It took most of two hours for Gabe and Stoddard to work out the details of the plan that would, in just over twenty-four hours, separate the President of the United States from a grave threat to his health and possibly to his life. In the process, he would also be separated from his wife and from the presidency itself. Vice President Tom Cooper, a major suspect in Gabe's eyes, would assume the duties of the office, though hopefully not for long.

Once Stoddard was ensconced in a place of absolute security and safety, Gabe would speak with the First Lady and tell her where her husband was. Gabe would also enlist her help in quickly mobilizing the force that would raid the nanotechnology laboratory adjacent to Lily Pad Stables—the lab indirectly responsible for the death of her physician and the transient episodes of insanity that had been threatening to destroy her husband.

With luck, the scientists in the lab, once they were isolated and interrogated by professionals, would cooperate. With luck, investigators would quickly determine who had hired them and who was paying them. With luck, whoever was poisoning Stoddard and controlling the transmitter would be arrested. And finally, with luck, those ultimately responsible would be brought down.

"Two days," Gabe said. "Hopefully less. With the whole world looking for you, we need you out of sight for two days. Can The Aerie accomplish that?"

"You may have read or heard about my grandfather, Bedard Joe Stoddard. He made a fortune in mining, patents of all kinds, and manufacturing by being uncompromising in his business practices and in his opposition to the unions. Some would and did say ruthless opposition. Like many geniuses, B.J. was more than a little eccentric. And also like many geniuses, there were detractors who felt he often crossed over that invisible line between eccentricity and madness."

"Most of my family simply skipped the eccentric step," Gabe said.

"Well, at some point B.J. decided he needed a refuge that was both isolated and secure. That's why he built The Aerie—modeled stone-by-stone after a medieval castle in northern England he once visited and photographed. He brought in trainloads of foreign laborers—mostly the Chinese who had worked on the railroads. He designed the maze of dirt roads leading into the forest himself. Most of them simply stopped, or became endless loops. The roads that eventually would make it up to The Aerie were and are a closely guarded secret."

"But they're marked on the map you gave me."

"I don't think there are more than a half a dozen copies of that map in existence, so take good care of it."

"If the press finds out that's where you were hiding, there'll be more gawkers making their way up there than to the Grand Canyon."