Michael Palmer - The First Patient

Theatrically he reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit coat and produced an Alupent inhaler.

The Alupent inhaler, Alison hoped edgily.

She pressed her lips together, testing how vigorously she was going to be able to resist.

"I think it's time," Griswold said, "that you and our fearless leader developed a common bond. I don't have the time or, frankly, the interest in explaining this little beauty to you, but it sure will be fun to see how you handle it-now and in the near future."

I knew it! Alison thought. The inhaler! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

"You are really slime."

"Actually," Griswold said, "I sort of like the big guy. I voted for him, and I never would have agreed to go along with this if I hadn't been-"

"Threatened with exposure because of this little baby-love peccadillo you've got going on here. That was your biggest sin of all-leaving yourself open to blackmail and extortion. Griswold, you are just so stupid. "

"That's why I'm standing here and you're lying there," he said, seeming a bit rattled.

"What goes around comes around. You'll get yours. Who's blackmailing you? What's in that inhaler?"

"Call it a high-tech time release capsule. Certain chemicals in here enter your bloodstream and settle in throughout your brain, where I can set them off with a push of any of these little buttons. Some of them will make you act loopy in any of a number of amusing ways; one of them will make you act wild; one pair will kill you dead."

He produced a stubby black remote transmitter and held it up for her to see. It reminded Alison of an ice-cream sandwich and had seven or eight cream-colored diamond-shaped control buttons lined up in two columns along one surface.

At last Griswold had done it. At last she knew for certain what was going on, even if she had no idea how the chemicals got to where they were intended, or who was blackmailing the man to administer them, or why. She searched desperately for some way-any way-she could get free, at least long enough to get word to Gabe about what was happening.

"Treat, give it up. Give it up and no one's the worse for what you've done. Give it up and I can tell people how you cooperated. You-"

"Okay, lady," he said, pinching her nostrils closed until they hurt, "I've heard enough. Big breaths, now."

He rested his massive hand against her chin, pried her mouth open, and jammed the business end of the inhaler between her teeth. Then he sealed the opening in place with his hand and waited until she breathed in to send a jet of mist into her throat and lungs.

Alison was in no condition to put up much resistance.

The first jolt of the stimulant tasted like rusty water, the second made her dizzy, and the third made her dizzier still. Griswold's grip tightened. Another spray, then another. Her heart was pounding, sending shock waves through her head. Acid jetted up into her throat and she struggled to swallow it again, rather than to aspirate it and have it scald the inside of her lungs.

Instead of opening up her bronchioles, the repeated dosing now seemed to send them into spasm, smothering her. Another dose and she knew her nervous system was going to explode into a full-blown, grand mal seizure. She managed one final glare at her nemesis, hoping that image of his face might stay with her into the hereafter. Then she closed her eyes tightly and waited to die.

Any word about her?" Gabe asked.

Stoddard shook his head.

"Mark Fuller from Internal Affairs says it's too soon to be worried."

"That's nuts. Something's happened to her."

"He says tomorrow morning he'll start putting people on it."

"I don't want to wait any longer than that."

"First thing tomorrow. I'll check on it myself."

"Good enough. I hear you carry some weight around here."

"I'm counting on you to keep it that way. Now, what are we up against?"

It took most of two hours for Gabe and Stoddard to work out the details of the plan that would, in just over twenty-four hours, separate the President of the United States from a grave threat to his health and possibly to his life. In the process, he would also be separated from his wife and from the presidency itself. Vice President Tom Cooper, a major suspect in Gabe's eyes, would assume the duties of the office, though hopefully not for long.

Once Stoddard was ensconced in a place of absolute security and safety, Gabe would speak with the First Lady and tell her where her husband was. Gabe would also enlist her help in quickly mobilizing the force that would raid the nanotechnology laboratory adjacent to Lily Pad Stables-the lab indirectly responsible for the death of her physician and the transient episodes of insanity that had been threatening to destroy her husband.

With luck, the scientists in the lab, once they were isolated and interrogated by professionals, would cooperate. With luck, investigators would quickly determine who had hired them and who was paying them. With luck, whoever was poisoning Stoddard and controlling the transmitter would be arrested. And finally, with luck, those ultimately responsible would be brought down.

"Two days," Gabe said. "Hopefully less. With the whole world looking for you, we need you out of sight for two days. Can The Aerie accomplish that?"

"You may have read or heard about my grandfather, Bedard Joe Stoddard. He made a fortune in mining, patents of all kinds, and manufacturing by being uncompromising in his business practices and in his opposition to the unions. Some would and did say ruthless opposition . Like many geniuses, B.J. was more than a little eccentric. And also like many geniuses, there were detractors who felt he often crossed over that invisible line between eccentricity and madness."

"Most of my family simply skipped the eccentric step," Gabe said.

"Well, at some point B.J. decided he needed a refuge that was both isolated and secure. That's why he built The Aerie-modeled stone-by-stone after a medieval castle in northern England he once visited and photographed. He brought in trainloads of foreign laborers-mostly the Chinese who had worked on the railroads. He designed the maze of dirt roads leading into the forest himself. Most of them simply stopped, or became endless loops. The roads that eventually would make it up to The Aerie were and are a closely guarded secret."

"But they're marked on the map you gave me."

"I don't think there are more than a half a dozen copies of that map in existence, so take good care of it."

"If the press finds out that's where you were hiding, there'll be more gawkers making their way up there than to the Grand Canyon."

"Hopefully, they'll all get lost in the forest. The whole project took eight years to complete," Stoddard went on. "Decades later, my father spent many more years upgrading the place, adding to B.J.'s bizarre collection of medieval weapons and instruments of torture, and increasing security there. He once told me that in the event of a nuclear attack, I was to eschew the bunker here at the White House and get the heck up to The Aerie, which he called the safest place in the world."

"Sounds like just what the doctor ordered," Gabe said, realizing only after he had invoked the platitude that it was actually funny. "How often does your father use the place?"

"Essentially never. He's much more into entertaining and wheeler-dealing on his yacht. It's been a long time since I was last there, but even then the place had fallen into pretty sad disrepair."

"Sounds perfect for us," Gabe said.

"It is perfect-especially if you get off on cobwebs plus the arcane and macabre. Wait until you get a load of it."

"I'm aimin' to do just that before it gets dark tonight. Now, I need two things from you."