Upon A Pale Horse

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 attention 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.

He jotted down the Frenchman’s contact information and created a blind email account using his middle name — Stanley — and once it was active he emailed a brief introductory message to Bertrand, in the hopes that someone on his end checked his correspondence. He chose his words carefully, requesting some time with the scientist as a featured figure in his new article series.

Jeffrey next turned to the job he’d been dreading — recreating the pages of the spreadsheet. He opened Excel and settled in, closing his eyes for a moment while he sorted through his memory and found page one. After a brief pause he began entering headings and numbers, the data as clear as though he was reading from the pages. He stretched another cup of coffee forever, and after several more hours had recreated the entire document.

The woman who ran the little café was obliging and told him how to print his file, and was more than willing to sell him an eight-gigabyte flash drive. He returned to the computer and saved the data to the drive, and sent the document to the printer. Once it was safely in the queue he closed the spreadsheet and wiped the temp file it had created. He then collected the dozen pages the printer spewed forth, shielding them with his body from the watchful eye of the proprietress, and accidentally tripped over the power cord, jerking it free of the wall and hopefully dumping the printer’s memory in the process.

Money changed hands and he folded the documents and slipped them into the inside pocket of his jacket. He suspected there was some way an interested party could retrieve the data from the printer if they were motivated, but it would have to be an acceptable risk — he’d covered his tracks as best he could, but he couldn’t be a hundred percent on everything.

His next stop was a cell phone store across the street, where he purchased a moderately priced disposable with a hundred minutes of talk time and a local number. Once it had been activated and he confirmed it worked, he moved to a print shop he’d passed the day before that advertised documents created while you waited — at least that’s what he’d thought the banners in the display window said. He shouldered his way into the shop and was greeted by a morose young man sporting a sparse goatee, a beatnik-era haircut, and an olive green T-shirt depicting Che Guevara staring into eternity. Jeffrey picked up a business card and pointed to it, and the clerk began rattling off prices and terms in lightning French. Jeffrey turned the sample business card over and wrote a name with his new number below it, along with a title: James Stanley, Investigative Journalist, 46a rue Saint-Guillaume, 75007 Paris.

Jeffrey pantomimed that he wanted some cards made, and after a few minutes of tortured back and forth, the young man snorted and addressed him in English.

“You want these on good, or the best, stock? And how many?”

Jeffrey was taken aback but didn’t show it. “The best, and make it a hundred. But I need them as soon as possible.”

“Hmm. Yes, I suppose you would.”

The clerk tapped keys on the calculator in front of him, paused, took another look at Jeffrey’s face and entered more, and then turned the calculator to face Jeffrey so he could read the display. As Jeffrey peered at the tiny screen the clerk moved over a few feet and addressed another customer, an older woman, who had entered the shop after him. The two had a heated exchange with much gesticulation, and then the woman left, slamming the door on her way out. The clerk’s long, jaundiced face remained impassive as he returned his attention to Jeffrey.

“Seems very expensive,” Jeffrey commented, and the man shrugged.

“You can make your own on a computer and cut them with scissors.”

“No, I’ll take them. How long until they can be ready?”

The man regarded the clock on the wall, as if making difficult calculations in his head. “One hour.”

Jeffrey fished money out of his pocket and handed it to the clerk, who seemed annoyed that the high price and his indifferent treatment hadn’t rid him of the American. He counted the bills with studied detachment, then wrote out a ticket and stapled the hand-written card to it before opening a book of sample typefaces.

“Pick one for your name, and the other for the rest of the information. Also, choose a layout.”

Jeffrey did, and the man scribbled another few notes on the order and then closed the book.

“Bon. In an hour,” he said, and then spun and made his way to one of the tables in the rear work area, where an obese woman was typing on a computer. He handed her the order and she glanced at it without comment.

Back out on the street, Jeffrey wandered aimlessly for a few blocks, killing time while trying to avoid jarring his head with any sudden movements. He stopped at a small bakery for a croissant, and then sat at one of the sidewalk tables and watched the Parisian crowd go by. When he tired of the mindless pastime he found another internet café and logged onto his new email, confirming that there were no messages.

With another glance at his watch, he decided to try reaching the scientist on the phone, in the hopes that he could get an interview within the next few days. If that failed, he had no plan B, other than stalking the man and looking for an opportune time to effectively kidnap him.

A woman answered, and when he asked for Bertrand, he was connected to another extension that rang five times before a younger female voice came on the line.

“Allo?”

“Hello. Parlez-vous Anglais?” Jeffrey asked.

“Oui. Yes, I do. How may I help you?”

“I sent an email earlier. My name is James Stanley. I’m an investigative reporter doing a story on retroviruses. I’m in Paris, and I want to interview Dr. Bertrand.”

“An email,” she said. He heard fingers tapping at keys at blinding speed. “Mm, yes, here it is.” She took a moment to read it. “I will need to ask the doctor, Monsieur Stanley. When did you want to try to see him, and how long will you need?”

That was more positive than he’d hoped for — she hadn’t just completely shut him down.

“Anytime he can fit me in. And I don’t imagine I’ll need more than an hour. But he’s a central figure in my feature, and it’s very important that he has an opportunity to present his perspective.”

“One moment, please,” she said, and muzak drifted over the line. A man carrying two bags of groceries, one in each arm, nearly collided with him, and Jeffrey stepped out of the way, pressing closer to the building to present a smaller target while he waited. The pedestrians moved with the urgency of gazelles chased by a pride of lions, and Jeffrey was viewed as an undesirable impediment, an obstacle to timely passage. He had just about given up on the receptionist and was going to call back when she returned.

“The doctor can see you today at four, if you can make it. For forty-five minutes.”

“That’s perfect! At the Institute?”

“Yes, third floor. You will need to ask the guards for an escort. Just use the doctor’s name.”

“Excellent. Four o’clock. Thank you.”

“It is not I you should thank. The doctor always tries to be accommodating for the press,” she said, and then the phone went dead in Jeffrey’s ear.

Even the truculent look from the print shop attendant upon his return and the additional twenty minutes of waiting for his order to be processed couldn’t bring Jeffrey down from his high. He was going to see one of the top virologists in the world in five hours, and hopefully would be able to solve the riddle of his brother’s diagram and spreadsheet.

Whether that would be in time to save the planet was a different story, but he’d take the small wins when he got them.