"Well, I still haven't seen any data or preliminary reports. The NIH monitor for those particular clinical trials is a woman called Cheryl Gates and she's not returning anybody's phone calls. The truth is, she doesn't have to. But another possibility is, she doesn't actually know beans and she's too embarrassed to admit it. If somebody wants to keep a monitor in the dark for strategic commercial reasons, it's easy enough to do."
"Well, how about the other thing? The thing we talked about. The list?"
He sighed. "I was afraid you might come to that. That's a tough one, Truth and Justice."
"Hey, you know I didn't want to ask. But I'm running out
of cards."
He sighed again. There was a long silence and then, "You know you're asking me to give you highly restricted access codes to the NIH Web site. We shouldn't even be talking about it. So officially the answer is no. That's for the record."
"Strictly your decision." But he had his fingers crossed, even as he was ashamed of himself for asking in the first place.
"Maybe this is God's way of letting me even up things a bit. It can't be something easy or it doesn't really count, does it?"
"I could end up knowing more about these trials than the NIH does," Stone said. "Because it doesn't sound like you guys actually know much at all."
"Let me think about it and send you an e‑mail tonight. Whatever comes up, it'll be 'scrambled eggs.'"