Grateful that he had closed the medical office for the day and diverted all traffic except the president to the Eisenhower Building clinic, Gabe returned some routine phone calls, then leaned back in his chair and dozed off-one of the perks of having such a truncated practice. The ringing telephone intruded on a hazy scene in which he and Alison were riding across the desert together, bareback on what looked to be Condor. Her arms were locked around Gabe's waist and her cheek was pressed against his back. Blearily he checked his watch. Blackthorn had been with the president for four and a half hours.

"Dr. Singleton," he answered, the words reminding himself of that fact.

"Yes sir, Doctor. Agent Blaisdell here. I'm upstairs in the residence. Your man has finished with the president, sir. We're checking to see if the coast is clear; then we'll bring your man down."

"Everything all right?"

"As far as I know, sir. Agent Griswold signed out a few hours ago, and just asked us to contact you in the office when the president was done with his visitor."

"Well then, bring him down, but be very careful he isn't spotted by anyone."

Gabe hurried to the small bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. From the moment Magnus Lattimore had led him into the president's bedroom, from the moment he had seen his onetime roommate thrashing about, sweating profusely, and babbling incoherently, Gabe had felt isolated-alone with his sensibilities and his emotions; alone with what seemed right and what felt right; alone with the awesome pressure of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Now he would at least have an ally he could rely on in the struggle to sort things out-a friend with no hidden agenda and nothing at stake except getting to the right diagnosis.

Gabe had just toweled off when, without a knock, the outer door to the medical office opened and closed. Hat in hand, looking none the worse for his lengthy ordeal, Kyle Blackthorn stood alone in the center of the waiting room. He set his valise of testing supplies on the floor by his feet. It looked to Gabe as if Blackthorn were quietly invoking the senses available to him, hypertrophied from overuse like the muscles of a weight lifter, to get the lay of his situation. After just a few seconds he turned directly toward the small bathroom.

"So, Doctor," he said, "you were napping in my absence."

Gabe stepped into the waiting room.

"Actually, I… what I was doing was… okay, yes, actually, yes, I was. But how did…?"

"If you hadn't been napping you would have been out here to welcome me back, not in there toweling off your face."

"Well, at least you didn't begin your explanation with, 'Elementary, my dear Singleton.' "

"I thought about it. Ready to talk?"

"Almost five hours. That must have been quite a session."

"For an incredibly impatient, kinetic man, your friend Mr. Stoddard displayed remarkable restraint and a deep desire to get to the bottom of things."

"I'm not surprised."

"Your office the best place?"

Gabe flashed on Alison working undercover for the Secret Service. Was it possible she had somehow managed to bug the medical office? It seemed highly unlikely, but his trust in anything or anyone had been pulled perilously thin.

"You hungry?"

"I can always eat."

"And I could use some fresh air. Let's go have an early dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill. Magnus Lattimore, the chief of staff here, took me there. The food's excellent, and at its quietest the place is noisy enough so that the only person anyone can hear is the one sitting directly across the table or right beside them."

"I am aware that you are in a hurry to come to an understanding on this matter," Blackthorn said, "but I assume you know that my final conclusions will have to wait until I have gone over all the test results and my notes and correlated them."

"Notes?"

"I have written nothing down, but I have used an electronic, Braille typewriter."

"Just hold on to it tightly."

"The moment someone tries to get into my notes without using the right password, the machine erases its contents."

"So, you want to review your notes and correlate them with the test results. Makes sense. But you have formed some preliminary opinion?"

"I have."

"And you'll share that with me?"

"I will."

The two men left the White House through the East Wing and headed up Fifteenth Street through fading afternoon sun.

"So," Gabe said, "thanks again for doing this. I know how busy you are and how much you don't like leaving home-especially for government work."

"I've never been one to hold a grudge," Blackthorn said. "Whenever I'm troubled about the genocide of my people, I just think about all those big, shiny casinos and how reassuring it is to have organized crime on hand to help take care of us."

Gabe sympathetically patted him on the back. He had heard the man eloquently decry the subject of Indian genocide in any number of speeches and forums over the years.

"So," Gabe said, "over and above the testing, what did you think of my patient?"

"What do you want me to say, Gabe?"

"I don't know. I guess I want you to tell me that as a psychiatrist and a psychologist you found him to be a man of magnificent character, who has the potential for true greatness as a leader."

This time it was Blackthorn who patted Gabe on the back.

"My dear friend," he said, "to make that pronouncement, I would have to be with the person in question for a good deal longer than the few hours I spent with your Mr. Stoddard this afternoon. Besides, if nothing else, this is a time for objectivity."

"Objectivity," Gabe echoed as they entered the Old Ebbitt Grill.

The restaurant, refurbished from a mid-nineteenth-century saloon, still featured dark-stained wood, marble-topped bars set in brass, and a Beaux Arts facade. According to framed pictures and documents on the walls, the place had been a favorite of Presidents Grant, Cleveland, Harding, and Teddy Roosevelt. Gabe wondered how many times issues affecting the future of a presidency and the country had been discussed at its tables. Certainly, few would guess that the tall blind man and his wind-worn companion were about to become part of that particular history.

The Old Ebbitt was neither as crowded nor as noisy as it would probably be in another hour, but the young and beautiful movers and shakers of the capital, along with the young and beautiful mover-and-shaker wannabes, were already two to three deep along the length of the bar.

"I don't think we have a place quite like this back in Tyler," Gabe said as they were waiting to be shown to a booth.

Blackthorn inhaled deeply through his nose.

"Smells like success," he said.

He folded his cane, took a seat opposite Gabe, and asked only for water. Later, after they had talked about almost everyone of interest in Tyler and ordered fish, Gabe could wait no longer.

"So?"

"Let us not use names at all," Blackthorn suggested.

"Agreed."

"First of all, on the surface at least, the man really seemed to be trying. He certainly had important things to do, but he never made me feel as if I were an intrusion on his busy day. He was never curt or condescending, and as I said before, he sincerely seems to want to get to the bottom of what is going on.

"In addition to the actual testing, I took an extensive history from him, stressing what he remembered from each of the episodes, and also an exhaustive history from his wife, stressing exactly what she had witnessed. Allowing for the fact that the husband remembers little of the details, their descriptions of each of the events were similar, but there were differences in what they described from one event to the next."

"Explain."

"I really can't, Gabe. At least not until I put all the test results together, but these episodes aren't behaving with the consistency of, like, a seizure with a specific focus in the brain, or a tumor."