The Manuscript

by Russell Blake

  Michael stopped reading and concentrated on slowing his heart rate to something normal – he was flush with adrenaline and in borderline panic mode. No wonder Abe had been stunned by this. If even half the claims were correct, it made most of the conspiracy theories since World War II seem like a book of children’s fairy tales. It would prove, not only a global agenda to drain wealth from the U.S. via every nameable means by a laundry list of the worst criminal syndicates on the planet, but also the active participation of key figures in the government, from the president on down, from as far back as Nixon, in treason, war crimes, murder, sedition, drug trafficking, money laundering, counterfeiting, fraud and theft, to name only a few.

  This was more than just dynamite and way larger than whether or not a bestseller had been born. Michael could more than understand why it would be worth killing for – if it were true. But the questions remained: was any or all of it accurate, could it be verified, what was the proof, and, probably most intriguingly, who had written it?

  He went back to page one and read more carefully, pausing occasionally to take notes. At the end of another hour, he had a list of claims he could nose around for evidence of, as well as an idea of how to conduct the first batch of searches. Rubbing his eyes, he took a break and considered how to proceed.

  Several things struck him as obvious. First, he’d need help on the research. Second, this was an extremely dangerous book, unless it was a work of fiction, in which case the level of detail bordered on a pathological level of invention and attention to consistency and inter-connectedness. Third, if true, he had to expect the worst – that there was now a team or teams of lethal operatives who would stop at nothing to silence any mention of the document or its contents. And he’d have to assume that he would be lucky to survive the next seventy-two hours; he would be up against CIA-level resources and monitoring capabilities.

  Finally, if any or all of it was true, he was already out of time and needed to take steps which assumed he might have to disappear without any access to his resources, including his bank accounts, credit cards, or professional contacts.

  In short, if Abe hadn’t died a natural death and that was just the first salvo in an all-out effort to contain the document, then everyone who had even talked to Abe since he’d received it and read it was potentially at lethal risk.

  Meaning there was a fair chance that Michael was fucked.

  He considered his options. Michael needed lawyers, guns and money. Well, actually, not lawyers, because they could do very little, if up against what was described in the book. But as to the rest – guns, which he had, and money, of which he had some – the question was whether he had enough.

  He opened Abe’s bag and removed the bundles he’d taken from his safe, setting them on the kitchen counter as he rummaged around for a knife in the nearest drawer. Finding one, he carefully sliced open the first package.

  Inside was a stack of hundred dollar bills. Thirty-five thousand dollars – his emergency funds. That had always seemed like a lot of cash. Now it looked laughable. It would fit in a couple of pockets of his cargo shorts.

  Next, he removed a passport and international driver’s license.

  He opened it.

  Irish citizen. Thomas Derrigan. His middle and last names.

  He’d long ago taken advantage of a citizenship program that Ireland offered to the offspring of Irish parents – his mother had been right off the boat from Enniscorthy as a two year old, having come to the U.S. when her parents emigrated. He’d applied for and been granted Irish citizenship and a passport, which he’d always figured could come in useful for banking or traveling purposes, especially in regions where being an American might be dangerous – such as in the Middle East. He’d just renewed it two years ago, so he had a long time before it expired.

  Having dual citizenship and a second passport was one of the legal tricks of the trade he’d picked up working in the security game – where it paid to always keep your options open, to always have a contingency plan.

  He unwrapped the other bundle and placed three plastic cylinders on the counter. Each tube contained twenty gold Krugerrands – all told, sixty ounces of untraceable gold. Less than four pounds in three little bundles that would fit in his shirt pocket.

  This was his life savings, other than about twenty-five thousand dollars of operating cash in his bank account and a piece of property in Casper, Wyoming he’d bought over time as a retirement spot. Not a lot to show for years of working, but then again he hadn’t been particularly frugal – if you were single and male in New York, you likely had a considerable burn, unless you were a shut-in or never hoped to get laid. While Michael would have liked to have had triple what sat before him, it was what it was. He had a little more than six figures to his name, part of which would need to be converted into cash as needed. Fortunately, everybody liked gold, and it was extremely portable and easily exchanged for currency anywhere in the world.

  That should be more than enough, depending upon how you defined enough.

  The thought stopped him.

  He needed to do a threat assessment, but before he could do so, he had to determine whether Abe had died of natural causes and whether the claims in the document could be either verified or debunked. Either would give him definitive data with which to plan. Right now, all he knew was that there was an old dead bookworm, some high tech spy-gear and probably a live surveillance effort. Obviously, these kind of variables could turn out to be life-changers. But he needed more information.

  He walked over to the voice-over-IP phone his friend had next to the PC, looked up a phone number on his cell phone and then dialed on the internet phone. After a few moments, one of his buddies at the NYPD picked up.

  “Detective Romer speaking.”

  “Hey, Ken, it’s Michael Derrigan. How’s it hanging?” Michael asked, keeping things light.

  “Super, Mike. How’s it going with you? Been a while since I heard from you,” Ken replied brightly.

  “Too much work, too little cash, my friend. I haven’t had much time lately,” Michael admitted.

  “What’s up, buddy? To what do I owe the pleasure on a work day? Did Vice finally bust you for male prostitution?” Ken inquired innocently.

  “Yeah, the John wanted a refund and I refused,” Michael quipped. “Seriously, though, I have a client who was found dead this morning at his apartment. Heart attack, no suspicion of foul play. White male, late sixties-early seventies, lived alone with some dogs. Neighbor called it in. I was wondering if you could look into that a little closer and make sure it passes the sniff test.”

  Ken’s tone changed. “Why, Mike? Tell me what I need to know. Do you have some reason to believe it might be something else?”

  “We ran a sweep on his office this morning and his place had more bugs than a crack house kitchen. And Ken, it’s not like he was on Wall Street or trading in high value intel. He was a literary agent, which is about as exciting as manufacturing shoelaces,” Michael explained.

  He stopped there – Ken didn’t need to know anything more. There was no point in getting him involved beyond providing confirmation that Abe’s death had been a natural one.

  “So no reason for any listening devices…” Ken finished the thought.

  “Exactly. I suppose it could be a competitor trying to learn what he was working on or negotiating, but that’s unlikely, given the industry.” Michael let that sink it. “Which is why I figured it might be worth having someone check the body.”

  “What was the name and address?” Ken asked.

  Michael told him everything he knew.

  Ken would be able to do a quick system scan for bodies found in the last twenty-four hours and find Abe. Then he’d ask the coroner to do a suspicious death exam – unofficially at first, even though ever
yone was supposed to follow procedure. Nobody wanted to waste a ton of time on paperwork on a ‘favor bank’ call, so it was more expedient to do it casually at this stage.

  Ken committed to notifying Michael whenever he had the results of the autopsy back. He figure it would be at least a day, maybe more, especially if they had to wait for a pathology report and tox screens to come in.

  Michael hoped with all his heart that they would confirm he’d expired from a coronary.

  Abe’s death was now under investigation; there was nothing else he could do on that score but wait, so Michael turned to the research issue. He needed fast, dependable and discreet verification by someone who’d never been within a mile of Abe’s offices and couldn’t be tied into his sweep or the e-mail. Normally, he would have used Koshi, but in light of his suspicions, Michael didn’t want to expose him to any more risk.

  Instead, he called a woman he’d dated for a few weeks who was also in the security field. They’d remained friends and colleagues for years since then, even though the spark hadn’t quite been there. Samantha was very good at what she did; she worked for one of the large PI and corporate security firms as a research specialist, but he figured she’d moonlight for him and could be depended upon to keep things confidential.

  Michael called her using the IP phone and gave her his short list of terms, dates and institutions to investigate. They agreed she would report back to him as soon as she had something, one way or another.

  There wasn’t a lot more he could do until he knew what he was dealing with, so he unwrapped an energy bar he found in a drawer, yanked a bottle of water out of the fridge and returned his attention to reading the manuscript.

  He weighed the remaining pages in his hand. Probably about two thirds left to go. Michael silently prayed that whoever had contrived the documents was given to long-winded descriptions, or went off on lengthy tangents, and that the rest of the book was fluff or obvious malarkey and didn’t contain any more realistic-sounding explosive claims. He didn’t see how it could get much more pejorative than the first third.

  Unfortunately, the author wasn’t big on creative writing.

  It got worse.

  Far worse.

  Chapter 6

  If there was a professional team working Abe’s office, Michael figured they’d go in after all the businesses had closed for the day and the employees had gone home for the evening. That would create an opportunity for Michael to stake out the building for signs of obvious activity – but he immediately dismissed it as unnecessarily risky and unlikely to prove or disprove anything. Sure, if they were amateurish, perhaps a cleaning crew would appear late at night, or some other sort of maintenance or emergency repair personnel would enter, and then the lights in Abe’s seventh floor office would go on. However, if they were seasoned professionals it was doubtful he’d see anything at all – and the absence of activity wouldn’t necessarily mean that nobody had breached the office – rather, it would reinforce that they were not a low-end team, which Michael was already pretty certain about, given the hardware Jim had found secreted.

  His natural desire to be pro-active, to gain an advantage over the hypothesized hunters of the document, lost out to his better judgment and discipline. Harsh experience had taught him that security threats were often akin to fishing – both required patience, skill, tuned senses, observation and instinct. Impatience and succumbing to a desire to act were weaknesses he couldn’t indulge.

  Michael gave up trying to finish reading the document that evening; he was in informational overload mode, and he realized he wasn’t registering the facts any more. A glance at the remaining pile of unread papers confirmed there was maybe ten percent left, at most, which he could hit in the morning. He decided to stay in the apartment rather than go out for dinner and spent his time going over his notes of the manuscript’s highlights so far.

  Studying the list of underlined terms and operation names and organizations, he resolved to attempt to parallel Samantha’s efforts and do some online research. Two hours of surfing and searching for data yielded nothing, other than an appreciation for the number of kooky conspiracy theories that were now accessible with a few mouse clicks. There was a scenario for every prejudice, every level of nuttiness, from the erudite and esoteric to the banal. From flat-earth adherents to those convinced that the devil was everywhere, from modern-day Knights of the Templar scheming for Armageddon to the Tri-lateral Commission fostering a shadowy new world order, there was an ass for every seat, as they said in the car business.

  The U.S. government was especially popular amongst the tin foil hat crowd as uber-villain, and one would have to believe it was astoundingly competent to pull off everything from staging lunar landings to assassinating its leaders to hiding the bodies of extraterrestrials to scheming to create a new currency in order to somehow take over Canada and Mexico.

  Exhausted and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, Michael eventually stumbled over to the couch to rest his eyes. He was out cold within two minutes of lying down.

  ********

  An explosive crashing jolted him awake, followed by screaming.

  Michael cautiously approached the window and peeked out; it was morning – a woman in a Honda SUV had rear-ended a plumbing van on the street below. Both drivers were standing beside their vehicles yelling at the top of their lungs, berating each other for their lousy driving skills. The woman was East Indian, with a pronounced accent and a vocal range that likely had the neighborhood dogs running for cover. The male sounded Polish or Russian.

  Good morning - I heart Brooklyn.

  He stumbled into the shower, prioritizing his activities for the day as he stood under the tepid stream of water. Having skipped dinner, he was starving, so first order of business was to get some calories on-loaded. Then he’d move to making calls and following up on his prior day’s contacts. And of course, finish reading the manuscript. Michael figured that today was going to define whether his network was in crisis, or if this was merely a false alarm.

  His Blackberry was blinking. Shit - he hadn’t even heard it ring. Koshi had called him the previous night. He punched the speed dial number and listened to it ring.

  “You alive?” Koshi asked by way of greeting.

  “Yup. I just crashed hard and missed your call,” Michael explained. “Sorry.”

  “Write this down,” Koshi responded, and gave him an e-mail address, login and password. “Use it to communicate until the fire drill’s over.”

  “Got it. Anything going on over there?” Michael asked.

  “No black helicopters, if that’s what you mean,” Koshi deadpanned.

  “Good to hear,” Michael reflected before going on to explain about his pulling in some favors to check on Abe’s death.

  “Keep me in the loop when you hear something,” Koshi reminded him.

  Michael promised to let him know as soon as he talked to Ken, and they agreed to stay in contact via e-mail at least twice that day – once at three o’clock, and once more at the end of the evening.

  There were two coffee shops on the block, indistinguishable from each other, so he chose the nearest one and slid into a vacant red vinyl-clad booth. He ordered, then called Ken, who promised he’d have more information later in the day – they were still waiting for feedback from the lab. He assured Michael he’d call as soon as he knew anything.

  Samantha wasn’t in yet, so he left a voice mail and the voice-over-IP phone number.

  Michael slouched restlessly, fidgeting with his cell, unable to sit still. He’d only been awake an hour, and nervous energy already had him bouncing off the walls.

  The waitress delivered his food; the coronary special – three eggs, pancakes, sausage, hash browns. Michael resolved to cut himself off after two cups of coffee. The last thing he needed
was to add caffeine jitters to his growing impatience. He plowed through the meal like he’d just been released from prison and broke his commitment to stop the coffee. They were small cups, he reasoned, so three were only about the same as one and a half of his usual.

  Back in the apartment, he reviewed the prior evening’s notes and then picked up the remainder of the manuscript, determined to finish it. As he made it to the last few pages, he registered an e-mail address inserted seemingly by mistake in one of the endnotes. That had to be deliberate. Maybe the author had put a contact point in that would only be noticed if Abe really read the entire thing and digested every word.

  It was worth a shot.

  Michael sat down at his laptop and logged into his newly created e-mail.

  He had one message, from Koshi: [The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.]

  That was Koshi for you. Mister sunshine. Michael fired back an e-mail so Koshi knew things were working: [Daddy drinks because you cry.]

  He was interrupted by the jarring ring of the voice-over-IP phone.

  “Michael, what do you know about the stiff you had me check on?” Ken launched, skipping pleasantries.

  “I told you – why…what did you find?” Michael’s stomach lurched even as he asked. He’d known Ken a long time, so he knew what was coming next. Or at least, he thought he did.

  “All right. Here’s the scoop. The ME confirmed death was caused by a massive myocardial infarction. But he also found very subtle bruising on the lower back. Judging by the amount of subcutaneous clotting, his preliminary assessment is that your boy sustained a blow there immediately before he croaked,” Ken reported.

  “Like someone rabbit-punched him in the kidneys…” Michael thought out loud.