A totally political response. Lattimore would be proud.

"Good to hear. . . . You're from Wyoming, right?"

"Tyler."

"That's southeast?"

"Precisely. Eighty or so miles north and west of Cheyenne."

"Ever come up north to Montana?"

"From time to time. The fish there always seemed a little bigger and a little more gullible than the ones around where I live." Gabe had never had much patience for hidden agendas cloaked in small talk, and he felt certain he was confronting one now. He also had his medical bag to check over for the trip. "So," he pushed, "what's the deal with your eye?"

"Ever since I woke up this morning, I've felt as if there's something in it—maybe a lash or something."

"How about we go in the examining room and I'll take a look."

"Actually," Cooper said, removing the patch to reveal none of the redness that would have quickly developed had a lash or any other foreign body made contact with the eye, "I think whatever was in there may have washed out. There's been a lot of tearing."

"I see."

Gabe felt himself understanding more and more the concern expressed by LeMar Stoddard. Thomas Cooper III was not only oblique; he was unsubtle and oblique—hardly what Gabe expected.

"The truth is," Cooper went on, "the lash probably washed away pretty quickly, but I've had trouble with corneal abrasions before and wanted to have things checked."

"No problem."

"And," the VP went on as if Gabe hadn't interjected the words, "I decided to seek you out because there's another matter I wanted to discuss with you. Two birds and all that."

At last the other shoe falls.

"I've got to get some things ready for the trip to—"

"This won't take long. Doctor."

Just that quickly, any softness there seemed to be about the man vanished. Gabe's internal alarm sounded a strident warning. For all his country upbringing and easygoing, disarming manner, Tom Cooper was, in fact, a seasoned politician, who had risen to the second-highest office in the land not long after he turned forty-six. It seemed probable that he never spoke—obliquely or not—without knowing precisely what he was saying. There was no sense examining his eye, even though at some point well past there may have actually been something in it.

"Go on," Gabe said.

"President Stoddard never made it to the state dinner the other night."

"We had a press conference about that."

"I know. Migraine headache and gastroenteritis, complicated by his asthma."

If there was facetiousness in the man's tone, Gabe couldn't hear it.

"Mr. Vice President, I had written permission from the president to speak about those aspects of his medical condition to the public. I would never share any information about him otherwise—to anyone."