The First Patient

by Michael Palmer

  "He's a very special man. . . . We should do what we can to keep him around."

  With Griswold's words reverberating in his head, Gabe pulled out of the White House compound onto Sixteenth Street and then made his way to G Street for the mile-long drive to the Watergate Complex. The night was thickly overcast, warm, and humid, even for August in D.C. Essentially lost in thoughts about the evening just past, Gabe rolled along with the languid early morning traffic. As he stopped at a red light at Twenty-second Street, the dark sedan that had been following him since he left the compound pulled into the empty lane to his left and drew up precisely even with him.

  What happened then was nothing but a blur.

  Aware only of slight movement in the car next to him, Gabe turned his head to the left. The driver of the other car, his face obscured by a baseball cap pulled low, and by dense shadow, had opened his passenger window and had raised a large handgun, pointing the menacing barrel straight at Gabe's face from a distance of no more than five or six feet. An instant before the killer fired, Gabe's car was struck firmly from behind, sending it forward several feet.

  With the muzzle flash etched into his vision and the shot ringing in his ears, Gabe's head snapped back. The rear side window of the Buick spiderwebbed from the errant bullet. There was no second shot. Instead, tires screeching amid the smoke and stench of burning rubber, the sedan vaulted forward, spun on two wheels onto Twenty-second, and disappeared.

  Still unable to piece together exactly what had happened, Gabe was limp, held in place by his seat belt, gasping for air and for composure.

  No time. There had been no time even to react. A man had just tried to kill him!

  From somewhere behind him a car door opened and closed. Then there were rapid footsteps, and seconds later his own car door flew open.

  "Are you all right?"

  The voice was familiar.

  It took a moment for Gabe's vision to clear.

  Standing there, looking down at him with undisguised concern, was Alison Cromartie.

  CHAPTER 11

  Is he all right?" a motorist called out from across the street. "Do you want me to call an ambulance?"

  "Do you?" Alison asked Gabe.

  Still stunned, he managed to shake his head.

  "No, he's fine," Alison called out. "Just a little fender bender."

  The motorist, the only one around, hesitated and then drove off.

  "A guy in that car next to mine tried to kill me," Gabe said, fumbling for the words. "He . . . he shot at me from . . . Jesus, I can't believe this. I . . . I don't know if it was some sort of random drive-by or . . . or—"

  "Easy, Doctor, easy. Are you sure you're not hurt? Can you stand up?"

  "I think so. I . . . I froze. All I could see was the muzzle of that gun, and . . . and all I could think was, 'This is it.' I don't even know what happened next."

  "I hit you from behind. That's what happened next," she said. "I saw what was about to happen and I rammed you. It was the only thing I could think of to do."

  Gabe glanced back at the shattered rear window of the Buick.

  "Nice move," he said.

  Slowly, with help, he managed to stand and brace himself against the roof of his car. Alison, wearing black jeans and a black tank top, kept a supportive arm around his waist until it was clear he could manage on his own. As before, he became instantly engrossed in her closeness and the scent of her.

  "Uh-oh," she said.

  A D.C. black-and-white pulled up and stopped directly over the burnt rubber from the assassin's car. The strobes flicked on, and the cop in the passenger's seat, a lean black man, lowered his window.

  "What's the deal here?" he asked.

  "Oh, am I glad to—"

  "Nothing big," Alison said, pointedly cutting Gabe off. "He did the right thing and stopped for a light, and I did the wrong thing and bumped into him. I'm guilty as charged."

  They could see the policeman eyeing the rear window, clearly trying to put the odd damage together with a rear-end collision.

  "You all right?" he asked Gabe.

  Unseen by the cops, Alison's expression was strongly cautionary.

  "I . . . I'm a little shaken up. That's all."

  "And that window?"

  "Two days ago, while it was parked, vandals probably. I'm getting it fixed tomorrow."

  "Want us to call an ambulance? Sometimes the adrenaline from an accident can mask serious injury."

  Again the look from her warning Gabe to say nothing about the shooting. What in the hell was going on?

  "No, no ambulance," he heard himself say.

  "Listen, guys," Alison said to the cops, "do whatever you have to do, but I really do intend to take full responsibility for this, and I really do have to get home. I just finished doing three hours of overtime in the ER at D.C. General and I have to be back for the day shift in just a little while."

  "You a doc?"

  "Nurse. I know way too much ER medicine to be a doc."

  "You got that right," the cop said, and exchanged approving glances with his partner.

  Just then the radio in the cruiser crackled out something that sounded urgent. Alison watched benignly as the officer behind the wheel took the call, but Gabe, bewildered as much at her handling the situation as he was at the situation itself, saw the keenness in her eyes and sensed that she was on top of the action, if not well ahead of it.

  "Another second and they're gone," she whispered before the conversation was complete.

  "Listen," the cop closest to them said. "We gotta go. You sure you're okay, fella?"

  "I'm fine . . . fine," Gabe replied. "If you don't have to, there's no need to write this up."

  "Okay. Suit yourself. You got an ER nurse there just in case you have any delayed reaction."

  "That I do," Gabe said as the cruiser squealed away.

  He watched until the taillights had vanished up Twenty-second Street, and then looked down at Alison.

  "What? What?" she asked. "The license plate on the killer's three- or four-year-old dark blue Taurus was covered, and with that baseball cap, there was no way whatsoever for me to get a look at his face. And staring down the barrel of a gun, I would strongly doubt that you got any kind of a look at him, either. By the time the police got the story straight from you and made their calls for backup help, the odds that the shooter's still driving around out there would be slim to none. What good would telling them do? There would be hours of interrogation and paperwork, and piles of unwanted publicity—especially given Dr. Ferendelli's disappearance."

  Gabe had no quick response. Alison Cromartie sounded incredibly certain and confident of what she was saying and absolutely comfortable with the lies she had told to deal with the police. She was anything but the trim, professional nurse who had tiptoed up to tie his bow tie just seven hours ago.

  "Wouldn't they at least have gotten a crime team to find and examine the bullet?" he finally managed. "It's got to be back there someplace."

  Alison sighed.

  "I'll tell you what," she said. "Trade cars with me for a day and I'll arrange to have the damage fixed on yours and the bullet checked out as well."

  "Who are you?" Gabe asked, no longer willing to trust anyone in that city.

  Alison drew a thin leather case from the pocket of her jeans and flipped it open for him. Gabe flashed on Lily Sexton and her elegant folder of business cards. But there were no business cards inside this case. There was a gold shield and a photo identification card.

  CROMARTIE, Alison M.

  United States Secret Service

  "People were worried about you," she said.

  CHAPTER 12

  I'm sorry not to have told you who I was back in the office, but the higher-up who placed me in the clinic asked me not to."

  Alison sounded sincere enough and Gabe wanted to believe her, but at that moment—nearly four in the morning—he really couldn't focus well enough to sort very much out.

  A man, his f
ace hidden in shadow, had driven up next to Gabe's car and taken a shot at him from almost point-blank range.

  Four days in D.C. and in one evening he had been browbeaten by a Navy admiral, lied to big-time by the President of the United States, his wife, and his chief of staff, deceived by one of his office nurses, and now nearly assassinated by—by whom? Someone who was systematically killing White House docs? Why? A whacko random drive-by? That hypothesis made as much sense as any. It was simply a roll of the dice that a madman with the need to kill happened to reach the intersection of G and Twenty-second at the same moment Gabe did, and another roll that Alison Cromartie, with the instincts and reflexes of a Secret Service agent, just happened to be in the car behind his, following him.

  "The Secret Service doesn't like things that don't make sense," Alison was saying, "and right now, Jim Ferendelli's disappearance makes no sense at all. I'm one of the few RNs in the service, so they plucked me off a backwater desk job in San Antonio and arranged for me to become part of the White House Medical Unit. My instructions were to keep my eyes and ears open for anything regarding Dr. Ferendelli and to keep an eye on whoever got brought in to succeed him. That's what I was doing tonight."

  Gabe rubbed at the grit in his eyes and tried to focus on what Alison had just said—that she had been placed in the White House medical office after Ferendelli's disappearance. Hadn't she told him earlier in the day that she had started working there before Ferendelli vanished? Gabe tried, through the deepening fog of fatigue, to re-create the exchange between them but sensed he might not be recalling it exactly. Why would she bother lying to him about when she started working at the White House? Then again, why would anyone have been lying to him about anything?

  He thought about trying to pin down which version of her story was the real one, but this just didn't seem like the time or place to get into an irresolvable yes-you-said-it, no-I-didn't discussion.

  "Well," he said, "whatever the reason for why you were there, thanks again for saving my life."

  "The alternative would have made a hell of a mess of the interior in that snazzy Buick of yours."

  Earlier in the evening, as she was working on his tie, Gabe would have offered his ranch for them to be sitting together at four in the morning on a bench behind the Watergate, overlooking the silent, ebony Potomac. Yet here he was in just that situation, distracted, edgy, and totally ill at ease.

  "Tell your boss that your secret is safe with me."

  "I'm not sure that will do the trick, but I'll try."

  "I always wondered why they called it the Secret Service when those agents in their dark suits and shades made no effort whatsoever to be secret."

  "They're meant to be seen and recognized. A lot of us aren't."

  "And there are Secret Service offices outside of D.C.?"

  "There are field offices all over. We do investigational stuff and also prepare for any presidential or major diplomatic visit."

  "And our good friend the admiral doesn't know he's got a Secret Service agent working for him?" Gabe asked.

  "Almost no one knows."

  "Treat Griswold?"

  "Nope. I report only to one man—the head of internal affairs."

  "Internal affairs?"

  "Gabe, I really can't tell you any more right now. First thing in the morning I'm going to have to report to my boss that I've blown my cover."

  The hour caught up with Gabe, and he tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.

  "Listen," Alison said. "Why don't you go on in. I can do all my explaining sometime later. I'll get this bullet to the lab and arrange for your car to be fixed. Just leave it on the street where you parked it. It'll be taken away within the hour, and it won't take more than a day to be good as new."

  "Better be. It's on loan from the First Father."

  "I know."

  "Of course. Everybody here knows everything, or at least tries to. So, what are you going to tell your boss?"

  "The truth," she answered matter-of-factly.

  "Ach, truth. Such a word. I would have never thought it was one of them words that meant different things in different parts of the country, like soda and pop or pancakes and flapjacks. Is that what you told me back in the office about how you came to be at the White House? The truth?"

  "I'm sorry. You have every right to be irritated, but I was just doing what I had been ordered to do."

  "And what should I tell my boss?" he asked.

  "That's up to you, but I'm not sure what's to be gained."

  "Secret Service protection?"

  "Depends on how badly cramped you want to be."

  Gabe again pawed at his eyes. He felt worn down by the events surrounding the president and utterly bewildered by this woman and by the attempt on his life, but he was also strangely unwilling to head up to his apartment. Below them, the surface of the river had begun subtly reflecting the first changes of the new day. Gabe found himself absurdly wondering which dignitary had gotten the bull's head on President Calvyn Berriman's Botswana flag cake. Maybe it was Lily Sexton.

  "So tell me," he asked finally, "how did a nurse end up with a badge and a gun and a desk job in San Antonio?"

  "You sure you don't want to do this later in the—"

  "No, no. I'm really interested. Besides, I feel a second wind coming on."

  "I can't tell if you're being facetious or not."

  "Defensive might be a better word. Or maybe I'm just testy. I was busy taking care of the president's gastroenteritis and migraine, and missed out on dessert."

  Gastroenteritis and migraine. The untruth rolled out effortlessly. Perhaps he had a future in D.C. after all.

  "Well, okay," she said with a shrug. "The story I told you is pretty close to what is. I was born in Louisiana and raised in New York—Queens. My dad, I think I told you about him, is . . . was, I mean, part Creole, part southern cracker—very handsome, very charming, rarely employed for long. My mom is part Japanese, part other things. She's a nurse. Still works in a nursing home. I became a nurse because of her, and got my master's."

  "When we first met, I tried to piece together your background from your looks."

  "I doubt you would have come close."

  "I didn't. But it's a combination that works pretty well."

  "Thanks. More?"

  "If you want?"

  "Let's see, then. A brief fling at marriage took me to L.A., where I worked in a surgical ICU. Like many hospitals, it was more or less ruled by the surgeons—one group in particular, busy beyond imagination, wealthy, and arrogant, all male, all well connected. The Cognac and Cuban Cigar Club, we used to call them—the Four Cs. The problem was that while most of them were top-notch and maybe deserving of the big bucks, a few of them weren't that good."

  "Go on."

  "Well, I won't go into the details, but there was a death in the unit. An order that should never have been given, written by a surgeon who was well aware of the patient's history and should have known better. He was one of the founding partners of the group, and drank too much. He also had neglected to inform the nurses about past events with their patient. Then there was a ridiculous delay in his getting in touch with the unit after he was paged, followed by a botched attempt to open the poor woman up right there in the ICU."

  "Sounds gruesome."

  "Even more gruesome was the way the group railroaded blame for everything onto one of the nurses. It was done with the ruthlessness and efficiency of a commando unit. Sheets disappeared from the patient's chart; doctors came forth with blatant lies. Unfortunately for her, they picked on a nurse who was going through a bitter divorce and was on a bunch of meds for depression, and who wasn't really that clinically strong anyhow. Janie got suspended from work, and then she overdosed. She didn't die, but I think sometimes she wished she had. Eventually, her ex got their kids and she moved away."

  "Were you two close?"

  "Not that close, but we considered one another friends. I couldn't stand to see what they had done
to her, and I was on duty when all this happened, so I decided to blow the whistle on the surgeon and those who covered up for him."

  "Uh-oh."

  "Uh-oh is right. They went after me the same way they went after her. It was a total mismatch. Evidence began to surface that suggested I had assisted Janie in diverting drugs and was just trying to defend my partner in crime. I began getting weird phone calls. A year before, I had broken off a three-year relationship with a man who decided that, despite what he and I had agreed upon all along, he didn't want kids. A new guy I had just started dating, who seemed very promising, without any real explanation suddenly wanted nothing to do with me. My record at work had been spotless, but out of the blue several groundless incident reports were filed against me by supervisors who had connections to the surgical group. It seemed as if the doctors were actually enjoying the challenge of systematically dismantling my life."

  Gabe studied her face. Even through the gloom, he could see the tension and hurt. They seemed real. Then he reminded himself that he had already bought her story once tonight. These people were good at manipulating the truth—very good. He turned back to the river. She was so attractive to him that it was hard to hang on to the notion that she might not be someone he could trust. At the same time, it was odd to think that while he was sitting there, listening to her this way, he was managing to avoid the issue of whether or not he should be instituting measures to remove the President of the United States from office.

  Tough night.

  "So what happened?" he asked.

  "Well, because in reality I had done nothing wrong, the conflict became sort of a Mexican standoff, even though I knew that sooner or later, the surgeons would increase their attack and I'd lose. Finally, in a secret meeting, the head of the hospital offered me a deal. If I left the hospital and stopped making trouble, he would see to it that I got an unconditionally strong recommendation. If I stayed, I was on my own."

  "And?"

  "And so I swallowed my whistle and gave up. It hurt then to make what seemed like a cowardly choice, and it hurts every day now knowing that I did. I guess I'm just not hero material."