A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [43]
“We’ll be waiting,” Fink said.
“Meanwhile, I want you to get over there and mill around with the crowd. Bring two men with you. Ramirez will keep an eye on Mr. Beard—or maybe I should say Dr. Beard—and we’ll be in touch when we know something for certain.”
“You’ve got it sp— Mr. Cain, sir.”
“They’re wearing portable breathing systems that are battery powered. Sooner or later he’s going to have to come out.”
“Count on us to be there when he does,” Fink said.
CHAPTER 18
DAY 2
8:15 A.M. (EST)
“Okay. The way I understand it, if I do my best to find a way to beat this bug, I’m free, whether I succeed or not. No strings.”
“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