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.