A Heartbeat Away

“That’s the deal,” the president said.

“Even though you still believe I stole that virus from my own lab.”

“The security cameras picked up several perfect shots of your face behind your visor. Particles from the floor of the deepest level of the lab were on your boots, and we found the canisters hidden in a recently constructed compartment behind your basement wall. The gym bag you used to transport the canisters was found in your bedroom closet.”

“It wasn’t me.”

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