Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

“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.”

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.”