Upon A Pale Horse (Bio-Thriller) Read online

  “Don’t feel bad. He was like that as a boy, too.”

  “I know. I didn’t take it personally. But then he stopped calling, and the few times I came by to see how he was doing, it was like he couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. After years together, suddenly it was the cold shoulder. I was afraid it was another woman or something, but that wasn’t Keith. He was a good guy. Quirky, but he wasn’t a cheater,” she pronounced with certainty.

  Jeffrey hesitated, unsure of how to best respond. “No, I don’t think so either. But where does that leave us? Can you think of anything else he said?” he asked.

  “Well, I didn’t tell anyone this, but he was freaking me out the last time I saw him.” She paused and her face changed to a look of annoyance. “Damn. I almost forgot. He gave me something to give to you.” She fished around in her purse. “Here. This is for you.” She handed him a paper stub.

  “What…what’s this?”

  “That’s what I mean by he was acting all weird. The last thing he did before he left my place that last time, about a week and a half ago, right after getting back from Europe, was give me that. It was one of the things that made me really uncomfortable. It was like he knew he was going to die.” Becky seemed to run out of steam. “Which is crazy. I’m sorry I told you. It sounds completely nuts. Unless you believe in psychic ability or whatever, which I don’t. But now I’m not so sure…”

  Jeffrey studied the slip of paper. At the top, in green ink, was the name of a pawn shop in Washington, D.C. It was date-stamped two weeks earlier. But the rest was unintelligible to Jeffrey, mainly because it was in Chinese, the characters meaning nothing to him.

  “I’ve never seen a pawn ticket before, but that’s what it looks like.”

  “That’s my guess. Anyway, he made a big deal out of making sure you got it, so it was pretty important to him. Which reminds me – I have a box of his stuff at my place that you might want. Odds and ends. And there’s his condo that needs to be cleaned out. I have a key to the place, but Jeff…I can’t do it. I just don’t have it in me. I hate to lay it on you, but there’s nobody else.”

  “No problem, Becky. I completely understand. I don’t really want to do it, either, but I’m his brother, and he would have done it for me.”

  “There might be some insurance from his work, or maybe a will…although he never discussed it. You’d know more about that than I would, being a lawyer and all.”

  Becky was doing the best she could, he could see, but she was barely holding it together. Keith’s death had hit her hard. She meant well, but she wasn’t equipped to deal with the details. Neither was he. But ducking it wasn’t an option. Becky was the girlfriend, not the wife. Which left him.

  Her coffee refill arrived and she sipped at it as he retreated into his thoughts, mentally making a list as he considered what would be involved in arranging his brother’s affairs. He leaned back in his chair and eyed the sky.

  “I’ll have to get a death certificate and then go through his stuff to see where he banked, what broker he used, who holds his mortgage,” Jeffrey said, thinking out loud.

  “I can help, Jeffrey. Only…not right now. I need some time. This has changed my whole life, and I don’t know what I’m going to do…”

  “Of course. You’ve done way more than enough organizing this service, Becky. This has put you through the wringer. Don’t worry about anything – I’ll deal with whatever needs to be done.”

  “I wish I could tell you more about those last weeks, Jeff. But there just isn’t much to tell. Except…well, how close were you two? Really? He didn’t talk about you a lot, and I only met you that one time…”

  “We used to be pretty close. It’s just that when we both grew up, things got complicated. Between school and work, and him moving across the country, we sort of got wrapped up in our own lives. I guess that’s my way of saying that we didn’t see each other nearly as much as we should have. But it happens,” Jeffrey said in a low voice, and then gazed off at the trees across the street, some of them hundreds of years old, he could tell by their height and girth.

  They both sat silently for a few minutes, and then she spoke again, calmer now.

  “I have a couple of photo albums too. He left them at my place one night and never bothered to pick them up. About six months ago. I’d been bugging him about his childhood for a while, and one night he showed up with a bottle of wine and the photos. I suppose you’re right. He was a little odd…”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to need some time to deal with his estate. I can’t see any way of doing it without flying back out here at least one more time. Hold on to everything until I return, and we can sort things out then. This is going to take a while, so there’s no rush.”

  She nodded and finished her coffee, then looked around as if lost. “I can’t believe this is happening…”

  “I know, Becky, I know.”

  He walked her to her car and declined the offer of a ride, preferring to walk back to the hotel. He needed to move, to cover ground, to have some silence after the grim discussion with Becky. There was a lot to mull over. And the logistics of dealing with his brother’s affairs weren’t going to be simple, he could already see that. He hadn’t thought about it until then, but there would be a lot of things to handle, and nobody but him to do it.

  Jeffrey watched her little Ford disappear around the corner, and then he set out the way he’d come, back to the hotel, more questions in his mind than answers.

  A dark gray sedan pulled away from the curb a block down the street and followed Becky’s car, its windows tinted dark, mud obscuring part of the license plate. Jeffrey didn’t notice, nor did he register the nondescript man who took up a position a hundred yards behind him, just another working stiff carrying a briefcase and a newspaper, on his way to a tedious day of monotony.

  SIX

  The Agency

  “What did he know?”

  George Thorn, the deputy director of the CIA, shook his head and shrugged at the question, deliberately taking his time with his answer. The questioner was not a man to be trifled with – enormously powerful, and one of the richest men in the nation. Thorn had been summoned to New York to meet with him rather than addressing the entire group to which he and the man belonged. It was better if some things were kept away from the others, although the two generals in their clique knew, and in fact had helped orchestrate the latest operation.

  “We’re not completely sure. We do know he was poking around in areas that were sensitive. Restricted. Top secret, and not in any way related to his work.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m aware of all that. How he was able to gain access is another troubling matter.”

  Thorn looked around the room – the sitting room of a penthouse suite in the most exclusive building in Manhattan, the cost per square foot more than if it had been cast in pure gold. Two Picassos adorned the walls, along with a Renoir that belonged in a museum. The questioner, Reginald Barker, was old, old money – the kind of money that had prospered during the Second World War from funding both sides of the conflict, in addition to now owning the largest investment bank on Wall Street and having its tentacles in oil, real estate, military contractors, and Big Pharma. It was the kind of money that would never show up on any Forbes list – the sort that ran nations, and Barker had been actively doing just that for at least fifty of his seventy-nine years, after inheriting the mantle from his father, a hard-nosed industrialist who had taken the billion-dollar legacy he’d been handed when Barker’s grandfather had died and built it into a mega-empire.

  “Indeed. But don’t forget that he was a computer expert. With fifteen years of experience with our systems. He ran some of our hacking groups. This was not an ordinary analyst.”

  “That’s precisely what has me worried.”

  Thorn nodded. “Me too. But we believe we’ve contained it.”

  “Yes. Blowing planes out of the sky is akin to using a sledge hammer to kill a fly.” Barker reache
d to the side table and opened an antique humidor, selecting one of the Cohibas he favored. He snipped the tip and touched it to a platinum and diamond lighter. He didn’t offer Thorn one, and Thorn didn’t expect it. That wasn’t their relationship.

  “We discussed our options. This had to be stopped immediately. As soon as we understood he was leaving the country, we needed to act. We couldn’t take the chance he would escape on the other end,” Thorn said.

  “I see the media is treating it as another regrettable accident – an unexplained explosion. At least that’s going according to plan.”

  “We’re confident that the flight recorder won’t show anything unusual.”

  “Then it’s a dead end. Pardon the pun.”

  “Yes. Although we’re still tying up loose ends.”

  “The Italian.”

  “No longer an issue,” said Thorn with an air of finality. “He was clean.”

  “Nobody’s clean in this,” Barker spat. “He was a potential trouble spot. I’m glad he’s off the table. Stupid bastard couldn’t keep his fool mouth shut. It got him what he deserved.”

  “Yes, well, at the moment, everything is progressing nicely. Our Defense Department contacts are on board, although they aren’t sure for what. Just that everything’s going to change soon. Permanently.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Barker said, studying the fine ash on the end of his cigar, tendrils of smoke drifting to the ceiling where they were discreetly sucked into the air filtration system, to be blown out over Central Park after being run through two different types of carbon filters.

  Thorn had been a close friend and confidant of Barker’s for forty years, and was part of the innermost sanctum, the true hall of power. Thorn was also wealthy – not nouveau riche billionaire level like some of the members of the last administration, but seriously wealthy, which was a closely guarded secret. To most he was a tireless champion of freedom, working as the number two man in the CIA for decades, his worth unquestioned. He didn’t have a private jet, didn’t live in a twenty-million-dollar mansion, took reasonable vacations, had been married to a decent woman for most of his adult life, wore a stainless steel Omega watch. Thoroughly unremarkable in most ways. Which was how he liked it.

  For as long as he could remember, he’d been part of the plan, which had morphed over time, but was now more urgent than ever before – not only because of Barker’s advancing age, but also his own…and other factors outside his control. It had never been more important for there to be no screw-ups. A lifetime of preparation had gone into this, resources that were unimaginable devoted to this new, final phase. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with it or derail it.

  Nothing.

  “I’m worried that the analyst may have not taken all his secrets with him. Is there any chance that he talked?”

  “Not that we can see. We’re monitoring his contacts, including his girlfriend, and there hasn’t been a peep. No, it looks like he was working this one on his own, which makes sense given his personality profile. It would actually be surprising if he had shared it – he was compartmentalized with his work, and drove that home with his team time and time again. I’d say there’s virtually no chance that he passed anything on.”

  Barker fixed Thorn with a hard stare, his gray eyes cold. “We’re down to the finish line. Everything’s in place. The WHO program, the manufacturing, the political jockeying, everything. We’re long past the point of no return, and we can’t have anything interfere. Never mind the money we’ll make. That’s meaningless at this point. No, we’re going to forever re-mold the world, solving a host of its problems in one fell swoop. You can be proud to be a part of it.”

  Thorn nodded, his assent obligatory. This was ground well covered, and he didn’t need to be sold on it or reminded of the stakes. They were taking a bold step that would do what many privately understood was essential to the survival of the species, but were afraid to voice out loud. That was the difference between wolves and sheep. He was one of the few, the chosen, who would do what needed to be done, moral quandaries be damned. He’d devoted his entire life to this cause and didn’t need convincing that it was the single most important thing that would happen. The societal, religious, and financial impact would be profound, and out of the change would emerge a new and better order. Of that he was sure.

  “What steps are you taking to confirm that there’s no further danger?” Barker asked, interrupting Thorn’s rumination.

  “We’re watching the girlfriend and the brother – we’re working on having NSA backdoor monitor their cell phones, but that can take weeks absent a warrant. As it is, those are probably dead ends.”

  “I have some thoughts on that,” Barker said, taking another satisfied draw on the cigar.

  When Thorn left the penthouse he felt a swell of excitement. They were so damned close to changing the course of civilization. Perhaps one day he would be remembered in the history books, but he doubted it – his contribution would be silent and unacknowledged, which was as it had to be. The world wasn’t capable of grasping what they were about to do. Better to allow events to unfold, to play the part of silent spectator than catalyst. The end would justify the means, and the outcome would be its own reward.

  SEVEN

  Break In

  Jeffrey took his time returning to the hotel, the walk helping to clear his head only a little. Once back in the lobby, he walked to the bar, which was just opening, and sat on a stool and ordered a single malt scotch, neat. The bartender nodded and rattled off the possibilities, and Jeffrey selected Glenfiddich.

  The burn of the potent nectar seared his esophagus and then spread warmth from his stomach outward, numbing the worst of the anxiety that had been afflicting him all morning. The scene in the funeral home had been innocuous but painful, and the discussion with Becky puzzling. He frankly didn’t know what to make of her revelations. Rather than bringing closure to his brother’s death, all she had succeeded in doing was raising questions.

  He ordered a second drink and mulled over his next steps: He’d need to get into Keith’s place and look around, throw away anything perishable in the refrigerator, and see what files he had for clues about his brother’s financial affairs. But he wasn’t up to the task just yet. He felt like crap; the ceremony had sapped his energy and brought up a heaping serving of guilt large enough to bury him. And from his experience dealing with his mother’s passing, he knew that he would be spending considerable time sorting through Keith’s belongings and making arrangements to liquidate his condo and deal with his possessions. Death might have been final for the victim, but it created considerable work for those surviving, and once again, the burden would fall on him.

  The bartender returned with a raised eyebrow, silently inquiring whether Jeffrey wanted another, and Jeffrey shook his head, ordering a beer instead. He wanted to get drunk, really drunk, pie-eyed to the point where he couldn’t think, but that wasn’t a solution to anything. And the lingering ache in his head from the flight’s vodka-fest was still there, only partially banished by the amber elixir that sat atop the bar’s middle shelf, promising blessed oblivion.

  He finished his Samuel Adams and signed for the tab, a princely number that was as close to robbery you could get without brandishing a gun, and then made his unsteady way to the elevator, suddenly drained from the morning, tired in spite of the caffeine he’d ingested and wanting nothing more than to crawl under the covers and hide from the world. A few hours of napping wouldn’t hurt, he reasoned as he stepped into the elevator. His face was sallow in the conveyance’s mirrored back wall, and he selected his floor with a noisy exhalation while waiting for the doors to close.

  In his room, he debated getting online and dealing with any incoming emails but then rejected the idea. He stripped off his suit and draped it over a chair, and then padded into the bathroom for a shower. Once done, he considered ordering room service for lunch but opted instead to throw himself onto the bed, face down, his body shud
dering as he sobbed into the pillow, eventually growing still before the room was filled with the drone of his snoring.

  Four hours later Jeffrey awoke, groggy and hungry. He donned his casual clothes and hefted his coat, and after a cursory glance in the mirror and a token running of a brush through his hair, he went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a late lunch, opting for caffeinated soda rather than more booze. His head pounded like drills were boring their way through his visual cortex and into his frontal lobes, and he silently rued his decision to down the two double Scotches – a move that was unlike him, as was all his drinking in the last twenty-four hours.

  But perfectly understandable, he thought, gulping a glass of water with a twist of lemon floating in it. It’s not every day your only brother vaporizes in a front-page disaster. Part of him was still tugged towards getting obliterated so he wouldn’t have to confront the grim errands awaiting him, but he wrestled that impulse back into the dark recesses of his mind from whence it had come. There was no point delaying the inevitable.

  Jeffrey chewed his twenty-five dollar steak sandwich slowly, determined to wring every ounce of pleasure out of it as he mulled over his next move. As unappealing as it was, he’d need to go to his brother’s place and deal with things there. Even as he reconciled himself to doing so, he realized that he wasn’t entirely sure where it was – Keith had bought it since the last time he’d been there, taking advantage of the abrupt drop in values as the economy had nosedived.

  He fished his cell out of his pocket, navigated to his address book, and punched in Becky’s number. She had the key and knew the location. Maybe she’d even have a change of heart and want to give him a hand – a long shot, and way above the call of duty, he knew. The phone rang four times before she answered, sounding out of breath.