Whiteout(13)
Stanley Oxenford came through the grand entrance. He was a tall man of sixty with thick gray hair and blue eyes. He did not look the part of a scientist—no bald dome, no stoop, no spectacles. Toni thought he was more like the kind of actor who plays the general in a movie about the Second World War. He dressed well without seeming stuffy. Today he wore a soft gray tweed suit with a waistcoat, a light blue shirt, and—out of respect for the dead, perhaps—a black knitted tie.
Susan Mackintosh had placed a trestle table near the front door. She spoke to Stanley as he came in. He replied briefly then turned to Toni. This is a good idea—buttonholing everyone as they arrive and asking when they last saw Michael."
"Thank you." I've done one thing right, at least, Toni thought.
Stanley went on: "What about staff who are on holiday?"
"Personnel will phone them all this morning."
"Good. Have you found out what happened?"
"Yes. I was right and you were wrong. It was the rabbit."
Despite the tragic circumstances, he smiled. He liked people to challenge him, especially attractive women. "How do you know?"
"From the video footage. Would you like to see it?"
"Yes."
They walked along a wide corridor with oak linenfold paneling, then turned down a side passage to the central monitoring station, normally called the control room. This was the security center. It had once been a billiards room, but the windows had been bricked up for security, and the ceiling had been lowered to create a hiding place for a snake's nest of cabling. One wall was a bank of television monitors showing key areas of the site, including every room within BSL4. On a long desk were touch screens controlling alarms. Thousands of electronic checkpoints monitored temperature, humidity, and air management systems in all the laboratories—if you held a door open too long, an alarm would sound. A guard in a neat uniform sat at a workstation that gave access to the central security computer.
Stanley said in a surprised tone, "This place has been tidied up since last I was here."
When Toni had taken over security the control room was a mess, littered with dirty coffee cups, old newspapers, broken Biros, and half-empty Tupperware lunch boxes. Now it was clean and tidy, with nothing on the desk except the file the guard was reading. She was pleased Stanley had noticed.
He glanced into the adjacent equipment room, once the gun room, now full of support devices, including the central processing unit for the phone system. It was brightly lit. A thousand cables were clearly labeled with nonremovable, easy-to-read tags, to minimize downtime in case of technical failure. Stanley nodded approval.
This was all to the good, Toni felt; but Stanley already knew she was an efficient organizer. The most important part of her job was making sure nothing dangerous escaped from the BSL4 lab—and in that she had failed.
There were times when she did not know what Stanley was thinking, and this was one. Was he grieving for Michael Ross, fearful for the future of his company, or furious about the security breach? Would he turn his wrath on her, or the dead Michael, or Howard McAlpine? When Toni showed him what Michael had done, would Stanley praise her for having figured it out so quickly, or fire her for letting it happen?
They sat side by side in front of a monitor, and Toni tapped the keyboard to bring up the pictures she wanted him to see. The computer's vast memory stored images for twenty-eight days before erasing them. She was intimately familiar with the program and navigated it with ease.
Sitting beside Stanley, she was absurdly reminded of going to the movies with a boyfriend at the age of fourteen, and allowing him to put his hand up her sweater. The memory embarrassed her, and she felt her neck redden. She hoped Stanley would not notice.
On the monitor, she showed him Michael arriving at the main gate and presenting his pass. "The date and time are on the bottom of the screen," she said. It was fourteen twenty-seven on the eighth of December. She tapped the keyboard, and the screen showed a green Volkswagen Golf pulling into a parking space. A slight man got out and took a duffel bag from the back of the car. "Watch that bag," Toni said.
"Why?"
"There's a rabbit in it."
"How did he manage that?"
"I guess it's tranquilized, and probably wrapped up tightly. Remember, he's been dealing with laboratory animals for years. He knows how to keep them calm."
The next shot showed Michael presenting his pass again at reception. A pretty Pakistani woman of about forty came into the Great Hall. " That's Monica Ansari," said Stanley.
"She was his buddy. She needed to do some work on tissue cultures, and he was performing the routine weekend check on the animals."
They walked along the corridor Toni and Stanley had taken, but went past the turning for the control room and continued to the door at the end. It looked like all the other doors in the building, with four recessed panels and a brass knob, but it was made of steel. On the wall beside the door was the yellow-and-black warning of the international biohazard symbol.
Dr. Ansari waved a plastic pass in front of a remote card reader, then pressed the forefinger of her left hand to a small screen. There was a pause, while the computer checked that her fingerprint matched the information on the microchip embedded in the smart card. This ensured that lost or stolen cards could not be used by unauthorized persons. While Dr. Ansari waited, she glanced up at the television camera and gave a mock salute. Then the door opened and she stepped through. Michael followed.