A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [62]
CHAPTER 27
DAY 3
1:30 P.M. (CST)
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?
Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.
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.
“You mean they bought this stuff for you?” Griff asked.
“Well, define bought. I filled out some paperwork, and marked certain items as research materials. It took some time, but ultimately they shipped me exactly what I ordered. And when I leave government service, Uncle Sam will get to watch movies and make popcorn.”
“The Pork Barrel Cinema,” Angie said. “We should have a marquee made up.”
“Just don’t put a photo of it in your newspaper. So, do you want me to pop up some buttered corn, or do you just want to see what I have?”
“I can’t believe this,” Griff said, slumping into one of the chairs in the front row. “Nine months in a goddamn cell.”
“Be tough,” Angie said. “What goes around comes around.”
Forbush extracted a video from the middle of an entire wall of hundreds of carefully aligned video and DVD cases. Then he held up the cover.
“Gaslight. Have you seen it?”
“I know the word,” Griff said. “It’s a verb, and it means to sabotage someone’s life to make them think they’re going nuts.”
“And this is where that word came from. Ingrid Bergman won the best actress Oscar in 1944, playing the naïve singer Charles Boyer sets out to drive crazy. It’s about things not being as they look on the surface.” He extracted the tape from the case. “I give you the surveillance video from security cameras twenty through twenty-four. It was never nominated for a Oscar, but it could have been—for best special effects.”
“Does it say why they chose me for the leading role?” Griff asked glumly.
“No, I can’t explain why they picked you,” Forbush said, “but I think I have a good idea who played you.”
He worked his way around to the projector and queued up the video.
Angie locked her fingers in Griff’s as an image of the lab appeared on the wide, white screen.
“I’ve spliced a couple of camera views together,” Forbush said. “The timing’s in the lower right.”
Nine months, Griff was thinking. Nine months of my life gone.
Images of the sadistic Florence penitentiary guards flashed strobelike through his mind.
At the bottom of the surveillance footage was the fuzzy lettering of a date and time marker that indicated the recorded events occurred some nine and a quarter months ago, at a few minutes past midnight.
“Since this is a silent film, I’ll provide the narration,” Forbush offered from his seat behind them and to the right. “For Ms. Angie’s benefit, what we’re looking at here is footage from the WRX3883 culture lab.”
“Actually, Melvin,” Griff said, “Ms. Angie knows this stuff. She’s written pieces about hot zone virology, including a couple about me.”
Angie stood up and pointed to a large cabinet on the right side of the scene.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“That’s one of the biosafety cabinets we use to work with hot agents,” Forbush answered.
“No, I know that. I mean this incubator