Upon A Pale Horse

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 Schmidt had done the forbidden since long before Jeffrey had been born; and judging by the virus diagram, he’d been replaced by others.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.

“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.