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."