Michael Palmer - The First Patient

She stared up at his massive head, framed by the aurora of the overhead light, and at the deep fold in his truncated neck, and she hated him more, even, than she had come to hate the surgeons in L.A. Silently, she chastised herself for being too cautious and scarred from her prior experiences not to say something about the legendary agent to Gabe or even to Fuller himself.

For a time, neither of them spoke. Griswold just stood there, looking down at her with no particular emotion. Alison felt a glimmer of hope. It seemed to her as if he might be considering her responses.

Please , she thought. Please, please don't do it again .

She tried, unsuccessfully, to get a better read on his intentions. In her life, she had shown some courage and some pain tolerance but not, she guessed, much more than average.

Please, please… don't .

Finally, Griswold shook his massive head and shrugged his buffalo shoulders.

"I don't know why, Nurse Alison, but try as I may, I just can't shake the notion that you're holding out on me."

He lifted up the IV tubing and gazed at the rubber injection port as if it were some sort of precious, delicate blossom. Then he sighed and quickly emptied the contents of the syringe into Alison's body.

At the first sight of his thumb tightening on the plunger, Alison began to scream.

Ketamine … psilocybin… LSD… methamphetamine… DIPT… atropine… mescaline… PCP.

Jim Ferendelli's chemist had found traces of eight different mind-altering drugs in the blood of President Andrew Stoddard.

Eight!

"Zeke likes to say that performing analytical chemistry is similar to doing a differential diagnosis on a patient," Ferendelli said. "If you don't look for it, you'll never find it."

"I totally agree with that," Gabe replied. "Presumptions and assumptions are as dangerous in a physician as arrogance and ignorance."

"Well, Zeke took things one step further. Once he started getting positive results, he anticipated the obvious question as to how these drugs could have gotten into the president's blood in such minute concentrations. He decided that the amounts administered would be far too small to have any neurological effect unless they were delivered to precisely the part of the brain where they were the most effective. The best he could come up with was a theory summarized in several articles he gave me."

"Nanotechnology," Gabe said, almost breathless at the way the pieces were at last dropping into place. "I didn't find any articles, but I found your books on the subject while I was searching through your place for clues about what might have happened to you, and I've been studying them. I'm still an amateur on the subject, but I'm a lot more knowledgeable than I was when I started."

For the first time, Ferendelli managed a smile. He reached out and patted Gabe approvingly on the shoulder.

"I would bet you are an excellent physician," he said.

"I feel the same way about you. Initially you went to see Lily Sexton to learn about nanotechnology, didn't you?"

This time, at least, mention of the woman's name didn't provoke as much agitation.

"From what I read," Ferendelli said, "it seemed as if using molecular-size nanobots to deliver drugs directly to cancers or to specific sites in the body was still very much on the drawing boards and in the minds of futurists. I went to her to see if there was something I didn't know about the status of the field. I also needed to develop some sort of possible explanation-a hypothesis-to answer the question: If the president was being dosed with micro-amounts of psychoactive drugs, how were the chemicals being introduced into his body? How were the drugs able to seek out the area of his brain where they would be most effective? And perhaps most urgent and frightening, how could their release be triggered on cue?"

It's not in the future! Gabe wanted to shout, flashing back to the disembodied brains in Dr. Rosenberg's glass cylinders and the immunofluorescent deposits on his slides. It's here-right now! But first Gabe needed to learn how his predecessor-and Drew-had come to be in such danger.

Already it was clear to Gabe what a hero Jim Ferendelli was. In an incredibly short time, he had accumulated an astounding amount of information in trying to save the presidency of his patient and longtime friend. In the process, Jim had placed his own life in jeopardy. At this point, the man should be standing on a golden pedestal in front of Congress and the American people, awaiting the highest honors this country could bestow, not skulking in the shadows here amid the beer bottle shards and fetid odors, emaciated, unkempt, and fearful.

"What happened, Jim?" Gabe asked softly, picturing the lovingly drawn portrait in the man's desk. "What happened with Lily Sexton?"

"When I contacted Lily about picking her brain regarding nanotechnology, she invited me out to her stables for a ride. In fact, I went out there several times. It was difficult, because I had to speak to Lily in generalities, and not mention the president in any way, even though I suspected she had quickly put two and two together. We both know that my only patients are the president and his family. There have been a growing number of rumors over recent months regarding the state of Drew's mental health, and Lily's a very perceptive person."

"You'll get no argument from me there," Gabe said.

"Well, she didn't have that much to add to what I already knew about the field of nanotechnology. It's advancing at an incredible pace, and the high rollers are beginning to speculate, throwing incredible sums of money at the possibilities. But the field is still much more theoretical and potential than actual. Lily arranged for me to visit a research and manufacturing site in New Jersey and to speak with several of the scientists and even two major investors."

"Manufacturing?"

"It's a company that manufactures nanotubes of various diameters and lengths, and several different sizes of fullerenes. There's a huge demand for them right now in industries and laboratories all over the world. The people in New Jersey sell them by weight, like bananas."

"You're doing great, Jim. Can you go on?"

Ferendelli stepped out of the shadow of the bridge and scanned furtively through the gloom.

"They can kill me, Dr. Singleton," he said, a note of shrillness returning to his voice. "With the push of a button, they can kill me almost anytime they want. And they can kill the president, too. Anytime they want to they can kill him, just like that."

Gabe reached out and gently guided Ferendelli back into the darkness.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"I have some theories, but they are no more than that. I… I continued to visit Lily at her place. We never saw one another in D.C., only at Lily Pad Stables."

Gabe knew what was coming next.

"You fell in love with her, didn't you?" he said.

"I feel so stupid."

"Nonsense. I don't know if I've ever met a woman more interesting and attractive."

"Nothing ever happened between us-sexually, I mean. She kept encouraging me to visit her and ride with her, but each time I tried to advance our relationship, she alluded to being in a relationship that needed resolving before she could move on to another. Meanwhile, I kept doing research, speaking with experts, and secretly running tests on Drew's blood. I refused to believe that my relationship with Lily had no future, and she still wanted to see me. Now I know she was the one who was pumping me for information, not the other way around."

"I'm sorry, Jim," Gabe said. "I'm so sorry."

"I was a fool not to see the truth long before I did. My judgment and my ethics were warped by the feelings I had for her. I had been so lonely since my wife passed away… I…"