Michael Palmer - The First Patient

Gabe put his hands on the man's shoulders.

"It's okay, Jim. You did what was best for your patient. No one could ever fault you for that."

"Well, finally, in a last-ditch effort to win her over, I decided to take her into my confidence. I mean she was a friend of Drew's, and he was going to nominate her to be in his cabinet. So I told her what I had learned and what I was theorizing, and what I planned to do about it."

Again Ferendelli crossed to the edge of the bridge shadow and peered at the scene he had photographed so sensitively. The white noise and vibrations from traffic speeding overhead were in sharp contrast with the emptiness of the field and the stillness of the river. Feeling the connection between them strengthening, Gabe moved forward and stood shoulder to shoulder with his predecessor, the two of them silhouetted in the strobes of passing headlights.

"How did she respond to that?" he asked.

Ferendelli glanced over at him, his fear and sorrow nearly palpable.

"She told me I would be doing nothing of the sort-that I'd be doing exactly what she told me to do, nothing more, nothing less. She said it was in the tea she served each time before we went riding. Now it was in me-locked in place in my brain."

Gabe felt himself go numb. The tea . Lily had been so proud of her tea-so excited when he wanted another cup.

"What do you mean, it? " he asked, barely able to get the words out.

"Fullerenes-hollow nanoball molecules carrying drugs. She told me her tea was laced with just enough narcotic to make me love it, relax, and want to drink more."

"Oh, God," Gabe murmured, almost inaudibly.

"So that's how she got the fullerenes into my body. I don't know how she did it with Drew, and I don't know how the fullerenes with their microdoses of drugs end up exactly where they would have the most devastating effect."

"I'm afraid I can answer that one," Gabe said, not bothering at this point to recount his experience with the scientists in Lily's nanotech laboratory. "The fullerenes are coated with antibodies specific to neuroproteins or neurotransmitters-maybe those in the thalamus, the basal ganglia, and the caudate nucleus. Maybe other places in the brain as well. The fullerenes float through the bloodstream until they encounter those specific proteins; then they just latch on until some signal or other tells them to open up by breaking the chemical bonds that had kept them perfectly round."

"But the state of the science isn't remotely close to that level of sophisticated biotechnology," Ferendelli said.

"It is. Trust me. It is. Jim, listen, do you have any idea how the fullerenes are commanded to open?"

"Sound. They have a transmitter of some sort that must send out a specific frequency-the signal for the fullerenes to open up. Perhaps the transmitters send out different frequencies for different drugs. Lily said that chemicals had been placed in my brain stem over time and also the president's brain stem as well that could stop our heart or our breathing, or both, with just the press of a button from a transmitter. Like opening a garage door or-or changing a television channel. She actually showed one to me. Then she said I should just go about my business and nobody would be hurt-especially not the president."

"But you didn't buy that."

"Once I began to sense what she wanted, I couldn't believe the president wasn't going to be harmed anymore. So I took off. At the very least I knew what she had done. I didn't think Lily and her people would do anything to harm the president as long as I was on the loose and hadn't said anything to anyone about her."

"What did she want you to do?"

"I don't know for certain, but from pieces of what she said, I had the feeling that at some time in the near future they were going to ask me to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment and spearhead the movement to replace Drew because of his mental illness."

"Oh, man. But why? Do you think Bradford Dunleavy could be behind this?"

"Possible, I suppose."

"How about Tom Cooper?"

"I don't know. He seems sincere enough, and he's been a loyal vice president, but I also know he's very ambitious, and we're talking about the presidency of the United States."

"Very folksy, but very smart. I agree. A couple of days ago he came by the office and pumped me for information on Drew's mental health."

"Did you tell him anything?"

"No, no, I certainly didn't. Jim, why did you stay around D.C.?"

"I've been waiting."

"For what?"

"For you-for this meeting. I don't trust anyone, Dr. Singleton-anyone, that is, besides you."

"Explain."

"Someone close to the president is involved in this. I mean someone very close-closer to him than Lily. I have no reason to believe Drew has been having tea with her-certainly not enough to account for all the attacks he has had. According to Lily, the chemicals have to be delivered over time-multiple doses. That means somebody has been dosing Drew continuously with the drug-loaded fullerenes, and also has been causing them to break open and deliver their payload, probably on cue. Someone has to trigger the transmitter to do that."

Gabe couldn't bring himself to tell the man that there was every reason to believe that, like Ferendelli and the president, he was now a walking time bomb, too, at least to the extent that a couple of cups of Lily's tea could deliver.

"What people are you talking about? Who might be in a position to do this to Drew?" he asked.

"The list is an imposing one. The president's wife and children, the twenty-five or so people in the kitchen, the chief of staff and his office, the staff secretary and her office, the cabinet, the Military Office."

"That would be my pal Ellis Wright."

"Ah, yes, the admiral," Ferendelli said. "I hope your relationship with him is cheerier than mine."

"No chance," Gabe said. "He clearly can't abide anyone he can't control. This list of yours is getting quite long."

"Oh, I'm just getting started. There are thirty or so in the medical office, and think of the dozens of housekeepers and other servants-people who just come and go virtually unnoticed."

"And the Secret Service."

"I don't know any exact numbers for them, but probably a few hundred have direct access to the president at one time or another."

"And of all these people you just listed, it only takes one."

"It only takes one," Ferendelli echoed sadly. "And I think he or she has got to be pretty close for the transmitter to work."

"How do you know that?"

"A man has been after me-a professional hit man."

Gabe felt a chill.

"How do you know he's a professional?"

"He uses a silencer. A week or ten days ago, I stopped by my place in Georgetown for some papers. I hadn't been there for twenty minutes when I heard him opening the front door with a damn key. Probably one Lily had made. I managed to get out the basement and down to the Potomac, where I hid along the bank. Then, just a couple of days ago, he showed up at a hobo village where I was hiding while I figured out how to contact you. He killed one of the guys there. Shot him in the face just like that. Again I got out before he found me. Later, I went back. The guys told me he used a transmitter. I couldn't have been more than fifty or seventy-five yards away when he did, but nothing happened."

"Fifty yards," Gabe said, now consumed by a sense of foreboding. "Jim, is there anything else you can tell me about the man? Anything at all?"

"I only saw him in the tunnel-not in the house. And it's pretty gloomy down there. But there was one thing-he was southern. No doubt about that. Heavy accent. Georgia maybe, maybe Alabama. I'm not good at those things."

Trouble . The same man had gone after both Ferendelli and Blackthorn.