Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

“We have a large furnace down another passage. Heats the whole building. We cremated the bodies in the furnace, then eventually discarded the ashes in a steel drum. I don’t know what Chen did with the drum.”

“Why are you telling me all this now?” Griff asked.

Tears streamed down Bartholomew’s flushed cheeks.

“Because I’ve been secretly praying that you’d come,” he said between heavy sobs. “I was too weak-willed to kill myself. Believe me, I’ve wanted to. And I’ve tried—more than once. So I prayed that somebody would find out the truth and come to free me from my sins. I guess that person is you.”

Griff detested and pitied the charlatan with equal vigor. His intentions may have been honorable at one time. His methods and his avarice, however, never were.

“According to my information, not all of the subjects involved in Chen’s experiments died.”

Bartholomew nodded.

“Oh, now that I think about it, that’s true. One of them escaped. I had given in to Chen and started coming down here and wearing those biocontainment suits, as you called them. I was inexperienced at working in those horrible things and didn’t set the lock properly on his cell. Chen blamed me for the mistake.”

“Why didn’t the guy turn you both in after he got out of here?” Griff asked.

“That wasn’t ol’ J.R.’s style. He looked out after J.R. and no one else. Besides, he was already wanted for robbing a convenience store someplace at gunpoint. The man had a heavy habit. I mean heavy. Habits like that need constant feeding.”

“What do the initials stand for?”

Bartholomew did not answer immediately. His cards were almost played out, and Griff could see him trying to calculate some sort of deal. Griff could no longer hold back his anger. He lunged at Bartholomew, seizing him by the front of his robe and slamming him backward against the stone wall.

“Tell me his name!” he rasped.

“Johnny … Johnny Ray Davis. He called himself J.R., though, like the guy from TV.”

Griff felt his pulse begin to race. The blank space beside the man’s name in Chen’s notebook was no accident. It was certainly possible that he had escaped before being exposed to the WRX virus. But then again …

“Do you know whether Chen ever gave J.R. the virus?” Griff demanded. Bartholomew hesitated and Griff slapped him across the face with all his strength. Then he lifted his hand to do it again. “My patience is gone, you fraud. Answer me!”

A trickle of blood had formed at the corner of Bartholomew’s mouth. Even in the dim light, Griff could see his handprint in scarlet on the man’s cheek.

“He … he was here for more than a week, so I suppose he got the virus. In fact, I’m sure he got it.”

“And he didn’t get sick?”

“Not so far as I know. He was well enough to pick the upstairs lock and then steal a bunch of stuff from my desk before he took off.”

“Jesus,” Griff whispered, his heartbeat now a jackhammer. “Do you know where he is?”

Bartholomew looked at him with feigned bravado.

“What’s in it for me?”

“Your life,” Griff snapped, fiercely grasping the man by the throat.

Bartholomew managed a nod of surrender, and Griff let up.

“He’s in prison. El Dorado Correctional Facility. Now ain’t that a kick. He escapes from this cell here, and winds up in El Dorado.”

“What’s he in there for?… I said, what’s he in there for?”

Griff could see the end of what resistance remained in the man.

“Murder. Double murder, in fact,” Bartholomew said. “Bastard’s there on death row.”

The El Dorado Correctional Facility, situated east of the town of El Dorado, was a sprawling complex of brown cement buildings seemingly designed to compete with its desolate surroundings.

Following Brother Bartholomew’s admissions, Griff had contacted the president. It was time to trust him. Beyond funding Sylvia Chen’s research, Griff was convinced that James Allaire had no connection with the way she had conducted it. Allaire’s response to Griff’s report regarding the Certain Path Mission and J. R. Davis was to galvanize all the resources at his disposal. Clearly, the man understood that time was running out for all those in the Capitol.

Now, Griff’s military escort, organized in amazingly short order, passed through two perimeters, one made of chain-link fencing, and the second of tightly strung wire. Both were topped by razor wire.

Griff’s limousine driver checked his watch.

“Normally takes forty minutes to get here from Wichita,” he said through the partition. “We did it in just a little over twenty.”

Overhead, three Apache helicopters hovered, kicking up dust while their crews kept watch in all directions. The El Dorado security team met Griff’s black armor-plated limousine at the gate, and then escorted the caravan into the correctional facility’s main parking lot. A moving wall of Humvees flanked each side of the limo. Ambulances and police cars, along with a fleet of motorcycles, also participated in the transport team that was filling most of the available parking spaces in the expansive prison lot. Clearly, Dr. James Allaire was not a president of minimal action, especially when his life and his family’s were at stake.

Griff stepped onto the tarmac and shielded his eyes from the early morning sun and the chopper-generated winds. A SWAT team joined with the military police and the correctional officers from the El Dorado facility. Griff suspected that their orders were to safeguard him from assassination. It was good to see that Allaire was finally giving Genesis their due.

The circle of armed security surrounding Griff parted to allow a lone man to approach. He wore a dark suit and had thinning hair on top, and an ample belly below. His face featured a neatly trimmed gray and brown beard. The man shook Griff’s hand vigorously and shouted to be heard above the helicopter’s whirl.

“Warden Jay Tobert, Dr. Rhodes,” he said. “Welcome to El Dorado. We’ll get you processed and with the prisoner as quickly as possible. I hope you’ve had a chance to review the files that you requested?”

Griff nodded. He’d been given the faxed pages by one of the MPs and read all about Johnny Ray Davis on the drive to the maximum-security penitentiary. Charged with the shooting death of a husband and wife during a failed carjacking, Davis was sentenced to die. Despite an initial plea of innocent, the evidence included in the file was irrefutable. Forensics and ballistics linked Davis to the crime. Several reliable eyewitnesses sealed the case for the prosecution.

Griff swallowed hard as he glanced at the stone walls and steel bars. It was one thing to be reminded of time done in prison, but something far worse to be back inside one, regardless of the reason. The familiar feelings of hopelessness and despair returned as though they had never left.

“Reception is waiting for you,” the warden said. “We’ll go to the Tower East building first to get you cleared. Then we’ll be heading over to our Commons building. That’s where you’ll meet Davis.”

Griff followed Tobert while the battalion of security followed him.

“Looks like you’ve got some friends in pretty high places,” Tobert understated on their walk to Tower East. When Griff just nodded, the warden continued to fish for information. “Not every day the president of the United States calls me to request special access.”

“Not every day,” Griff echoed.

“I understand that the Wichita police arrested this Bartholomew fellow on his way out of town.”

Again, Griff nodded.