"Laughing at oneself is said to be an advanced form of wit, and it's especially easy when the one happens to be me."

"Stow that talk. I was there, remember? You have certainly overcome the tragedy and the odds and made something of yourself."

"Thank you, sir. Rumor has it that your son is well on his way to making something of himself, too."

Stoddard's face crinkled in an arresting way when he smiled, but Gabe also noticed that the tycoon's remarkably intelligent eyes remained leveled at him, as if taking in every nuance of his expressions.

Stay sharp, he cautioned himself. In all likelihood, this was not a man who relished immersion in idle chitchat—at least not for very long. Gabe guessed that, when it came to lunch with Stoddard, whether at his club or his suite at the Watergate or his lodge or here aboard Aphrodite, the courses on the menu were seldom served without an agenda.

"So," Stoddard said as Waldorf salads were placed before them, "I understand that you were a special guest at the dinner honoring the President of Botswana last night."

Gabe wondered briefly how often the president's father was invited to such affairs. He guessed that despite being the most powerful leader in the world, Drew was and always would be intimidated by the man. It seemed quite possible that omitting him from guest lists was one way of dealing with that dynamic. Gabe also decided that if Stoddard knew about the black-tie affair, he also knew that both his son and his son's physician were conspicuous by their absences.

Even for a man with considerably less acumen than his host, the implications of such a concurrence would be obvious. Gabe gripped the sides of his chair as if it were a flotation device. Five minutes into lunch, with Aphrodite tied fast to the pier, and they were already on choppy seas.

"I . . . um . . . at the last minute I wasn't able to attend," he tried.

"But you were there for a while."

The assault on what had transpired in the White House was close at hand. Gabe knew it was time for a preemptive strike.

"Sir—"

"LeMar."

"LeMar, you know that I would never violate the trust any of my patients place in me. My belief in patient/physician confidentiality is second only to my belief in my horse."

"I'm worried about my son. That's all."

"I understand."

"Gabe, even though Drew has had asthma for a number of years and has mentioned migraine headaches to me in the past, I couldn't help feeling that there was more to the story than what the public was being fed. I didn't accumulate all of this"—he gestured to Aphrodite—"without a built-in bullshit detector, and when I saw a tape of that press conference last night, every light on my detector panel lit up."