"Let me think about it and send you an e-mail tonight. Whatever comes up, it'll be 'scrambled eggs.'"

"Thanks, Atlas."

"Scrambled eggs" was a reference to a made-up code system they'd used in college. A name or number was encoded by interlacing it with their old phone number. This time the interlaced number would be an access code for proprietary NIH data.

"I do not think I'm long for the world here at the Sentinel. We're forming a mutual hostility society."

"I sure as h.e.l.l hope you've got a new career concept ready for the day when they give you the ax." Dale's attempt at a light tone did not quite disguise his concern.

"Funny, but that's the second time I've received that advice in the last half hour. I deem that unlucky."

"Stone, sometimes I think you ought to try not living your life so close to the d.a.m.ned edge. Maybe you ought to start practicing a little prudence, just to see what it feels like."

"I'm that wild ox we used to talk about I like to scrounge.

But I also like to look around for the biggest story I can find. I'm trying to get an interview with a guy on Bartlett's staff. Maybe our 'scrambled eggs' will flush him out."

"Just take care of yourself and keep in touch."

"You too."

And they both hung up.

Was this going to do the trick? he wondered. As it happened Stone Aimes already knew plenty about Bartlett's business affairs. He had been a lifelong student of Bartlett the man, and as part of his research into the Gerex Corporation he had pulled together an up-to-date profile of Bartlett's cash-flow situation. If you connected the dots, you discovered his financial picture was getting dicey.

Bartlett was overextended and, like Donald Trump in the early 1990s, he needed to roll over some short-term debt and restructure it. But his traditional lenders were backing away. He had literally bet everything on Van de Vliet. If his research panned out, then there was a whole new day for Bartlett Enterprises. That had to be what he was counting on to save his chestnuts.

The funny thing was, Bartlett didn't really like to spend his time thinking about money. One of his major preoccupations was to be in the company of young, beautiful women, usually leggy models.

Bartlett also had an estranged wife, Eileen, who reportedly occupied the top two floors of his mansion on Gramercy Park. Rumor had it she was a paranoid schizophrenic who refused to separate or give him a divorce. She hadn't been photographed for at least a decade, but there was no reason to think she wasn't still alive and continuing to make his life miserable.

Another tantalizing thing to know about Winston Bartlett was that he had bankrolled a Zen monastery in upstate New York twenty years ago and went there regularly to meditate and recharge. He had once claimed in a Forbes interview, that the monastery was where he honed his nerves of steel and internalized the timing of a master swordsman.

The Forbes interview was also where he claimed he had quietly ama.s.sed the largest collection of important j.a.panese samurai swords and armor outside of j.a.pan. For the past five years he had been lobbying the Metropolitan Museum of Art to agree to lend its dignity to an adjunct location for his collection, and to name it after him. The Bartlett Collection. Winston Bartlett l.u.s.ted for the prestige that an a.s.sociation with the Met would bring him.

At the moment some of his better pieces were housed in a special ground-floor display in the Bartlett Building in TriBeCa. Most of the collection, however, was in storage. He had recently bought a building on upper Park Avenue and some people thought he was planning to turn it into a private museum.

Well, Stone thought, if the stem cell project works out, he could soon be rich enough to buy the Metropolitan.

He walked back to the lobby of his building and stood for a moment looking at himself in the plate gla.s.s. Yes, the older he got, the more the resemblance settled in. Winston Bartlett. s.h.i.t Thank goodness n.o.body else had ever noticed it.

Chapter 4

_Sunday, April 5

9:00 A.M.

_

When Ally and Knickers walked into her lobby, Alan, the morning doorman, was there, just arrived, tuning his blond acoustic guitar.

Watching over her condominium building was his day job, but writing a musical for Off Broadway (about Billy the Kid) was his dream. He was a tall, gaunt guy with a mane of red hair he kept tied back in a ponytail while he was in uniform and on duty. Everybody in the building was rooting for him to get his show mounted, and he routinely declared that he and his partner were this close to getting backers. "We're gonna have the next Rent, so you'd better invest now" was how he put it. Alan had the good cheer of a perpetual optimist and he needed it, given the odds he was up against.

Knickers immediately ran to him, her tail wagging.