Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

“No … please…”

Her eyes were wild with fear as she made a furtive scan of the restaurant. Either she was searching for an exit, or perhaps, even more terrifying to her, Angie’s accomplice.

“Easy,” Angie said. “Please don’t call attention to yourself. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Are you police? Military?”

The words were said softly. The accent was gone.

“No, I’m not. Trust me.”

“Are you them? Are you Genesis?”

The woman kept trembling.

“I’m a reporter with The Washington Post . The Capitol has been quarantined. Griffin Rhodes has been asked by the president to develop a treatment for WRX3883. I’m helping him keep a record of everything that he does. We know about how he was set up before, and we know you were involved. The president has gotten him out of prison and reopened your lab. There is little time. People are dying from the virus.”

Chen’s knees buckled, as though mention of the past had placed too much stress on her joints. Angie reached up, supported the woman by her arm, and encouraged her to sit down. Chen refused, straightened up, and pointed to the menu on the table.

“Is there any chance that you were followed?” she asked.

“I don’t see how,” Angie said. “I flew in from Kansas earlier today via Denver.”

“Genesis is very resourceful. I should never have agreed to cooperate with them, but they knew all about my work, and they knew that their financing was the last chance I had to keep my research going. They are also very dangerous. I am a loose end for them now. All they want is the virus. They don’t care about controlling it. They tried to kill me, but I escaped and came here. If they find me, I assure you, both my mother and I are dead.”

“I can help you, Sylvia. That’s why I came to New York—to help you and to see if there is any way to control the virus. I’m working with Griffin Rhodes at your lab.”

“He’s out of prison, you said?”

“Yes, he’s been out for just a few days.”

“That is wonderful news. Listen, stay here. Study your menu.”

Angie did as she was asked, but went on red alert in case Chen bolted.

The Ph.D. scientist went to service a table of four, then returned.

“I’m going to ask you again. Is it possible you were followed?”

“I know the people who are after you are resourceful,” Angie replied, “so I suppose anything’s possible. But I really don’t see how.”

Chen looked unconvinced.

“How did you find me?”

“The brochure in the peach cookbook,” was all Angie needed to say.

“Did my mother tell you I was here in the restaurant?”

“I didn’t find your mother. Where does she live?”

“Riverside. I thought you knew that.”

“On close inspection, the woman I thought was your mother—a woman named Li—didn’t look like her.”

Angie’s puzzled expression seemed to clarify the mystery for Chen.

“Ah. Li is the name I made up for her. Her real name is Chen, same as mine. Chen Su. You went looking for the woman in the picture on my desk, yes?”

Angie nodded. “I checked every patient in Riverside.”

“Do you know how Alzheimer’s disease can ravage the body? Alter the appearance?”

“I do. How long has your mother had Alzheimer’s?”

“It’s been progressing for several years. She still floats in and out, and is sometimes quite lucid, but it is getting worse. The woman in the photograph in my office is the woman I want to remember. This is what my mother looks like now.”

Chen fished out a picture from her pocket and handed it to Angie. Then she went off again to take orders. When she returned, she set a steaming bowl of some sort of seafood soup in front of Angie.

“This is the best thing on the menu,” she said, “especially on a cold winter’s day like today. I hope you like it. You just came in here by chance, then?”

“I was starved and this was the closest place to the Riverside. Mei, the nurse there, said the daughter who visits Mrs. Li was badly scarred by a fire.”

“When I go there I am wearing a hat. My face is covered by a scarf. My hands are hidden by gloves. I lie to protect my mother and myself.”

“You have to help us,” Angie said.

Chen paused for a time.

“I know,” she said finally.

She took another nervous look about the restaurant, and even glanced several times out the front windows. Droplets of perspiration had appeared like condensation on her brow.

“So you will help us?”

“I’ve done terrible things,” the virologist said in a shaky voice. “I did not know they would do this. The attack on the Capitol. How could I have known?”

“What were you told would happen? Do you know who these people are? Do you have any idea how we can stop this?”

Chen shut Angie off.

“Eleven o’clock the restaurant will be closed,” she said. “It is too busy here for the rest of the evening. Too dangerous to talk now. Come into the alley at the back of the restaurant. Red door with Chinese lettering on it. Knock three times so I know it is you. I have some papers that might help. I’ll tell you everything that I know then.”

“Eleven o’clock,” Angie said.

Chen nodded grimly, turned, and vanished through the swinging kitchen doors.

Sleep.

Griff’s eyes stung with a persistent gritty burn that he knew only sleep could relieve. He felt desperate to rub at them, to coax some moisture out of the tear glands, but the plastic face shield on his biosuit made it impossible, and the forty minutes it would take to remove his helmet, massage his eyes, and get suited up again were an unacceptable waste of time. Relief would have to wait. The same with sleep.

Thirty-six hours straight now since his last nap.

Gratefully, the concentration involved with his work eased the time along.

His limbs felt leaden, and his joints ached inside the bulky protective suit. Every twenty minutes or so, he took a brief walk through the Kitchen to Sylvia Chen’s office, and back to his own. Perhaps he had gone without sleep this long during his months in solitary confinement, but it was hard to track time in such an utterly monotonous place. Here, more than two hundred feet underground, he had the added reminder of wall-mounted digital clocks in every room.

He took a break, went online, and looked up the record for continuous sleep depravation. Eleven days by a seventeen-year-old student in the sixties. Guinness had subsequently closed the category for fear of causing serious health problems in those attempting to get their bit of immortality, although no adverse effects were reported in the high schooler.

Back to work.

Griff adjusted the electron microscope until it projected crystal-clear images of WRX3883’s submicroscopic world onto an attached television monitor. Despite the screen’s high-definition resolution, he had to strain to keep the image in focus. Forty-five minutes slid by. He rose from his chair, but knew it had been too long. His knees had gone to Jell-O and he stumbled twice before managing his brief walk.

I’ll just close my eyes for a few seconds, he decided.… Just a few seconds.

Griff’s head dropped forward onto his arms, and in moments, his thoughts began to fade. Then, just as suddenly, they reappeared, centering about horrific images from the Capitol—snapshots of people whose lives he had vowed to try and save. As if he were at the wheel on a long-distance drive, he snapped his head from side to side until he produced a jet of renewed consciousness that did the trick—at least for the moment. If he had to stay alert for another thirty-six hours, he would do it.