A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer [83]
“When I go there I am wearing a hat. My face is covered by a scarf. My hands are hidden by gloves. I lie to protect my mother and myself.”
“You have to help us,” Angie said.
Chen paused for a time.
“I know,” she said finally.
She took another nervous look about the restaurant, and even glanced several times out the front windows. Droplets of perspiration had appeared like condensation on her brow.
“So you will help us?”
“I’ve done terrible things,” the virologist said in a shaky voice. “I did not know they would do this. The attack on the Capitol. How could I have known?”
“What were you told would happen? Do you know who these people are? Do you have any idea how we can stop this?”
Chen shut Angie off.
“Eleven o’clock the restaurant will be closed,” she said. “It is too busy here for the rest of the evening. Too dangerous to talk now. Come into the alley at the back of the restaurant. Red door with Chinese lettering on it. Knock three times so I know it is you. I have some papers that might help. I’ll tell you everything that I know then.”
“Eleven o’clock,” Angie said.
Chen nodded grimly, turned, and vanished through the swinging kitchen doors.
CHAPTER 36
DAY 5
10:00 P.M. (CST)
Sleep.
Griff’s eyes stung with a persistent gritty burn that he knew only sleep could relieve. He felt desperate to rub at them, to coax some moisture out of the tear glands, but the plastic face shield on his biosuit made it impossible, and the forty minutes it would take to remove his helmet, massage his eyes, and get suited up again were an unacceptable waste of time. Relief would have to wait. The same with sleep.
Thirty-six hours straight now since his last nap.
Gratefully, the concentration involved with his work eased the time along.
His limbs felt leaden, and his joints ached inside the bulky protective suit. Every twenty minutes or so, he took a brief walk through the Kitchen to Sylvia Chen’s office, and back to his own. Perhaps he had gone without sleep this long during his months in solitary confinement, but it was hard to track time in such an utterly monotonous place. Here, more than two hundred feet underground, he had the added reminder of wall-mounted digital clocks in every room.
He took a break, went online, and looked up the record for continuous sleep depravation. Eleven days by a seventeen-year-old student in the sixties. Guinness had subsequently closed the category for fear of causing serious health problems in those attempting to get their bit of immortality, although no adverse effects were reported in the high schooler.
Back to work.
Griff adjusted the electron microscope until it projected crystal-clear images of WRX3883’s submicroscopic world onto an attached television monitor. Despite the screen’s high-definition resolution, he had to strain to keep the image in focus. Forty-five minutes slid by. He rose from his chair, but knew it had been too long. His knees had gone to Jell-O and he stumbled twice before managing his brief walk.
I’ll just close my eyes for a few seconds, he decided.… Just a few seconds.
Griff’s head dropped forward onto his arms, and in moments, his thoughts began to fade. Then, just as suddenly, they reappeared, centering about horrific images from the Capitol—snapshots of people whose lives he had vowed to try and save. As if he were at the wheel on a long-distance drive, he snapped his head from side to side until he produced a jet of renewed consciousness that did the trick—at least for the moment. If he had to stay alert for another thirty-six hours, he would do it.
It had taken several hours of painstaking effort to get his lab operational again, but things seemed to be working remarkably well. The computers had sparked back to life and were picking up where he had last left off some ten months ago. Cultures of the blood brought from the Capitol were cooking in cell lines Melvin had prepared.
WRX3883 was a hearty, rapidly multiplying microbe,