Chapter 1

"I've had considerable difficulty reaching you by telephone, Mr. Cosgrove."

"Perhaps if you weren't so mysterious, you might have found reaching me somewhat simpler."

"Yes sir," the caller said, as if trying to sound conciliatory. "Actually, I am fully aware that you are a busy and important man. But the reason I've been going to all this extra trouble to speak to you personally is that I must guard my own identity ... and privacy."

"Very well, let's get on with it," Cosgrove said. "You've reached me. I guarantee that you are now speaking to the one-and-only Albert W. Cosgrove, as you have so insistently requested."

"How is your daughter, sir?"

Cosgrove didn't try to hide his irritation when he responded. "What possible relevance has my daughter to do with you and your affairs? What is your business?"

"I'm aware, sir, that she's very sick."

"She's dying. She's eleven years old and has the best goddamned medical attention available in the entire world, and she's dying. But it's not a secret. You don't need me to tell you how Patricia is doing. It's in the goddamned New York Times!"

"I can help her, sir," the voice on the telephone said.

Albert Cosgrove was irritated to the point of almost terminating the conversation. "Oh, is that what this conversation is about? Oh, of course you can. Do you think you're the first idiot charlatan to contact me and tell me you had a miracle cure for all that ails my daughter? You're not even one of the first dozen! You are the first, however, who's managed to get me on the telephone. The others were content to speak to my staff members or my attorneys. One even had the balls to ask to discuss the matter with Patricia's doctors!"

"Mr. Cosgrove, I can make your daughter well. And I'll be pleased to do so, if you will simply agree to work with me to preserve my anonymity."

"You've told me your name," Cosgrove said.

"No, sir," the telephone voice said. "I've simply given you a name. You must understand. I have to preserve my anonymity because if people knew who I was, it would be the end of any possibility of a normal life for me."

"Listen now, you! ... I'm not going to call you John Healer because that alias you've given me is a ridiculous one. I'm not going to play your goddamned games! What is it that you want, really?"

"I want to come to your daughter's hospital room, accompanied only by one person of your choosing. I assume the person you would choose would be a strong, athletic man — perhaps carrying a weapon on his person. I have no objection to any of that. I would come to Patricia's hospital room and would be alone with her briefly — alone except for your assigned bodyguard. Then I would leave, accompanied by your assigned bodyguard and he would assist me in departing the premises unmolested."

"And what's in this for you? Are you going to take a photograph of my daughter in her deathbed, to sell to some magazine? Is that what this is about?"

"No, sir. No photographs. No publicity."

"I repeat: What's in this for you?"

"If your daughter recovers her good health, I would hope that you would see fit to make a cash contribution to my work."

"And what work might that be?"

"I'm a healer."

"What kind of cash contribution are we talking about?"

"That will be left entirely up to you to decide. If I am not successful in bringing your daughter back to good health, there will be no price to be paid for the attempt. The only cost to you will be paying the bodyguard assigned to accompany me."

"And how would I then manage to pay you, given your immense regard for personal privacy?"

"I will communicate with you — afterward — and leave instructions with your attorneys, or with any person you designate."

"But you're not naming a fee?"

"Normally, Mr. Cosgrove, there is no fee charged for my services. In your case, the fee payment will be voluntary, but I am of the opinion that once your daughter's good health is restored, you will be inclined to be generous. Your fee will then be used to sustain me in my work, which is healing as many people as it is feasible for me to heal."

"So you're some kind of healing Robin Hood, is that it? You charge the rich and heal the poor for free?"

"As I've said, sir, the payment you make, if you choose to make one at all, will be voluntary. I will have no means of forcing you to pay, because any attempt to do so would require that I reveal my identity and the nature of this transaction."

"But you don't always charge a fee — is that correct?"

"No sir," the telephone voice said patiently. "I never actually 'charge' a fee, as you put it. As you said, I intend occasionally to ask the rich to contribute to my work and to thus ensure my ability to sustain myself. One of the byproducts of your contribution would be that many other individuals will be cured of their illnesses. Some — not all — of those persons will be poor people. Some will be as wealthy, or at least almost as wealthy, as you are, Mr. Cosgrove. Normally, even those wealthy people will not be asked for help to sustain me in my work."

"Because you only ask for money when you need it, right?"

"Yes sir, that is correct, although I could do without the sarcastic tone," the unidentified caller said. "You have a dying daughter. She is, if press reports can be believed, threatened with death within days, if not hours. I assure you that I can help her. I cannot, however, bring back the dead. If you are going to allow me access to her and afford me the opportunity to help her, there isn't a lot of time to lose."

"What you're describing isn't possible," Cosgrove said. "You're just some kind of cruel dispenser of false hope. You've actually got me half-believing that you're serious in this."

"Mr. Cosgrove! Sir. For God's sake, why not give me a chance? There is no risk. I cannot make things worse for your daughter. Worst-case, I can be a charlatan, as you've suggested, but the cost of finding that out is minimal. Yes, it could be a cruel hoax that will give you a few moments of additional pain associated with the hours, days, years of pain your daughter's condition has already caused you and your family. But, sir, why not allow the attempt?"

"Oh, hell! I've already decided that I will," Cosgrove said. "Tell me what you want me to do."

"The person accompanying me to your daughter's room must be known to the hospital staff and trusted by them. Everyone on the hospital's staff must be instructed to stay away from the room and the corridor. No photographs, no attempt to slow me down or to stop me, either before or after I visit your daughter's bedside. The bodyguard, of course, will be free to assure your daughter's safety, but in all other respects, he is not to interfere in any manner.

"I am to be permitted to leave the hospital premises unmolested and un-spied upon. The escort you appoint is to be pledged to absolute silence concerning any hints he may pick up about my identity, age, sex, height, weight -- anything."

"When?"

"Tonight, if you can arrange it. The sooner the better, Mr. Cosgrove. Your daughter is failing fast."

"All right. It's four p.m. now. I can have my man ready to escort you by ... by eight p.m. The hospital staff will be given the instructions you've specified."

"Have your man meet me in an automobile directly across the street from the main hospital entrance on Laurel Avenue South. Make it a BMW two-door sedan. The driver should be alone in the car, and should be wearing a white shirt and a tie - no jacket. He will stop at the curb, facing the hospital entrance. No photographs. No telephoto lenses. Nothing. Is all of that understood?"

"Perfectly," Cosgrove said.

"Wonderful. Mr. Cosgrove! You have behaved wisely. I know that you doubt that fact right now, but you will know it to be the case in a few hours. Thank you, sir, for trusting me, at least to the point of allowing this to happen."

"I have a question," Cosgrove said.

"Yes?"

"Why not just walk into the hospital and cure the poor girl, if you're able to do so? Why all this elaborate staging?"

"That's normally exactly what I would have done," the telephone voice said. "But I have been unable to defeat the security precautions you've laid out around your daughter."

Cosgrove remained unconvinced. "And, of course, had you just gone in and cured her, how could you claim credit — and payment — from me later?"

"Were there more time, sir — if your daughter had more time — I could suggest that you explore with your medical advisors some recent strange occurrences in hospitals all over North America. Cases of spontaneous cure of multiple hospital patients, all occurring in a single day, many of them defying any medical explanation."

"And what would that prove?" Cosgrove asked.

"It would prove the truth of my earlier statements to you, Mr. Cosgrove, to the effect that normally I don't put the families of the sick through their paces before I administer a healing hand."

"You just ... wander around hospitals at random, curing the sick?"

"Yes, sir. Exactly that."

"Without payment?"

"I have recently exhausted my own personal resources," the voice said. "Now I must seek the willing contributions of people like you, sir - people who have reaped the benefits of my gift, and can afford to reward me for what I've done."

"Eight o'clock, then," Cosgrove said.

At precisely eight p.m., a young man turned the corner across from the hospital's main entrance and, walking quickly, approached the already-parked BMW driven by a man wearing a white shirt and tie.

The driver, a large, square-jawed fellow with a no-nonsense expression and intelligent eyes, looked expectantly at the man as he approached the car. Neither man said anything.

The stranger opened the passenger door of the BMW and sat down. He was wearing large, heavily tinted sunglasses and a New York Mets baseball cap, pulled down hard over his eyes. Long blonde hair — obviously a wig - cascaded down his back. The BMW driver, with a lifetime of experience in law enforcement, already had registered the fact that the stranger wore lifts in his shoes, no doubt intended to give him a somewhat taller appearance than he actually presented outside of the disguise.

Albert Cosgrove's appointed bodyguard could see through a great deal of the stranger's amateurish attempt at disguising his appearance. It didn't matter. His instructions were to protect the little girl clinging to life in her hospital room. There was to be no attempt made to identify, detain or capture this man.

"Let's go," the stranger said, his voice gravelly, disguised, and not at all like the voice he had employed earlier while conversing with Cosgrove.

During the brief drive, no words were exchanged. When the driver parked directly in front of the hospital's main entrance, his passenger got out of the car and waited for the driver to accompany him. Then, instead of going in through the front door, the man beckoned the driver to follow him inside through an obscure ground-floor entrance fifty yards farther around the side of the hospital's main building.

From there he took the most direct possible path to a pair of side-by-side elevators bearing signs indicating that they were reserved for hospital staff. The two men took one of the elevators to the eighth floor.