A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [61]
“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 The Washington Post, here to write about our efforts.”
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 Moulin Rouge and To Die For. She was nominated for an Academy Award for that, yes?”
“Actually, no. She won an Oscar in 2002 for The Hours.”
“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.
“Ben-Hur, actually. Jack Hawkins playing the slave master Quintus Arrius.”
“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