The First Patient Page 10

  Speaking through the intercom, Heather's voice sliced into the moment.

  "Dr. Singleton, Mr. Lattimore is here."

  "Tell him I'll be right out."

  Come on! his mind urged. How did it happen?

  Gabe left Nick McCall and crossed through the examining room to the small bathroom where, a lifetime ago, he had engaged in near-mortal combat with a bow tie. The brief note in the envelope was typed.

  Doc,

  I have the keys to J.F.'s place. Meet me at your parking space

  at six.

  A.

  PS: Your car looks great.

  Alison.

  Gabe flushed the toilet for effect and washed his hands. He was drying them when he returned to McCall.

  "Nick, tell me something," he asked, sensing the answer before he had even voiced the question. "What nurse was assisting you during the MI?"

  "It was the new one, Alison. She rushed over from the clinic in the Eisenhower Building. She's really excellent. Like having another M.D. Have you met her?"

  "Yeah," Gabe replied, the tension gathering in his chest. "I've met her."

  CHAPTER 17

  Gabe left the White House at five and headed to the Watergate by cab. Following the realization that the bloods he had drawn on the president were missing and that Alison had been in the clinic assisting in the cardiac resuscitation, he had visited with the First Family and checked his patient over. Drew Stoddard was cheerful, alert, and energetic. He had some significant amnesia surrounding the events of the previous night, but his long-term memory was sharp, and his mental status testing showed no real holes.

  "Admiral Ramrod thinks he runs this place," Drew said. "And to some extent he does. But sometimes I have to find a way to remind him that despite all the authority he has, I am still numero uno. Bringing you to Washington instead of taking Wright's suggestion that I go for a military doc was one way of keeping him in his place. You know, I don't think I mentioned it back in Tyler, but the initial idea to bring you on board was my father's. He really thinks a great deal of you."

  "And I do of him."

  "You think you can handle the admiral okay?"

  "With your support, I can handle him as much as I need to."

  "So I get another day as the Big Kahuna?"

  The question was asked with some lightness, but there was no mistaking the seriousness behind it.

  "You get another day," Gabe said.

  "How long a leash?"

  "For the time being, short—very short."

  For a moment, the president seemed ready for debate.

  "Maybe after tomorrow, I can start doing a little campaigning?" he ventured, finally. "You know, to keep my job?"

  "Let's do this a day at a time, Drew. I've lined up a consultant who should be here sometime tomorrow. I need to share some of the burden you've heaped onto these stooped shoulders. He's the one I've chosen."

  It wasn't until Gabe was in a cab headed back to the Watergate that he sorted through the significance of his decision to say nothing to the president about having had lunch with his father. It wasn't an oversight, Gabe admitted to himself, but now just didn't seem like the time to wade into the deluge of questions that were sure to follow. Perhaps he was merely catching onto the Washington game of Less Is More—It Can't Be a Lie If You Never Said It.

  Another unresolved issue was who to speak with regarding having a point-blank shot taken at him as he was headed home from the White House. The last thing he wanted, next to being shot, was a Secret Service contingent following him around, and the next thing to that was any sort of leak and the massive publicity that was certain to follow. Until his best response became clear, he had decided, he would just leave things be.

  It would be a huge relief to have Kyle Blackthorn on the scene. The psychologist, whose logic sometimes reminded Gabe of Mr. Spock on Star Trek, had an earthy wisdom and perspective unlike anyone else he knew.

  First, though, there was the matter of Alison Cromartie—who she was really working for, why she had lied to Gabe, and how she came to steal the blood he had drawn on the president.

  At quarter of six, when Gabe arrived at the Watergate garage, the Buick was back in its space with a new rear window and a clean interior. If there had been any damage to the rear bumper, it had been touched up. If the upholstery had been torn by the would-be assassin's bullet, it had been repaired. If nothing else, Alison most definitely had some clout.

  Gabe leaned against the car and tried to put together what he knew and what he sensed of the woman. A continuing-ed course he had once attended on psychiatry for primary-care docs had spent an hour on sociopaths—people with little or no innate ability to separate truth from lies, right from wrong. Glib, often charismatic, usually believable, always dangerous. The condition had a formal, for insurance purposes, name—antisocial personality disorder, or something like that. He wasn't sure of the precise wording. Could Alison be one of those? Gabe wished he had paid more attention at the course.

  "So, cowboy, what do you think of your new wheels?"

  Alison, wearing jeans and a light, zip-up-the-front San Antonio sweatshirt, was leaning against a Volvo, appraising him from no more than ten feet away.

  "Can you arrange for one-hour tailoring, too?"

  "I can be resourceful, if that's what you mean. Actually, I didn't even have to go through the office for this one. The Colombian guy who owns the auto body shop around the corner from my apartment thinks we are destined to spend forever together. He did this."

  "Do you think asking him for favors is leading him on?"

  "Maybe, but he's, like, seventy-five and has three of his sons working for him, and I think his wife is still in the picture, too. I'm not that great at reading people, but he doesn't seem like much of a threat."

  What about me? Gabe wanted to ask, deliberately looking away from her. Am I a threat? He was surprised at the hurt he was feeling—hurt mixed with anger that she had lied to him more times in one day than Cinnie had over the entire length of their marriage.

  "Ferendelli's place is in Georgetown, yes?" he asked.

  "The far side from here—somewhere between a walk and a drive. How's your luck at finding parking spaces?"

  "It was always pretty good in Tyler, but we only have three or four cars in town, and a lot of spaces."

  "In that case, let's take this car." She flipped the keys to him. "Traffic's heavy, but I don't mind spending the extra time together if you don't."

  Stop looking at me that way!

  "I'll manage," he said, opening the door for her and receiving a smile of pleasant surprise in return.

  "In my world, people worry that opening the door for a woman might offend her. I like your world better."

  "So tell me. You dropped off the bullet at the lab?"

  "I did."

  "And did your handlers have any theories about who might have tried to kill me?"

  If, in fact, the guy wasn't a Secret Service employee to begin with.

  "I don't have any handlers, Doctor. I have department heads and a division chief. Was that snide tone on purpose?"

  "Huh? Oh, no." He warned himself to be more careful. "I'm on edge about this, that's all. Someone tried to kill me, and the police show up a minute later, and at your urging I end up not telling them anything—or anyone else for that matter."

  "Well, believe me or not, it was the right thing to do. I did speak to my superior about what happened. He doesn't have any idea who could have done this or why. Is there anything going on surrounding Dr. Ferendelli or the president that you haven't told anyone about?"

  "Absolutely not." Nice delivery, Gabe thought. Not too rushed, not too forced. A little bit of incredulity thrown in. You pick up on things quickly. "Is this supervisor you spoke to the same guy who has no idea why Ferendelli might have disappeared?" he asked.

  "Pardon me for suggesting it, but you're sounding snide again. You're upset because I didn't tell you I was Secret Service when we first met
. Is that it?"

  "Sorry. Let's drop it for now."

  "Go left at the next light."

  Except for finishing the directions, there was no other conversation.

  Ferendelli's place was a three-story brownstone on a small, tree-lined street off MacArthur. A parking place materialized just three doors down, but with the tension between them more or less out in the open, there was no comment about Gabe's luck.

  "Thirty-seven hundred a month furnished," Alison said as they paused on the short front walk. "Dr. Ferendelli and his wife both came from money. In addition to that, he invented something and got a patent on it—some sort of electronic gizmo that can pinpoint even small veins and arteries through the skin. I may not be completely right about what it does."

  "I'll try to find out, but it sounds like such a thing might have some practical uses."

  "Their place outside of Raleigh is for sale for two and a half million."

  "I hope he's alive to spend the money."

  "I've been here twice," she said, opening the front door and then dealing with the alarm keypad in the hallway. "The place has been thoroughly searched and dusted for fingerprints. I doubt there's anything left to find."

  "I just want to get a sense of the man."

  "I understand," Alison said coolly. "I can wait in the car or maybe in the kitchen. There's a neat view of the woods from there, and a little bit of the river. The views from upstairs are much more striking."

  "That would be fine," he replied, matching her tone.

  "And Gabe?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm sorry we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot."

  "Me, too," he replied as much to himself as to her. "Me, too."

  The house had a wonderful feel—heavy, rough-hewn beams and fireplaces in both the kitchen and the living room, dark, rich wainscoting in the dining room, leaded glass in many of the windows. There was so much money in the world concentrated with so few, Gabe mused as he made his way up the ornate staircase. In one day, he had been aboard Aphrodite at the Potomac Basin yacht club, in the Watergate condominium residences, and now here.

  So much money.

  He thought about his small place in the desert on the outskirts of Tyler. Unlike his best friend and roommate at the Academy, he was never cut out for the life of brownstones and yachts. Even if the accident at Fairhaven had never happened, he would have eventually found his way to someplace like the ranch.

  The Ferendelli master bedroom had two tall mullioned windows that overlooked the tops of shade trees and beyond them the Potomac. Spectacular. Set up beside the window was a professional-grade artist's easel with the rough sketching on an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch canvas for an oil painting and evidence that someone—Jim Ferendelli, he supposed—had begun painting the piece. Gabe expected it to be a rendering of the view he was seeing, and in fact it was a landscape. But instead of the scene outside the window, it was one of vast, rolling hills surrounding, in the distance, some sort of structures, perhaps the house, barn, and other outbuildings of a farm.

  Physician, inventor, artist. Gabe had always felt that the term Renaissance man was overused, but it certainly seemed that in his predecessor he had found one.

  Not the least bit certain what he was searching for, Gabe flipped through the clothes hanging in the two closets, checked the floor beneath them, and scanned the contents of the bureau and the bathroom medicine cabinet. There were the usual salves and over-the-counter analgesics, but no prescriptions. A healthy Renaissance man at that.

  In no particular rush, Gabe checked the two smaller bedrooms on the second floor, then entered the exquisitely appointed office and library. The room, perhaps a thirteen-foot square, featured a mahogany desk, oxblood high-backed leather chair, and matching love seat. Finely framed prints, both Renoirs, graced two of the walls.

  The drawers of the desk held nothing of interest except three portrait sketches that confirmed Ferendelli's skill as an artist. Two of them, both rendered in charcoal, were of a lovely younger woman with a narrow, intelligent face and large, widely set eyes—Ferendelli's daughter, Jennifer, perhaps.

  A third portrait, again in charcoal, again neck-up, was of a somewhat older woman, also quite attractive, with short hair and eyes that seemed almost luminescent even when done in char—

  Gabe stared intently at the work. Then he carried the sketch over to the room's only window. The early summer evening light was quite enough to confirm his initial impression that the subject of the drawing had to be Lily Sexton, the woman destined in the event of a Stoddard/Cooper victory in November to be the first Secretary of Science and Technology.

  The wall across from the desk and the window was the library—neatly aligned volumes, nearly all of them hardcover and many leather bound—ten feet across and extending up nine feet to the ceiling, the collection was impressive. There were classics: Chaucer, Dickens, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Fitzgerald; coffee-table art books: French Impressionists, Picasso, Winslow Homer, and a number of others; plus several volumes dealing with WW II.

  In addition, there were groupings of American and European history, world history, philosophy, and politics—mostly conservative. Gabe opened several volumes, but there were no bookplates and no other indication as to whether the books belonged to the owner of the brownstone or to Renaissance man Dr. Jim Ferendelli.

  Having learned more than he had expected to about his predecessor and having found one surprise—the portrait of Lily Sexton that the FBI and Secret Service may have missed—Gabe was about to head downstairs when his attention was drawn to book spines at the far right end of the very lowest shelf. A set of six or seven volumes, all paperbacks with colorful covers. He pulled out the largest, thickest of the volumes: Nanomedicine, by Robert A. Freitas, Jr. Volume 1: Basic Capabilities. It was a highly technical treatise, 507 pages long, with an extensive table of contents and vast index. Meticulously block-printed at the top of the inside front cover was the single word FERENDELLI.

  Gabe set the tome on the desk and brought out the others. Understanding Nanotechnology, Nanotechnology for Dummies, Nanotechnology: Science, Innovation, and Opportunity, Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea. Each of the volumes had Ferendelli's name carefully printed inside the front cover.

  Gabe reflected on the neatly folded underwear and carefully arranged socks in the bedroom bureau and added "meticulous" to the characteristics he had already attributed to the man. Then he took a few minutes to flip though the volumes expounding on this latest aspect of Ferendelli—a fascination with nanoscience, the study and manipulation of atomic and molecular-size particles, and nanotechnology, the construction of useful chemicals and machines built from individual atoms and molecules.

  Nanotechnology. What Gabe read in just three minutes of flipping pages was already way more than he knew about the subject.

  But, he decided, that would not be the case for long.

  He brought a heavy garbage bag up from the kitchen and set the books inside. When Alison asked what he was doing, he was ready.

  "There are a couple of up-to-date medical specialty texts in the library that I could use at the clinic," he lied. "I'm sure the doc won't mind."

  "Terrific. Find anything of interest up there?"

  "Nothing," he lied again. "Truth is, I really didn't expect we would."

  Piece of cake, he thought as they headed back to the Buick. Once you got the hang of lying, there really wasn't much to it.

  Taking a good medical history was much harder.

  CHAPTER 18

  Midnight.

  It had been years—decades, actually—since Gabe had studied uninterrupted with such intensity. Perhaps back then it was a test in med school, maybe his internal-medicine boards. Whatever the exam, given where his life had taken him after Fairhaven, he always welcomed the chance to study where some sort of goal was involved. Tonight that goal was learning as much as he could about nanoscience and nanotechnology.

  He had gotten him
self up and running with the perusal of a few articles on the Internet and then chosen the most basic of Ferendelli's texts—an overview of the field in a small volume put together by the editors of Scientific American.

  Next came Nanotechnology for Dummies.

  Now he was approaching the other books by topic, rather than trying to scan each from cover to cover. Nanotechnology in your world. . . . Pathways to molecular manufacturing. . . . Building big by building small. . . . Making molecules into motors. . . . The fantastic voyage into the human body. It was possible, even likely, that Jim Ferendelli's study of nanoscience and technology had nothing to do with his disappearance, but it was fact that at the moment Gabe had precious little in the way of ideas, and it was also fact that less than twenty-four hours ago a man—a legitimate assassin or part of an ingenious charade—had tried to kill him.

  Alison had offered to take a cab or the Metro home from Ferendelli's brownstone, and Gabe, anxious to start reading and not wanting to screen every word she said for underlying intent, had come close to agreeing. In the end, though, he acknowledged his ambivalence toward her and his reluctance to end their evening together and made the drive to her place, although in near silence.

  She lived in a prim brick garden apartment complex in Arlington, Virginia, just across the river from D.C., although she shared with Gabe that she now suspected the residence would not be hers for long. It seemed quite possible that by exposing her identity as she had, she might have outstayed her usefulness and be facing imminent deportation back to the desk job in San Antonio. The Secret Service was as uptight as any branch of the military, she told him—maybe more so. A blown assignment was a blown assignment regardless of the reasons.

  Once during the drive, he had risked a glance over at her. She was gazing impassively ahead, approaching headlights glinting off the dampness in her dark eyes. She really did have an unusual, expressive beauty, he acknowledged, as well as an energy he couldn't get out of his mind. Still, something else he couldn't get out of his mind was that she had been placed in the White House Medical Unit to get information from him, possibly about the president's medical situation, and she was willing—no, required—to lie and possibly to steal as well to get the job done.