Michael Palmer - The First Patient

What secret are you hiding, Gabe Singleton? she asked herself now. Why do you seem so vulnerable?

An hour passed.

Inside the house, lights appeared behind a few of the windows that weren't covered by drapes. The two functioning streetlights remaining on Beechtree Road, neither of them near where she was parked, winked on. Then, just as Alison was considering limiting her time there from three hours to two, the front porch light came on, the front door opened, and two people emerged. Alison brought her field glasses up and focused on their faces. One was a statuesque woman with a face about the color of her own. Latino, Alison guessed.

The other was younger-much younger. Possibly ten or eleven at the oldest. Like the older woman, she was mocha skinned and dark eyed, and also like her, she was pretty. No, not pretty, Alison suddenly realized, stunning, with perfect, gentle features, an incredibly sensual mouth, a lithe body-still more girl-like than woman, but with breasts that were already well beyond nubs. Such things were almost always a matter of personal taste, she acknowledged, but the girl was as beautiful as any young woman Alison had ever seen.

What was Treat Griswold doing with such an attractive woman and a spectacularly beautiful girl? It seemed as if the only ones who could supply the answer to that question were the woman and girl themselves. The pair, arm-in-arm, descended the stairs and began to walk leisurely in the direction away from where Alison was parked.

Alison waited, sorting out her options. Then she set the binoculars down, turned off the CD, and followed.

Another liar?

An hour had passed following Gabe's conversation with Lily Sexton-a conversation in which she denied knowing a man who possessed a beautifully and accurately rendered charcoal drawing of her in the drawer of his desk. The questions came far faster than their answers. Was it possible the drawing wasn't of her? If it was, could it have been done from a photograph-perhaps one in a magazine? Given her style, poise, unusual beauty, and acknowledged intellect, it seemed that if Jim Ferendelli was obsessed with her from afar, he wouldn't have been the first.

Could she simply have been frightened about being connected to any scandal when she was so close to being the subject of a major confirmation hearing in Congress? That possibility made more than a little sense.

Was it worth confronting her with the drawing and asking for some sort of explanation?

And finally, would it be possible to trust anything that she said?

Questions without answers.

Gabe massaged the sudden throbbing in his temples, pulled out the vial of painkillers in his desk drawer, then just as quickly put them back again. His headache was real enough, but the solution lay in getting at the causes-diagnosing the president, finding Jim Ferendelli, and getting the hell back to Wyoming, where, most of the time at least, hidden agendas weren't a way of life. Maybe the headache would help Gabe stay sharp. It was a reasonable guess the codeine wouldn't.

A floor above, in the presidential residence, his friend Kyle Blackthorn was administering the neuropsychological tests that would go far in determining whether or not the man entrusted with the safety of every being on the planet was fit to continue in that role. Blackthorn was a person of great character, passion, and intellect. He had never, as far as Gabe knew, come to a forensic decision regarding a patient or defendant that had proven to be inaccurate.

Vice President Cooper, Magnus Lattimore, Admiral Wright, LeMar Stoddard, Lily Sexton, and of course Alison-were any of them someone Gabe could truly rely upon? Probably not. Certainly not in the way he could rely upon The Chief.

Gabe sat at his desk, biding time by shuffling papers, wondering if it was worth contacting Alison to arrange a repeat trip to Ferendelli's brown-stone. No, he decided, not with her, anyway. She was far too eager to learn about the president's health-at least that was the way it appeared to him. It would be terrific, absolutely wonderful, if he was wrong about her. She had never been far from his thoughts since the drive back to her place from Ferendelli's.

During the president's asthma attack, she had functioned with quickness, medical knowledge, and, except for a brief moment when she seemed oddly distracted, composure. Cinnie had the same qualities. Alison seemed to be telling the truth about her role as an undercover agent for the Secret Service, but she might have been forced to improvise after her quick thinking saved his life-or at least seemed to have saved his life. If the shooting wasn't something she had orchestrated, she needed an immediate explanation for why she had been following him from the White House in the early morning hours. If it weren't true, the undercover assignment story was brilliant. But brilliant improvisation or not, it would still have been a lie.

Then there was the matter of the missing tubes of blood. How would Alison explain that? Could anyone but she possibly have been responsible?

Another hour passed. Gabe's brain felt as if it were being squeezed in a vise. His headache-tension, he felt certain-failed to respond to some Tylenol, but still the codeine remained in the drawer. I never took a drug that I didn't have a pain for , he had once heard a recovering addict say at an AA meeting.

I never took a drug that I didn't have a pain for.

It had been a long, long while since he last went to a recovery meeting, Gabe thought now. A couple of years at least. Maybe it was time he started going again. The AA program taught not only how to stay away from a drink or a drug for a day but also how to do the right thing when it came to making difficult decisions. Maybe it was time. Why in the hell had he stopped going in the first place?

Grateful that he had closed the medical office for the day and diverted all traffic except the president to the Eisenhower Building clinic, Gabe returned some routine phone calls, then leaned back in his chair and dozed off-one of the perks of having such a truncated practice. The ringing telephone intruded on a hazy scene in which he and Alison were riding across the desert together, bareback on what looked to be Condor. Her arms were locked around Gabe's waist and her cheek was pressed against his back. Blearily he checked his watch. Blackthorn had been with the president for four and a half hours.

"Dr. Singleton," he answered, the words reminding himself of that fact.

"Yes sir, Doctor. Agent Blaisdell here. I'm upstairs in the residence. Your man has finished with the president, sir. We're checking to see if the coast is clear; then we'll bring your man down."

"Everything all right?"

"As far as I know, sir. Agent Griswold signed out a few hours ago, and just asked us to contact you in the office when the president was done with his visitor."

"Well then, bring him down, but be very careful he isn't spotted by anyone."

Gabe hurried to the small bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. From the moment Magnus Lattimore had led him into the president's bedroom, from the moment he had seen his onetime roommate thrashing about, sweating profusely, and babbling incoherently, Gabe had felt isolated-alone with his sensibilities and his emotions; alone with what seemed right and what felt right; alone with the awesome pressure of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Now he would at least have an ally he could rely on in the struggle to sort things out-a friend with no hidden agenda and nothing at stake except getting to the right diagnosis.

Gabe had just toweled off when, without a knock, the outer door to the medical office opened and closed. Hat in hand, looking none the worse for his lengthy ordeal, Kyle Blackthorn stood alone in the center of the waiting room. He set his valise of testing supplies on the floor by his feet. It looked to Gabe as if Blackthorn were quietly invoking the senses available to him, hypertrophied from overuse like the muscles of a weight lifter, to get the lay of his situation. After just a few seconds he turned directly toward the small bathroom.