At the airport, Oliver was waiting in the Lear jet. It had been checked out and readied by airport mechanics.

"Everything turn out satisfactorily, sir?" asked Oliver, holding out the suede flying jacket.

"Perfectly," said James Orayo Fielding, not telling his manservant about the stabbing pains in his stomach. Why give Oliver any joy?

If he did not have the appointment that evening, he would have taken the slower Cessna twin-engine prop job. With that one, he could leave the fuselage door open and watch Oliver clutch his seat as the wind whipped at his face. Once, during an Immelman turn, Oliver had passed out in the Cessna. When Fielding saw this, he leveled the plane and undid Oliver's safety strap. The manservant recovered, saw the unbuckled strap, and passed out again. James Orayo Fielding loved his old propeller plane.

Doctor Goldfarb's office on Holly Street shone like three white squares against a dark checkerboard of black square windows. If any other patient had asked for this evening appointment, Dr. Goldfarb would have referred him to someone else. But it was James Orayo Fielding who had asked for that specific appointment to get the results of his every-six-months physical, and that meant that Fielding had no other free time. And what else could be expected of a man so fully occupied with the world's welfare? Wasn't Mr. Fielding chairman of the Denver chapter of Cause? Hadn't he personally visited India, Bangladesh, the Sahel to see famine firsthand and come back to Denver to tell everyone about it?

Another man with Fielding's wealth might just have sat back and become a playboy. But not James Orayo Fielding. Where there was suffering, you would find James Orayo Fielding. So when Mr. Fielding said he was only free this one night of the month, Dr. Goldfarb told his daughter he would have to leave just after he gave her away at the wedding ceremony.