Upon A Pale Horse

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.”

“Do you have anyone working on getting inside the bank?”

“We’re pulling out all the stops. With any luck, we’ll know what he was doing there by tomorrow. But that’s not a guarantee — if we can’t find a point of weakness with the staff, we may never know.”

“Well, the good news is that he didn’t have anything on him.”

“Yes, he may be ignorant of the plan. But we need to be sure.”

“It shouldn’t be much longer, should it?”

“We’re only days away.”

“At which point it won’t matter. The world will have bigger problems than what one attorney may or may not know.”

“But until that point, he’s your top priority. That hasn’t changed.”

“I understand. He’s not going anywhere. The hospital is going to hold him for at least twenty-four hours, and probably longer. So for the near term, he’s neutralized.”

“Report back to me if anything changes.”

“As always,” the speaker said, and then disconnected. An announcement boomed from the overhead public address system, calling for a crash cart in the emergency room. The man surveyed his surroundings, eyeing the waiting patients, and then moved back into the hospital corridor, his green surgical scrubs making him as anonymous as any of the other staff hurrying to attend to their duties, everyone focused on their preoccupations and uninterested in the young orderly.

At the end of the wing he spied an exit sign over a doorway, and in a minute he was outside, disappearing around a corner, his work at the hospital, at least for the moment, concluded.