“Exactly.”
“One floor below the Kitchen, on the very bottom level of the facility, also secured off by one or two doors, is what I call Hell’s Kitchen—Sylvia Chen’s animal lab. Twenty or so monkeys and some cats. I almost never went near the place because I hated it so much and because none of my research involved her animals.”
“But the space is empty now?”
“I assume. If it’s not, then Hell would not be a strong enough word.”
Angie pointed in the direction of a security camera fastened to the ceiling above a hand and retinal scanner.
“Is that the camera they used to film you stealing the virus?” she asked.
Griff nodded. “One of them. There are state-of-the-art security cameras throughout this place. Don’t ask me how they got footage of me, though, because I haven’t got a clue.”
“Will the system let me in?”
“The security system requires identification to enter
Griff motioned to the porthole. Beyond it Angie saw a tall—very tall, actually—gangly man in a knee-length lab coat advancing toward them. There were no more than six inches between his unruly mop of auburn hair and the ceiling. Melvin completed his biometric scans and the door separating them opened with a loud click.
At six foot six or so, the virologist had to hunch to pass beneath the metal threshold without hitting his head. He was clean-shaven, with rounded, childlike features and thick tortoise-shell spectacles.
“I once suggested that Melvin try growing a mustache just to make him look a little more professorial,” Griff told Angie. “His response was that unless he could grow the exact one that Daniel Day Lewis had as Bill the Butcher in
“I might call that eccentric.”
“He’s also a bit unpredictable. A mastery of social skills has never been one of his strengths.”
Typically, even though he and Griff had worked shoulder to shoulder for years, Forbush did not open his arms for a welcoming embrace. Instead, he offered a somewhat tepid handshake.
“Good to see you, my friend,” Griff said. “I’d like you to meet Angela Fletcher. She’s a reporter from
Forbush took hold of Angie’s outstretched hand, but rather than shake it, he rotated her wrist in various directions, carefully studying it.
“Nicole Kidman,” he said, finally. “Narrow hands, long fingers. I can show you some stills from her films and you’ll see that your hands and hers are a near perfect match.”
Angie laughed.
“Thanks, Melvin. She’s one of my favorites, especially in
“Actually, no. She won an Oscar in 2002 for
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know a lot about the movies, so if someone gets something wrong, I just tell them. Then, if they keep thinking they’re right, I just show them. Film can be doctored, but it really doesn’t lie, so if I say I’m right, I always am.” He handed out specially coded access cards. “So, are you two ready to create your biometric profiles?”
“I already have one,” Griff said.
“No, you don’t. Right after they took you away, everything that said you existed vanished. Then Dr. Chen disappeared not long after that.”
“But you stayed.”
“The truth is I didn’t have anyplace to go. You and Dr. Chen were the only ones who could have written a recommendation for me. Believe it or not, in the past, prospective employers have thought I was strange.”
Griff set his hand around the taller man’s shoulders.
“Your kind of strange is a good kind of strange, Melvin. I’m glad to see you again.”
“After it was clear neither you nor Dr. Chen was coming back, Sam, her animal guy, and I sold her animals to other labs, and Sam got a job with one of them. Then I just cleaned up and accepted the government’s invitation to stay around. I just now found out where you’ve been. No one would ever tell me. All they would say was that you had stolen WRX3883. I knew that wasn’t possible.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, it wasn’t pleasant, either. The president had me thrown into solitary confinement at a federal prison in Colorado.”
“Now he wants you out here working again?”
“Go figure.”
“You have the spirit to fight back but the good sense to control it,” Forbush said. “Your eyes are full of hate. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.”
“I’m not even going to try and guess what movie that’s from,” Griff said.
“
“Melvin, you’re amazing,” Angie said.
“Glad you think so, Ms. Angela. This man here understood me. He’s the best.”
“I’m sort of figuring that out.”
“How anybody could think he was guilty of stealing our virus is beyond me. I tried to tell them that it was impossible, but nobody would listen.”
“What was impossible?” Griff asked, his interest suddenly peaked.
“You being the one to steal the WRX3883 cultures. I told Dr. Chen and the others why it never could have happened the way they said. I even showed her proof that it wasn’t you. But she didn’t do anything about it. Then when she disappeared, so did anybody I could raise the issue to.”
“I don’t understand, Melvin,” Griff said. “What do you mean you showed her that it wasn’t me?”
“Just what I said. I brought her to my theater and showed her why I know you didn’t steal the virus.”
“Well, everybody thinks that I did. I realize that knowing I’m a good guy is enough to convince you it couldn’t have been me, but you can’t show somebody a person’s character.”
“That’s true,” Forbush said with a wry grin, “but I can show them the film. And like I said, film can be doctored, but it doesn’t lie.”
CHAPTER 27
After all they had been through, Griff was obsessed with the need to reopen his lab and get to work. But there was no way he could put off seeing exactly what evidence Forbush believed he had. He felt sickened by the notion that his friend had tried unsuccessfully to convince people that he had been framed.
But he wasn’t surprised.
Had the president simply not cared, or were the people who had set him up that good?
As Forbush led him and Angie down the passageway to the lounge area, Griff felt his bitterness and anger grow. How deep did the conspiracy to get him away from Veritas go? If Allaire was in any way involved, he had better hope that Griff never found out.
Forbush had his choice of bungalows outside the hangar, but it seemed as if he spent little time in any of them. Instead, he had converted two small underground offices into a sleeping area and a rather sophisticated movie theater, outfitted with five stadium seats and an antique popcorn machine. The seventy-inch movie screen, DVD player, and state-of-the-art home theater projector were, as Forbush put it, enlightened gifts from the United States government.
