"Okay, Gabe," she said finally. "I'll do the compounding myself and see to it that the mixture is at your D.C. address by noon. It will be a blend of ketamine, Nembutal, and maybe some fentanyl, although I'm not sure yet how much of each. I'll have to make my best guess as to when each drug will do what it does, and how they will work together. There's a couple of rescued animals here I might be able to try various combinations on. They could use some rest."

"I owe you, Doc," Gabe said, "and I think the country owes you as well."

He gave her the address of the Watergate, slipped the cell phone into the jeans Stoddard had lent him, and turned his attention back to Big Al, feeling not that pleased about what he had just coerced a very wonderful doctor into doing.

"Listen, B.A.," he said, "I'm going to run home and pick up my old plate. Then I'll be back. I'm glad I didn't throw it out."

"Me, too," Big Al called out as Gabe was leaving the lot.

When he reached the street, Gabe glanced about casually. Then he began the evasive action he had started the moment he left the White House. The lesson learned in Anacostia was an indescribably painful one, but it was a lesson nevertheless.

Except for what he had seen in the movies and read in some thrillers, he was a rank amateur in the cloak-and-dagger business. But he was logical and, in most circumstances, he wasn't dumb. Down uncrowded sidewalks; through stores and restaurants with back exits; into one cab, then another. With each move he fought against complacency and against allowing the pressure of time to make him careless. As things stood, with what he knew he might be as much a target as Drew.

Now, leaving Big Al's, he moved thoughtfully, ducking into a doorway from time to time and flagging down a cab for a zigzag five-minute ride to no place in particular. After a two-block walk, he stopped in a hardware store, emerging from the alley entrance with both slotted and Phillips head screwdrivers. Parked against one of the walls in the alley, looking as if it might not have been driven for a while, was an old Chevrolet—hardly a perfect match for the car he was about to buy, but a match of sorts nonetheless. He ducked behind the junker and in just a minute emerged with its plate.

If nothing else, he had just made Big Al's day.

Finally, after returning to the lot, screwing the plate on the Impala, paying Al off, and freeing the balloon, it was time to use some more of the president's hard-earned cash to brighten up someone else's day—this time, it would be Lily Sexton's stable man, William.

CHAPTER 54