Michael Palmer - The First Patient

Something about the question was bothersome to Gabe, but he could not discern precisely what.

"No, I'm not sure that I wasn't followed," he said. "I told you that. Listen, I have a car right over there. Let me take you to a hospital or… or to my place."

"Just talk to me," Ferendelli said. "Talk to me and listen to me. They've poisoned me, Doctor. Just like the president, they've poisoned me. I haven't come in because I don't know precisely who they are, and I haven't run because I owe it to my president and the country not to."

"Is your daughter all right?"

"Yes. She's fine as far as I know. When all of this began to happen, I feared they might use her to get at me, so I had her go away to stay with friends. So long as she stays where she is, no one will find her. Now please, listen to me."

"I'll listen, Dr. Ferendelli, but try to stay focused. Who're they? Is one of them Lily Sexton?"

Mention of the woman's name hit Ferendelli like a sucker punch. For some time he said nothing. When he finally did speak, there was a noticeable tremor in his voice.

"I pray, sir, that you have had no contact with that woman."

"I'll tell you of my connection with her when you finish. Please, Jim, please. From the beginning?"

"Oh, this is bad," Ferendelli said. "Very bad. You've seen her, haven't you-been with her?"

"I have. But please, compose yourself and tell me what's been going on."

Inventor, physician, artist, intellectual. The Renaissance man Gabe had heard so much about was a nervous shell.

As if reading Gabe's thoughts, Ferendelli took a calming breath.

"I have a friend named Wysocki," he said, "Zeke Wysocki. He's an analytical chemist and owns a small lab just outside of Durham. He's a loner, with not one whit of social skills, but he is a wizard of a chemist, and a hell of a poker player. That's how we met-playing poker at a small, private game. He liked to talk about some of the contract work cases he did for the police and the FBI-cases that no regular labs could handle. So, on a lark, when the analysis of the president's blood came back negative, I sent one of the split samples I had kept to Wysocki."

"He found something."

"A number of things, actually. I drew bloods after two of the president's attacks. There were traces of several different hallucinogens in each sample, only not the same ones."

"Go on, Jim. You're doing great."

Ferendelli was again becoming jittery. He pulled a small bottle of spring water from his jacket pocket and managed a shaky, prolonged swallow. Gabe wondered if the bottle might contain vodka but didn't ask. Ferendelli wasn't intoxicated, just frightened-frightened and totally spent.

"You sure you weren't followed? I've been getting bad vibes about this place since you arrived."

Gabe glanced out at the empty field.

"I don't see how, but if you want to go someplace else, or maybe just drive and talk, we can do that."

"I… I guess we can stay here."

"Go on, Jim. Tell me what your friend found. This is all beginning to come together for me. We're going to get to the bottom of things. I promise you we are. And whatever you and the president need to be okay, we're going to get it for you. I've got a friend in the Secret Service we can trust."

If we can find her .

"I… hope so."

"You did the right thing to contact me, Jim. You're safe now, and I assure you, you are not alone. Now please, go on."

"I'm not alone," Ferendelli said, marginally more calm. "I like the sound of that."

A block away, a nondescript white van, lights off, rolled down the street, the antenna on its roof rotating slowly.

Alison knew the pain was coming but was helpless to stop it. She lay on her back, her gaze transfixed on the syringe in Treat Griswold's hand. In horror, she watched as once again he slid the needle attached to it into the rubber port on the IV tubing.

"I know you're not particularly fond of this stuff, Nurse Alison," Griswold said, "but I really have to know what's going on, and frankly, to this point, I haven't been all that satisfied with your answers."

"What I told you was everything," she pleaded, aware of the sudden wash of perspiration beneath her arms and across her upper lip. " Everything . Please, I have nothing else to tell. Please don't do that again."

She was on a creaky metal military cot, with her wrists and ankles uncomfortably bound to the frame. The thin, sheetless mattress reeked of mold. The room-clearly for storage-was brightly lit from a bare overhead bulb and was less cluttered than the one in the White House. At some point, she had been dressed in light blue surgical scrubs, possibly taken from the clinic. Her clothes were neatly folded nearby with her bra and panties carefully laid on top-Griswold's not so subtle reminder of her helplessness. Almost certainly, she had decided, the two of them were in the basement of the house on Beechtree Road in Richmond-Donald Greenfield's house.

This would be the third injection Griswold had administered to her over what might have been two hours… or two days. The thought of having to endure the spasms and the pain again brought bile percolating into her throat. He had told her the name of the chemical in the syringe, but it was not one she recognized. In fact, he had mentioned that it was still somewhat experimental, developed by friends of his in the CIA.

After she was allowed to awaken from whatever anesthetic he had given her in the White House, Griswold listed the questions he was going to ask her, and then, without waiting for answers, he injected what he called a "quarter-strength" amount of the drug into the rubber port of the tubing draining intravenous fluid into her arm. In less than a minute, the muscles in Alison's body began to twitch. Then, suddenly, they cramped, every one of them, as brutal as any cramps she had ever experienced.

With her movement restricted, there was no position she could get to that would make the spasms go away. Her quadriceps muscles tightened into rock-hard balls. Her hamstrings pulled just as viciously in the opposite direction. The contractions in her abdominals were especially merciless. Her jaw was clenched so firmly, she was unable to open her mouth to scream.

It was possible-likely, even-that not long after the second injection she had passed out from the unremitting pain. She awoke, chilled from evaporating sweat, feeling as if she had been beaten with a two-by-four. Now Griswold was about to dose her for a third time.

"Griswold, Treat, listen. Dammit, please listen," she pleaded, her speech rapid and forced. "I was placed in the White House because Mark Fuller in Internal Affairs wanted to know what might have happened to Dr. Ferendelli. He also asked me to see if the rumors they had heard about the president's mental problems had any element of truth. Also, I was to keep my eyes open and follow up on anything unusual that I encountered. Fuller never mentioned any Secret Service agent specifically-certainly not you. Now, please, don't use that stuff on me again. I'm begging you."

"Why did you follow me?"

"I already told you. You were the only one I've encountered who did anything even the slightest bit unusual."

"Carrying the inhaler against regulations."

"Exactly. It may or may not be a specifically written rule, but in the clinic we all know that no one except us and the president himself is supposed to handle his meds, and certainly you've been around long enough to know the same thing, too."

Alison had said nothing about the pickpocket, Lester, or about having successfully switched inhalers. If Griswold got even the slightest scent of that one and if there was, in fact, anything unusual about the inhaler he had been carrying, she was in for more pain than she could possibly endure.