Maybe, he thought, this was a momentary screw-up. I just happened to be at the right place at the right fleeting moment, when somebody, somewhere, was entering those names. Maybe some NIH bureaucrat hit the wrong key on a keyboard someplace in Maryland.

But it was the break he'd been waiting for.

He turned off the IBM and headed for the fridge and another Brooklyn Lager. Ally, Ally, Ally. Can it be you? This is so weird.

Worse than that, it was painful. There was that immortal line from Casablanca: "Of all the gin joints in all... she walks into mine."

Why you, dear G.o.d?

Coming back, he sat down, took a long hit on the icy bottle, and reached for the phone.

Chapter 11

_Monday, April 6

1:29 P.M._

As she hung up, Ally wondered again what she was getting into. But she did want to meet this miracle worker. The kind of thing Van de Vliet was talking about sounded as much like science fiction as anything she'd ever heard. Still, his voice was rea.s.suring, even mesmerizing, and there seemed no reason not to at least check out the Dorian Inst.i.tute firsthand. But then what? Help!

She looked at her coffee cup and wished she dared have a refill. But that much caffeine always made her heart start to act up. And maybe she didn't need it. The conversation with Karl Van de Vliet had energized her and sharpened her senses quite enough.

She was still thinking about that when the phone rang again. There was an electronic voice directory, but her own phone was the default if a caller did not care to use it.

"Citis.p.a.ce."

"Hi, Ally. Tell me if you recognize the voice. Just please don't hang up."

Who was it? The intonations were bouncing around somewhere in the back of her brain, as though they were a computer file looking for a match.

The one her unconscious mind was making was being rejected by her conscious mind. Then finally the match came through and stuck.

My G.o.d, it couldn't be. The last time she'd talked to him was ...

what? Almost two decades ago.

The irony was, she'd been thinking about him some lately, as part of taking stock of her life. She'd been meditating over all the roads not taken, and he'd been the last man she'd actually loved or thought she loved before Steve.

"What ... How did ... ?" She found she was at a loss for words. She figured he'd have been the same way if she'd called him out of the blue.

"Hey, this isn't easy for me either. But I have a pretty good reason for breaking our vow of silence."

She was immediately flooded with mixed emotions. Stone Aimes. She already knew he wrote for the Sentinel. Or at least she a.s.sumed the irreverent reporter by that name who did their medical column was him.

The tone sounded so much like the way she remembered him. There was a lot of pa.s.sion and he was always editorializing against "Big Medicine."

He had plenty of raw courage, but sometimes he had too much edge. That was one quality he had that had eventually gotten to be nerve-racking back when they were together.

Now, in hindsight, she remembered their breakup with both anger and regret. She was angry that, even though she tried like h.e.l.l, she could never really connect with him at the level she yearned for. He always seemed to be holding something back, some secret he was afraid to divulge. Truthfully, they both were grand masters at never allowing vulnerability. In short, they were overly alike. They shared the same flaws.