Michael Palmer - The First Patient

Gabe felt himself sink. He had been so immersed in the logistics and potential of his plan that he did not think for a moment that Ellen Williams, whom he had known professionally and socially for years and who was on the board of Lariat, would be morally unwilling to go along with a scheme that might end up killing horses.

Desperately, he searched his mind for alternatives. The best he could come up with on the spot was finding a large-animal specialist locally and opening one of the wallets full of cash he was carrying. He knew that there was no way a bribe of any size would work on Williams.

"You're right, Ellen," he said finally. "If I were even going to consider such a request, I'd want to know details-details and exactly what was at stake. Well, unfortunately, I can't tell you all the details. But I can say that the life of the man I am caring for may be at stake, and I am desperate enough to beg, but not desperate enough to ask you to compromise your professionalism and love of animals. As a physician, I completely understand why you would have misgivings."

A long silence followed.

"You'll be careful?"

"I promise. You've been out to my place. We've even ridden together. You know how I feel about horses."

"Okay, Gabe," she said finally. "I'll do the compounding myself and see to it that the mixture is at your D.C. address by noon. It will be a blend of ketamine, Nembutal, and maybe some fentanyl, although I'm not sure yet how much of each. I'll have to make my best guess as to when each drug will do what it does, and how they will work together. There's a couple of rescued animals here I might be able to try various combinations on. They could use some rest."

"I owe you, Doc," Gabe said, "and I think the country owes you as well."

He gave her the address of the Watergate, slipped the cell phone into the jeans Stoddard had lent him, and turned his attention back to Big Al, feeling not that pleased about what he had just coerced a very wonderful doctor into doing.

"Listen, B.A.," he said, "I'm going to run home and pick up my old plate. Then I'll be back. I'm glad I didn't throw it out."

"Me, too," Big Al called out as Gabe was leaving the lot.

When he reached the street, Gabe glanced about casually. Then he began the evasive action he had started the moment he left the White House. The lesson learned in Anacostia was an indescribably painful one, but it was a lesson nevertheless.

Except for what he had seen in the movies and read in some thrillers, he was a rank amateur in the cloak-and-dagger business. But he was logical and, in most circumstances, he wasn't dumb. Down uncrowded sidewalks; through stores and restaurants with back exits; into one cab, then another. With each move he fought against complacency and against allowing the pressure of time to make him careless. As things stood, with what he knew he might be as much a target as Drew.

Now, leaving Big Al's, he moved thoughtfully, ducking into a doorway from time to time and flagging down a cab for a zigzag five-minute ride to no place in particular. After a two-block walk, he stopped in a hardware store, emerging from the alley entrance with both slotted and Phillips head screwdrivers. Parked against one of the walls in the alley, looking as if it might not have been driven for a while, was an old Chevrolet-hardly a perfect match for the car he was about to buy, but a match of sorts nonetheless. He ducked behind the junker and in just a minute emerged with its plate.

If nothing else, he had just made Big Al's day.

Finally, after returning to the lot, screwing the plate on the Impala, paying Al off, and freeing the balloon, it was time to use some more of the president's hard-earned cash to brighten up someone else's day-this time, it would be Lily Sexton's stable man, William.

Gabe had first seen the muddy four-wheel all-terrain vehicle parked outside the barn at Lily Pad Stables. It would be perfect for negotiating the rutted dirt roads up Flat Top Mountain to The Aerie, where it could then be easily concealed in the forest. But first it had to be trucked from Flint Hill to the mountain, fifty or so miles away.

Now, after an explanation that included the assurance that lending Gabe the ATV was what Lily Sexton would have wanted, he was in his newly purchased Impala, leading Lily's stable man, William, up I-81 toward the West Virginia border. Tied down in the back of William's Ford pickup was the ATV-a Honda quite similar to the one Gabe used on his ranch.

If things worked out tomorrow the way he and Drew planned, they would go from horseback to the Chevy and, after an hour's drive, leave the car concealed at the base of the mountain and head up to the castle on the ATV. At the least, as soon as word got out that the president was missing, the sky would be dotted with helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft and the roads jammed with cruisers. Sooner or later, some bright investigator might come across mention of The Aerie someplace and contact LeMar Stoddard, but by then, hopefully, Drew would be ready to come back out into the open.

Their best bet, Drew suggested, would be to stay off the roads as much as possible-even the tangle of dead ends and other dirt roads that his grandfather had built around The Aerie. Drew had owned off-road motorcycles and later ATVs from the time he was a child, and even though he hadn't been up to the castle since before his election, he still felt confident that he could negotiate the narrow hiking paths winding up through the forest and concealed from overhead by the dense canopy of foliage.

William, a laconic septuagenarian, had been born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley and had been working at Lily Pad Stables when Lily took it over nearly ten years before. He had no idea what, if anything, he should charge Gabe for the ATV, which Gabe promised to return when his use for it was done. In the end, the stable man settled for a thousand dollars, which he said he would send along to his niece in Harrisonburg. Gabe added an additional two hundred of the president's money after William promised to keep that amount for himself.

Just past Winchester, they crossed from Virginia into West Virginia. Now Gabe began using his trip odometer and consulting the map Stoddard had drawn. Somewhere off to the left, on a high hill named Flat Top Mountain, was The Aerie. Gabe slowed and took Exit Thirteen. William followed. At 1.2 miles, the narrow two-lane road curved off to the right. To the left, barely visible, a rutted dirt road cut off into the forest.

"Fifty or a hundred feet in on the right," Stoddard had said, "is one of those dead-end roads I told you about that my grandfather built. That's where we'll leave the ATV, covered with branches. Later, we'll leave your car there and put the branches on it."

Saying nothing to William of his intentions, Gabe stopped before reaching the dead-end spur. Together they unloaded the ATV. Gabe started it up, and with William squeezed in behind him, they made a quarter-mile test run down the paved road and then back. The machine seemed a bit sluggish at first but then rallied. Depending on the steepness of the paths up to The Aerie, Gabe decided, he and Drew ought to have a decent shot at making it.

After again expressing his regrets over Lily's sudden and tragic death, and having William refuse his offer of another hundred dollars, Gabe stood by the ATV and watched as the truck rattled back down the road toward Virginia. Then, amid lengthening shadows, he used the seven-inch blade of a newly acquired hunting knife to cut down the branches that would conceal the Impala tonight and again tomorrow. Finally, a bit winded from the effort, he leaned against the trunk of a mature hickory and listened to the noisy quiet of the West Virginia woods. It was time to familiarize himself with The Aerie.