"Hey, don't try to ream me twice in the same morning." He walked around her desk and gazed down at the street. The Sunday-morning traffic was light. He also noticed that there was a public phone on the corner. Good, he'd be using it in about eight minutes. Then he took a moment to reflect on how nice it was to actually have a window. Of any kind. "You know the saying, the pen is mightier than the sword. I'm about to prove that once and for all, but there's something I need I need a half hour's face time with one of Bartlett's employees. A certain Dr. Karl Van de Vliet. He runs a company that Bartlett bought out, called the Gerex Corporation. Strictly for fact-checking. They've got some important clinical trials going on at a clinic in New Jersey that I need to hear about." She looked at him in sincere disbelief. "Stone, how on earth am I supposed to--" "You talk to the Family's lawyers. They've gotta be talking to Bartlett's attorneys by now. Make it happen." "And why exactly--?" "Because I have a book contract, Jane. And in the process I need to find out everything there is to know about Winston Bartlett's biggest undertaking ever. He has bankrolled something that could change the face of medicine." "You're doing a book about Bartlett?" Her astonishment continued growing and appeared to be genuine. "Jesus, you didn't tell--" "Hello. That's because who or what I write about on my own dime is nobody's effing business around here." Now he was thinking about Winston Bartlett and wondering why he'd never told her the most important piece of information in his life. It was how he was connected to the man. He often wondered if maybe that was why he was doing this book on stem cells, knowing that half of it would end up being about Bartlett's self-serving, take-no-prisoners business career. His infinite cruelty. Was the book actually revenge? "You know you'll have to get permission to reprint anything you've published in the Sentinel. The paper owns the rights to--" "Didn't you hear me?" He smiled. "It's a book. My book. There's no editorial overlap." "Who's the publisher?" "They exist, trust me." His small publisher wasn't exactly Random House, but they were letting him do whatever he wanted. "It didn't start out being a book about Bartlett, per se," he went on, "but now he's becoming a central figure, because of what's going on--or possibly not going on--at Gerex." She was losing her famous poise. "What . . . what are you writing?" "The end of time. The beginning of time. I don't know which it is. You see, the Gerex clinic in northern New Jersey has clinical trials under way on some new medical procedure involving stem cells. At least that's what I think. They've clamped down on the information, but I believe Van de Vliet, who's the head researcher there, is perilously close to one of the most important breakthroughs in medical history. I just need to get all this confirmed from the horse's mouth."