"Someone close to the president is involved in this. I mean someone very close—closer to him than Lily. I have no reason to believe Drew has been having tea with her—certainly not enough to account for all the attacks he has had. According to Lily, the chemicals have to be delivered over time—multiple doses. That means somebody has been dosing Drew continuously with the drug-loaded fullerenes, and also has been causing them to break open and deliver their payload, probably on cue. Someone has to trigger the transmitter to do that."

Gabe couldn't bring himself to tell the man that there was every reason to believe that, like Ferendelli and the president, he was now a walking time bomb, too, at least to the extent that a couple of cups of Lily's tea could deliver.

"What people are you talking about? Who might be in a position to do this to Drew?" he asked.

"The list is an imposing one. The president's wife and children, the twenty-five or so people in the kitchen, the chief of staff and his office, the staff secretary and her office, the cabinet, the Military Office."

"That would be my pal Ellis Wright."

"Ah, yes, the admiral," Ferendelli said. "I hope your relationship with him is cheerier than mine."

"No chance," Gabe said. "He clearly can't abide anyone he can't control. This list of yours is getting quite long."

"Oh, I'm just getting started. There are thirty or so in the medical office, and think of the dozens of housekeepers and other servants—people who just come and go virtually unnoticed."

"And the Secret Service."

"I don't know any exact numbers for them, but probably a few hundred have direct access to the president at one time or another."

"And of all these people you just listed, it only takes one."

"It only takes one," Ferendelli echoed sadly. "And I think he or she has got to be pretty close for the transmitter to work."

"How do you know that?"

"A man has been after me—a professional hit man."

Gabe felt a chill.

"How do you know he's a professional?"

"He uses a silencer. A week or ten days ago, I stopped by my place in Georgetown for some papers. I hadn't been there for twenty minutes when I heard him opening the front door with a damn key. Probably one Lily had made. I managed to get out the basement and down to the Potomac, where I hid along the bank. Then, just a couple of days ago, he showed up at a hobo village where I was hiding while I figured out how to contact you. He killed one of the guys there. Shot him in the face just like that. Again I got out before he found me. Later, I went back. The guys told me he used a transmitter. I couldn't have been more than fifty or seventy-five yards away when he did, but nothing happened."