A Heartbeat Away

by Michael Palmer

  “This is about the list of names,” Melvin said, ignoring Allaire completely. “I’ve been searching for death certificates, but I think that’s going about it the wrong way.”

  “What death certificates?” the president demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  “Melvin is working on Dr. Chen’s animal death reports,” Griff said, with theatrical exaggeration. “She gave each animal a certificate so we can easily reference them.”

  It was hardly one of Forbush’s strengths, but Griff hoped his assistant would pick up on his expression and allow the lie to hold. Still, he turned his back to the camera so that his assistant alone could see him put his finger to his lips. After ten seconds of uncertainty, Forbush saw the light and nodded that he understood.

  “Mr. President,” Griff said, “I’m not sure you’ve met Melvin Forbush before.”

  Grinning broadly, Forbush bent low, put his face eight inches or so from the camera, and waved hello to the president with the fingers of one hand.

  Allaire seemed to calm down a notch.

  “Mr. Forbush,” he said, “I want to thank you personally for your dedication and service to the country.”

  “It’s a job,” Forbush said. “I’m doing my best, and no matter how exhausted Dr. Rhodes is, he’s doing his best, too.”

  “Good,” Allaire responded. “Now, both of you get back to it. Because the way things are right now, you both need to do better than your best.”

  With that, the screen went dark.

  “Well, that sure went swimmingly,” Griff said, sighing. “I guess I’d be a little tense, too, if someone told me I didn’t have much time left.”

  “You didn’t say that.”

  “It’s not what you say that counts, Melvin. It’s what people hear.”

  * * *

  AN HOUR passed.

  Griff spent most of it staring across the small room at nothing in particular. His exhaustion seemed overshadowed by the feelings of impotence at not being able to get more out of Sylvia Chen’s recipes—her notes on what appeared to be experiments performed on human subjects.

  “Hey there,” Forbush said from the doorway. “Are you ready to get back to work?”

  Griff sighed and stretched the tightness from his neck and shoulders.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  “Good, because I told the president of the United States you were trying your best.”

  “I’m suffering from brain lock, Melvin. That happens when I get real tired. It’s like I’m incapable of looking at a problem from more than one perspective.”

  “That’s strange. My problem is that I always see problems from too many perspectives. Speaking of which—”

  “Yes?”

  “One of the perspectives I’ve been thinking about, that I almost forgot to mention, has to do with Sylvia’s list of names.”

  “Did you connect with any of them?”

  “No,” Forbush said. “But I’ve been wondering if maybe the names in Chen’s lab reports could be bogus.”

  “Bogus?”

  “A code within a code. Do you think the president knew anything about these tests?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Griff said.

  Forbush pulled over a chair and sat down beside him.

  “Well, something has been bugging me about the reports,” he said.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s the heading on each page. ‘The Certain Path.’ ”

  “Why does that bug you? I assume it’s just Sylvia’s way of saying this is the certain path to making WRX3883 a workable agent, and keeping the lab in operation.”

  “Maybe.… Have you ever seen the movie Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid?”

  “Steve Martin,” Griff quickly recalled. “I think I saw it, but maybe I’ve just seen clips. It came out a while ago.”

  “In 1982 to be precise. Carl Reiner directed it and cowrote the script with Martin and George Gripe, who died a few years later from an allergic reaction to a bee sting.”

  “We can probably do without the trivia right now, Melvin. In case you couldn’t tell, we’re sort of at a serious dead end.”

  “Well, there’s a point here.”

  “Okay. Sorry. Don’t let me take my grouchiness out on you. You don’t deserve it.”

  “But the good thing is I can handle it,” Forbush said, “so you’re forgiven in advance. But listen, Griff. In the film, Martin’s character is investigating the disappearance of Rachel Ward’s father, a scientist named Dr. Forrest, played by George Gaynes.”

  “This helps us how?” Griff asked.

  Forbush held up a hand to urge patience.

  “Hey, easy does it,” he said. “In the movie business, delivery is everything.”

  “Sorry,” Griff said again.

  “Before he disappeared, Dr. Forrest leaves lists of notes that Martin keeps on finding throughout the film. One list he titled ‘Friends of Carlotta,’ and the other he called ‘Enemies of Carlotta.’ ”

  “Go on.”

  “The big break in the case comes when Philip Marlowe, who’s played by footage of Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep, tips Martin’s character off that Carlotta wasn’t a person. It was a place—an island off Peru.”

  Griff’s impatience gave way to intrigue.

  “So…”

  “So, what if ‘The Certain Path’ isn’t Chen’s way of suggesting that she was on the right track, but an actual place.”

  Griff’s eyes narrowed. He pulled his laptop computer over, opened a Web browser to Google, and typed in quotes: “The Certain Path.” He clicked the first link in the resultant set, then leaned back in his chair to study the page. Moments later, a look of astonishment washed over his face.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said.

  Griff turned the screen to Forbush, and used the computer mouse to highlight two lines of text. The highlighted words read:

  The Certain Path Mission

  Wichita, Kansas

  CHAPTER 48

  DAY 6

  9:00 A.M. (CST)

  The Certain Path Mission Web site was a simple design, featuring a photograph of the building and some modest graphics. Its mission statement was prominently displayed at the top of the homepage.

  DRUG ADDICTION AND ALCOHOLISM CAN BE CURED BUT ONLY BY WALKING THE CERTAIN PATH

  According to the Web site’s About Us section, the ministry’s founder, Brother Xavier Bartholomew, was a recovered alcoholic/addict himself.

  “It says here Brother Bartholomew was on the verge of death,” Griff said. “Drugs had drained him of the will to live. And then he heard a voice, and it saved his life and guided him along the certain path to health and purpose.”

  “Let me guess,” Melvin said. “God spoke to him and told him to open a ministry to help other addicts get clean.”

  “Have you been to this Web site before?”

  “I’ve just seen a lot of movies,” Melvin said. “And as often as not, the characters in those films aren’t who they seem to be. Is there anything on Brother Bartholomew that he wouldn’t want posted on his Web site?”

  “Like dirt?” Griff asked.

  “If that’s the same as skeletons in his closet.”

  Griff did another search, tracking a sequence of links in the search results for more information.

  “Seems like we have enough dirt for a landfill,” he said after a short while.

  He opened a YouTube video of a Wichita TV news report. The video’s title was an obvious attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor: “The Not So Certain Path.” The reporter was an attractive blond woman, with a short, stylish hairdo, and a scrubbed, corn-fed glow. Griff turned up the volume on his laptop’s small speakers.

  “Deb Rosen, reporting from the Certain Path Mission in Wichita, where the ministry’s founder, Brother Xavier Bartholomew, has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of assault and battery. The charges against Bartholomew stem from a complaint filed by this man, Karl Larson, who came to
the Certain Path Ministry seeking treatment for his drug addiction.”

  The video showed an unshaven man in his fifties, with tangles of gray-black, unwashed hair, and murky eyes that supported the label underneath his picture: “Homeless Drug Addict.” The shot cut back to the reporter at the ministry.

  “Mr. Larson,” Deb Rosen said, “claims that Brother Bartholomew offered him help for what he said was a decades-long addiction to narcotics and alcohol. But what Brother Bartholomew was offering turned out to be anything but helpful.”

  The video swung to Karl Larson. The street person responded to the reporter’s queries in a gruff, raspy voice.

  “I thought the Certain Path was about praying and stuff,” Larson said. “But after a little while I couldn’t do the meditation and the hours and hours of praying. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stay clean and sober. That’s when Brother Bartholomew began to beat me. He put me in a cell in the basement to keep me away from the booze and drugs. Then he’d beat me on my back and butt with straps and ropes and even canes. Sometimes he’d tie me up. He told me it was the only way to get the demon out. We may be homeless and desperate, but we still got pride. And we don’t deserve to be beaten like dogs, even though, as Brother Bartholomew says over and over, it’s for our own good.”

  Larson held his tattooed arms up to the camera to show they were bruised and scarred. The next shot cut from the drifter back to the outside of the ministry, where the camera followed the reporter around the perimeter of the aged redbrick building, with a red neon sign running down one corner that read, simply, MISSION.

  “According to prosecutors, Mr. Larson was not the only addict subjected to Brother Bartholomew’s unusual brand of aversion therapy.”

  The next transition showed the outside of a police station. The bottom graphic identified the officer interviewed as Lieutenant Erik Olsen of the Wichita, Kansas, Police Department.

  “We have several alleged victims of Xavier Bartholomew who have come forward to file complaints. The matter is under investigation, so I cannot comment further at this time.”

  “And yet, in another twist to this story of good intentions gone bad,” Deb Rosen’s voice said from off camera, “not all of the addicts who have sought out Brother Bartholomew for help have been treated as Karl Larson allegedly was.”

  The man in the next shot looked to be everything Larson was not. He was bright-eyed, clean-shaven, well dressed, and smiling. The undergraphic identified him as Paul Silasky, recovered alcoholic/addict.

  “I would have died if it weren’t for Brother Bartholomew,” Silasky said. “Same for a lot of others, too. I tried everything, NA, AA. You name the twelve-step program and I did it. Nothing worked for me until I found Brother Bartholomew. I don’t consider the Certain Path’s way a punishment. It’s a path to freedom—a way to life.”

  The segment finished with the reporter across the street from the mission. The graphic shown in the upper right corner of the screen was a photograph of Brother Bartholomew, a man in his fifties with a round, cherubic face and a horseshoe head of silver hair, absent in the front, down past his shoulders in the back. He wore a bright, floral-designed shirt underneath a heavy, dark brown wool monk’s robe. Chains of brightly colored beads—turquoise, reds, and blues—dangled around his neck. Some of the necklaces had ornaments attached, but none were of any religious symbol that Griff recognized.

  “Community activists, social workers, and other mental health professionals have been uniform in their condemnation of the Certain Path’s alleged methods,” the reporter said. “Some are opposed to the ministry and its soup kitchen remaining open to the public. In the meantime, Brother Xavier Bartholomew is free on bail and back at work. A trial date is projected for sometime next year. Bartholomew and his attorney declined our requests for an interview.”

  YouTube faded to black. Griff pointed to the stats that showed the video had originally been uploaded four years ago, and over that time had amassed only 725 views.

  “Guess a video about abusing drug addicts isn’t going to sweep the world,” Griff said.

  “Certainly not like all those dancing overweight cats with ten million views apiece,” Forbush replied.

  “I think I need to try and find Brother Bartholomew and get some answers for ourselves.”

  “What’s so important?” Melvin asked.

  “Because if we’re right, and Chen was experimenting on people, I would assume that the subjects were referred to her by Bartholomew.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “What’s possible?”

  “For a man of the cloth to go bad. In Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum—one of my favorite actors, incidentally—plays Harry Powell, a serial killer and self-proclaimed preacher, who has L-O-V-E tattooed on the knuckles of one hand and H-A-T-E on the other. Then there’s Reverend Phillip Shooter in Hot Fuzz and, of course, Cardinal Richelieu in all the Three Musketeer movies and spin-offs. Those are just for starters. Now that I think about it, there’s—”

  “Melvin, I get the point. I want to know how these people were chosen, where they were treated, and what was done to them. And most of all, I want to know what happened to J. R. Davis. Was he just some sort of clerical error on Sylvia’s part, or is he still alive?”

  Griff held up Davis’s lab report, distinguished from the others in the fax set by a result that did not conclude with the word “deceased.”

  “Could Bartholomew be in jail?” Forbush asked. “That news report was from a few years ago.”

  Griff surfed the Web some more.

  “It says here the case against him was dropped a few months before trial. That was about two years ago. Doesn’t say anything about the ministry closing down.”

  “And Allaire can’t know about this?” Melvin asked.

  “Allaire might have orchestrated all of this,” Griff said. “I don’t know the man well enough. He doesn’t trust me, anyway. What if he ordered Chen to conduct human experiments? You’d think he would have told me if he knew Chen was dosing people with the virus, but I’m just not sure. If he’s involved, he might decide I’m going to use this stuff against him. Or else he’ll think I’m just setting it up to give me leverage to bolt. For now, Melvin, nobody else can know about this—at least not until we know more ourselves. It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Can you sneak me out of here, the way you did Angie?”

  “What about our work? Orion? Our experiments?”

  Griff rubbed at his eyes.

  “What experiments are we going to continue, Melvin?” he asked, his voice cracking. “The ones that aren’t working? The ones that never had a chance to work? I was on this job for years at Columbia, then here before they arrested me. Find a way to keep WRX3883 from killing people—that was my original assignment. And I failed. A lot of scientists fail. That’s just the way it is. We fail and we fail until one day we shift gears and change direction and something works. So now, I’m being asked to do in a week or two what I couldn’t accomplish in years. You tell me what I’m leaving?”

  “We could lose a lot of time. It could be the end of the line for the people in the Capitol.”

  “I’m telling you, Melvin, it’s the end of the line already. I’ve done everything I can think of. If this J. R. Davis really did survive his WRX infection, then we might have something. We might have that change of direction.”

  Forbush sat pensively for a while, then said, “I don’t believe we should take the chance of trying to sneak you out in the trunk.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think Angie and I were lucky. Now that we actually did it, I would bet eight out of ten times we’d be caught.”

  “Maybe they were under orders to let her go so she could be followed.”

  “Now that you mention it, that seems possible. I lied to the guards about a critical experiment being in jeopardy unless I got to town for some supplies we didn’t have, so they might have been in a rush. Plus, I do asthma attacks well becau
se I actually have it. The guard was rummaging through the glove compartment for my inhaler when Angie slipped into the trunk.”

  “So the trunk isn’t going to work. What else?”

  “What about the exhaust system?”

  Griff saw the possibilities immediately.

  “How many of the ventilation ducts have surface access outside the wire?”

  “Only one,” Forbush said. “We have a dedicated single-pass air exhaust discharge for the Kitchen ventilation system that pumps HEPA-filtered air to the surface. It was intentionally installed far from occupied buildings and the other air intake vents. It’s interlocked with the other subsurface supply and exhaust fans to prevent positive pressurization in the Kitchen labs.”

  “How wide is that vent shaft?”

  “Big enough to fit you inside, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “But not a heck of a lot bigger in diameter than that. Plus, from what I recall, after it leaves the Kitchen, the duct makes a pretty intense vertical rise. There are not many sharp bends in ductwork, or long horizontal runs, because those put a lot of strain on the exhaust fans. On the plus side, the discharge is well outside the perimeter of the base.”

  “So nobody would see me exit?”

  “Not even if they were using searchlights.”

  “How do I get in?”

  “First, you have to be suited, so that’s going to make the work harder.”

  “What tools do I need?”

  “A screwdriver and ratchet should do it. You’ll have to remove the pre-filters first, then the HEPA filter from its housing, clear the bags from the safety and cinching straps and such, the blower too. Piece of cake.”

  “That’s some cake. Is the exhaust system alarmed?”

  “It is, but I can shut that down.”

  “How long will it take me from the Kitchen to the surface?”

  Forbush pondered the question.

  “Twenty minutes, I would guess. You’re going to have to shimmy your way to the top. That will be the hard part. Keep your hands and feet pressed to the sides of the duct and inch your way up.”