"This is Piper," Magnus Lattimore's detached voice said. "Has anyone seen the doc?"

"This is Dr. Singleton. . . . I copy direct."

"Doc, it's Magnus. You still in the office?"

How did you know where I was?

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"I'll be by to escort you to dinner in ten minutes."

"Roger."

"And Doc?"

"Yes?"

"Whatever the admiral had to say, pay no attention. He's just spraying to mark off his territory."

"Just spraying. Roger that."

"Your first state dinner," Alison said as Gabe set the radio down. "How exciting."

"I'll tell you what—you go to the dinner and I'll man the fort here. I'm a wrangler, not a mingler—especially not sober."

"Who's the dinner for?"

"Um . . . depending on who you ask, that would be either the President of Botswana or, to a lesser extent, me."

"The guest of honor!"

"More like an auxiliary guest of honor. People are jittery over Dr. Ferendelli's disappearance, so President Stoddard wanted everyone to get a look at the man who was taking his place, and to know he was in reliable medical hands."

"Makes sense. Well, in that case, I think some sort of tie is called for to go along with the rest of that tux—perhaps the one I noticed casually resting in the bathroom sink."

"It's being punished—a time-out for insubordination."

"Nothing worse than a surly, disrespectful bow tie. I've dealt with its kind before."

"Well, make this one behave and you get a year's supply of tongue depressors."

"Plus a rubber glove blown up and decorated like a rooster?"

"You drive a hard bargain."

"You got that right."

Alison retrieved the tie and took less than a minute up on her tiptoes, inches away from him, to knot it. Wishing it had taken longer, Gabe breathed in what might have been her shampoo or a microdot of subtle perfume. He decided as she stepped back to appraise her handiwork that he would try for a Guinness record for breath holding before he had to exhale.

"There you are, Doc," she said. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

"Congratulations, Nurse. You have been of great service to the United States of America."

"I want my rooster smiling and autographed," she replied.

CHAPTER 5

Direct sunlight never found its way into the three-hundred-foot-long underpass beneath Levalee Street. The tunnel, just a few miles from the seats of justice and government of the most powerful nation on Earth, was a living, teeming monument to the have-nots in this richest of societies. In fact, in many ways the rules of this microcosm were as complex and constricting as those of the civilization that surrounded it. And chief among those rules was never to deal with outsiders.