Gabe gripped the wheel until his knuckles were white, then remained parked on the rise for several minutes, composing himself and wondering how he could possibly get at the subject of Lily's connection with his predecessor without arousing her suspicion that he might know more than he was letting on. Finally, having failed to come up with any specific plan other than to improvise, he eased his foot off the brake and rolled slowly down the first of several gentle grades.
The driveway to the main house was more than a quarter of a mile long. As he approached the broad, finely landscaped turnaround, the dark blue Taurus that had been following him since he pulled out of the Watergate garage drove past the main drive and toward the rear entrance to the farm.
CHAPTER 35
Alison spent a sluggish morning in the White House clinic, wondering if it was metaphysically and psychologically possible to be absolutely obsessed with two men at the same time.
Her attraction to Gabe had been smoldering since the moment they first met. Now she had trouble focusing her thoughts on anything else-anything, that was, except for Treat Griswold or Don Greenfield, or whoever the Secret Service icon was today.
Actually, this was a Griswold day, or at least a Griswold morning. She had seen the man take the elevator up to the residence and return soon after with the president's widely beloved dog, a handsome, powerful pit bull terrier, following dutifully at his heel. The two of them had gone into the Rose Garden for a time and then returned. It all seemed so typically normal. But nothing involving that man would ever be normal again.
Restless and feeling scattered and distracted, Alison ran meaningless errands and made two trips to visit with friends in the clinic on the first floor of the Eisenhower Building next door. It was a blessing that, to this point in the morning at least, nothing medical had happened to the president or to any of the visitors to the White House. There was no predicting how she might have responded.
The physician on duty with her, a humorless Army major, who looked too young to be a doctor, let alone a White House doctor, kept his nose buried in journals most of the morning.
Her thoughts about Griswold inevitably included memories of L.A., her friend Janie, and the 4Cs surgeons. She was hardly prepared yet for the fallout that was sure to accompany any effort to expose the agent. And in fact, his perversion, assuming that was what Beatriz represented, might well have nothing to do with the president or the bronchodilator inhaler, in which case there was really nothing to expose. But then again, because of her refusal to accept what seemed like a fairly minor break in protocol, a path had opened. Now it would be foolish not to follow that path to the end.
As the morning had worn on, Alison had became more and more fixated on the consideration, however remote, that the inhaler Griswold was using might have more inside it than simply Alupent. At this point, the notion made little sense, but it had moved in and taken up residence in her mind. Rumors-the very rumors that had led her chief to send her into the White House undercover-had been whispering that Drew Stoddard was mentally unstable. True or not, it was her job, quietly but quickly, to investigate anything related to that possibility. If nothing else, she decided, in addition to fleshing out Donald Greenfield and his relationship to the women of Beechtree Road, she had to examine the contents of the inhaler Griswold carried in the inner breast pocket of his suit coat.
Piece of cake, she thought, grinning sardonically as she checked supplies and certified that the defibrillator was ready and waiting. If Treat Griswold wasn't the toughest and sharpest of the president's protectors, he was close. Short of coming on to him in a manner she was absolutely averse to, there was no way she was going to get near that inhaler, let alone switch it for a duplicate.
In his transformation from Treat Griswold to Donald Greenfield, he had either left his suit coat locked in Griswold's car in the Fredericksburg garage or placed it in the luggage compartment of Greenfield's Porsche. It seemed like somewhere in that transformation there might be a moment, but no approach was lighting up for her. She considered and discarded several other possibilities, each time coming back to the one scenario she had absolutely rejected, an all-out come-on, taken far enough to get Griswold's jacket off.
No way! she decided emphatically. As a Secret Service agent, she had vowed to sacrifice all for president and country. But allowing a beast like Treat Griswold to-
Her thoughts were interrupted abruptly by the germ of an idea. For several minutes, like an enophile with a new wine, she did nothing but explore the possibility from every aspect. Then she began to savor it. At that moment, the idea was still a remote possibility-nothing more. To make it work would require a number of pieces falling into place, followed by a hell of a lot of luck. But the best alternative she had been able to come up with to this point was unacceptable.
She approached the studious young physician in his office and asked to take the rest of the day off to deal with a nearly incapacitating migraine.
"Need anything for it?" he asked, barely glancing up from his New England Journal of Medicine.
"No, no. I have exactly what I need at home."
In truth, what she needed was right in her purse, her address book, and in her jacket pocket, her cell phone. Somewhere in that book was the initial step in converting a remote possibility into a plan-the phone number of Seth Owens of San Antonio. FBI agent Seth Owens.
CHAPTER 36
Well, Doctor," Lily said, "I can't begin to tell you what a pleasure this has been, getting to drink tea and break bread with the most talked about man in D.C."
"The most talked about man in D.C.? Now that's a little hard to believe."
"Well, it's true-not even a contest. In Washington it is all about proximity and access to the president. Nothing more, nothing less. Proximity and access. In lesser cases, it becomes proximity and access to the ones with proximity and access. You, sir, are not only the new man on campus, but you are handsome, unassuming, and have total access to the big guy. Now, if that doesn't get you talked about, I don't know what does."
She shrugged matter-of-factly and held her hands out as if to say, That's the way it is.
No, Gabe thought. The way it is, is that you have a relationship with Jim Ferendelli that you're willing to lie to protect.
The two of them sat across from one another on fine leather sofas in Lily's richly paneled den, sipping tea from ample Oriental mugs and sampling a variety of tiny pastries and wafers.
"Remember, we still have tuna steak and salad waiting," Lily said. "Save some room."
"No problem. I'm ready for lunch and I'm very ready to feel a saddle beneath my butt. I'm grateful to you for this day, Lily. I haven't felt this at ease since the president showed up at my place with the suggestion that I come out here."
"Why, Doctor, what a very kind and very gracious thing for you to say."
"Okay, no more 'Doctor,' unless you want me to start calling you that. I'm sure you know it, but a Ph.D. in just about any field is much harder to get than an M.D. anyway. If anyone deserves to be called Doctor, it's you guys."
"More tea… Gabe?"
"I guess one more cup. I don't usually love tea, except iced, and then only outside on the hottest days, but this is really delicious."
"It converted me from coffee. I discovered it on a trip to western China, and now I have it shipped in regularly. From what I've been told, it's a variety of Camellia sinensis that doesn't grow anywhere else in that country, and maybe in the world. The closest I've encountered to it is Keemun black tea, but they really aren't that similar."