Point of Balance by J.G. Jurado Page B

towering greed, mentally calculating how much he would milk out of that tremendous stroke of luck, and the little man in calm expectation.
    I felt faint. Luckily I was sitting down, or I might have fallen over somewhat unprofessionally.
    â€œWhy me?”
    â€œHe will tell you everything. Naturally the whole process entails some inconvenient security and confidentiality measures.”
    â€œWe will gladly embrace them,” Meyer hastened to say. “Right, David?”
    I can tell when I’m being given an order and was too shocked to quibble.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWell said. Dr. Evans is our big star.”
    He bared an enormous row of teeth and slapped me on the back, twice, perfectly camouflaging the fact we cannot stand each other. He thought I was a loose cannon and a bleeding heart. I think I’ve made my thoughts clear.
    â€œSo could you see him today?”
    â€œIs he . . . is he here?” I asked stupidly.
    The little man in the bow tie grinned at my innocence.
    â€œAs I have said, Dr. Evans, there will be certain extraordinary measures.”
    An hour later I entered the White House by the servants’ entrance for the first time.
    It is a strange and unreal feeling to have the world’s most important man ask you for help, and all the more so when you have to slink in to avoid prying eyes, like a thief in the night.
    â€œAll the journalists are in the press conference, but just in case, we will take you along a slightly unorthodox route,” the agent beside me said.
    We crossed a courtyard and a well-lit service corridor. Then another courtyard flooded with the smell of good cooking and the noise of food being prepared, up to a room with palms planted in big alabaster pots. We had crossed paths on the way with some of the maintenance staff and uniformed guards, but nobody else.
    â€œWait a minute,” the agent said.
    He popped his head through one side door, then another. Finally we went along a gigantic corridor fitted with wall-to-wall gold-trimmed red carpets. We passed by a door with a brass plate inlaid with black letters saying “Doctor’s Office,” although we didn’t stop there, but at the following door.
    â€œThis is the Map Room,” the man said curtly. “We’ll wait here.”
    Although the room was full of chairs, I remained standing in the middle. The agent stood by the door, legs astride, his bull neck pointing skyward. The strong silent pose I had seen in a thousand movies, and I wondered whether he was simply imitating the way he thought an agent was meant to stand or whether it came naturally.
    I was tempted to ask but kept quiet. Before Rachel died I used to try to raise a smile out of those I met. A joke, a funny story, a wisecrack. She would see me make an effort with waiters, receptionists and cab drivers, and award points depending on the scale of difficulty and attainment. Believe me, that was a high-stakes game in Washington. I know nowhere else in the world where people have turned rudeness into an art form.
    Rachel would have given me top score for that agent. But she was no longer with us and I had lost the will to play, so all I did was shoot the breeze. My surroundings overwhelmed me. Wood, silver, satin. Everything about the place was designed to overawe visitors.
    My hosts overawed me for a long while, at the end of which a bald, broad-shouldered sixtysomething man with firm callused hands entered the room.
    â€œCaptain Hastings, chief of the White House medical staff. This way, Dr. Evans.”
    I followed him through the adjoining door and into a small lobby with two doors. The first led to two consulting rooms which the doctor showed off to me. In the second one, which was next to his office, an old chart with a diagram of the heart and lungs in vertical section that was hung up over a stretcher caught my eye, and I walked across to examine it.
    â€œYou like it?” Hastings said in a