The First Patient

by Michael Palmer

  "Yes?"

  "Alison, it's Seth. Everything okay?"

  "Well, not exactly. It's, like a hundred degrees out here in front of the monument, every ounce of love I once had for schoolchildren has been ripped from my bosom by one stampeding horde after another, and your man Lester has failed to appear."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course I'm sure."

  "Very sure?"

  "Uh-oh."

  "I did mention that Lester had a flair for the dramatic, didn't I?"

  "I think you might have said something like that, yes."

  "So Alison, my flower, what did you call and ask me for?"

  "I asked you for the best pickpocket on the planet—the man you guys would send out to pluck a prime minister's speech out of his jacket before he got to deliver it."

  "That's exactly what you said. So, why don't you take a look inside your purse."

  "Inside my—"

  The moment she touched her shoulder bag, she knew something was wrong. She opened it up. Her wallet was gone. So were her notebook, her lipstick, at least four packs of Trident, and a mini-size copy of A Walker's Guide to Washington. In fact, the purse was empty, completely empty. Well, not exactly. Lester—she had to assume it was he—had replaced the weight of what he had taken from her with plastic packs of Tic Tacs, at least a dozen of them.

  "Your right earring?"

  "Gone," she said, realizing even before she felt for it that it was.

  "Like you, Lester is very good at what he does."

  "I guess. Okay, Owen. I'm a believer. Where is he?"

  "See the group of kids at the far end of the stairs?"

  "Yes."

  "See the guy entertaining them?"

  "The one juggling?"

  "Lester."

  "He just waved to me without dropping a ball. I owe you big-time, Owens. When I get back to San Antonio, dinner at Paloma Blanca's on me."

  "I thought you didn't want to come back," Seth said.

  "If I screw this up, I may be shipped back to wash the urinals. Gotta go. Lester just waved to me again, this time with an Indian club while he was juggling two more with his other hand. I think he and I will be able to do business, provided he doesn't get busted by the park ranger heading toward him. Thanks, pal."

  CHAPTER 38

  The laconic stable man, William, tall, gaunt, and in his seventies, handled the news of the gunman and Lily's injury with anxious composure. He called 911 and ordered the police and ambulance to Lily Pad Stables, while Gabe loaded up with water, bandages, anything that would pass for a splint, and blankets.

  "Is there any easy way a man with a rifle could have gotten as far into the forest as he did?" Gabe asked, swinging back onto Serious Therapy.

  "They's a number a ways, actually. These hills're crisscrossed by old logging roads and old mining roads and even old military roads from the war—the Civil War, that is. The bastard couldda taken the one right at the base of that hill over yonder. Ends up at an abandoned coal mine 'bout six miles in. Runs right alongside the Yellow Brick Road—that's this trail here that you was on—for three, four mile before cuttin' away."

  "Send the rescue people right out," Gabe said, urging his horse to a full gallop with just a tap of his heels.

  Lily was essentially as he had left her, eyes closed, moaning in pain, and looking as if her blood pressure was still quite low. For more than half an hour Gabe ministered to her, replacing the splints protecting her shoulder and neck, keeping her warm and as hydrated as she would allow, and whispering steady encouragement. Her injury was severe—probably a fracture dislocation with significant hemorrhaging—and as likely as not she would be in the operating room before the night was out.

  Having done everything he could think of, Gabe knelt beside her and peered into the woods toward the spot where the shooter had stood. It would be worth taking the police there against the remote chance the man had left anything behind. The more Gabe thought about the episode, the more convinced he became that the gunman who had nearly killed him on the street near the White House and this assailant were the same or at least were working for the same people. It was nearly impossible to believe otherwise.

  But why target him? Trying to come up with an explanation that fit the facts was a shortcut to a migraine.

  "Hang on, Lily," he said. "Help should be here in just a few minutes."

  "Can I make it to a hospital in D.C.?" she asked, her voice weak and raspy.

  "In the shape you're in, I wouldn't chance it. You've probably lost a significant amount of blood into your arm and back into your chest. At some point you're almost certainly going to need anesthesia and a procedure to fix your shoulder. Maybe after you're stabilized, you can arrange to be transported to a university medical center for that."

  "Thanks, Doctor."

  Her eyes closed and again she drifted off, breathing sonorously. Moments later Gabe heard an approaching siren, and within a minute two cruisers came jouncing up the deeply rutted Yellow Brick Road, followed by an ambulance.

  The paramedics, as was the case almost everywhere Gabe had ever watched their brothers and sisters work in the field, were confident, efficient, and damn good. The two of them, a young man and an older woman, were kind enough to compliment Gabe on his makeshift first aid as they immobilized Lily's neck, started an IV, put some oxygen in place, did a quick, competent check for other injuries, and expertly immobilized her shoulder. Gabe reminded himself of what he already knew well. If he was ever injured outside of a medical center, he would take a paramedic's care over that of any but the most exceptional trauma physician.

  On the way in, the team had noted a place to turn around, and after loading Lily in the back of the ambulance and again praising Gabe's thoughtful work, they backed up toward the spot, with one of the Flint Hill cruisers following.

  Not surprisingly, there was nothing in the woods or on the road beyond to suggest the identity of the shooter, although there may have been a few cracked branches in the area where Gabe thought the man had been standing. Gabe felt obligated to disclose to the policemen the nature of his connection to the president but chose to say nothing to them about the previous attempt on his life. He would contact Alison as soon as he got back to D.C. Then, unless she had strong objections, he would speak with Magnus Lattimore and probably with the president himself. With two attempts on Gabe's life in less than a week, it seemed like time for him to get some Secret Service protection of his own.

  First, though, he had some business to attend to—a search of Lily Sexton's home. She had left the house open. If her housekeeper was gone, as it seemed she would be, he would have some time to search for any information regarding Jim Ferendelli and then head for the hospital to check on Lily.

  Gabe led Lily's horse back to where the stable man was waiting. Then, after muttering something about picking his briefcase up from the den, he returned to the house and let himself in.

  He began at the master suite, a massive carpeted bedroom and elegant bath located at the rear of the house. There was a small desk but no papers of interest on top of it or in the drawers. The closets, however, were more interesting. There were two of them, one a walk-in, the other much smaller. The walk-in was filled with the gowns and casual clothes of a woman who took pains to dress well. The smaller closet was taken up with clothing belonging to a man—a man who dressed as tastefully as did the mistress of the manor. Business suits, several tuxedoes, worn work clothes, riding attire, and casual shirts and slacks. Thirty-three waist, thirty-two leg, sixteen-thirty-three shirts. The man, Gabe estimated, was about five eleven, one hundred and seventy pounds, and in shape. Gabe had no idea if these were Jim Ferendelli's clothes, but he wouldn't be the least surprised later on to find that they were.

  What amounted to the back staircase led down to three guest bedrooms, each comfortably apportioned with its own bath. With his enthusiasm for finding anything else of significance waning rapidly, Gabe did a walk-through of the guest rooms, pu
lling out a drawer here and there and checking the closets, all of which were empty but ready for guests, with extra blankets and towels.

  He was about to head upstairs to retrieve his briefcase when he stopped in the center of the guest room farthest from the back staircase and directly under the den. Behind the antique oak bureau and tall mirror was a door in the wall, visible from either side of the bureau but only at an acute angle. Gingerly Gabe slid the bureau aside. A typed half page was sealed in plastic and tacked to the door, which rose no more than five feet from the floor.

  LILY PAD FARM AND THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

  The construction of the central house of Lily Pad Stables took place between 1835 and 1837. Sheep rancher Thaddeus Boxley and his sons were the first owners. It is unclear whether the family died out or moved away. By the mid-1840s, the farm became the property of Abolitionist James Sugarman. It also became an important cog in the Underground Railroad—a series of way stations for slaves trying to make their way from bondage to freedom in the cities of the North and in Canada. The small room behind this door often held as many as ten men, women, and children for as long as a day. Feel free to look inside, but please touch nothing.

  The low, narrow door, constructed of three skillfully conjoined planks, slid into the wall on a pair of tracks. Gabe wondered if the bureau had been there from the beginning. It made sense, especially given that there was barely room for the furniture in any other arrangement. The concealment of the door wouldn't survive anything more than a cursory exam, but he could imagine situations where it might have been overlooked.

  Gabe opened the drapes to let in more light and switched on the bedside lamp. Then, with extreme care, he hooked two fingers into a north–south groove that had been carved into the right-hand margin of the door and pulled. The door slid across into the wall with surprising ease, revealing a dark, somewhat dusty space, about eight feet square, with a packed red clay floor. There were three rough-hewn benches against the walls, an old straw broom, a wooden water bucket and ladle, and a second, larger bucket with a cover, which Gabe surmised was to aid in the disposal of bodily waste.

  There was no source of light, but if someone stood back from the doorway, enough flowed in from the guest room to illuminate most of the space. Three of the four walls were constructed of the same packed red clay as the floor. The fourth, to Gabe's left, was some sort of rough-hewn wood panel. That was all there was to it—a way station for slaves, virtually unchanged for over 160 years.

  Frustrated, Gabe turned to leave, then turned back to be certain he hadn't left any telltale footprints. The heels of his boots had, in fact, made several gouges in the earthen floor. The rest of the floor had been brushed smooth, possibly with the old broom.

  Careful not to track clay back into the small guest room, he pulled his boots off and set them aside. Then he got down on his knees and was smoothing out the defects when he noticed small bits of loose clay around the bases of the legs of the bench leaning against the paneled wall. It appeared as if the bench had been dragged forward and then pushed back again.

  He crawled cautiously to the bench and pulled it toward him. It was fixed to the wall, with just enough space at one end to admit his fingers. A stronger pull and an invisible low doorway opened on almost invisible hinges, revealing a tunnel, similar to the room itself, supported every ten yards or so by upright railroad ties and a crossbeam. The tunnel was quite dark but was faintly lit from somewhere in the distance. Electing not to put on his boots, Gabe crossed the small chamber with one step and entered the tunnel with the next.

  In total silence, his senses keyed up, he moved through the deep gloom toward the faint glow in the distance. He had traveled perhaps a hundred yards when he began to hear the thrum of machinery. The faint light, he now realized, was coming from beneath a heavy drape of some kind. Cautiously, he eased the drape aside a few inches. Just beyond it, a brushed-steel door, with glass in the upper half, separated him from a gleaming, tiled, brightly lit corridor. Along the corridor on the right-hand side were five doors identical to the one before him. Each was identified by a letter and number painted just above the glass. In addition, there were name plaques in brass just below several of the panes.

  Gabe inhaled, held his breath, opened the door, and slipped inside. The steady, mechanical humming was coming from the far end of the corridor. Otherwise, there was neither sound nor movement. He angled himself to be able to see through the glass of the first door, labeled B-10. Below the glass, a bronze plate read: DR. K. RAWDON.

  The room, gleaming beneath white fluorescent lights, was clearly a lab of some sort, devoid, at the moment, of people. There were several computer terminals set alongside a complex apparatus that was a tangled arrangement of thick and thin highly polished metal tubes, connected by numerous rivets and bolts and constructed around a series of lenses and eyepieces. The effect was as if he were looking at the inner workings of a nuclear submarine.

  But Gabe knew better.

  His study of the materials borrowed from Jim Ferendelli's library had disclosed a number of images of equipment nearly identical to the apparatus in Room B-10. The instrument was, he felt certain, a scanning tunneling microscope, capable of mapping the surface of materials atom by atom. It was this instrument, more than any other, that was elemental in the design and construction of nano-scale systems. It had become, in essence, the basis of the entire field of nanotechnology.

  CHAPTER 39

  Lester, how're you doing?"

  Grateful for her hands-off headset, Alison worked the wrapper off a stick of Trident and slipped it into her mouth to join the two sticks already there. From the moment she spotted Treat Griswold heading for his car, she knew this was going to be a three-stick operation. Three at least.

  "I'm just passing Dale City," Lester said. "Is he out yet?"

  "He's out. Just getting into his car. Lester, listen, are you sure you want to go through with this?"

  She already knew the answer. Everything about the man said that the greater the challenge, the more he welcomed it. He was slightly built, with bright dark eyes that suggested he was up to something even when he was just sitting still. After connecting with him by the Lincoln Memorial, Alison had treated him to some coffee from a kiosk and found a bench where they could talk. The deal to move ahead was consummated after just a few minutes.

  Lester had told her not to worry about his last name, only the three-hundred-dollar fee they had agreed upon—this after she had offered him five hundred. He was a busker, he said—a street performer with simple tastes. Nothing more, nothing less. Alison strongly sensed there was much more to the man, but he admitted only to being an entertainer, who did contract work from time to time for the FBI to keep his juices flowing.

  "Why would I not want to go through with it?" he said now.

  Alison waited until two cars had inserted themselves between her and Griswold's Jeep, and then eased into the flow.

  "Lester, this is not any normal man. He's built like a small ox, he's trained to kill, and he's armed. I know you're the one who's putting himself in harm's way, but I'm getting cold feet."

  "In that case," Lester said, "let's make it three twenty-five."

  "Okay, okay, three twenty-five it is. Well, traffic's not bad. We're almost out of the city. As soon as our man passes the exit to his place up here, we'll know he's headed to Fredericksburg. You dressed appropriately?"

  "Just like you wanted. Plus a little Jack Daniel's cologne to heighten the effect. I know a good idea when I hear one. This is going to work, Alison. Piece of cake."

  "Lester, who are you?"

  She could almost see him grinning.

  "Like I told you in the park, just someone who needs a little danger and excitement in his life every now and then, and who owes your friend Seth a favor—make that a couple of favors. He said you were the real deal and wouldn't be setting this up if it weren't important. That's all I have to know."

  "Your call."

  "No
w we're talking."

  "In that case, I would think Seth's glowing recommendation would qualify me to learn how you did that thing with the Tic Tacs."

  "A Congressional Medal of Honor wouldn't qualify you for that one. How's it going with our man?"

  "We're coming to the exit he'd be taking to his house up here . . . and . . . and . . . he's driven past it. We're on, my friend."

  "Okay. I have the Fredericksburg street map spread out right here. I'm going to find a safe place to leave this jalopy of mine not too far from the garage. Then I'll walk over there and practice looking like I'm picking the lock until he gets there."

  "The right-hand door. He's not as likely to take you apart for trying to open that one rather than the one with the Porsche behind it. Just don't get busted by any of the local police. I'll call and let you know when he's getting off of Ninety-five."

  "Good enough. But then I'm going to leave my cell phone under the seat. You just relax and have a Tic Tac."

  Despite the gum. Alison's mouth seemed dry as she followed the Jeep from three car-lengths behind. Traffic was perfect—not too dense, not too light. As they approached the Dumfries exit, Griswold suddenly broke with the pattern Alison had anticipated he would be following. At the last possible moment, he whipped the Jeep to the right and down the exit ramp. She could almost see him scanning the rearview mirror for any sudden movement from any of the cars behind him. If she duplicated his move, she would be giving herself away. Helpless, she tapped the brake once and continued down the highway as she dialed Lester's number to warn him something was wrong and they should consider backing off and trying another time.

  There was no answer.