight? A cover-up? It certainly seemed so. Already the machine was in gear, spinning theories that the mid-air disappearance was a mechanical failure of some sort, a freak accident whose cause might never be known.

His footsteps pounded on the sidewalk as he approached the office, and he realized that he would have to visit the professor in person if he was going to get any answers. But he would need to do it without leaving any traces, which meant no cell and no car. Hopefully the man was still alive and could bring some clarity to a murky situation.

And he would have to get to Zurich, sooner rather than later, and see what was in the box. Without triggering any alarms, which meant that the trip needed to appear to be for plausible, innocent reasons — for Jeffrey, who had only been to Europe once, seven years before, for a week following his graduation.

Back behind his desk, he searched online for an hour and then saw exactly what he needed: a two-day symposium on the changing tax and reporting rules for the European Union, taking place the following Thursday and Friday in Zurich. It would be well within his job description to put in a request to attend it, and with nothing on his plate now other than tying up a few loose ends for the conglomerate’s attorneys, he certainly had abundant free time.

He drafted a memo requesting permission to sign up for the conference and book travel, and sent it to his immediate superior — Eric Fairbanks, one of the partners. Other than a welcoming handshake on his first day, he hadn’t had any interaction with Garfield, and he’d been relegated to Fairbanks’ pool; he was the one who handled the financial end of things, leaving the others to attend to the lobbying and class action support business.

Twenty minutes later his internal line rang, and Fairbanks asked to see him. Jeffrey suited up and walked down the long hall to the partner offices and nodded to the receptionist, who waved him through.

“Jeffrey. Have a seat. What’s this all about a conference in Zurich? Are you tired of working here already?” Fairbanks asked.

“Hardly. The situation in the EU is changing literally week to week, and as we saw on the first deal I handled here, our clients are global entities who need cutting-edge counsel. Informed advice. If you looked at the link I sent you, the speakers are heavy hitters in Euro Zone banking and taxation. I normally don’t go in for attending conferences, but this is a worthwhile exception. I think we’d get a hundred times the value of the travel and attendance costs. It would take weeks or months of research to get everything they’re covering in the two days. Besides which, since I closed the deal last week I’ve got nothing on the board at the moment, so it comes at an opportune time.”

“We’re not in the habit of sending our staff on paid European vacations, young man,” Fairbanks countered sternly.

“Sir, with all due respect, I wouldn’t call sitting in sessions from eight to five for two days a vacation. One of the reasons I try to avoid these is because they’re typically like having un-anesthetized oral surgery. But with the fluid situation in the EU, I’m willing to make an exception. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think it was a good use of my time. And if anything comes up between now and then, I can take files with me and work on them on the plane and in the evenings, so my effective usefulness wouldn’t be affected in my absence, nor would my ability to bill.” Jeffrey figured he would mention the magic words — ‘billable hours.’ “And of course, the whole thing’s a write off…”

“And you really believe this is an essential conference?”

“I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise. I’ll only lose two days of office time — I can take a red-eye over the night before. I think it would be a mistake not to go. My understanding is that every major player in the field is sending personnel there.”

“I see,” Fairbanks said, studying him over the rims of his reading glasses. He took a few seconds to think and then leaned forward. “Let me take it up with Garfield and confirm that he doesn’t have anything pressing he intends to assign you. I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear from him,” he said, bringing the matter to a close and lowering his eyes back to the paperwork he’d been working on. Jeffrey got the hint and returned to his office, confident that he’d be allowed to take the time off.

Two hours later he got a terse email from Fairbanks okaying the trip.

He went to the men’s room and splashed water on his face, then dried it and looked at his reflection in the mirror. At least that part of his plan had gone off without a hitch. The symposium had been a brilliant feint, a completely reasonable distraction for anyone watching his movements. He could slip out and get to the bank in the late afternoon, and then would have the weekend there if he needed it. And all under the guise of work-related travel.

In a little over a week, he’d know what his brother had paid his life to discover.

From there, he had absolutely no idea what he would do.

But it was a start.

In the meantime, he wanted to spend some time researching cattle mutilations, and figure out how to get to rural Virginia to see about tracking down the professor. All without raising any red flags.

A tall order, but now that he was committed, there was no way he would turn back.