The First Patient

by Michael Palmer

  "What's her range?" Gabe asked next, reconnecting with some of his Naval Academy roots.

  Stoddard, wearing a dress shirt, no tie, charcoal slacks, and a navy blue blazer, looked pleased.

  "Transatlantic. Maybe even to the end of the Mediterranean traveling fourteen or fifteen knots. Not the swiftest lady on the seas, but certainly one of the sleekest and most relaxing. I won't mind an extra half a day crossing the Atlantic. Maybe someday you'd like to join me on the trip."

  "First things first. Let's get your son reelected."

  "Well put."

  Gabe marveled at the utter comfort and relative lack of pretension with which the president's father enjoyed and presented his wealth. Of course, Gabe reminded himself, when you had everything, and billions in the bank in case you discovered something you didn't, it had to be fairly easy to act as if it were all no big deal. Still, he also reminded himself as they settled in across from one another at a glass-topped table on the lower deck, this was a man who had founded and supported a number of charities devoted primarily to cancer research and reducing infant mortality. And he was also the man who had supplied Gabe with emotional and financial support, and an attorney, at a time when his own father had all but turned his back. Whoever had looked at wealth without class or style and had coined the term nouveau riche clearly did not have LeMar Stoddard in mind.

  The table was set with crystal and fine china. There was a small silver pillbox to the left of LeMar's place. He noticed Gabe glancing at it and answered the unasked question by dropping three tablets onto his tongue and washing them down with a long draft of lemon water.

  "See what you have to look forward to? Two blood pressure pills and one to stop my stomach from making acid. And that's just the noon box. My doctor's going to get my blood pressure down to a hundred and twenty or kill me in the process."

  "Sounds like you have a good doc. I shoot for numbers like that in my patients, too. And they complain just as much. Is your pressure responding?"

  "Don't ask." Stoddard ended the exchange by motioning to the young white-coated waiter that they were ready to be served. "I hope you like salmon."

  "We don't get a lot of good seafood in Wyoming," Gabe replied. "The aroma clashes with that of the cattle being driven down the center of Main Street."

  Stoddard grinned.

  "It's good to see you after so long, Gabe," he said. "I always liked your sense of humor."

  "Laughing at oneself is said to be an advanced form of wit, and it's especially easy when the one happens to be me."

  "Stow that talk. I was there, remember? You have certainly overcome the tragedy and the odds and made something of yourself."

  "Thank you, sir. Rumor has it that your son is well on his way to making something of himself, too."

  Stoddard's face crinkled in an arresting way when he smiled, but Gabe also noticed that the tycoon's remarkably intelligent eyes remained leveled at him, as if taking in every nuance of his expressions.

  Stay sharp, he cautioned himself. In all likelihood, this was not a man who relished immersion in idle chitchat—at least not for very long. Gabe guessed that, when it came to lunch with Stoddard, whether at his club or his suite at the Watergate or his lodge or here aboard Aphrodite, the courses on the menu were seldom served without an agenda.

  "So," Stoddard said as Waldorf salads were placed before them, "I understand that you were a special guest at the dinner honoring the President of Botswana last night."

  Gabe wondered briefly how often the president's father was invited to such affairs. He guessed that despite being the most powerful leader in the world, Drew was and always would be intimidated by the man. It seemed quite possible that omitting him from guest lists was one way of dealing with that dynamic. Gabe also decided that if Stoddard knew about the black-tie affair, he also knew that both his son and his son's physician were conspicuous by their absences.

  Even for a man with considerably less acumen than his host, the implications of such a concurrence would be obvious. Gabe gripped the sides of his chair as if it were a flotation device. Five minutes into lunch, with Aphrodite tied fast to the pier, and they were already on choppy seas.

  "I . . . um . . . at the last minute I wasn't able to attend," he tried.

  "But you were there for a while."

  The assault on what had transpired in the White House was close at hand. Gabe knew it was time for a preemptive strike.

  "Sir—"

  "LeMar."

  "LeMar, you know that I would never violate the trust any of my patients place in me. My belief in patient/physician confidentiality is second only to my belief in my horse."

  "I'm worried about my son. That's all."

  "I understand."

  "Gabe, even though Drew has had asthma for a number of years and has mentioned migraine headaches to me in the past, I couldn't help feeling that there was more to the story than what the public was being fed. I didn't accumulate all of this"—he gestured to Aphrodite—"without a built-in bullshit detector, and when I saw a tape of that press conference last night, every light on my detector panel lit up."

  "I don't know what to say," Gabe replied, unwilling to lend even the slightest credence to Stoddard's belief that there was something medically wrong with his son beyond what the public was being told. "There's nothing I can or would tell you other than what you already know."

  To Gabe's utter surprise, the billionaire forged ahead.

  "Gabe, is there something the matter with Drew?" he asked. "I mean seriously the matter."

  Gabe hesitated, then pushed back from the table.

  "LeMar, don't force me to leave," he said. "And please, don't play the card of all that you did for me way back when. I've already told you, many times, how grateful I am for that."

  "Easy, easy," Stoddard said, hands raised. "I'm a very worried parent. That's all. My son starts getting migraine headaches he never had before; then all of a sudden his personal physician vanishes, along with the man's daughter. Do you blame me for being concerned?"

  "No, sir—LeMar. I don't blame you a bit." He chose his next words carefully. "If Drew ever tells me there's something about his health he wants me to share with you, I'll contact you in a heartbeat. But until that happens, you'll just have to get used to some frustration."

  Stoddard sighed and motioned to the waiter that he had no further interest in his salmon. Anxious for the inquisition to end, Gabe did the same. For the next ten minutes, through coffee and a chocolate soufflé that Gabe suspected was close to perfect, the conversation lightened considerably—an amusing tale out of school about the president's childhood, some questions about Gabe's medical practice and Lariat, and an anecdote about Magnus Lattimore containing a veiled suggestion of the man's sexual preference for men, a possibility that Gabe had wondered about in passing but didn't particularly care about one way or the other.

  "So," Stoddard said, with no more transition than that, "have you had much contact with Thomas Cooper the Third?"

  "Very little, actually."

  "He insists on using 'the Third' whenever possible—doesn't want to be just another Tom Cooper. You don't have a physician/patient relationship with him, do you?"

  "Not unless he comes to see me for medical help, and so far that hasn't happened. He has his own doctor—a Navy man."

  Gabe felt uncomfortable speaking about anyone else to Stoddard, but it was quite clear that the president's father, like most of those people he had met since arriving in D.C., traded in gossip, speculation, and information the way folks in Tyler traded in horses. It wasn't necessarily anything sinister or immoral; it was just the nature of the Washington beast. Gossip, speculation, and information—the coin of the realm.

  Gabe knew that even the most casual, offhand remark, such as the one he had just made about Tom Cooper not having come to him as a patient, could have useful implications to the right person. Once again, Gabe cautioned himself to be careful. He was no better equipped to be playing in thi
s game than he would have been in Olympic ice dancing. He flexed his neck and became aware of the all too familiar discomfort of tightly knotted muscles.

  "I know you're being very careful with what you share with me," Stoddard was saying, "possibly with anyone. But I want you to know that if you hear or encounter anything about the vice president, anything at all, you will be doing a great service to your friend and my son by reporting it to me."

  "I don't understand," Gabe replied. "I thought the vice president and Drew were linked emotionally and politically."

  "Nonsense," Stoddard shot. "Simply put, and contrary to the pap his PR men have fed to the public, Thomas Cooper the Third is no friend of Drew's. He would like nothing more than to set his butt down behind that desk in the Oval Office, and it kills him every day that he's going to have to wait another four years to get there, if in fact he gets there at all."

  Gabe was shocked at the virulence of Stoddard's attack.

  "Well, nothing I've heard supports that view," was the best he could manage.

  "During the primaries four years ago, Cooper started every manner of rumor about Drew. When confronted, of course, he denied everything, and my son actually believed him. But I know better. I warned Drew against choosing him for a running mate, but he wouldn't listen. Tom Cooper is a Brutus, and as things stand, he's just waiting until after the election to begin to assert himself and to take credit for Drew's achievements."

  Gabe shook his head in dismay. One of the many things credited to the president was adding a public importance and credibility to the office of second in command that hadn't existed in prior administrations. The explanation in the press, of course, was that Drew was grooming Cooper for eight more years of Democratic control of the office. Was there something behind LeMar's vitriolic attack on the man? Gabe wondered now. Did LeMar have suspicion or information that something might be wrong—that his son's presidency might be in trouble? Was that what was behind the invitation to lunch? Did he know more than he was letting on about Drew's illness?

  "Well," Gabe said, "I'll be certain to keep my eyes and ears open."

  Without warning, the billionaire's countenance softened dramatically. He reached across the elegant table and took Gabe's hand in both of his, suddenly looking vulnerable and very much like a man in his seventies.

  "Gabe, please," he said, his earnestness unquestionable. "Please don't let anything happen to my boy."

  CHAPTER 16

  Gabe, please. Please don't let anything happen to my boy."

  With LeMar Stoddard's oddly compelling display of vulnerability still reverberating in his mind, Gabe entered the White House through the West Wing checkpoint and headed directly to the clinic. The president and First Lady had promised him they would spend the day at home, leaving the residence only for a luncheon meeting with his campaign advisors in the small White House dining room, and after that a carefully orchestrated press conference in the press-briefing room, which Gabe was to attend.

  By and large, the polls were holding between an eight- and eleven-point lead for Drew and Tom Cooper over Bradford Dunleavy and Charlie Christman, a four-term representative from Texas, whose politics were clearly and purposefully further to the right than those of Dunleavy, a self-proclaimed moderate conservative.

  Eight to eleven points—certainly not a landslide, but an encouraging margin at this stage of the campaign. Still, Lattimore had reminded Gabe just a few hours ago, even an eleven-point lead was unlikely to survive any credible evidence that the chief executive was undergoing diagnostic evaluation or, even more damaging, treatment for mental illness of any sort. Rumors of treatment for depression had been enough to start the Dukakis campaign spinning out of orbit. There had been other errors by the Democratic strategists in that election, Lattimore admitted, but a Dukakis twelve-point lead after the convention had turned into a ten-point deficit with jackrabbit quickness.

  Of passing interest to Gabe was a poll reported in that morning's Post that he had read during the car ride from Aphrodite to the White House. In it, Thomas Cooper III held a fourteen-point lead over Charlie Christ-man if the two of them were running against one another for the top spot. Experience and public trust were the two main issues to those voters who were polled. Nowhere did the poll pit the vice president against Bradford Dunleavy, but the analyst of the survey did opine that Cooper might win that race as well.

  "Tom Cooper is a Brutus."

  The small waiting area in the physician's office was empty save for Heather Estee, the young, ultra-efficient office manager cum receptionist. By her account, over the three-plus years she and Jim Ferendelli had worked together they had become quite close, and she was devastated not only by his disappearance but by his daughter's as well.

  "Jennifer and I had lunch together several times," Heather had told Gabe, "and once we even went clothes shopping. She's a brilliant, talented, wonderful person. I can't believe she's missing. I pray every day that she's all right."

  As Gabe entered the modest space, Heather, on the phone, glanced up from the notes she was taking, smiled, and waved. Gabe motioned to the partially opened door to the physicians' office, and she waved him to knock, that the covering doc was in.

  Gabe had just done so when she said, "Gretchen, just a second, please. Dr. Singleton, this was on my desk when I came back from running some errands a little while ago."

  She handed him a plain white business envelope with DR. GABRIEL SINGLETON typed on the front but no address. At that moment, the inner office door was pulled open. He slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket as he was greeted with a noncommittal smile, curt nod, and brief handshake by the doc on duty this day, a Navy captain named Nick McCall.

  The greeting wasn't the least bit disconcerting to Gabe. There was still a coolness and formality toward him on the part of most of the other physicians assigned to the White House Medical Unit—no surprise, especially with Admiral Ellis Wright running the show from his position as chief of the White House Military Office and boss of everyone on the unit staff . . . except for the president's personal, civilian physician.

  "Any word from the POTUS?" Gabe asked, closing the office door gently behind him.

  "Not since you were here earlier. Not a word. He's been in a meeting in the dining room for about an hour. Magnus just called and said he'd be up here to get you in a few minutes."

  "Fine."

  "Gabe, I'm really sorry we haven't had much chance to talk. I've been scrambling to catch up with everything I let drop after Jim Ferendelli vanished."

  "Any theories about that?"

  McCall shook his head.

  "It makes no sense. Jim seemed like a pretty low-key guy, totally devoted to the president and to doing a good job. There are still a slew of FBI and Secret Service people beating the bushes for him, and rumors are still flying."

  "Well, there's nothing I'd like better than to see him walk through that door right now."

  "How's it been going for you so far?"

  "I went from seeing like thirty patients a day in my practice back in Wyoming to seeing one here, and I'm totally exhausted. What do you make of that?"

  "The strain of having your one patient be the most powerful man on Earth will tend to do that to you. Don't worry, you'll be seeing more cases as time goes by. An hour or so ago I had a maintenance man with chest pain and hyperacute changes of an MI on his EKG. That was sort of exciting. We just finished cleaning up."

  "You have everything you needed?"

  "Pretty much, except maybe a couple of more hands and a dozen or so more square feet of treatment room space, but we did okay. IV, nitrates, oxygen, morphine, aspirin, bloods drawn. He was pretty stable by the time the ambulance arrived."

  Bloods!

  Shortly after drawing the three vials of blood from the president, Gabe had brought them down to the office, labeled them with the reverse of his home phone in Tyler, placed them in a sealed specimen bag, and set them on the back of a shelf in the under-counter refrigerato
r until he could decide what tests to order and where the samples should be sent. It wasn't done according to a legal, chain-of-custody protocol, but he wasn't handling evidence, and the fewer things Drew Stoddard's name was physically attached to, the better. Fatigue, the hour, the lack of a specific plan, and subsequent events had temporarily driven thoughts of the samples from Gabe's mind.

  "Sounds like you did great," he said, wondering if there was anything wrong with sharing the fact that he had drawn the vials. The memory of LeMar Stoddard pumping him for information and the vision of Ellis Wright staring him down and calling his medical ability to question gave him enough pause to hold back. Lattimore would probably be able to answer his questions about where the blood chemistry studies should be run.

  For effect, he cleared his throat twice and then asked if McCall wanted to grab a glass and split the Diet Coke he had sequestered in the fridge. There would be none there to split, but he had plenty of fallback explanations for that, centering about his absentmindedness. The captain begged off, and Gabe entered the treatment room prepared to continue the charade.

  The refrigerator was empty.

  No Diet Coke. No tubes of blood.

  Nothing.

  Gabe mentally retraced his steps from the eventful evening. Somewhere around two, he had taken the elevator down to the clinic, labeled the tubes, and placed them on the rack in the back of the refrigerator. Then he and Treat Griswold had left the White House.

  Gabe was certain of it.

  "Nick, has anyone been in the fridge that you know of? My Diet Coke is gone."

  "I can only tell you since seven thirty this morning when I got here. I haven't even left for lunch. Heather had a wrap sent up for me. There was a lot of chaos when the MI was here, and about as many people as that room will hold, so someone might have come across it and maybe helped themselves."

  Damn! Okay, Singleton. A Diet Coke is one thing. The blood samples you drew are another. Come up with some scenario to explain how they might have gone MIA.