Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

“I don’t think we should be doing this,” O’Neil said again.

“I only need a minute in there, Sean,” Ellis demanded. “Turn the damn key!”

And so he did.

Griff was asleep at one of the two tables in the small library when he was roused by a gentle hand on his shoulder. He shot upright, flailing to maintain his balance. His hand caught two tall stacks of reference books, sending them flying. Standing beside him, Forbush looked down with undisguised concern.

“You fell asleep,” he said.

“The understatement of the day,” Griff replied thickly. “I seem to remember you pledging to check on me every fifteen minutes.”

“I did. You must have just passed out.”

Griff nodded and caught a glimpse of his haggard reflection in the dark glass of the nearby videoconferencing system. His beard was making a rapid reappearance, not unlike the ground cover after the eruption of the Mount St. Helens volcano. But his sunken cheeks and hollow eyes were most disturbing, exceeding even what he remembered from his time in the Alcatraz of the Rockies.

The videoconferencing system had a direct link to the Capitol, and Allaire was expecting an update from Griff in the morning. The news Griff planned on sharing would not be well received.

“Did you at least find anything useful in these reference books?” Forbush asked.

“Maybe,” Griff said. “No matter what, it was worth getting out of that suit, even for a short while. Still, I need more time to think.”

“Just like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. He was always thinking, too.”

“Didn’t he turn out to be insane?”

“That all depends on your definition of the term.”

“Terrific. Something’s missing, Melvin. I’m thinking if we could give Orion a nudge—maybe from an adjuvant of some kind that boosts the immunologic response.”

“Would an adjuvant be toxic?”

“Possibly, but certainly no less toxic than what’s already inside those poor souls in the Capitol.”

Before Forbush could respond, the fax machine in the corner of the library beeped that it was receiving a transmission.

“Who could possibly be faxing us?” Griff asked.

Forbush crossed to the machine.

“It could be from Ms. Angie. I gave her this number with instructions that it would be the safest way to communicate with us.”

“Really? Are you sure a fax transmission can’t be intercepted by Genesis?”

Melvin turned back to him and shrugged.

“As sure as I can be where they’re concerned,” he said. “They’re a shifty bunch.”

“So how can you be so confident?”

“I found a phone number on the Internet that supposedly will produce a short tone if the landline is bugged, and a longer one if it isn’t. I checked, and according to that program, at least, the line was clear.”

“That’s putting a lot of faith in the Web,” Griff said.

“Sometimes, boss, we reach the point when faith is the only thing we have left.”

“Good quote. What movie is that from?”

“The one I’m going to produce when I win Publisher’s Clearing House.”

Forbush was chuckling as he gathered the fax pages from the printer tray. Then abruptly, he stopped.

“Griff, this fax isn’t from Angie, it’s about her.”

Griff leapt up and crossed the small library in two steps. The logo on the fax cover sheet was from the Riverside Nursing Home in Manhattan.

“Read it out loud,” Forbush said, his expression uncharacteristically grim.

Griff’s throat tightened at the first lines of the note, handwritten inside the cover sheet’s comment box.

My name is Mei Wu. I am the duty nurse at Riverside Nursing Home in New York City. This is regarding Angela Fletcher, who is in the hospital.

The rest of the note was typed on a computer.

“ ‘Before Ms. Fletcher collapsed,’ ” Griff read, “ ‘she admitted to forging health inspector documents to gain access to our residents. She was desperate to find a woman named Sylvia Chen. She believed Chen’s mother was a resident here.

“ ‘I am sorry to inform you that Sylvia Chen is dead. I only know that Ms. Fletcher said she was. I have no details on that. Ms. Fletcher was being chased by a very bad man when she sustained a head injury from which she eventually lost consciousness. We had her transported by ambulance to Lower Manhattan Hospital. I have no update on her condition at present.

“ ‘The man chasing her died in a fall down our elevator shaft. Before she collapsed, Ms. Fletcher was given a box by a resident here whom we knew as Ms. Li. It now appears that Ms. Li is actually Sylvia Chen’s mother, Chen Su. Inside the box was an envelope labeled RECIPES FROM THE KITCHEN, with some papers apparently belonging to Sylvia. Ms. Fletcher regained consciousness long enough to ask me to fax these pages to you. She believes this information might be critical to your work, and to what is happening in Washington, D.C. You can reach me here if necessary.

“ ‘Dr. Rhodes, you should know that despite deceiving us, Ms. Fletcher acted with extreme bravery, and saved the life of Chen Su. I will never forget her.’ ”

“Melvin, we’ve got to get a call to Lower Manhattan Hospital in New York.”

“I wouldn’t advise that,” Forbush said. “Assuming the man who was after Ms. Angie in New York was with Genesis, we’ve got to believe the leak to them was somewhere here in Kalvesta.”

“What should we do?”

“That depends.”

“On what?” Griff asked.

“On whether or not you have any friends in high places.”

“Allaire!”

“I believe we’re set up for secure communications with him. Why not go that route?”

“Put yourself in for a raise, Melvin. Listen, let me finish looking at this stuff from Sylvia, and then we’ll get ahold of Allaire and see if he can insert himself on Angie’s behalf—at least make sure she’s getting the best care from the best doctors.”

“Poor Sylvia. Mixed up with the wrong crowd and so desperate to succeed in her work. I wonder how she died. With all those people looking for her and none of them finding her, I sort of thought she might have fallen on hard times.”

“Hopefully Angie’s okay and can tell us what happened.”

Griff flipped to the next page in the stack. Chen’s lab reports followed a very consistent format, and Griff did not have to study the pages long to know that they were, in fact, written by her. But the contents of the reports were not associated with any experiments that he had ever seen.

The same title was printed on the upper right of every page.

The Certain Path

The test subjects, most likely monkeys, were each identified in a code Griff had never seen before. The reports, one sheet for each animal, included basic information about sex, cage number, viral dose, route of administration, and antiviral treatment, as well as the dates and times of each run.

Sylvia knew that Griff had drawn the line at her performing experiments on chimpanzees. But she also knew that he seldom set foot in the Hell’s Kitchen animal facility. Was it possible she had somehow managed to sneak some chimps into her lab? If so, why had she taken the results away from the Kitchen—especially when they did not seem to have been any more successful than the rest of her primate work? And how did she get the sheets of paper through the sterilizing showers and UV lights?

The questions gnawed at Griff.

The recorded results noted clinical signs, along with quantity of virus injected or given by inhalation. In every instance but one, speed of death was directly proportional to the size of the inoculum.