A Heartbeat Away (16 page)

CHAPTER 27

DAY 3
1:30 P.M. (CST)

After all they had been through, Griff was obsessed with the need to reopen his lab and get to work. But there was no way he could put off seeing exactly what evidence Forbush believed he had. He felt sickened by the notion that his friend had tried unsuccessfully to convince people that he had been framed.

But he wasn’t surprised.

Had the president simply not cared, or were the people who had set him up that good?

Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.

As Forbush led him and Angie down the passageway to the lounge area, Griff felt his bitterness and anger grow. How deep did the conspiracy to get him away from Veritas go? If Allaire was in any way involved, he had better hope that Griff never found out.

Forbush had his choice of bungalows outside the hangar, but it seemed as if he spent little time in any of them. Instead, he had converted two small underground offices into a sleeping area and a rather sophisticated movie theater, outfitted with five stadium seats and an antique popcorn machine. The seventy-inch movie screen, DVD player, and state-of-the-art home theater projector were, as Forbush put it, enlightened gifts from the United States government.

“You mean they bought this stuff for you?” Griff asked.

“Well, define
bought
. I filled out some paperwork, and marked certain items as research materials. It took some time, but ultimately they shipped me exactly what I ordered. And when I leave government service, Uncle Sam will get to watch movies and make popcorn.”

“The Pork Barrel Cinema,” Angie said. “We should have a marquee made up.”

“Just don’t put a photo of it in your newspaper. So, do you want me to pop up some buttered corn, or do you just want to see what I have?”

“I can’t believe this,” Griff said, slumping into one of the chairs in the front row. “Nine months in a goddamn cell.”

“Be tough,” Angie said. “What goes around comes around.”

Forbush extracted a video from the middle of an entire wall of hundreds of carefully aligned video and DVD cases. Then he held up the cover.

“
Gaslight
. Have you seen it?”

“I know the word,” Griff said. “It’s a verb, and it means to sabotage someone’s life to make them think they’re going nuts.”

“And this is where that word came from. Ingrid Bergman won the best actress Oscar in 1944, playing the naïve singer Charles Boyer sets out to drive crazy. It’s about things not being as they look on the surface.” He extracted the tape from the case. “I give you the surveillance video from security cameras twenty through twenty-four. It was never nominated for a Oscar, but it could have been—for best special effects.”

“Does it say why they chose me for the leading role?” Griff asked glumly.

“No, I can’t explain why they picked you,” Forbush said, “but I think I have a good idea who played you.”

He worked his way around to the projector and queued up the video.

Angie locked her fingers in Griff’s as an image of the lab appeared on the wide, white screen.

“I’ve spliced a couple of camera views together,” Forbush said. “The timing’s in the lower right.”

Nine months
, Griff was thinking.
Nine months of my life gone
.

Images of the sadistic Florence penitentiary guards flashed strobelike through his mind.

At the bottom of the surveillance footage was the fuzzy lettering of a date and time marker that indicated the recorded events occurred some nine and a quarter months ago, at a few minutes past midnight.

“Since this is a silent film, I’ll provide the narration,” Forbush offered from his seat behind them and to the right. “For Ms. Angie’s benefit, what we’re looking at here is footage from the WRX3883 culture lab.”

“Actually, Melvin,” Griff said, “Ms. Angie knows this stuff. She’s written pieces about hot zone virology, including a couple about me.”

Angie stood up and pointed to a large cabinet on the right side of the scene.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“That’s one of the biosafety cabinets we use to work with hot agents,” Forbush answered.

“No, I know that. I mean this incubator or whatever it is next to it.”

Forbush sounded genuinely impressed.

“That’s Big Bertha. We custom built her to mimic a human host in various stages of WRX3883 infection—body temperature, natural defenses, that sort of thing.”

“So you’ve got virus growing in some sort of nutrient bath, incubating in a way that simulates the host organism’s response. Amazing.”

“Well,” Griff said, “when your boss is the president, and you’ve got Dr. Sylvia Chen running the show, research expense is never a big concern.”

“Okay, audience,” Forbush broke in, “in our next scene, you’ll see Griff enter the lab. Security access logs will document that it was him, even though it wasn’t.”

“How did you get this, Melvin?” Griff asked. “We don’t archive surveillance video.”

“After I learned about your arrest I archived the footage myself,” Forbush explained. “I wanted to see with my own eyes what they said you’d done. It wasn’t until I watched it on the big screen twenty or so times that I figured out what was wrong.”

The video showed an empty lab for two more minutes before someone dressed in a white biocontainment suit entered the frame. The suit was bloated from air pumped through an attached yellow hose that descended from the ceiling. The intruder moved like Neil Armstrong on the moon.

“Now, with his back to the camera, we can’t tell who this is. The only clue that it’s Griff is the canvas bag he’s carrying,”

“That’s my bag all right,” Griff said. “But that’s not me.”

“In ten seconds, you might think otherwise,” Forbush replied.

As soon as the tenth second ticked past, the suited person turned and faced the camera directly. Griff and Angie uttered gasps of astonishment. It was easy to see Griff’s face through the hood’s clear plastic front shield. If this was a double, it was a perfect one.

“How in the hell did they do that?” Griff asked.

“How did James Cameron make all those beautiful, tall, sexy blue Na’vi in
Avatar
? How do you and I manage to re-create human RNA out of thin air?”

Mesmerized, they watched as Griff carefully removed tissue cultures of WRX3883 from the incubator and placed them inside six seamless aluminum canisters.

“Those canisters are custom designed to permit safe transport of cultured virus from one lab suite to another,” Griff explained. “We can sterilize the outsides without harming the virus.”

“For the first few viewings I wondered why you didn’t do anything to disable the cameras,” Forbush said. “Then I realized you didn’t have to. It would be perfectly normal for you to make this specimen transfer.”

The next sequence cut to Griff, still carrying the black canvas bag, but now dressed in his street clothes and on his way out of the lab. He traveled through a maze of concrete corridors before he came to a stop at Security Checkpoint Two. The video showed him place his hand upon the biometric scanner and ended when he opened the security door to exit.

“Is that it?” Griff turned to Melvin and asked. “I thought you said you had proof. You show that in a court of law and I’m gone for good.”

“What do you mean?” Forbush asked. “That is proof. Proof positive.”

Griff and Angie exchanged bewildered looks.

“I don’t get it,” Griff said, an edge of irritation in his voice.

“What? You’re telling me you didn’t see that. Look again.”

Forbush reran the last minute of footage. He froze the frame just as Griff set his hand on the wall-mounted biometric scanner.

“I still didn’t see anything,” Griff said.

Forbush sighed.

“Do you know that there are people like me who live for finding goofs in film? And trust me when I say there’s not a movie without them. Hollywood even hires continuity specialists to make sure that if a character is wearing a hat in one shot, she’s got the same hat on the same way if there’s a change in the camera angle.”

“So you found a goof that clears me?”

“More than a goof,” he said. “Look at the screen where I froze it. What do you see?”

“My hand on the scanner,” Griff replied.

“Which hand?” Melvin asked him.

“My left,” Griff said. “It happened so fast, I wasn’t even looking for it.”

“You’re right-handed. That’s your primary hand. That’s the hand your security profile was built from. The scanner is set up so that either hand can be placed in the indentation. In other words, it has two thumbs. Since the mold is to the left of the door, a left-hander would just set his—or her—left hand in place. But a right-hander would have to step across the indentation to set their hand in it. We each scan one and only one hand when we are creating our security profile—our dominant hand. You couldn’t have possibly exited through that checkpoint using a left-hand scan, which means—”

“It wasn’t Griff carrying that bag,” Angie finished for him.

“No. But it was somebody,” Forbush continued. “Whoever did this probably used other security footage of Griff to cobble together a perfect digital forgery. It’s really flawless. Well, except for that one little gaffe.”

“And you showed this to Sylvia?” Griff asked.

“Oh yeah, I showed her. I didn’t come right out and confront her, though.”

“Confront her about what?” Angie asked.

“Sylvia Chen’s biometric profile. She’s one of the three left-handed primaries that we have in the system. I would bet the thief was her.”

“Maybe that’s why she disappeared,” Griff said. “The president told me that at one point there were dozens of FBI agents—I think he actually said
hundreds
—out looking for her.”

“Maybe it’s worth trying some more,” Angie said. “Does Sylvia have an office down in the lab?”

Forbush nodded.

“We’d have to suit up, but I can take you in there. A couple of agents have already searched there, though.”

“If neither of them were women, we ought to look again.”

“Why?”

“Most women have a special talent built onto their X chromosomes. The talent to find things. If we want to find out who’s behind Genesis, that office is the first place we should look.”

CHAPTER 28

DAY 3
4:00 P.M. (CST)

Griff had gone ahead to get his lab operational, and had left Angie and Forbush to get started in Sylvia Chen’s office. Angie held her security card up to the reader and the red light above the palm scanner turned green. Standing off to one side, Forbush next had her set her hand on the opaque plate that initiated the biometric scan sequence. As she was waiting for approval, Angie suddenly found herself imagining Sylvia Chen approaching the door from the other side, carrying Griff’s canvas bag, and knowing that she was setting up an innocent man who had been her friend and coworker for years.

Prison … Possibly torture.

The woman had to have known, Angie thought. She had to have known what was in store for Griff.
Who paid her to do it? Why? Where had she disappeared to?

A sweet, computerized voice announced, “Biometric scan approved for Angela Jane Fletcher. Guest pass seven-oh-seven, security level Alpha Hotel Alpha. Please proceed to iris scan.”

Angie set her chin in place and readied herself.

“Who supplies all this equipment, anyway?” she asked through clenched teeth.

The scan failed and a loud warning buzz followed.

“Please clear the optical scanner and try again,” the voice demanded.

“You can’t talk during a scan,” Forbush said. “The algorithms that handle the matching are very precise. Keep your chin pressed in and your head as still as possible.”

“Sorry.”

Angie repositioned herself.

“The equipment comes from different vendors,” Forbush explained. “Staghorn Security from Indiana handles the ordering and then puts the system together and installs it. If every one of the companies dealing with the government were as efficient and detail-oriented as Staghorn, half the national debt would probably vanish. Those guys know what they’re doing and they know how to do it.”

This time the scan worked and Angie lifted her chin from the cup.

“What about the cameras?” she asked.

“Those came from Staghorn also.”

“Maybe we should talk to them. If they know the equipment inside and out, perhaps they’ll have some idea how Genesis and Sylvia managed to pull off the scam. The computer graphics don’t seem like they would be that easy to do.”

“If you know how, you know how,” Forbush replied matter-of-factly. “Griff is in his lab right now. After we go to Sylvia’s office, maybe he’ll show you what he does in that arena.”

“You really care about him, don’t you.”

“I trust him, if that’s what you mean. He’s genuinely concerned about people. I suppose you’ve already picked up on the fact that sometimes I have trouble … um … getting along with others. He and I have never had one disagreement.” Forbush considered his words for a moment, then added quite seriously, “Even though I’m smarter.”

Angie waited on the other side of the door for the man, then headed down the corridor toward the cool zone of offices, and beyond that, the Kitchen. Data transferred wirelessly to a computer chip automatically unlocked the next secure metal door with a loud click.

“Do you know the Staghorn folks, Melvin?”

“I’ve done some work with them. Nice people. Smart. Anxious to please.”

“I would imagine that sometimes you’re not so pleaseable.”

“You imagine correctly.”

As they approached the hot zone changing area, Angie sensed an increase in the tightness in her chest. In spite of herself, she was beginning to panic. They were two hundred feet underground approaching the area where, less than a year ago, dreadfully powerful microbes were being developed, including a virtually invisible germ that would soon begin killing scores of people in the Capitol.

“Is there any living virus left down here?”

“You mean in the Kitchen? I suppose it’s possible. We don’t take any chances. Besides, Griff has those blood samples from Washington. He’s suited up, working on them now to reestablish tissue culture lines.”

The band around Angie’s chest grew stronger. Her breathing felt strained.

“I need a minute, Melvin,” she said.

“Don’t be embarrassed. We all feel claustrophobic and endangered from time to time down here, especially when we stop to think about how few particles of WRX3883 it would take to kill us.”

“That makes me feel much better.”

“Good,” Forbush said, clearly missing her sarcasm. “You said you wanted to start with Dr. Chen’s lab office. You’re going to have to suit up.”

“I’ve done that before.”

“So you know that breathing in the suit takes some getting used to.”

“Yes.”

“The air can feel like molasses at first.”

“I understand.”

“And we’ll have to talk real loud to be heard over the air compressors.”

“Melvin, let’s go.”

“Change on the other side of the lockers, then go through the security door. I’ll meet you in the Kitchen. This is the door to the locker room. Once you pass into the first staging area, the light above the locker room door will turn green.”

Willing herself to calm down, Angie pulled on the door handle. It was difficult to open.

“Negative pressure,” Forbush said. “Helps keep any loose virus particles from—”

Before Forbush could finish the explanation, Angie clenched her teeth, yanked the heavy door open, and stepped inside.

“Don’t forget to remove all jewelry,” Forbush’s voice continued through a speaker on the wall. “And remember to tape your wrists and ankles.… This is a little like the lab in Michael Crichton’s
The Andromeda Strain,
but not exactly.… Arthur Hill played Dr. Jeremy Stone in that one. One of my favorites. He’s Canadian. Not Dr. Stone, but Arthur Hill.”

Several years before, Angie had written a three-part story on the autism spectrum disorder called Asperger syndrome. Unless her research was way off base, Melvin Forbush was a poster child for the neurological condition.
Delightful, but at times exasperating,
she had written.
Often brilliant, yet frequently unaware or out of step
.
Obsessed with details provided they are interested in the subject.

He and I have not had one disagreement,
Forbush had said about Griff.

It was another tribute to the man already hard at work in the lab ahead of her—the man charged with saving the lives of the president of the United States and seven hundred others. Angie had never fallen in love with the same man twice. Now she found herself wondering.

Twenty minutes later, she was ready. Dressed in a biocontainment suit, she exited the locker room and entered the next staging area, which glowed purple from ultraviolet lights. Finally, she entered the airlock to await her guide. The rush of air after she connected her hose was initially like going ninety in a convertible with the top down.

“Are you doing okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine. This is what my brain feels like most of the time. I sort of like the rush.”

As Angie waited, once again her thoughts focused on Sylvia Chen. Griff had given her a capsule summary of the woman and her life. Born in China, and brought to the U.S. by her mother at a young age. Now speaks with minimal or no accent. No mention of her father. Graduated from Yale at twenty. Ph.D. from Columbia at twenty-six. Tenured by age thirty-eight. Briefly married. No children. Tireless researcher. Driven by ambition. Passed over for what would have made her the youngest department chief at Columbia, and so took her research on WRX3883 to the government. Author of literally hundreds of books, articles, and scientific papers. The anti-Griff in terms of her belief in the importance of using animals for her research—primarily chimpanzees or other smaller primates. Nevertheless, she had great belief and trust in Griff and his work. An opera buff and chess master. Meticulous, serious, intense. Owned a black Porsche, and in the wide, flat spaces of southwest Kansas, drove it extremely fast. Coveted a Nobel Prize, and had hitched her wagon in that regard to WRX3883, but believed it was bad luck to dwell on that desire.

The airlock door opened and closed, depositing Forbush behind her. Together, they entered the hot zone identified by a wall-mounted placard as the Kitchen.

“Do you want a tour?” Forbush offered.

“Later, maybe. I want to see Dr. Chen’s office and lab.”

“I tell you, it’s already been gone over several times.”

“Then this shouldn’t take too long.”

Next to the placard were detailed instructions on how to handle an exposure event. Beside the instructions was a sign reading simply
BLACK ZONE
, with an arrow pointing straight down.

“Explain,” she said.

“We never used it, but it’s a small bunker down below near the animal facility, with a couple of beds and a TV. If you get exposed to WRX, that’s where you would go to die.”

“Nice.”

“Sort of like the submarine in
Das Boot.
”

“Chen’s office?”

“Down the hall.”

“Favor, Melvin. Can I do this myself?”

“I suppose. What do you think you’re looking for?”

“I have no idea. Something … anything. Ten minutes. Just give me ten minutes.”

“Miss Marple.”

“Pardon?”

“Agatha Christie’s detective—
Murder at the Gallop
;
Murder Most Foul.
That’s who you remind—”

“Ten minutes, Melvin.”

She thanked him with a pat on the shoulder.

Sylvia Chen had gone to great lengths to insert some hominess into her windowless space. The walls were whitewashed plaster, with either Chinese artwork or bookshelves filled with scientific tomes. There was a wooden desk in the corner—perhaps walnut—and incandescent lamps designed to mimic natural sunlight. The largest painting, framed in black, was an appealing watercolor of Angel Falls in Venezuela, and across from it was a small table, featuring an inactive water fountain made of bronze. The floor was foot-square off-white tiles, largely covered by a circular oriental rug in rich blues and reds.

After a slow inspection of each wall and shelf, Angie stood in the center of the rug and closed her eyes. Sylvia Chen was there. This was a woman who cared desperately about her appearance and her surroundings—a woman who needed to be appreciated.

When Forbush returned, Angie was seated at Chen’s desk, gazing first at one wall, then at the next.

“Are you done, yet, Miss Marple?”

“Not yet. I’m just getting a sense of Sylvia.”

“Not much here, is there?”

“More than you might think,” Angie said over the rush of air in her helmet.

Griff appeared to Forbush’s right.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Oh, hi, there, Doctor. How’s it going?”

“Looks like we’re live. We’ve got virus and we’ve got cells to grow ’em in, and the two seem to be getting along.”

“So let the games begin,” Angie said. “Have you budgeted any time for sleep?”

“Do you think those people in the Capitol are sleeping?”

“Point made. I’ll pick you up some maximum-strength NoDoz at the commissary as soon as they build one.”

“You were saying there’s more to this room than one might think.”

“Like the way that table over there is turned at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall, and the reason Chen chose a circular rug and not one with corners.”

“I still don’t get it,” Forbush said.

“Melvin, how much do you know about feng shui?”