Guillermo del Toro - The Fall

Barnes sat up, shaking off sleep, feeling refreshed. “Washington?” he guessed.

The agent shook his head. “Goodweather.”

Barnes pressed the flashing button on the desk phone and picked up the receiver. “Ephraim? Where are you?”

“Penn Station. Phone booth.”

“Are you all right?”

“I just put my son on a train out of the city.”

“Yes?”

“I’m ready to come in.”

Barnes looked at the agent and nodded. “I am very relieved to hear that.”

“I’d like to see you personally.”

“Stay where you are, I am on my way.”

He hung up and the agent handed him his coat. Barnes was attired in full Navy regalia. They went out the main office and down the steps to the curb, where Dr. Barnes’s black SUV was parked. Barnes climbed into the passenger side and the agent started the ignition.

The blow came so suddenly, Barnes didn’t know what was happening. Not to him-to the FBI agent. The man slumped forward, honking the horn with his chin. He tried to raise his hands and a second blow came-from the backseat. A hand wielding a pistol. It took one more blow to knock out the agent, leaving him slumped against the door.

The assailant was out of the backseat and opening the driver’s door, pulling out the unconscious man and dumping him onto the sidewalk like a big bag of laundry.

Ephraim Goodweather leaped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Barnes opened his door, but Eph pulled him back inside, jamming the gun against the inside of Barnes’s thigh rather than his head. Only a doctor or perhaps a soldier knew that you might survive a head or neck wound, but one shot to the femoral artery meant certain death.

“Close it,” said Eph.

Barnes did. Eph already had the SUV in drive, and was racing out onto 27th Street.

Barnes tried to squirm away from the pistol in his lap. “Please, Ephraim. Please let’s talk-”

“Good! You start.”

“May I at least put on my seat belt?”

Eph took the corner hard and said, “No.”

Barnes saw that Ephraim had dumped something into the cup holders between them: the FBI agent’s shield. The muzzle was tight against his leg, Eph’s left hand heavy upon the steering wheel. “Please, Ephraim, be very, very careful-”

“Start talking, Everett.” Eph pressed the gun hard into Barnes’s leg. “Why the hell are you still here? Still in the city? You wanted a front-row seat, huh?”

“I don’t know what you are referring to, Ephraim. This is where the sick are.”

“The sick,” said Eph disparagingly.

“The infected.”

“Everett-you keep talking like that and this gun is going to go off.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“And you’ve been lying. I want to know why there is no goddamned quarantined Eph’s rage filled the interior of the car. He veered hard right to avoid a broken-down and looted delivery van. “No competent attempt at containment,” he continued. “Why has this been allowed to keep burning? Answer me!”

Barnes was up against the door, whimpering like a boy. “It is completely out of my hands now!” he said.

“Let me guess. You are just following orders.”

“I… I accept my role, Ephraim. The time came where a choice had to be made, and I made it. This world, the one we thought we knew, Ephraim-it is at the brink.”

“You don’t say.”

Barnes’s voice grew colder. “The smart bet is with them. Never wager with your heart, Ephraim. Every major institution has been compromised, either directly or indirectly. By that, I mean either corrupted or subverted. This is occurring at the highest levels.”

Eph nodded hard. “Eldritch Palmer.”

“Does it really matter at this point?”

“To me it does.”

“When a patient is dying, Ephraim-when all hope for recovery is gone-what does a good physician do?”

“He keeps fighting.”

“You prolong it? Really? When the end is certain and near? When they are already beyond saving-do you offer palliative care and draw out the inevitable? Or do you let nature run its course?”

“Nature! Jesus, Everett.”

“I don’t know what else to call it.”

“I call it euthanasia. Of the entire human race. You standing back in your Navy uniform and watching it die on the table.”

“You apparently want to make this personal, Ephraim, when I have caused none of this. Blame the disease, not the doctor. To a certain extent, I am as appalled as you are. But I am a realist, and some things simply cannot be wished away. I did what I did because there was no other choice.”

“There is always a choice, Everett. Always. Fuck-I know that. But you… you are a coward, a traitor, and-worse-a fucking fool.”

“You will lose this fight, Ephraim. In fact, if I’m not mistaken-you already have.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Eph, already halfway across town. “You and I. We’ll see it together.”

SOTHEBY’S, THE AUCTION house founded in 1744, brokered art, diamond, and international realty sales in forty countries, with principal salesrooms in London, Hong Kong, Paris, Moscow, and New York. Sotheby’s New York occupied the length of York Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets, one block in from FDR Drive and the East River. It was a glass-front, ten-story building, housing specialist departments, galleries, and auction spaces-some of which was normally open to the public.

Not this day, however. A private security detail wearing breathing masks were posted outside on the sidewalk and inside behind the revolving doors. The Upper East Side was attempting to maintain some semblance of civility, even as pockets of the city fell to chaos around them.

Setrakian expressed his desire to register as an approved bidder for the impending auction, and he and Fet were issued masks and allowed inside.

The building’s front foyer was open, rising all the way to the top, ten levels of railed balconies going up. Setrakian and Fet were assigned an escort, and taken up escalators to a representative’s office on the fifth floor.

The representative pulled on her paper mask as they entered, making no move to come out from behind her desk. Shaking hands was unsanitary. Setrakian reiterated his intention, and she nodded and produced a packet of forms.

“I need the name and number of your broker, and please list your securities accounts. Proof of intent to bid, in the form of an authorization for one million dollars, is the standard deposit for this level of auction.”

Setrakian glanced at Fet, twiddling the pen in his crooked fingers. “I am afraid I am between brokers at present. I do, however, possess some interesting antiquities myself. I would be happy to put them up as collateral.”

“I am very sorry.” She was already retrieving the forms from him, refiling them in her desk drawers.

“If I might,” said Setrakian, returning her pen, which she made no move to touch. “What I would really like to do is to view the catalog items before making a decision.”

“I am afraid that is a privilege for bidders only. Security is very, very tight, as you probably know, due to some of the items being offered-”

“The Occido Lumen. ”

She swallowed. “Precisely, yes. There is much… much mystique surrounding the item, as you may be familiar with, and naturally, given the current state of affairs here in Manhattan… and the fact that no auction house has successfully offered the Lumen for sale in the past two centuries… well, one doesn’t have to be especially superstitious to link the two.”

“I am sure there is also a strong financial component. Why else go on with the auction at all? Evidently Sotheby’s believes that its sale commission outweighs the risks associated with bringing the Lumen to auction.”