A Heartbeat Away

by Michael Palmer

  Griff’s meeting with James Allaire was in a conference room that did not appear on any of the floor plans Griff had studied. The president of the United States was one chair to Griff’s right at a vast mahogany table. The secretary of defense, Gary Salitas, sat several places to Griff’s left, next to Dr. Bethany Townsend and a man introduced as the Capitol architect. Two Secret Service agents stood against the wall behind them, presumably ready to save the president from the terrorist in the blue biohazard suit. The rest of the room was empty.

  Griff felt his anger toward this man, who had stolen nine months of his life, simmering very close to the boiling point.

  “Do we have any chance?” Allaire asked, clearly unwilling to enter into a debate around Griff’s guilt or innocence.

  “If it was the flu, like you’re telling all those poor people out there, the answer would be yes. But it’s not.”

  “We’ve decided to share the true facts a bit at a time,” Salitas said.

  “Well, a bit at a time, I don’t think they’re buying your flu story, Mr. Secretary,” Griff replied.

  “Look,” Salitas snapped, “if you’re going to be a wiseass—”

  “Easy, Gary,” Allaire said. He took a deep breath to reset himself and exhaled. “Okay, Dr. Rhodes, this is a real mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. We don’t have a hell of a lot of cards to play. In fact, at the moment you’re about our only hope.”

  “Sorry if I sound a little out of joint, sir,” Griff said. “But I hope you’ll understand if at the moment you’re not on my list of favorite presidents.”

  Salitas made a move toward him, and the guards responded in kind, but Allaire stopped them with a raised hand.

  “I understand,” he said. “Tell me, Dr. Rhodes. When—when you were put in prison, how close were you to coming up with something that would kill WRX3883 or at least keep it in check?”

  “I would say I had a shot. I had completed my computer model of the virus twice. Both times, though, something changed in the germ.”

  “Mutation.”

  “Precisely. We were after reverse transcriptase, one of the enzymes the virus makes to help replicate itself. If we could administer a drug that would disrupt the formation of that enzyme we could possibly neuter the little buggers before they could reproduce. Just like taking your pooch to the vet.”

  “Why were you having so much trouble?”

  “The virus mutates faster than I’ve been able to modify the transcriptase. There’s something missing in my sequencing, but I hadn’t been able to figure out exactly what when you pulled the plug on me. Did you know that the solitary confinement cells at the Florence penitentiary are eight feet by eight counting the toilet? That’s less than the length of this table.”

  “How long will it take you to figure out what you were doing wrong?” Salitas asked, his jaw nearly clenched.

  “Did you know that aside from the guards calling me a terrorist while they were beating me with their clubs, no one ever told me why I had been imprisoned? No dime to make a call, no attorney, no hearing. Nothing.”

  “Enough!” Salitas barked, slamming his fist down.

  “Gary, please. Dr. Rhodes is angry with us. He doesn’t see our responsibility to the people of this country the way we do. And at the moment, that’s okay. We need him, Gary. We all need him.… Dr. Rhodes?”

  “We need to be thinking if, not when,” Griff answered. “I have no real basis for guessing what this virus does in people. We’ve had some contagion disasters with Dr. Chen’s monkeys, but never any leaks involving humans.”

  The exchange of queer looks between the president and his defense secretary lasted only a moment, but Griff caught it, and wondered about it.

  Did they know something he didn’t?

  He filed the unasked question away. Allaire and Salitas had already shown themselves capable of lying if they deemed it necessary. Griff felt certain they would not hesitate to lie to him.

  “My lab,” he asked. “What’s the status?”

  “Your man Melvin Forbush has been serving as a watchman at the lab. We just got ahold of him. He’s started getting the place operational.”

  “We have a support team of CDC virologists being deployed to the Vertias lab as well,” Salitas said.

  “Cancel them,” Griff replied curtly. “I don’t need anyone’s opinions but my own. What I need are blood samples from twenty or thirty infected hosts. All exposure levels. Between Melvin, my computers, and the lab, if it can be done, it will be done. It’s my work. I’m the only one you need.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” Allaire said. “We have your lab notebooks. I’m sure our scientists can do something with them.”

  “In that case, I want Sylvia Chen to head up the other team.”

  Again an exchange of glances.

  “Um … Dr. Chen disappeared … two days after your arrest,” the president said. “We haven’t heard from her since. We suspected she might have been an accomplice of yours, but we still really have no evidence to support that.”

  “Have you had people out looking for her? The FBI?”

  “Of course.”

  “And are they still looking?”

  “Some are.”

  “Some?”

  “A few officers are still on the case.”

  “Damn. I just spent a significant percentage of my life locked in a concrete box while you stop looking for the one person who might—”

  “I’ve heard about enough!” Salitas exploded, leaping to his feel and charging toward Griff. His cheeks were flushed, the veins in his neck protruding.

  “Gary! Dammit, leave him be! He has a right to be upset about this one. I’m sorry, Dr. Rhodes. Sylvia Chen’s trail was ice-cold, and I needed every agent looking for Genesis.”

  “Tell your pal there to spend a couple of days in solitary at the Alcatraz of the Rockies,” Griff said. “Then he can come at me, provided he has the strength left to do so. Do you have any idea what this Genesis wants? Is it a group or a person?”

  “Almost certainly a group—domestic, most likely. No idea what their agenda is except to sow fear and discord.”

  “Religious fanatics?”

  “Maybe. We’re betting some sort of fundamentalists.… So, do we have an agreement or not?”

  Griff doodled for a time on a sheet of yellow legal paper.

  “So, you’ve got scientists to make sure I do the work,” he said finally, “and military guard dogs to make sure I don’t make a run for it. Is that right?”

  “Yes. That’s about it,” Allaire said. “I’m prepared to set you free no matter what the results of your research, provided our people tell me you put in the effort. A full presidential pardon.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Then I’ll put you back in prison, and you’ll have the blood of seven hundred people on your hands while you rot there.”

  The force behind Allaire’s words seemed to shake the room.

  “Then I have one demand of you,” Griff said. “Since we really don’t trust one another, I want everything I do to be documented by a third party—someone unassociated with your administration. A reporter. That way there can be no misunderstandings or covert efforts to change fact into fiction. Consider it an insurance policy on your word.”

  “I’ll make some calls.”

  “No need,” Griff said. “Get me Angela Fletcher.”

  “The science reporter for The Post?” Allaire asked.

  “She’s reported from hot zones before.”

  Allaire and Salitas silently conferred and agreed.

  “I’ll see if we can track her down.”

  Griff flashed back to the scene outside the Capitol, the chaos of the gathering crowd, and the disembodied woman’s voice that kept calling his name.

  “No need for that, Mr. President,” he said. “I believe she’s outside the Capitol right now.”

  CHAPTER 19

  DAY 2

  10:30 A.M. (EST)
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  “I knew it was you, Rhodes!” Angie cried out. “I knew it!”

  Griff was there as she entered the Capitol through the airlock, his military entourage a respectful distance away.

  “Welcome to hell,” he said, reaching out to take her gloved hands in his.

  “You know, I almost didn’t bring my binocs with me, but at the last moment I threw them in my bag. All it took was one good look through that visor of yours and I knew it was you, despite the Rip Van Winkle beard.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Through the visor of her butyl hood Griff could see that, if anything, Angela Fletcher was even more beautiful than the woman in his memory—wonderful skin; sensual, truculent lips; velvet, deep brown eyes. It was hard to believe it had been twelve years since they first met in Kenya. She must have been a baby.

  “If you’re here,” she said, “things must be really bad.”

  “Worse than you can imagine.”

  She set her hand on his arm.

  “Whatever they want of you, Griff, I know you can do it. I’m pleased to see you’re back in the game.”

  The temperature inside his suit went up several degrees.

  I know you can do it.

  He had heard those exact words from her before. First in Africa, then again, years later, on his houseboat in the Keys.

  I know you can do it.

  She always had more faith in him than he did in himself. He had never told her, and probably never would, but Angela Fletcher was the only woman he had ever loved.

  The canvas backpack Angie wore contained blood collection supplies. Strapped over one shoulder she carried a lightweight video recorder and a digital SLR camera, accounting for all the items Griff had requested.

  “How’s the suit, kiddo?” he asked.

  “It’s a little tense in here, but nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Some claustrophobia at first is expected. But now’s the time to turn back if you’re feeling panicked. Believe me, no one will hold it against you, least of all, me.”

  “I’m a reporter. This is the story of the century. I’m not going anywhere. Besides, I might be able to help.”

  “You already have.”

  “You going to tell me the story behind that beard?”

  “When we have time. You ever draw blood?”

  “I worked as a phlebotomist in college before I switched out of premed. But I don’t think I ever did it with bulky gloves on.”

  “We’ve got the president’s doctor to do some of the drawing, and we’ll see if there’s a corpsman here. I can do the rest. In case you couldn’t guess, a puncture in these suits is highly undesirable. Let’s walk.”

  “So what do you know about this virus?” Angie asked. “And how did you end up here? The last thing I remember was when I found you on that houseboat of yours vowing to the heavens that your Ebola encounter had done you in, and you were through with viruses.”

  “Things happen, people change,” he said.

  It had been just another day in an unending sequence of fishing, naps, and Jack Daniels when Angie showed up on the deck of Sanctuary, the moss-colored sixty-eight-foot Sumerset houseboat Griff had bought at a Drug Enforcement Agency auction and set up in a sleepy little marina in Key Largo. Seven years had passed since the two of them had first met in Kenya—six years and nine months since Griff, with little explanation, had ended their intensely passionate love affair and gone off chasing after the source of an outbreak of deadly Lassa fever.

  Angie had come to Africa on assignment to report on virus hunters for Science Times Digest. “Cowboys of the Jungle,” the article would eventually be called. She was young, beautiful, bright, brash, and ready for adventure. The whole package. It was difficult to say which one of them fell quicker … or harder. Griff’s sudden pullaway was nearly as surprising to him as it was to her, although it didn’t take him long to work out the reason.

  After waiting more than a week for him to return or at least to make contact, Angie finally left for the States. Friends told him that she did so hurt and angry, and never knowing why he had taken off the way he did.

  Griff was dozing on the stern deck of Sanctuary when she came aboard carrying a houseplant, and knocked on the wall of the cabin.

  “ ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ ” she said. “Couldn’t you have come up with a little more inventive note than that?”

  Griff felt his throat close.

  “Creative writing was never one of my strong suits,” he managed, grateful that there was a half-filled glass of Jack Daniels on the table.

  “I guess it wasn’t,” she said.

  “It’s a little late, I know, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  She sat down next to him. Her scent was dizzying.

  “Just a few months ago I was working on a story about an Ebola accident, and I heard from one of the cowboys I interviewed about what happened to you.”

  “Tweren’t nothin’.… You married?”

  “Engaged. You?”

  “I like to sit here and fish and drink, and watch the sun pass by. Women tend to want more out of a husband than that, I think.”

  “You were afraid you were going to die. That was the reason you took off on me, wasn’t it.”

  “Almost. I was never afraid of dying. I was afraid of what my dying would do to you. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “You might have let me in on the decision.”

  “I didn’t feel I could. I was always going to lose, Angie. It was just a matter of where and when, and how much of me was left when the battle was over.”

  “You once said you were going up against near-perfection. I never quite knew what that meant.”

  “But you do now.”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “I should have been a matador, Ange,” he said, absently tossing a pebble into the still water. “Bigger opponents.”

  “But you’d have to kill the bulls and you don’t kill animals.”

  “I’d sing them to sleep.”

  They talked through the night and into the next day. Angie was working on an article for The Post on researchers who were bypassing animal experimentation and testing, but still getting answers. Griff’s seminal paper on the subject was referenced more than any other.

  By the time she had gathered her notes and prepared for the drive back to the airport in Miami, he had given her enough material for a whole series. In between scribbling page after page in her remarkably illegible shorthand, she had managed to clean the galley, change the sheets, catch a fish, clean it, and poach it, accompanied by the contents of what seemed like a bunch of near-empty boxes, and a mélange of refrigerator leftovers.

  “Why have you stayed away from the lab for so long?” she asked, packing her briefcase.

  “Too dangerous. Them viruses never forget. Like elephants.”

  “Come on, Griff. I’m serious. People need you. Science needs you.”

  “Do you need me?”

  “Dammit, Griff, don’t make this difficult. I love the memories of what we had. I don’t want to have to shut them out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You can get back to your research. I know you can do it. Why can’t you see how much you have to offer to the world?”

  “I don’t know. I guess nearly dying has a way of getting inside a man. Every day while I was in Africa I felt as if I were totally prepared for the inevitable. I guess I wasn’t.”

  “You weren’t meant to spend your life this way. If you need help, then dammit, go and get it. Take meds if you have to. But don’t deprive us all of what you have inside you—especially your fearlessness.”

  Griff thought about her visit every day after she left. He had promised to call her and let her know what was happening, but he never did. Still, the moment she stepped off his boat and drove away, he had sensed something inside him begin to change.

  “I’ll take that backpack, Angie,” Griff said.

  The pack, filled with b
lood-collection gear, was light, but the decreased mobility of the biosuit made it cumbersome to tote. Angie followed him through Emancipation Hall, with the soldiers close behind. Aliens on the move. As they walked, Griff did his best to explain the circumstances leading up to this moment, especially the nine horrific months he spent in solitary confinement for what was clearly a frame-up.

  Her proximity to him was distracting, even more so when she shared that not long after she left him on the Keys, she had finally accepted that she wasn’t in love with her fiancé and had broken off their engagement.

  “So, what’s happened since then?”

  “Not that much. I’ve become a paragon of serial monogamy. But I remain eternally optimistic, just like always.”

  Griff’s pulse accelerated as they neared Statuary Hall. He became determined to share his feelings with her … as soon as the time was right.

  Along the wall to their left, racks of comfortable clothing, probably from local department stores, were being sorted by Capitol police in preparation for distribution.

  “Angie, it’s not going to be a pretty sight in there. People are very anxious. Some of them are already getting ill. Earlier a group of them charged at me and tore one of my protectors’ suits. Just stay focused and move ahead steadily. If people try and get near you, we’ll stop them.”

  If she heard him, she did not respond. The moment they came through the archway bordered by the statues of Jefferson and Washington, she fell off the pace and stopped just inside the expansive room.

  “Angie, don’t get distracted now!” Griff whispered urgently. “Keep moving. Dammit, keep moving!”

  But Angie remained where she was, surveying the frightening, pathetic scene. She took in the people sprawled out upon the floor, and those slumped over with their backs leaning up against the wall. Then she knelt down beside one particularly distressed woman. The woman, in her forties and probably quite pretty, was wearing a black evening dress that had been torn in places against the oppressive body heat in the hall. Her hair was disheveled, and makeup was smeared across her face. The large amethyst brooch that had held her neckline together had come open. Her back was pressed to the wall, and she was sobbing uncontrollably.