Thomas Hoover: Syndrome

Or was he hiding something? Had the clinical trials out in New Jersey gone off the track? Was he keeping the project hush-hush because something was going on he didn't want the public to hear about? Had stem cell technology turned out to be an empty promise? Or had there been some horrible side effect they didn't want reported?

"So could you just raise this with his attorneys? Because if he lets Van de Vliet talk with me directly, he can be sure I'll get the story right. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It's up to him."

"Stone, I hope you have an alternative career track in the advanced stages of planning. Because the minute the Family gets wind of this, that you're writing some tell-all about Bartlett, they're going to freak. Even if you're doing it on your own time, you still work here. At least for the moment. Your name is associated in the public's mind with the Sentinel ."

He knew that, which was why this was going to be all or nothing.

"Just do me this one itsy-bitsy favor, Jane. It's the last thing I'll ever ask of you." He was turning to walk out. "And look on the bright side. When the Family finally sacks me for good and all, you won't have to write me any more nasty memos telling me to be a good boy."

He walked to the elevator and took it down. The next thing he had to do was make a phone call, and this was one that required a pay phone.

He'd thought about it and decided one possible way to encourage Bartlett to open up was to try to bluff him, to make the man think he knew more about the clinical trials than he actually did. There was only one way he could think to do that.

In premed days Stone Aimes had shared a dorm room at Columbia with Dale Coverton, who was now an M.D. and a deputy director at the National Institutes of Health. His office was at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

One of the nice things about having friends who go way back is that sometimes, over all those years, something happens that gives one or the other a few chips to call in. Such was the case with Stone Aimes and Dale Coverton.

Dale's oldest daughter, Samantha, a blond-haired track star and math whiz, had-at age thirteen-developed a rare form of kidney cancer and needed a transplant. She was given six months, tops, to live.

Stone Aimes had done a profile of her in the paper he worked for then, the New YorkGlobe , and he'd found a transplant donor, a young girl on Long Island with terminal leukemia, who was able to the knowing she'd saved another person's life. The two had met and cried together, but Samantha was alive today because of Stone Aimes. It was a hell of a chit to call in, and he'd sworn he never would, but now he felt he had no choice. The truth was, Dale Coverton would have walked through fire for him. The question was, would he also violate NIH rules?

Stone hoped he would.

He stopped at the pay phone at the corner of Park and Eighteenth Street, an area where nine people out of ten were wearing at least one item of clothing that was black. It also seemed that six out of ten who passed were talking on cell phones. He took out a prepaid phone card and punched in the access number and then the area code for Bethesda, Maryland, followed by Dale's private, at-home number. It was, after all, Sunday morning.

"Hey, Atlas, how's it going?" That had been Dale's nickname ever since he lifted two kegs of beer (okay, empty) over his head one balanced on each hand, at a Sigma frat blast their senior year. It now seemed like an eternity: for Dale, two wives ago, and for Stone, one wife and two live-togethers.

"Hey, Truth and Justice, over and out." It was their all-purpose old code phrase for "I aced the quiz. I hit with the girl. I'm doing great."

"My man, I need some truth," Stone said. "Justice may have to wait."

A big delivery truck was backing up against the sidewalk, its reverse-gear alarm piercing and deafening. The mid-morning sun was playing hide-and-seek with a new bank of clouds in the south.

"That thing you told me about? Is that it?" Dale's voice immediately grew subdued. He was a balding blond guy with just enough hair left for a comb-over. Beyond that, his pale gray eyes showed a special kind of yearning. He wanted truth and justice to prevail.

"Don't do anything that won't let you sleep nights. But this situation is very special. I was hoping I wouldn't have to come to you about what we talked about last month, but I'm running out of time and ideas." He paused, listening to the sound of silence. "I suppose it's too much to ask."

"Well, I still haven't seen any data or preliminary reports. The NIH monitor for those particular clinical trials is a woman called Cheryl Gates and she's not returning anybody's phone calls. The truth is, she doesn't have to. But another possibility is, she doesn't actually know beans and she's too embarrassed to admit it. If somebody wants to keep a monitor in the dark for strategic commercial reasons, it's easy enough to do."

"Well, how about the other thing? The thing we talked about. The list?"

He sighed. "I was afraid you might come to that. That's a tough one, Truth and Justice."

"Hey, you know I didn't want to ask. But I'm running out of cards."

He sighed again. There was a long silence and then, "You know you're asking me to give you highly restricted access codes to the NIH Web site. We shouldn't even be talking about it. So officially the answer is no. That's for the record."

"Strictly your decision." But he had his fingers crossed, even as he was ashamed of himself for asking in the first place.

"Maybe this is God's way of letting me even up things a bit. It can't be something easy or it doesn't really count, does it?"

"I could end up knowing more about these trials than the NIH does," Stone said. "Because it doesn't sound like you guys actually know much at all."

"Let me think about it and send you an e-mail tonight. Whatever comes up, it'll be 'scrambled eggs.'"

"Thanks, Atlas."

"Scrambled eggs" was a reference to a made-up code system they'd used in college. A name or number was encoded by interlacing it with their old phone number. This time the interlaced number would be an access code for proprietary NIH data.

"I do not think I'm long for the world here at the Sentinel . We're forming a mutual hostility society."

"I sure as hell hope you've got a new career concept ready for the day when they give you the ax." Dale's attempt at a light tone did not quite disguise his concern.

"Funny, but that's the second time I've received that advice in the last half hour. I deem that unlucky."

"Stone, sometimes I think you ought to try not living your life so close to the damned edge. Maybe you ought to start practicing a little prudence, just to see what it feels like."

"I'm that wild ox we used to talk about I like to scrounge. But I also like to look around for the biggest story I can find. I'm trying to get an interview with a guy on Bartlett's staff. Maybe our 'scrambled eggs' will flush him out."

"Just take care of yourself and keep in touch."

"You too."

And they both hung up.

Was this going to do the trick? he wondered. As it happened Stone Aimes already knew plenty about Bartlett's business affairs. He had been a lifelong student of Bartlett the man, and as part of his research into the Gerex Corporation he had pulled together an up-to-date profile of Bartlett's cash-flow situation. If you connected the dots, you discovered his financial picture was getting dicey.

Bartlett was overextended and, like Donald Trump in the early 1990s, he needed to roll over some short-term debt and restructure it. But his traditional lenders were backing away. He had literally bet everything on Van de Vliet. If his research panned out, then there was a whole new day for Bartlett Enterprises. That had to be what he was counting on to save his chestnuts.