Time for tea? Perhaps. Ginger tea for this one, if you please.

[You’ll Never Be Alone \\ Duncan Sheik]

Part III

Sherman and Didi Goodman sat outside the tent, now located a few blocks in from the boardwalk but still near the North Jetty, going over the latest vectors. The TB outbreak was gaining serious momentum now, despite the health department and CalTrans dispersing the latest encampments with bulldozers and flamethrowers. Most had fled to Culver City, though some of the homeless made it as far north as Santa Monica, but it was a rout. Daytime temperatures were still in the F-115 degree range, or Category 4, though the beach was still relatively cool at F-95 degrees. Still, as nighttime temps were still almost F-90 near the beach, the remaining homeless populations were suffering. And now that the Colorado River was a shadow of its former self, hydro power from Hoover dam was sporadic at best, so rolling blackouts were the norm these days. When people got home from work their gasoline powered generators fired up, fouling the air even more. Calls for wind and solar farms in the city were escalating, but in a sense everyone knew it was already too late.

Didi had located Ellie and Sherman had tested her family, and when they all tested positive for TB he’d had to notify the health department. The problem now, at least as far as Sherman was concerned, was that TB was spreading too rapidly in some neighborhoods, but not fast enough in others. And there was nothing predictable about these new vectors. If he’d been paranoid and susceptible to conspiracy theories currently spreading around the web, he’d have jumped to the conclusion that “someone” was seeding ghetto neighborhoods with the bacterium, but the simple fact of the matter was that wealthier neighborhoods on the west side had been equally hard hit. Yet clusters of localized infections was the norm, but when entire city blocks fell to the bug something new had to be at work. How could one city block fall and the next one over have zero cases? It just didn’t make sense.

“Any new ASP cases today?” Sherman asked, referring to the Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning passed along by consuming infected shellfish.

“Two clusters. San Pedro and Newport Beach. There’s also a new cluster of cholera patients at a camp near Griffith Park.”

“Cholera? Damn.”

“The Eagle Network affiliate is making noise again,” Goodman replied.

“What…the internment camp solution?”

“Yes.”

As homelessness spread, conservative news outlets were beginning to clamor for more aggressive solutions to the problem, the latest being to round up all the homeless and put them into camps up in the desert.

Bud Kurzweil pedaled up in a rush just then, and he looked spooked. “Have you heard?” he said breathlessly.

“Heard what?” Sherman said, taking a Diet Dr Pepper out of the cooler and tossing it over to the cop.

“At least two bombs hit in the Netherlands,” Kurzweil said. “And the word is NATO has launched on Russia.”

“Bombs?” Sherman sighed. “I assume you mean nuclear bombs?”

The cop nodded as he opened the can of soda and gulped it down. “Yup. The one that hit near Amsterdam was a big city-buster, at least that’s what CNN is saying. And there are reports of Russian airborne troops in the area.”

Sherman remembered nuclear doctrine. He knew what came next. 

“Say, weren’t you in the Navy?” Kurzweil asked. “Were you ever around any of that stuff?”

Sherman nodded. “Yes. To both your questions.”

“So, how long until the bombs hit?”

Sherman shrugged as he pulled out his iPhone and dialed Debra’s number.

“You back on the boat?” he asked when she picked up.

“Watching CNN. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are gone. One missile has hit St Petersburg and another is headed towards Moscow. The president is about to address the nation.”

“Better fire up the engine,” Sherman said softly. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He rang off and put his phone away.

“Where you headed, doc?” Kurzweil asked.

“Back side of Catalina. Didi, better bring the car around.”

“Got it,” she said, her voice sounding unchanged, indeed almost unaffected.

Kurzweil shook his head, and he looked distraught. “Think you could make room for me?” he asked carefully.

Sherman looked at the cop for a moment, then he nodded. “You won’t be missed if you cut and run?”

“All things considered, Doc, I’d rather be alive than late for roll-call.”

Kurzweil knew engines so he’d be good to have around, and besides, Sherman owed him now. After the solar-magnetic anomalies of the past couple of days the entire electrical grid had been down for hours, and engines of every kind had been fried. After switching out solenoids and logic boards, however, Kurzweil had revived the Rover and the boat’s diesel in one afternoon, so Sherman didn’t hesitate. “Well, of course. There’s plenty of room, and we’d be happy to have you.”

Didi pulled up in Debra’s old Land Rover and they loaded all the medications in the rear and then took off for the marina. When they got to aquaTarkus Deb was filling the water tanks, and she had Roscoe leashed up and ready for one last walk, so Sherman and Kurzweil took the pup up to the grass. Cars were streaming into the parking lot now, and boat owners were loading supplies as quickly as they could, only now there was a sense of real panic in the air. Even more so as they walked back to the boat, as people were frantically loading supplies on their boats.

“I wonder how many people got there engines sorted out?” Deb asked after they cast off their lines and motored for the breakwater. And as if on cue, a little sailboat entered the fairway under sail, and in the disturbed, light air it was hardly making any headway. “Gene, you think everyone will be headed for Catalina?”

“It’s the safe call. Two good harbors on the backside, and the only other option is San Clemente, but that would be dangerous. It’s too close to the Navy bases in San Diego.” They were the first boat to make the breakwater, but Sherman halfway expected the flash of a detonation at any moment. He looked at the chartplotter and noted the course, 197 magnetic, and he synced the autopilot – watching as it kicked-in when engaged.

“Isn’t there another island out past Catalina?” Kurzweil asked.

“Yup. San Nicolas, but the Navy owns that one. And Santa Barbara Island is even closer, but it’s too small to offer any protection from a blast and I don’t thing there are facilities there.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Debra said as she and Darius came up from below.

“Everything stowed?” Sherman asked.

Debra nodded while Darius stared at an airliner trying to line up for a landing at LAX. “Man, that don’t look right,” he grumbled as he pointed to the west, and Sherman turned his attention to the A380 that looked about five miles out, so coming in from the west. The left wing was low and the huge aircraft seemed to be wallowing, then he suddenly realized he didn’t hear any sound coming from the engines and he looked at the aircraft’s position relative to their own.

Sherman swung the boat into a hard right turn and then chopped the throttle, letting speed bleed off as the boat arced in a smooth circle.

“What’s wrong, Gene?” Debra asked, but Didi answered before he could.

“The jet is out of fuel and in a glide. It will not make the runway,” she added unnecessarily, because now it was quite obvious the huge jet was too low and too slow to even make the beach.

“Bud, you got your radio handy?” Sherman asked Kurzweil.

“On it,” the cop said, taking his radio out of its holster. “Two VictorPaul to all units vicinity LAX, looks like an inbound A380 is going to land in the water.” Since the solar flares and magnetic anomalies of the day before, LAX had been closed so the tower and fire services were unmanned, and that meant that the county’s emergency services would have to respond…and they’d be slow…at best.

And as everyone looked on, the A380s drooping left wingtip sliced into the water about a half mile short of the beach, and horrified now, Sherman looked on helplessly as the aircraft started spinning towards the breaking line of breaking waves. Sherman pointed the bow at the disintegrating airliner and pushed the throttle to full power while Kurzweil started giving updates to responding units from both the fire and police departments. One doorway up on the airliner’s right side’s forward upper deck opened and the emergency slide deployed, just as the entire left side of the airliner slipped beneath the waves.

“Looks like the port wing spar snapped,” Sherman said, “but it’s still partially attached to the fuselage, so it’s pulling the passenger cabin down!” And as he spoke the right wing started rising higher and higher, until it was pointing almost straight up into the midday sky. People started climbing up and out of the lone open doorway and onto the side of the fuselage, and Kurzweil kept sending updates to emergency responders all the while. A couple of firetrucks appeared near the beach but as very few vehicles had been repaired after all the recent geomagnetic anomalies, it looked like the response would be inadequate, at best… 

“Better break out the Zodiac,” Sherman said to no one in particular. “Deb, you’d better take the helm while we get it ready to go.”

“Got it,” she said, and then: “Gene, have you been keeping an eye on our depth?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s gonna be tight. When we get to fifteen feet indicated turn away from the beach and circle around.”

It took about five minutes to get the inflatable boat in the water and running, and Sherman ran Kurzweil over to the fuselage. The aft end of the airliner had sunk rapidly so people had moved that way, to where the water met the fuselage, and because he was still in uniform Kurzweil’s gun and badge prevented panic from overtaking the crowd. They loaded five injured passengers the first time over and ferried them to just outside the surf line, where paramedics and firefighters were standing by to carry the injured ashore. Two more sailboats arrived and soon two more Zodiacs joined the operation, and between the three inflatables everyone was evacuated from the Airbus within a couple hours.

And by that point it was obvious no hydrogen bombs were on their way, so Sherman looked around and asked everyone on aquaTarkus what they wanted to do. And everyone now wanted to go back to the marina.

“Well, Hell, that was an interesting day,” he said as he pointed the boat at the breakwater and added power.

Then Darius came up to him and showed him his iPhone. Turned out he had captured the A380s approach and water-impact on his phone and he smiled. “Betcha I get a million hits on YouTube!” he beamed.

+++++

Debra had gone to the hospital and visited the woman with the black aura more than once in the days just before the two-day war, and she soon came to a startling realization. The woman remembered nothing about her life, nothing at all, and her physician expressed concern about her neurological condition.

“Her short term memory should be impaired, perhaps permanently, but this toxin has no reputation for affecting long-term memory.”

“So,” Debra said, looking at the young Vietnamese woman, “do you think something else is going on?”

“Every test we’ve run is negative, even her fMRI came up clean.”

Debra looked at the woman through a window; her aura was still a swirling obsidian mass, and she still felt her father’s malign presence when she walked closer to the woman, but how on earth could she relay this information to a neurologist? “Could this be a mental disorder, I mean like some kind of psychotic episode?”

The physician shook her head. “No evidence of that.”

“Idiopathic,” Debra sighed. “But that just doesn’t seem logical,” she added.

“Logical? What do you mean, exactly?”

“Next time you talk with her, ask her if she’s been to Argentina recently.”

“Argentina? What do you think’s going on?”

But Debra shook her head. “Just a hunch,” she said – quietly. “But ask her about Argentina. And see if she responds to the name Ted Sorensen.”

“Sorensen? The movie guy?”

Debra nodded, but now she was getting upset. She looked at the woman again, studied her aura and recoiled when she felt her father still reaching out to her, but after a minute more of that she turned and walked from the hospital. Darius was waiting for her at the Land Rover, and he could tell something was wrong as he watched her approaching – but he knew that look, knew not to push her.

“Father Gene, he needs us to to get more of them TB drugs, he said the starter paks if they still have ‘em.”

She nodded. “Okay. That means we head over to La Cienega. Feel like driving?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, helping her in then walking around to get behind the wheel. “Ain’t much traffic out yet.”

She sighed. “No more solenoids, no more motherboards. A lot of people are going to have to learn to like public transit.”

“Radio was sayin’ they got no power from the Bay Area all the way up to Vancouver. A hundred and eighteen degrees  in Portland today, too.”

She turned on the air conditioner and basked in the cool air – when the sky turned unnaturally bright and the engine died. She saw people out on sidewalk cover their eyes but within a few seconds they started falling to the pavement, then her eyes were drawn to the Land Rover’s hood – because the paint was beginning to sizzle and crack. She picked up her iPhone but it wouldn’t turn on, and when she looked outside the car she saw bodies writhing on the pavement.

And then the sky turned an impossibly bright white for a few seconds and spidery cracks appeared all over the windshield – then as quickly everything went back to ‘normal’ – whatever normal was these days. She opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement but her tennis shoes seemed to melt into the concrete so she jumped back into the Rover.

Darius experimentally held his hand up and placed it on his door’s glass window – but he quickly yanked it back and whistled in startled pain as the intense heat registered. “Must be a hundred and fifty out there,” he said as he looked at the skin on his fingers. “What happened?”

“Probably another solar flare. Now we need to wait for the temperature to stabilize.”

“Then whatta we do?” Darius asked.

“We get the folding bikes down and head for the marina…but we’ll have to wait for the pavement to cool down first.” She pulled out her iPhone and it too wouldn’t ‘wake up’ and she shook her head. “Looks like this is fried too,” she sighed. She held her hand up to the glass and quickly pulled it away, surprised that some people had survived and that they were getting up and making their way to any shade they could find.

But after a few minutes sitting there in the line of stalled traffic the temperature inside the Rover was rising quickly, and now Darius was beginning to sweat profusely. 

“Okay,” she said, “let’s get the bikes and see if we can make it down to the boat.”

Once the bikes were down and unfolded, she tentatively rolled the tires and they moved freely so they took off down Venice Boulevard, weaving between stalled cars and around dazed people wandering around in the streets. She smelled smoke in the air as they made made their to Lincoln Boulevard, then she heard someone screaming, and they could both see flames coming out of several buildings, then people smashing glass storefronts and grabbing anything of value before they took off down the street.

“We best hurry along now, Miss Debbie,” Darius said – just before a huge fireball erupted at the Chevron station they were passing. The concussive explosion knocked them both to the ground, and when Debra stood she saw that Darius was having a hard time just sitting up so she went to his side.  He’d tried to stop his fall with an outstretched arm, and she could see that both the radius and ulna in his right forearm were fractured, their disjointed forms stretching the skin above his wrist, and he appeared to be in a good deal of pain. She helped him stand but he was looking at her like he really didn’t know what to do, so she picked up his bike before she reached for hers, but he still seemed confused about what to do next.

“What’s wrong, Darius?”

“I ain’t no good now, Miss Debbie. Can’t protect you, can’t drive you nowhere…”

“Don’t you worry about that,” she said, watching his aura wilt before her eyes, turning from deep blue to silver gray as his lingering depression came back for him. “Come on, let’s go…we’ve only got a few blocks left to go.”

They pushed their bikes along, watching as the world went mad all around them. More windows shattered and television sets disappeared down trash-filled alleyways. Someone tried to rob a liquor store and the owner chased the robbers out into the street, shooting at them as they ran between cars and completely oblivious to the danger he was himself creating. A house was on fire a couple of blocks away and a huge column of black smoke was rising into the cloudless sky, joining the fire and smoke from the blazing gas station behind them, then she saw smoke coming from the marina – a lot of it, too. She picked up their pace a little, suddenly wondering where Gene had been when the solar flare hit – and if he was okay.

As they got closer to the marina she could see dozens of boats fully engulfed in fuel-soaked flames, but most appeared to be on the far side and well away from where aquaTarkus was tied up. She turned and looked back towards downtown and was shocked to see dozens of columns of black smoke rising into the afternoon sky, but what was most surprising was the utter silence of the scene. No cars, no airplanes or helicopters, and most worrying of all, no sirens. No cops. No firefighters and no paramedics.

They were alone now. Cut off.

When they made it to the pier where her boat was tied off she saw Gene and Bud Kurzweil were already there and waiting for them, and as they pushed the bikes out the pier Gene came out to meet them, stopping when he saw Darius’s wrist – then nodding his head in understanding.

“Get him down to his cabin,” Sherman said. “I’ll get to him after we get out beyond the breakwater.”

“So, you got the engine running?” Deb asked.

“Yup. You and Bud need to stow the bikes after we cast off the lines.”

She stared at him for a moment – as she was not quite sure what she was seeing in his aura – but whatever it was he seemed seriously alarmed, so she helped Darius into his berth and told him they’d be with him soon, then she went topsides in time to help coil and stow the lines Gene and Bud had just pulled aboard.

Gene went to the helm and backed out of the slip – again, and this time he took note of the mass of other boats entering the fairway. “Lot of people having the same idea,” he said to Debra as she came and sat by him. “How bad is out there,” he asked.

“People were looting within minutes, and I think people were trying to steal gas by cutting the nozzles from the fill hoses. I think that’s what caused the Chevron station to go up, anyway. Knocked us right off our feet.”

Sherman shook his head as he listened, then he watched as kids in a Zodiac took off from a nearby pier and headed for the closest boat to them – which happened to be aquaTarkus. Then he realized the guy in front of the little boat had an assault rifle. “Bud,” he said, “you see what I see?”

“Yup. On it,” Kurzweil sighed, keeping his right side out of view as he unsnapped his holster.

When the Zodiac was about fifty feet away the kid with the rifle brought it up to his shoulder but Kurzweil drew down and fired first; this kid fell back into the inflatable and the other boy in the boat picked up the rifle and started to aim at Kurzweil; two more shots rang out and this kid went down, only now it was obvious both were badly wounded and writhing in pain.

Sherman backed off the power and circled around to the boys’ little boat – just as automatic weapons fire erupted from Chase Park – causing instant havoc throughout the marina.  Bud jumped down into the inflatable and he found the boy in the back was already dead, while the first boy was wounded and crying out now as he went into shock.

Sherman tossed a line to Bud and as soon as the boy was hoisted onboard and the little dinghy tied off, Sherman moved away from the gunfire at full throttle. As aquaTarkus motored out the breakwater he could see the large homeless encampment by the North Jetty and he flipped a button on the plotter and looked at the current outside air temperature.

“One eighteen,” he sighed, “and that’s down here at the beach.” Bud lifted the wounded boy into the cockpit and Sherman looked at Deb and pointed at the wheel. She nodded and he went below to grab an IV setup and his go-bag, but he dropped in to check on Darius first.

“How’re you doin’ down here, Amigo?” he asked, and when Darius shook his head Sherman took out an pre-filled morphine syringe and shot him in the arm.

“Did I hear shootin’ up there, Doc?” Darius asked.

“Yup. Things are breaking down real fast now. No cops, no fire department, so I’d guess the next thing will be troops. I don’t think we want to be around for that.”

Darius nodded. “Thanks for taking care of me, Doc.”

Sherman nodded. “Darius, you’ve been taking care of me for years, so it’s about time I returned the favor, you know? We got a kid in the cockpit with a gunshot wound, and as soon as I’m done up there I’ll try and set your arm.” Darius nodded and Sherman turned to go topsides – and there in front of him was Didi Goodman.

He jumped back, completely startled. “How’d you get here?” he asked, looking her over suspiciously.

Yet true to form she simply shrugged away his question with an enigmatic little flip of her hand, then she turned and walked aft to the companionway. She picked up Sherman’s equipment then walked topsides – only to have to face down the shocked expressions from Deb and Bud Kurzweil. But she ignored those as adroitly by turning to the boy with the gunshot wound in his belly – and she sighed when she saw the damage to his upper right quadrant.

“Let me guess,” Goodman said sarcastically to Kurzweil, “hollow points…right?”

“You know it, man. 45 ACP, Silvertips,” Kurzweil nodded with satisfaction. “Great stopping power,” he added – unnecessarily.

“Yes, you stopped him, alright,” she said as she leaned over and palpated his belly. The boy writhed in agony and Kurzweil turned away and walked forward, leaving Goodman and Sherman alone to deal with the consequences of the boy’s actions. “He might survive a day,” she started to say to Sherman, “in a well equipped hospital. But he’s going to need a transplant, Gene. What do you want to do? Drop him over the side, maybe?”

Sherman recoiled from the insinuation. “We can give him morphine, I think…”

“And just how much of that do you have, Gene? Enough to help Darius and this kid? Because that’s what it’s going to come down to, and you know it.”

Sherman turned and looked shoreward, as if there was a morphine store right around the next corner – but the hard-edged reality of the situation came into sharp relief as he looked at the surreal number of coiling back clouds now rising over the city. “It’s all coming undone,” he whispered – more to himself than to anyone else. “I thought we’d have longer, ya know?”

“Maybe it was always just a house of cards,” Debra said as she turned and looked at whole blocks of houses and condos being consumed by walls of towering flames.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Goodman said stoically. “What matters is this kid. What are you going to do for him right now?”

Sherman caught the tone in her voice as he turned and looked at her, his eyes suddenly full of wonder: “Why is it that I get the impression we’re being judged?”

“What makes you think that you aren’t?” Goodman said with the faintest smile on her face – yet in the next moment her form wavered a little before it just disappeared. 

Sherman turned and looked skyward, then he turned to his bag of tricks before he shrugged and started to work on the boy.

© 2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…and note this story is fiction, pure and simple.

Not trying to be obscure here, but for the most part The Eighty-eighth Key is complete. And yet it seemed that before I could post the conclusion I needed to lay a little more groundwork – in order to set up the conclusion of that story will take us straight into TimeShadow. Enough said, for now.

[Buffalo Springfield \\ For What It’s Worth]

Second Part

Sherman woke earlier than usual; Roscoe hopped off the berth and made for the companionway, wagging his tail while he waited for him. Sherman strapped on his leg and put the coffee on then hooked up the leash before he set off up the companionway and into the dawn.

Roscoe was a Sussex Spaniel, a low-slung long brown haired fluff ball, and he was also a born show off and kind of a clown. He hopped off the boat’s bulwarks and pulled Sherman towards the nearest patch of grass, still almost fifty yards away, and for his size Sherman thought the pup was incredibly strong. 

“Not so fast,” Gene Sherman growled, and Roscoe let up…a little, but he’d held it long enough and time was now of the essence. They made with just moments to spare and Roscoe watered the grass before he circled twice and got down to the real business at hand. With those chores out of the way, Sherman took the pup for a long walk before heading back to the boat.

Debra was up and futzing around in the galley by the time they got back to the boat, and she had Roscoe’s kibble ready to go by the time he trundled down the steep steps. He dove in and wolfed down his chow, and Deb handed Gene a mug of coffee as he sat down beside at the cockpit table.

“I’m glad you could stay last night,” she said, smiling. It hadn’t taken a whole lot to convince him to stay, but the hot shower had probably sealed the deal. Sherman insisted on sleeping in the tent most nights, though it was unnecessary at this point. Her father had completely disappeared from LA years ago, and in a matter of months Ted Sorensen’s malign influence had evaporated. Sherman, however, still wasn’t sure what was going on, so he still kept to the shadows.

After the night of the signal — when the fate of the planet had been revealed — Deb and Sherman had slowly grown close. First in the underground research facility and then after Daisy Jane passed. Debra had started to lean on him as soon as it became crystal clear that Henry Taggart was gone, that he’d never come back to her.

When Sherman became aware of her abilities he was curious for a while then he just took it for granted, and when Debra finally realized that Gene Sherman never lied, and that he didn’t even try to keep secrets, she understood that he didn’t have anything to hide — from her, or from anyone else, for that matter. His aura was always cool blue and the only time she’d sensed anger in him was once right after he’d smashed his thumb with a hammer.

Was that, she kept asking herself, why Henry left her? Too many secrets he could no longer keep?

If so, she couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have become for him. And she’d never once intuited how impossible their situation had become. ‘Why not?’ she kept asking herself. Had she become so blind to their reality? But when he left she’d begun to feel deep changes within, like something changed when he left, like his departure triggered a release of some sort… 

…and yet Gene Sherman had proven to be the exact opposite of Henry Taggart. He fit, he understood, and her only regret was that he was so much older than she was — because he’d have made a perfect husband. And yet when she mentioned that once he’d not rebuffed her.

“Why would you want to hang around with an old fart like me?” he’d replied with a chuckle.

“Because…you didn’t run away.”

And then he’d turned and looked into her eyes, a somewhat and reserved love manifest in the gentle, soft light of his aura. He’d reached out and cupped the side of her face in his hand, stroked her hair as he looked into her soul. 

“If that’s what you want,” he’d said, “let’s do it.”

So they’d run to Vegas and done the deed, yet it wasn’t long before he told her he wanted to return to Venice Beach, and then he’d told her what he had in mind. So she’d picked up a new boat and moved back to the marina, and he’d helped her find a new pup along the way. Soon enough her new life looked a whole lot like the one she’d hoped to share with Henry, and soon enough she’d even begun to feel a little of the happiness she’d always longed for.

Every now and then Ralph Richardson dropped by — “Just to say hi!” — but he wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all her. He’d made a Faustian bargain somewhere along the way and was creating clone-like beings, but for what purpose? She’d met one the night of the signal, the red cat-suited blond in Gene’s Ferrari, yet even Sherman had no idea what she really was. The strangest thing about her was she seemed to “belong” to Sherman, and though he’d plainly rejected the relationship she was never really far away from him. When he had dozens of patients lined up at the tent she’d simply show up and start taking care of the next one in line, and from the first Gene had just shrugged and let her do her thing — whatever that was. Soon enough they’d both grudgingly accepted her unwanted appearances as almost inevitable.

She pulled bagels from the toaster and spread a thin layer of cream cheese, then slivered tomatoes and red onions and freshly sliced Scottish gravlox were carefully layered before she sprinkled a few capers on top, and she had to admit once again that she loved doting on Sherman. Because unlike her father, and yes, Henry Taggart, he really seemed to appreciate her efforts, yet his ongoing appreciation continued to surprise her. Though of course he always put aside a few choice pieces of salmon and slipped them under the table to an equally appreciative little spaniel, she never experienced his type of appreciation.

“After you drop me off,” he said that morning, “could you take Darius and run over to the lab?”

“You think they’ll have results this early?”

“They might have Ellie’s…”

“You’re really worried about her, aren’t you?”

And he’d nodded his head carefully — and slowly. “Yes. Too many vectors. If her grandmother is the source, I’ll have to get the public health department involved…”

“And people will start losing their jobs,” Debra replied. “Again.”

“That’s what it’s going to look like from now on. Culling the sick and the weak from the main herd…”

“Stop with the Darwin, would you? It’s too early in the morning for that crap.”

“It’s inevitable now,” he said before he took a bite of his bagel. “Oh, what’s the weather look like? Any word on the high today?” She turned on the television and flipped over to The Weather Channel, and soon enough the local forecast popped up and Sherman whistled: “Geesh, 115 in the valley and 98 at the beach,” he said as he shook his head. “The water will start warming again.”

“I can bring an extra cooler and ice water,” Debra said helpfully.

“Yeah. Maybe the blue cooler with bottled water and the big white one with Gatorade. It’ll hit a hundred on the pavement. Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask…how’s Darius doing?”

She shrugged. “Still moody but he’s cleaned up his act. No hangovers and he’s not as angry.”

Sherman shrugged. “That’s the bupropion kicking in.”

“So, you think that group on the beach has TB?”

He nodded. “My guess is we’re going to have a major outbreak down there…what’s that on the TV…something about Russia…?”

She flipped the channel over to CNN and breathless reporters were describing a sudden Russian ground advance into Poland, and one reporter came on and advised that air raid sirens were going off in Berlin and Hamburg… 

“What the hell?” Sherman sighed as he leaned over and turned up the volume. “Did I miss something? When did this start up?”

Deb looked away, suddenly very afraid. Henry was over there right now, and he’d emailed last week, told her he was already very ill and making for Paris as quickly as he could.

“Oh man, this is so Crazy Eddie,” Sherman grumbled.

She nodded. “Why now? I mean, aren’t things bad enough as it is?”

He shook his head and sighed. “Well, it is what it is, and whatever happens it won’t stop people from getting sick. I’m going to change into my scrubs. Can you be ready to go in five?”

“Yes, of course.”

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry. He’ll be alright.”

“What?” Deb said, startled now. “Who…who will be alright?”

He smiled at her – but then he slowly turned and walked aft to the head. She watched him, watched his aura, but it never changed.

+++++

The old man slowly made his way to the Zebra but he wasn’t too surprised when he found that Ellie had already called in sick. He nodded and asked for his coffee ‘to-go’ – then he made his way to the tent, only to find Bud Kurzweil and his rookie already there — waiting anxiously. Which meant that all his homeless patients had scattered and disappeared into the woodwork.

“You’d better pack up, Doc,” Kurzweil said as Sherman walked up.

He nodded. A large TB vector in the area would certainly drive a massive Public Health Department response in the area, and that had to mean that the lab results from last night’s exams at the north jetty had already been received downtown. “How long?” he asked Bud.

“The dump trucks are on the way. Call it twenty minutes.”

Sherman fished his iPhone from his coat pocket and sent the emergency pickup signal to Deb. “Thanks for the head’s up, Bud.”

“Can we give you a hand?”

Sherman shook his head. “No. You two can’t be seen here.”

“Where are you going to set up?”

Sherman sighed. “The garage, I reckon. Give us a couple hours.”

“Okay,” Bud said. “Did you hear about the crap going on in Europe?”

Sherman nodded. “I guess someone figured we needed another world war. Odd timing, though.”

“Odd?”

“Yeah. I mean, it seems kind of pointless right now, ya know? Floods and droughts and crop failures everywhere, and now on top of all that it seems like people from equatorial regions are heading for cooler climates. So, yeah…why now?”

Kurzweil nodded. “Well, we’ll drop by later this morning. We gotta go check on that camp by the jetty.”

Sherman sighed. “Hopefully they won’t be scattered. If they are, a major new outbreak is just about guaranteed.”

“I hear you,” Kurzweil said. Deb pulled up in the Rover just then and she smiled at the cops then she and Darius started breaking down the tent and loading it in the back, and ten minutes later the ‘clinic’ was gone — and it looked as if it had never been there. They drove over to Deb’s old house on the boardwalk and Sherman helped them set up the clinic in the garage, then he sat and read through Ellie’s lab results. “Positive on both blood and sputum,” he grumbled, and he knew what that meant. Chest and abdominal imaging to confirm involvement in the lungs and to see if the kidneys were involved, then patient education on proper adherence to protocols during the long term antibiotic therapy she’d start. But first he had to get labs working on Ellie’s grandmother and brother.

And just then Didi Goodman drove up to the garage — in a small mobile CT scan rig. She slipped out of the truck’s cab and walked over, and Sherman was glad to see she’d finally given up on the red leather catsuit and was now wearing green scrubs and gray felt clogs. Even so dressed she was still sexy as hell, and he found that amusing.

“Well,” Sherman said, smiling, “long time no see.”

Goodman appeared to ignore the comment. “I assumed you’d need this today.”

“Where’d you dig it up? At the mobile cat-scan store?”

“I borrowed it.”

“Did you borrow a technician to run the thing, too?”

“I read all the relevant materials. That should suffice.”

He shook his head and grinned. “No doubt.”

“Where is your patient? Ellie, isn’t it?”

“A no show, so far at least.”

“Would you like me to find her?”

Sherman shrugged. “Sure. Why not…? And bring her family, would you?”

“Of course.”

It would have been so much easier to simply keep the clinic operating out of Deb’s old house, but the city, and her neighbors, would have nothing to do with such a venture in a ‘high rent’ neighborhood like this one. Even operating here for a day or two at a time was fraught with risk, because anything that encouraged the homeless to remain in the area was tantamount to treason – at least as far as the local homeowners were concerned – yet Sherman could understand their point of view. When swarms of the homeless settled in an area all types of problems exploded almost exponentially. There was the usual problem of urine soaked sidewalks, but soon human feces would appear on sidewalks and in roadways. Far from a trivial concern, outbreaks of cholera and dysentery would follow as these encampments grew in size, and without aggressive management of these diseases they could, if left unchecked, spread rapidly to the general population. Of course property crimes increased too, with petty theft and home invasions soon spiking rapidly. Trash accumulated in public spaces, rendering them useless or even dangerous. Homeowners and shopkeepers soon demanded enforcement action and the unhoused would be pushed on to the next neighborhood, and the cycle would begin again.

Yet being homeless was itself a risky proposition. Aside from being broke all the time, most homeless were elderly and disabled – either mentally or physically, and many were disabled veterans. A surprising number of these elderly people had recently lost homes after compounding medical debt led to confiscation of their homes, and suddenly cast out into the wilderness and now without a physical address, they lost what little retirement income they had as they fell through the cracks in the system. Every morning the police were called to the tents of these elderly men and women to deal with the aftermath of yet another suicide, and public crematories discarded the remnants of dozens of these sundered lives every weekday morning.

Yet for some reason Sherman felt drawn to these people, and he had since his time in seminary, yet he found their situation uncomfortably close to home. ‘There but for the Grace of God go I’ came to mind, of course, but there was also something about the way so-called organized religion had turned on these people, and that overreaction had unnerved and revolted him. As the evangelical movement had grown increasingly political, and as this movement became more closely aligned with the ‘prosperity gospel’ that had sprung up in Texas in the 1980s, it seemed that more and more the teachings of Christ had been removed from Christianity.

And yet Sherman was also an astronomer, and he was one of the few people around that understood what the signal had revealed. In a very real sense, he knew the truth of human existence in a way that few others could, or ever would. Life on this planet would perish in roughly fifty years, and there was literally nothing anyone in the world could do to stop that from happening. 

So it seemed now to Sherman that the best use of his life would come from alleviating human suffering, and right here in Los Angeles, the City of the Angels, was as good a place as any to start down that path. He had soon turned his back on the the Church and married Debra Sorensen, and he had set about tending his new flock in the only way he knew — by tending to their infirmities. With Ted Sorensen gone he had no enemies left in the city, and there was no time for anything other than his mission.

As he was setting up for the morning a sleek black Lexus SUV rolled to a stop and a woman opened the driver’s door and quietly fell to the pavement; Sherman ran to her side and began to assess her situation. She was weak and trembling but otherwise appeared healthy; a few questions revealed that her long term memory was intact but short term was affected. She convulsed and he observed fresh diarrhea running onto the pavement, then she started coughing and she produced large amounts of phlegm. 

“Short term memory loss,” he muttered, his mind sifting through possibilities as he took her temperature. There had been numerous sick sea lions washing up onto the beach recently…and that meant an algae bloom and a red tide. That meant shellfish, near the bottom of the food chain, had ingested the psuedo-nitzschia diatom, which led to domoic acid poisoning in mammals that ate these impacted shellfish, and which could in extreme cases produce a rare reaction known as Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning. There were no treatment options beyond fluid support, allowing the body to flush out the toxins as quickly as possible. 

Darius and Debra helped Sherman get the woman on a cot, then he started an IV and set an aggressive flow rate. “Better call for an ambulance,” he said to Debra, but she was staring at the woman, and Sherman noted the look of concern in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Her aura. It’s solid black, Gene. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Do you think…you can see her thoughts?”

“I’m not sure I want to,” Debra said as she stepped closer to the woman. She closed her eyes and drifted inside the currents of the woman’s aura – until she was in – and then she felt her father, and now he was probing her thoughts.

© 2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…and note this story is fiction, pure and simple.

[Something Happening Here \\ Duncan Sheik] 

A not so short story here, a couple hundred pages so plenty of time for ginger tea. All three parts revised since you last saw them, too. Have fun.

[The Years Roll By \\ Glass Hammer]

Trinity

Part I: Copper Canyon

He checked his rearview mirror again, no longer sure what he might find back there. 

Nothing? Could it be? Was this really going to work?

He saw nothing. And then he realized he felt nothing at all. The adrenaline fueled sense of exhilaration had been ebbing fast, even though he was sure he was being followed. He had to be. He could still feel that much in his gut, and that was all he needed to know. Weaving through late afternoon traffic, he made it to his house on East Summit Street and pulled into the garage, hitting the button on the sun visor and closing the overhead door even before he turned off the truck’s motor. He darted inside and showered, and after he dried off he made a reservation at the Marriott in the French Quarter for tomorrow night, staying four nights. With that last detail out of the way he called Quintana on one of his burner phones.

“I’m blown.”

“I thought as much. So, the truck goes to New Orleans as planned?”

“Yes. It’s loaded now and the other stuff you requested is there under the seat.”

“When will it go active?”

“Thirty miles.”

“Bueno. The boy will be there in an hour.”

Quintana hung up and he powered-off the phone, then he placed it in a baggie full of isopropyl alcohol, which fried the circuits and completely erased all residual oils and fingerprints. Next he went to the bathroom and shaved his head, and then his face, even trimming his eyebrows until they were reshaped and unrecognizably short enough to confuse facial recognition software. He grabbed his ‘go bag’ and waited for the courier to show up. Tonight’s driver, really just a kid the DEA had forced to make the New Orleans run, was already late and he was getting nervous. It took all his remaining patience to not beat the kid to a pulp when he eventually showed up, but death would come soon enough.

The kid was instructed to drive straight through to New Orleans, and he’d been given a route map and money for gas before being sent on his way. Tonight’s payload was supposed to be coke and crystal meth, reportedly several hundred kilos of each, and once the truck was gone and headed to New Orleans he called an über to pick him up at Barbaro’s. He changed clothes again, taking care to strap a huge prosthetic stage belly around his waist and a sloppy wig on his head before he slipped out the rear door. He sucked in a deep breath of warm air and slipped his ragged old go bag over his shoulder and, adding just one more last minute detail, he started walking through the alley with a cane, now hunched over and limping like an old man. He passed a black Ford Explorer parked down the block from his house, and he even waved at the two DEA agents inside as he passed, noting that they were still looking at his house through binoculars and clicking away with a Nikon. He smiled as he limped past the Ford and, taking care not to break his limping stride, made it to the pick up just in time. 

The über took him to a large self storage complex just west of his office at Lackland Air Force Base and he went to his unit and unlocked the door. His motorcycle, a new BMW R1250GS, was already packed and fueled, and he had fifty thousand dollars stashed inside the foam seat, and another 300,000 in Mexican pesos in the tank bag. He unhooked the battery charger and started the motor, and while the engine warmed he discarded the latex belly and the wig before he changed into a one piece riding suit. With that last chore done, he locked the unit before he drove slowly out onto Highway 90, headed westbound for Del Rio, Texas and the Mexican border.

The sun was setting on another hot Texas day, and he set the cruise control on 65 and flexed the fingers on first his right hand, then the left. He took a deep breath after he checked his rear view mirrors again, and leaned back against the duffel bag he’d strapped across the rear seat, trying to relax. Something caught his eye and he looked up, saw a v-shaped formation of ducks headed south and he had to smile at that. “Great minds think alike,” he said to the roaring slipstream of air outside his helmet, but as it always did, the sudden dark memory came for him once again… 

…his stepfather, always his step father. Beating his mother. Again. He’d been too little to help her, of course, but that had never stopped him from trying. He’d run and slammed into his stepfather’s legs, knocking the old drunk off balance for a moment, but that had only pissed the old fart off even more. The last time that happened his stepfather had a knife out and the bastard had gutted his mother before he turned on him, but they’d both heard sirens in the distance and the old man had trundled out to his Harley and taken off—heading for Mexico.

And now? Like his stepfather he was making a run for it…to Old Mexico.

His mother Mary didn’t survive that last beating, either. Police officers found him hiding under a bed and he’d been taken in and processed by CPS, the State of Texas’ Child Protective Services bureau, before entering the foster home system. But Eugene Diggs had been lucky. He was placed with a couple that lived at the Chase Field Naval Air Station in Beeville, Texas, a US Navy attack pilot training facility. This new ‘family’ adopted him before moving to Whidbey Island, Washington, to the naval air station located there. His new father, the only real father he’d ever have, was a flight surgeon, his new mother a school teacher, and they had doted on their new son.

He smiled when he thought of that brief period of normalcy. Of course he’d killed that, too.

Riding along while the sun slipped lower into one last lost horizon, he realized his life had become the very same perfect storm his mother had given him as his birthrite. If he represented the sum total of the discussion between nature versus nurture, genetics had carried the day where he was concerned. In the end he had been raised in a caring household by very well educated people, he had excelled in math and science but from the time he arrived in Washington until the day he left for Yale, all the way across the country in Connecticut, he had been fascinated by the fringes of his new culture. He played the guitar, and decently, too, but even in middle school he’d dabbled in hallucinogens, mainly peyote and acid, so by the time he arrived in New Haven he’d been around the block a few times.

He was a natural student, perhaps because of his new parents constant encouragement and attention, yet the fear of landing in a house with someone like his stepfather was never far from his mind. His new parent’s doting love and the lingering image of his mother’s emaciated body lying in a bloody heap on the kitchen floor would compete for Gene Harwell’s attention for the rest of his life.

His father had convinced him to let the Navy pay for his schooling, including medical school, so after graduating from the med school at Johns Hopkins he soon found his way to Afghanistan, and it was there that the whole nature versus nurture conversation took on a peculiar urgency. Afghanistan was, when he arrived, still ground zero in the global heroin supply chain, and Gene Harwell had been quietly, and almost eagerly sucked into the trade, helping pack dead bodies being returned to Dover Air Force Base full of product. He had no way of knowing that even then he was being drawn into working for the Sinaloa Cartel, but the bargain had been made a long time ago, maybe even before he’d come into the world. Fate, he had come to believe, had dealt him the cards he was destined to play.

And his work for the cartel continued when, after his return from Afghanistan, he was posted to SAUSHEC, the combined services medical training facility in San Antonio, Texas, and here his relationship with the cartel only deepened. He became an integral part of a massive operation moving cocaine and heroin all around the country, and as the cartel’s efforts generated so much cash there was always more than enough on hand to pay-off anyone’s silence, or even buy their complicity. There was even enough to siphon a little off every now and then.

He slowed down as he approached Uvalde, Texas, because deer were moving in the twilight and hitting one with a motorcycle at high speed would be the end of his line. Hungry now too, he stopped at the Whataburger on the east side of town, then he topped off the bike’s little fuel tank, paying cash now for everything before continuing on to Del Rio. He filled up the tank once again before crossing, uneventfully, into Mexico, telling the ICE agents there that he was bound for the Copper Canyon region to join a motorcycle tour along the famed highway that crossed the mountains west of Chihuahua. He found a quiet looking inn on the south side of Ciudad Acuña and put the cover over his bike before settling in for the night, and once in the little room he didn’t even bother to get out of his riding gear; he just flopped down on the bed and promptly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He spent three days making his way to Chihuahua, and once there he found a mechanic to change the oil and the BMW’s filters, and then, after another night in a sleepy little inn, he turned west into the mountains, not quite sure where he was going but reasonably sure he’d know the right place when he found it.

+++++

He stumbled into the village of Batopilas on his seventh night in Mexico, and felt by then beyond exhausted. He ached everywhere and for some reason his groin burned, but he put that off to all the long hours spent in the saddle. He pulled into an upscale looking lodge and inquired about a long term stay, but by then all he wanted to do was lay down… 

“How long did you have in mind?” the proprietor asked.

“I’m a writer,” Harwell lied, “and I’m looking for someplace quiet to spend a few months.”

“We have two casitas for rent by the week, but soon it will be the off season and I am sure we could work something out.”

“Sounds good. So, how ‘bout tonight?”

“Of course. I’ll just need your passport. Will you be paying cash, in dollars?”

“If you prefer, certainly.” He handed over his passport, one of two bogus passports he had with him.

“Ah, Dr. Eugene Smith, of Duluth, Minnesota?”

“Yes,” he lied.

“And you are a physician?”

“I am, yes. General surgery.”

“And you are writing about surgery?”

“No, I’m writing a novel about the Gulf War. I served in Iraq.”

“I see. Well, unlike Iraq it is quiet here, that much I can assure you.”

“Perfect. And is there a bank in town?”

“Yes. There are two, and in addition to the dining room we have here at the lodge, there are two nice restaurants in town. And of course breakfast is included with your room.”

“Internet?”

“Just here in the main building, I’m afraid. We have a computer for your use, but it is a dial up modem. The canyon walls are too steep for satellite coverage, and our village is still too small for other services. Here are the instructions, and the computer is in that room,” the proprietor added, pointing to a room full of potted palms, complete with squawking parakeet.

“Alright.”

“Will you need help with your luggage this evening?”

“No, I’ve got it.” He paid cash for a week’s stay then returned to the bike and carried his bags to the room, then he showered and changed into street clothes before returning to the bike. He pulled the seat off and removed the tool kit stored inside the seat and while he checked his tire pressures he also removed his stockpiled cash and put the lead foil packets inside his tank bag before setting off down the street to find a restaurant. Every muscle in his body ached, but his groin burned ever worse now, and he felt a deep muscle spasm taking root inside his left thigh as he walked around the bike.

After dinner he fired off an email to Quintana from the lodge’s computer, then returned to his room to wait for the reply.

He woke in the middle of the night with gut ripping cramps accompanied with a spiking fever and chills, and he knew he’d picked up a nasty GI bug, and then he realized he’d not remembered to pick up any ciprofloxacin before leaving Texas. He shrugged, knowing there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it right now, so he concentrated on drinking bottled water between bouts on the toilet. By 0530 there was blood in his stool and he groaned at the implications: he was going to need antibiotics and this tiny village couldn’t possibly have a doctor – or even a pharmacy.

“The closest clinic is in Guachochi,” the proprietress now working the front desk advised, “at the Mission Hospital.” She handed over a bottle of bismuth subsalicylate with a smile, and he popped the top and took a long slug of the pink sludge right there at the desk.

“How far is it?” Harwell groaned as his gut twisted into another barrel roll.

“Are you on the motorcycle?”

He nodded. “Yup. Lucky me.”

“It will take all day, I’m afraid, but if you leave soon you might avoid the rains.”

“The rains?” he moaned.

“Yes, but there may be some snow at higher elevations.”

His eyes wide open now, he had to confront the reality that he wasn’t in Texas anymore, and that now there wasn’t a pharmacy just down the street across from a well-stocked supermarket, and that he had for all intents and purposes run from that life with the DEA and probably the FBI hot on his tail – but at least here he was still a free man. “Alright,” he sighed. “Do you have a hotel safe? I want to leave a few things if I may.”

“Of course,” the woman said, “and I’ll have some rehydration fluid ready for you.”

“Thanks.”

He went to his room and put his riding suit back on, then put his dollars in a small Pelican case and locked it before heading back up to the desk. The woman gave him a bottle of ORF, or oral rehydration fluid, and she gave him a couple of packets of the mix to add to bottled water as he crossed the mountains.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said as he walked out to his bike. He put his helmet on and fired up the engine, then entered the clinic’s address into the GPS as he stretched – but no…it was too soon, he realized as he turned and sprinted for the restroom off the lobby. He made it just in time.

+++++

He pulled into the clinic parking lot a little before eight that evening, but he was shaking now, and he knew he was borderline hypothermic. The bike’s engine heat, and the heated grips on the handlebars, had been the only thing between him and death for the last two hours. Snow in September? In fucking Mexico? Well, mountains are mountains no matter where you find them, but having to stop every half hour to shit on the side of the road had only added insult to injury – and completely dehydrated now, he was near the end of his rope.

He had just got the bike up on the side-stand and was making his way through blowing sleet to the clinic entrance when he collapsed just outside the door.

+++++

He felt the stinging pinch of an IV, heard the calm, reassuring voices of a physician giving orders to a nurse and he relaxed – until he remembered he was in Mexico and these people were speaking English! Had the DEA caught up to him? Was he in a prison hospital?

He grimaced at the thought and opened his eyes, but he saw a very cute American girl drawing blood from a stick in his right arm and another, even cuter girl looking at his EKG, then this girl turned and looked at him.

“Oh, you’re awake now!”

“Where am I?” Harwell sighed, mesmerized by her red hair and green eyes.

“Guachochi. At the Tarahumara Mission Hospital, and I’m Dr. McKinnon.”

“Shouldn’t you be, oh, I don’t know, in Glasgow, maybe?”

She smiled. “Med school in Mexico City, and I’m doing my public service commitment here,” she shrugged.

“UTMB Galveston,” he smiled, telling yet another little white lie.

“You’re a doc? Where at?”

“Minnesota. Taking a year off to do some riding.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice suddenly dull, flat, and comprehending. “Well, your core temp was 95.6 so I put some heat packs under your arms and I’m running Cipro wide open. You should be good to go in the morning.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s your specialty?”

“General surgery?”

“Really? I’ve got a kid with a hot belly and no cutter. Think you can do an appendix?”

“When? Now?”

“You should be hot to trot in an hour or so,” she said, knocking his knee with her clipboard. “And look at it this way…you do me a favor and maybe I’ll do one for you.”

“You got a gas passer?”

“A nurse practitioner. Well, kind of.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’ll figure it out.”

He shook his head and looked at his watch; he’d been out for a few hours – but he really was feeling a lot better. He shivered once and a nurse draped a hot blanket over him and he fell into a deep sleep…again. When the dreams came his stepfather was running out the back door and headed for Mexico… 

+++++

The overhead lights weren’t the best but the instruments were clean and the OR was spotless, now he stood over an eight year boy and checked off his landmarks for the incision, making a few dots with a marker on the boy’s belly before he swabbed betadine over the site. 

Patty McKinnon had taped hot packs to his axial pits and inside his thighs and at least he wasn’t shaking now, so when the anesthetist, a girl from San Diego named Debbie Surtees, gave him the go ahead he made his incision and dissected muscle to expose the kid’s appendix, and forty five minutes later he closed the incision and had just made it back to his bed before he passed out. Again.

He woke early in the morning and saw two bags of antibiotics and a bag of platelets running, and he didn’t know what to make of that. “What the hell?” he wondered out loud.

McKinnon came in an hour later and when she saw he was awake she pulled up a chair. “Your white count is in the basement, Doctor – uh – Smith. And your right nut is as hard as a golf ball. Some of the cord, too.”

“Fuck.”

“My surgeon will be here this afternoon, and we should do an orchiectomy first thing.”

“All my stuff is over in Batopilas…”

“At the Lodge?”

“Yeah.”

“I know Martin. I’ll have ‘em put your stuff in storage ‘til we can run over and pick it up.”

“We?”

“You won’t be riding that bike for a while, if you know what I mean.”

“We?”

“Yeah. We’ll treat you here, and you can work off your bill with the rest of the indentured servants working here.”

“I’ve got to be in Creel tomorrow morning.”

“That isn’t going to happen.”

“You have internet here?”

“If you don’t mind me asking, which cartel got to you? Sinaloa?”

He nodded.

“Quintana?” she sighed knowingly.

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

She chuckled. “Half the docs working in Mexico these days got sucked into their fentanyl operations. There used to be a shortage of doctors down here. No more. You can find better surgeons in Puerto Vallarta than you can in Dallas these days.”

He nodded, if only because he’d already figured as much.

“I can get in touch with him if you like, but I’ll need to know your name.”

“Gene. Just tell him Gene, okay? He’ll know who you’re talking about.”

She looked away and shook her head. “Sooner or later you’re gonna have to trust someone.”

“I’m not there yet.”

“How long you been on the run?”

“A week.”

“Shit. No wonder…”

“Did you run an AFP?”

“No. Our tech would have to get supplies from Creel to run that one.”

“Sorry…it’s just a lot to wrap my head around.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I thought I felt something down there, like a burn, a pulled muscle kind of thing.”

“Probably the cord. We can decide on chemo after we look at the histology, but retroperitoneal radiation will probably be worth looking into.”

“Uh-huh. Where? Not here, I assume?”

“No, not here. We do limited chemo, but I do mean limited.”

“So? Where?”

“I assume going home is out of the question?”

“Yup.”

“You could go to Creel, but…”

“Yeah…no buts, please. I guess that means Mexico City?”

“Oh, yeah, of course, but there’s a good medical school in Chihuahua and the hospital there has a decent radiology department.”

“What would you do, Patty?”

“I’d wait until I had the pathology report, ‘Gene.’”

He grinned. “You know, I was thinking when this blows over about heading over to someplace like Sudan or Ethiopia, joining MSF and maybe working over there.”

“Really? Why?”

“Something about practicing medicine in the states bothers me, I guess. Maybe it has for a while. When I joined the group I was working with I was told we were a volume business, that the aim was to spend just enough time with each patient to get a handle on the exact medical problem, then get ‘em in and out of surgery as fast as possible. I guess within a year I felt like I was flipping burgers at MickeyDs, and I didn’t know my patients, not one. It was like go into the OR and see a patch of skin already draped, get in and get out and go to the next OR for the next case, then off to the office for exams before heading back to the hospital for rounds. Pretty soon I realized I couldn’t even remember one patient’s name from the last couple of years.”

“Flipping burgers,” McKinnon sighed, shaking her head in disbelief. “That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that.”

He looked out a little window and nodded. “I think I felt useless.” He looked around the room then back at her. “Maybe I’m tired of feeling useless.”

“Do you have any idea how many times you say ‘I’ when you’re talking?”

He turned and looked at her. “What…a little too much narcissism for your taste?”

“Just curious,” she shrugged, “but was someone holding a gun to your head when you decided not to get to know your patients?”

“Yeah. A fire breathing dragon called the office manager was, and the partners were pretty nasty, like out of a Dickens novel…”

“Really. My-my. So, it’s off to Africa you go where, guess what, you won’t speak the language so there’ll be no way in hell you’ll ever get to know anyone…”

“And I sure won’t be part of another volume enterprise, will I?”

“What’s that got to do with medicine? You were treating sick people, right? I mean, isn’t that the point?”

“I don’t know that there is a point anymore.”

“Ah. The heart of the matter. You’ve lost your way.”

He looked away again and took a deep breath, but finally he nodded his head just a little.

“So…you think you’ll find your way back from the wilderness by going to deepest, darkest Africa? Sound about right?”

“I don’t know what I’ll find…”

“Yeah? But isn’t that the point?”

“What?”

“The point, Gene? To find yourself?”

“You make it sound so…trite…?”

“Hey, if the shoe fits…”

“You like kicking people when they’re down, don’t you?”

“Like it? No, not really, but sometimes people only really listen to you when they’re face down in the mud. And who knows, if you’re lucky maybe you’ll finally listen to that little voice in the back of your head.”

His eyes blinked a few times and he nodded. “Anything else, Doc? Any more words of compassion and wisdom?”

She hooked up a syringe in his line and shot in something. “Get some sleep, okay? We’ll operate as soon as the cutter looks over the images.”

“What about my things?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

His eyes suddenly felt full and very heavy, and later, sometime in the dark he felt gloved hands running a catheter. More strange voices came and went and at one point someone drew blood, then he was aware of being lifted onto an operating table and then the strangest thing of all; he seemed to be aware of a mask sliding down over his mouth and nose – followed by an all consuming stink that was not at all enjoyable… 

+++++

“Well, Dr. Frankenstein, it lives,” he heard someone say as he opened his eyes.

“McKinnon? That you?” 

“Yes, it is, Dr. Harwell. Can you rate your pain for me?”

‘She knows my name,’ the scared little voice inside Gene Harwell’s head screamed. ‘What else does she know?’ He strolled along her razor’s edge with ambivalence on one side of the blade and utter fear on the other, all while trying to think of how to reply to this simplest question.

“Let’s just say I’m still deep in the land of I don’t give a flying fuck, and let’s leave it at that.”

“Okay, we’ll call that a nice, fat zero. Know where you are, by any chance?”

“In the wonderful land of Oz, and I’m about to pull back the curtain.”

“Memory intact. Sense of humor sucks,” she wrote out loud on her chart. “Know who the president is?”

“Snidely Whiplash, esquire.”

“Good one. I’d never have thought of that. Think you could handle some water?”

“If it comes out of a bottle, maybe.”

“Good situational awareness, too. Okay, five by five, Harwell.”

“You got a path report yet, smart ass?”

“Diffuse seminoma and teratoma in the left testes, no cells in the cord so no radiation needed.”

He felt a roaring surge of relief and then a few tears running down his face, so he cleared his throat before he spoke. “Thanks, McKinnon. I think I love you.”

“No problemo, Gene. Oh, Quintana is okay with things, he says to just lay low for a while and he’ll be in touch. And Martin is bringing your stuff over tomorrow.”

“How long you going to keep me here?”

“You could go home today, but…”

“…but, right, I got no home to go to. I think I got that.”

“I’ve got a spare room at my place if you want to bunk out there for a while. There are plenty of places to rent around here, too. Like three, maybe four.”

“Ah. So, any port in a storm, huh?”

“How’s the pain now?”

“I’m feeling it now. Versed is wearing off.”

She picked up a syringe from a bedside tray and hooked it up to his IV and sent a little morphine down his line. “That’ll take the edge off for a while. You have any trouble taking Oxy?”

“Yeah. I don’t take it, period. You got naproxen?”

“Sure.”

“That’ll do.”

“You want me to get my spare bedroom cleaned up?”

He nodded her way, then grinned at her green eyes: “Yeah. That’ll do.”

+++++

He started easy, riding a few miles around local roads, then a few mining trails, but his groin still hurt when he pushed too hard. He worked three weekends at the hospital before he decided he’d had enough domesticity in his life. It wasn’t that McKinnon was hard to take, either; in fact, the opposite was true. She was bright as hell but should have gone into psychiatry, not general medicine, and her constant psychoanalyzing had grown stuffy and was often downright obtuse. Even after a couple of weeks with her she seemed to alternate between voracious horniness and bouts of moodily introspective self analysis and he never really felt like he belonged there.

Probably because he didn’t like moodily introspective analyses of his situation. And maybe she knew that too, but it didn’t keep her from pushing him to look at his choices.

But he’d liked the way Batopilas felt, and something about the place still seemed to pull at him. Maybe it was the steep-walled, tree-lined valley, or how the town was clinging precariously to a ledge just above the edge of a roaring river, or even how the tiny village was defined by narrow cobbled lanes and brightly painted stucco walls topped with sun-dried red-tile roofs, everything surrounded by overhanging trees and the roar of the rushing water just below. He wondered what it would feel like to stay in a village like that and yeah, maybe write about the war and to call a place like that home. Maybe he could buy a house and open up a little clinic there, too… 

Yet when he told McKinnon he was thinking of leaving she seemed to come undone.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “I haven’t been here a month…”

“But I’ve had this feeling about you since the moment I saw you,” she said, coming on hard. “Look, I don’t want you to go.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, I get that and yeah, I like you too. I’ve enjoyed spending time with you…”

“Then stay!”

“And what happens when I decide to head to Africa? What then?”

“We both go.”

“Simple as that, huh? You just pack up and head out?”

“Yeah. Simple as that. I’ve looked into it, I know what we’d have to do and we’d be a perfect team. Medicine and surgery…I mean, they’d be nuts to turn us away!”

“Patty, doesn’t it bother you that I don’t love you?”

“No, not really. You’re a guy and guys are like that. I do know that we fit together, that we’d be a good team…”

“And what about you? What about love?” he asked.

And she shrugged away his indifference. “We haven’t been together long enough for that, Gene, not really, but the thing is – when I’m around you I’m happy. And it’s like I can’t imagine being happy ever again unless I’m around you, and I don’t know what else you call that…”

“Infatuation, maybe?”

“But I’m not a teenager, Gene,” she said, though perhaps a little too defiantly – like maybe she’d had ‘daddy issues’ once upon a time and still didn’t like being told how she felt. Still, he had Quintana to worry about, because if he bolted on the cartel now he might as well hang it up. He knew too much and they’d never let him go without an understanding of some kind.

So he stayed. He understood, really understood, that without Quintana’s blessing he had to ‘stay put’ for the time being. And yet, by that point he’d also recognized that McKinnon and Quintana had a bond of some kind, some kind of connection he could only guess about. Like maybe she’d gotten him out of a tough spot once upon a time, and maybe he owed her. Big time. At least…that’s what it felt like. On the other hand, he’s stashed away money in banks in Mexico City, and over almost fifteen years he’d siphoned away a lot of cartel money, too. Down here he was safely out of reach from both the DEA and the FBI and he had a roof over his head. McKinnon was fun to hang with and all in all he was soon inclined to just go with the flow.

But after a couple of months he missed ‘big city’ medicine, and he couldn’t get a handle on the reasons why. His Spanish, after living in San Antonio for almost ten years, was already more than passable – but now his language skills were quickly improving because of this immersive setting – and so he was finally able to talk to his patients without the commercial restraints imposed by corporate medicine. And he liked working that way – finally. And while it was what he’d always imagined medicine could be like, or should be like, he reminded himself, conditions at the mission clinic were almost, but not quite primitive.

He liked riding around the mountains but he also recognized he was living right alongside the edges of a really hostile environment, too. At medium elevations vast fields of poppies were growing in the meadows he rode by, while at lower elevations marijuana cultivation was in full swing. And everywhere he went he ran into armed guards, in many cases just kids with AK-47s and itchy trigger fingers. Rival clans were staking claims up here in the mountains and some were encroaching on other clan’s grows, with turf wars the first obvious result, and that made him think about the role he’d played in this ongoing house of cards.

There wouldn’t be cartels without users and all this semi-clandestine production was aimed at supplying the North American market. With almost two thirds of the people in the United States and Canada now being regular users of marijuana, and with domestic cultivation still for all intents and purposes illegal, the cartels had been handed a market so insatiably vast it was almost beyond comprehension. It was no wonder the cartels were paying lobbyists in the U.S. to keep these products illegal, yet the handwriting was on the wall. U.S. tobacco companies had been buying up land in Northern California for decades, and why? Because it was prime land for marijuana cultivation. Not to mention federal taxes on marijuana and related products could crush federal budget deficits. But it would severely limit the profitability of the cartels, and that was the game, the cards as they’d been dealt…

So for the time being riding around these hills was still dangerous. Kidnappings were more frequent, and some kids had been known gun down bikers just to take their motorcycles for a joyride. There were often no repercussions because the cartels owned the cops, and only reason he could ride around the area was because he was under the protection of a capo, one of the Sinaloa cartel’s commanders. He was therefore untouchable, so he rode around and kids with AK-47s waved at him as he passed – though he usually stopped and talked with them. They talked about the things they did out here, about their command structure, and he listened as they talked about their gripes – and even their hopes and dreams. Most of these kids, he soon learned, had already killed members of rival clans, and Harwell began to feel as though the whole set-up was faintly medieval. 

He also found that a lots of these kids were working while they were sick as hell, so he started loading up his saddlebags with medical supplies and started taking care of the kids along his route. 

People in the smaller villages along his route soon heard about that, too.

So when he rode through these hamlets people waved him down. He learned that most of these people didn’t trust doctors, or hospitals, but for some reason they trusted him, and probably because he’d treated their kids and he was under the protection of the cartels. So pretty soon he was treating people along a vast network of tiny villages along dirt roads in the boondocks, and the administrators at the Mission Hospital grew quite interested in his successes. When he ran across a case he couldn’t fix out on the road he put the patient on the back of his bike and brought them back to the hospital, and he fixed ‘em there. Word spread, too. Harwell was soon a popular man, and accorded saint-like status in many of these villages.

And so pretty soon he began to feel the one thing he’d been missing in his life: a sense of purpose. When he told an old woman that his mother’s name had been Mary her eyes lit up and she’d crossed herself while she fingered her rosary.

So almost out of inertia he fell in with McKinnon and soon enough weeks turned into months, and months to a year, and still, at least three days a week he hopped on his bike and rode off into the boonies. He worked weekends in the OR, usually three to four surgeries a day, some days more, rarely less. He stopped caring about McKinnon’s perceived flaws and started listening to her hopes and dreams, and her fears, too. Somewhere along the way he started caring for her, too.

He found her breast cancer and he did the procedure. He nursed her through chemo, and he held her hands as her hair fell away. He stayed by her side as she regained health, and he took her to Chihuahua for radiation. They took walks together, short walks in the beginning but longer ones as she got stronger, and her hopes and dreams turned into quiet talks about some kind of a future together, just the two of them. Maybe here in Mexico or maybe somewhere in Africa…it didn’t matter to her as long as they were together.

So on a Friday night in April one of the Jesuits at the mission said the words people say when they promise to stay together until death do they part, and standing there in the candlelight surrounded by his new friends, Gene Harwell felt something he’d never really expected to feel after he left his home, and his country. He felt happy, and that even came as a surprise to the DEA agents who’d had him under surveillance for the last two months. 

+++++

“Hold your legs up,” the Bexar County sheriff’s deputy told Harwell, and with his legs shackled the deputy pulled him roughly from the van. Once he was out on the concrete the deputy began pushing Harwell through the sally port to the inmates entrance, but no one noticed rough treatment down here in the courthouse basement – and no one cared if anything out of place went down. They waited for an elevator with several other inmates and deputies, and when the elevator came they all rode up to the fourth floor holding block, and he was quickly locked-up in a small holding cell.

He’d had a jerk-water public defender who hadn’t objected even once to questionable evidence presented at his trial but by then Harwell knew this trial was a slam-dunk, a show trial for public consumption. The DEA had rammed the case through pre-trials and before a trial judge in record time, and from then on he knew he was being made an example of how not to fuck with the Feds, and physicians were the intended audience. The guilty verdict was a forgone conclusion, so he’d just smiled and shuffled off the stage, his performance complete. What had surprised him was Quintana, and how the cartels had simply dropped him like a hot rock. Still, he’d decided on silence as the best course, banking on the cartel having people on the inside who’d keep him relatively safe. And who knows, maybe they’d even be able to keep him alive.

Today’s appearance was for sentencing, but by this point he really didn’t give a shit. He’d gone from being a physician in a lucrative American practice to taking care of peasants in Mexico’s central highlands, and now the word was he was going to spend the rest of his life in a “SuperMax” prison outside of Canyon City, Colorado. Not exactly how he’d seen things working out once upon a time, but what hurt most of all was leaving McKinnon down there, because just before the Federales came knocking on her door she’d told him she was pregnant. He knew the stress would get to her, and he hated himself for what she’d have to go through on her own.

So now it looked like everything he could have possibly screwed up in his life he’d managed to do, because on top of everything else he’d have a kid he’d never know…so in a way he’d have a kid that would experience many of the same joys he had. Then a funny thing crossed his mind: while he was glad neither of his ‘parents’ had lived to see his fall, he’d never once imagined how his biological mother might have felt. 

Why? Was she so unimportant? Had she ever loved him, or had her role been to simply set the stage for all that came next?

But yeah, his prosecutors had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he’d moved the cartel’s product for years and years. They’d mapped out his life for all the jurors to see, from being part of an intricately planned and meticulously executed supply pipeline to helping kill DEA informants. He’d been responsible for moving Mexican meth, Afghani heroin, and Chinese fentanyl all around the country, but consider this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: he’d made a shitload of money along the way too, and that was his game, the only one that mattered, wasn’t it? Money was only thing that mattered to Gene Harwell, MD. Helping to move product through hospitals where he worked, but he’d also done so in uniform while serving his country in Afghanistan. Not saving lives, mind you. No, this monster had not been caring for his wounded brothers, he’d taken part in a system that created nothing but suffering.

“What sort of stunted creature does this” the prosecutor asked those wide-eyed jurors. If not for a well-placed informant this monster would still be on the loose, moving heroin to school playgrounds in a neighborhood near you! But he’d been fingered! Maybe it had been a very bloody jailhouse confession, but in the end none of that mattered because here he is, ladies and gentlemen, awaiting your judgement. The Mexican ‘Federales’ and the DEA had scooped him up while he was on the run down in Mexico and now here he is, teetering on the edge of the abyss, waiting for you to pronounce his fate.

Another deputy came for him a few hours later and walked him down a marble hallway to the courtroom, and then he was pushed through heavy oak doors into the courtroom. 

And there he was. His nemesis.

J. Alan Wentworth III, the federal prosecutor ramrodding his case through the system. Wentworth was short, fat, baldheaded and bespectacled – a paragon of every modern virtue imaginable. He was playing the game, alright. Throwing aces every time, and always with an extra up his sleeve. He was asking the court to consider the death penalty, or at the very least life without parole, because if they didn’t come down hard on physicians like him then law enforcement would never get a handle on the problem…

The problem with your thesis, Mr. J. Alan Wentworth III, is that law enforcement is in on the scam at every fucking level, from cops on the beat to the guards in the jails; all of them feeding at the cartel’s trough – but there was no way Harwell would be allowed to say this in open court. This simple truth was so readily apparent even a dime-bag dealer could figure it out: pay anyone enough and they’ll look the other way, and every fucking time, too…but Wentworth had a quota to meet, a conviction rate to maintain, and that more than anything else was dictating the outcome this afternoon. Harwell was just a mid-level executive in a thriving international manufacturing and distribution operation, but instead of working for one of the big pharmaceutical outfits he’d chosen to work for the cartels. Too bad anti-trust laws didn’t apply, because the irony on display in the courtroom was a little too rich.

Harwell wasn’t exactly surprised when, a half hour later and due to the aggravating circumstances of his crimes, he was sentenced to life in prison at ADMAX Florence, the notorious and justifiably dreaded super-max facility in central Colorado. When asked by the court if he had anything to say prior to final sentencing he declined to speak, and so was simply escorted from the courtroom straight to the elevator – this time by a nattily dressed US Marshall – and then out to a shiny new Ford Explorer waiting just for him.

Harwell was driven to the basement parking garage at a nearby office building and led inside a basement level office, and then right into a restroom – where the handcuffs and shackles were removed. Not at all sure what was happening now, the marshal handed Harwell a gym bag and the keys to the Ford, then the cop turned around and walked out of the restroom, and he left Harwell standing there – almost in a state of shock. Not knowing what else to do, he opened the gym bag and found an envelope, two changes of clothes and some toiletries, as well as a new pair of Adidas running shoes. He opened the envelope and found an airline ticket, cash, credit cards and a French passport. 

“Quintana,” he muttered to himself with a smile, then he changed into the street clothes and dumped the orange jumpsuit in a dumpster on his way back to the Explorer. The NAV system was already programed for the airport and he put on a ball cap and sunglasses the cop had left on the driver’s seat and he drove straight to the airport. Once there he parked the car in the long term lot and went into the terminal. He checked the envelope and found a boarding pass so went right up to the TSA security checkpoint and then out to his gate, where he waited for an AeroMexico flight to Mexico City. His assigned seat, he realized, was in the business class section, and he suddenly felt as if he was inside a particularly warm and fuzzy dream.

When his flight was called he halfway expected a dozen DEA agents to come crawling out of the woodwork…but no, nothing happened, and by that point Harwell thought his life was getting positively surreal. He walked out the Jetway and boarded the 737Max and a flight attendant brought him an ice cold Bohemia and a slice of lime, and he did his best to ignore the people boarding the flight because he just knew that at any moment he was going to wake up and this was all going to turn out to be a really nasty trick of the mind.

But no, the main door was about to close – when, apparently, one more person ran into the cabin, and Harwell watched as Quintana boarded and came to the seat next to his own.

“Mind if I sit here?” the number three man in the Sinaloa Cartel asked.

“No, please,” Harwell said, then he watched as Quintana put two small carry-ons in the overhead bin.

Then Quintana sat and took the offered Bohemia from the flight attendant, and Harwell watched as the main door was pivoted into the closed and locked position, and he looked out the window as the Boeing was pushed back from the gate. When he could stand it no longer, he turned to Quintana and smiled.

“Did you have a nice visit?” he asked the capo.

“Yes. And you?”

“I’d have to say, all in all, that it was an interesting trip.”

“Perhaps someday we’ll have time to sit over dinner and talk about your experiences.”

Which meant, Harwell understood, now was not that time. He nodded and smiled and looked out the window as the Boeing turned onto the active runway and dashed into the evening sky. 

He ate his dinner in silence and watched intently as the jetliner lined up to land in Mexico City, and just before Quintana left him there he advised that Harwell not forget his two bags in the overhead bin, and Harwell thanked his friend then watched him leave. He pulled the bags down and walked out the jet and through immigration and then found a small lounge to sit for a while.

Then he opened Quintana’s parting gift.

Another envelope on top…

A ticket to Paris on Air France, departing in an hour and a half. Enough cash to live comfortably for several months. Documents to provide a completely new identity along with the academic degrees and transcripts of post-grad work to back everything up. And a note that said all his savings accounts in Mexico City were still intact, and that the DEA hadn’t uncovered them.

And then there was one last note from Quintana.

‘Silentium ac fides super omnia.’

There wasn’t a whole lot else to say, was there? He’d never talked, never sought a plea bargain right up until the moment of his sentencing, and maybe that had come as a surprise to Quintana. Maybe that was why he’d risked it all to come up the States, to see this through to the end. To see what kind of man this Gene Harwell really was.

Maybe. Maybe not. Harwell would probably never know the answer to that one, would he? Because the second part of Quintana’s message was equally clear. 

We own you. And now you owe us not just your life, but your freedom, too. And we can take both if we need to.

He walked over to the First Class lounge and went inside, checked-in for the flight and saw that he was indeed flying alone. Not knowing what else to do he sat and watched jets come and go until his flight was called, then he walked out and boarded the 777 and made his way up to seat 1A. 

A simply gorgeous flight attendant came by and introduced herself, offered him a glass of Champagne and a warm towel for his face, then she smiled and sashayed up to the galley. After three months behind bars the sight of such a woman was enough to leave him in puddles of wilting despair. He shook his head and tried to remember he’d been married – once upon a long time ago.

He looked up and saw the main doors close a few minutes later and then he looked down at his hands. How long had it been? How many months since he’d last operated on a patient? How long since he’d given up on ever doing anything like that again?

How many months since he’d seen McKinnon?

How would she feel now? Would she still care about him?

Dare he even try to get in touch with her? Wouldn’t the DEA be monitoring her every move? Especially now that he’d managed to flee?

The jet pushed back and taxied out to the active, then it turned onto the runway and lumbered into the sky, turning to the northeast to fly up the east coast of North America on its way from the New World to the Old. He saw Washington DC down below just after his second dinner of the evening, then New York City and Boston before the long Atlantic crossing. His seat was turned into a cozy little bed and he slept the miles away, waking up in time for a little breakfast and a mid-morning arrival in Paris.

He waited until almost everyone else had deplaned before grabbing his bags and heading out the Jetway into the terminal. He made his way to immigration and as he was now a citizen of France he walked right through the ‘Nothing To Declare’ line and then out to the queue of people lining up to ride into the city.

And then he felt an arm slip into his.

“Well, hello there, stranger,” Patty McKinnon said, a coy little smile crossing her face. “Fancy running into you here.”

“Yes, small world,” he said, smiling. She leaned into him and they kissed with a ferocity that might have annoyed most of the people standing in line, but hey…this was Paris.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Better now. You?”

“Not bad, considering,” she said, rubbing her round tummy.

He took her hand in his and closed his eyes. Not a day had passed that he hadn’t dreamed of feeling her skin on his one more time and now here she was.

“I have an apartment for us near the medical school,” she sighed. “We start an MSF orientation in a couple of weeks, then we’re headed to Ethiopia, to a new clinic south of Gondar.”

“Did Quintana help you with this?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Gene Harwell smiled, but in a snap he suddenly understood his future as everything popped into focus. Quintana would never let him go, not completely. He’d have to work off his debt – one way or another – and in the only way he could. He’d go to Africa but as always he’d help establish new markets and new distribution networks, just as he always had. Where would it be this time? London? Berlin? Or the explosive new markets in Stockholm and Moscow? It didn’t matter now, did it? – because there wasn’t such a thing as a fresh start where the cartels were concerned. The life that had chosen him valued loyalty – and silence. Nothing more, and no less.

He helped McKinnon into the back of a little beige Mercedes taxi and then slipped in right beside her, and for a moment he considered turning and seeing if he could spot the people tailing them, but—why? In the end nothing really mattered, and anyone could see that.

 Part II: The Soul of Perception

Once upon a time in a city by the sea there worked a physician. A surgical resident doing his time at a big university hospital, he at first glance seemed to genuinely care about people; he always had a caring smile on his face ready for the next patient, and he could always be counted on to lend a hand to anyone who needed help. Yet some people thought of the man, this physician, as something of a doormat, thinking that he simply couldn’t say no to people and that, as a result, everyone lined up to take advantage of his generosity. Such people no doubt called the doctor a ‘patsy’ — another word for an ‘easy mark’ — and, who knows? Perhaps such people laughed at him behind his back, from time to time, anyway — at least when they didn’t need him. Perhaps such little voices of whispered derision are little more than a sign of the times we live in, yet in a world suffocating under the weight of so many little sidelong whispers you have to step back from all the noise for a moment and ask yourself just one little question all your own. Have we forgotten that, if only occasionally, true goodness walks among us from time to time. Or is there really such a thing? Perhaps, in our haste, we have confused goodness with expedience?

+++++

Doug Tanner rubbed the corner of his right eye, trying without much success to brush away the lack of sleep from his burning eyes. He looked at his watch and noted the time: 2220 hours. He’d had, by this reckoning, an hour of sleep — in the last two days — and his mouth tasted coppery, almost cruddy; he smelled like stale coffee, dry body odor and of an after shave lotion that had given up hours ago. He was hungry, yet he could hardly stomach the idea of food; even the very idea he needed food seemed vaguely off-putting. There were times he resented his own human frailty, and this was one of those moments.

The pager in his lab-coat buzzed and he picked it out of the rubbish of gum wrappers and throat lozenges that lived there; he looked at the code on the little green display and groaned.

“Shit, not again…”

Then, from a old speaker mounted in the ceiling: “Dr Tanner, Dr Tanner, stat to ER, Trauma Two. Dr Tanner stat to Trauma Two.”

“Hey, Dougie, sounds like they’re playing your song again,” a third year neurology resident sitting in the room said. “Go get ‘em, Tiger!” she snarled.

He didn’t know her name, and for some reason he didn’t care, though he smiled at her on the way out the door. Then he grumbled something nine-tenths obscene under his breath and rubbed at his eyes absent-mindedly again while he from the stumbled break room. He followed the red stripe on the floor to the ER and waded into the full-blown chaos that was Trauma Two, one of two rooms set up in the ER for emergency surgery and advanced life-support. A couple of other residents had already arrived before him and were sorting out the mess under the lights.

“Ah, Tanner! Gun shot, through and through URQ and I got tamponade. Gonna need you to get a chest-tube in, pronto!”

Doug Tanner was wide-awake now. He gloved-up, moved to a tray set-up beside the patient, the terrified black kid on the table — his wide-eyes darting everywhere, bloody froth coming from his nose and running down his neck; a nurse opened the chest tube kit while Tanner gloved-up and palpated the kid’s thorax, then Tanner made an incision between ribs on the kid’s left side and thrust the hemostat and surgical tubing into the kids chest. Frothy blood came out the end of the tubing at first, then a steady stream of deep red fluid jetted to the floor. Then an anesthesiologist was by the boy’s head and intubating the kid; a fourth year thoracic resident hovered over the boy’s sternum, her scalpel poised and waiting for the go-ahead from the ‘gas-passer’; another resident was swabbing the kid’s sweaty, mud-caked skin with saline and Betadine. It was now or never, because there just wasn’t enough time to get the kid upstairs to a fully equipped O.R.

This was Tanner’s second year as a general surgery resident, and his third six-month rotation through the ER, and he couldn’t remember ever having done anything else in his life. He could barely remember his parents anymore — they seemed like abstract constructs that had existed once upon a time in the gauzy remnants of time before the first year of med school. Girlfriends? Like…are you kidding? Who had time? There’d been a Becky so-and-so, then a waitress one night, but then there’d been Macy last summer — yet the other one night stands had come and gone so fast he couldn’t even remember what any of them looked like. Because soon enough everything had fallen into the general blur of this chosen life, and like everything else in this world people soon became one more blur inside a fast-passing landscape that never seemed to stop for a rest. Everything he had once thought important, girls, cars, maybe even getting married someday — all these things belonged to a past that was so far away it wasn’t even recognizable anymore. Everything he’d ever wanted to do had been wiped clean away, his memory replaced by an endless stream of drunk drivers, irate husbands and soaring cholesterol levels, and the broken bodies never stopped coming in through the out door. Life had turned into a carousel — wooden horses that never slowed down and that just couldn’t stop going round and round. And he was trapped here, trapped with no way off.

But everything had to stop, didn’t it? Eventually? But apparently that wasn’t true, not here, because now he was on again and going round and round and nothing mattered anymore — nothing, except what happened within the confined little spaces inside this sprawling emergency department. This place was like a beast that fed on human weakness, a Darwinian jungle where only the strongest survived, and as he sutured the chest tube into place the door flew open… 

And an orderly, a young kid, rushed into the trauma room: “We need someone in Five, like right now!”

The Head Resident looked up at the orderly, then at Tanner. 

“I’ve got it,” Tanner said, the room spinning round and round. 

“Go!” she said, nodding as soon as they made eye contact.

“Right.” Tanner walked down the hall and ducked into Trauma 5 and shuddered to a stop: “What the fuck?!” he whispered, his eyes flaring in wide-eyed astonishment. Still, he managed a brief smile of encouragement to the patient – just because…

“He got his arm caught in this machine,” one of the paramedics started explaining. “They use it to grind hamburger and sausage at the supermarket…”

Tanner looked at the mess, then at the patient, a middle-aged man who, stunningly, appeared quite calm; he was sitting up on a fire department gurney, and his right arm — almost up to the elbow — had been pulled into this large stainless steel meat-grinder, and there was one fireman holding the grinder on it’s rolling base, mainly to keep the blades from cutting the rest of the man’s mangled arm from his body. Paramedics had applied a tourniquet at the scene and started an IV; every time they released it on the ride-in through traffic massive blood loss resumed.

Tanner walked to the man’s side, trying to smile. ‘Why isn’t this guy in shock?’ he asked himself.

“How’ya doin’, doc,” the man said. He still had his white butcher’s coat on. “Sorry about this.”

“Can you feel anything?” Tanner said, nodding while he bent over to examine the “hamburger” that had come out the spout on the far side of the machine.

“No, not really… it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch when it was happening, but not much since.”

“Nerves completely severed,” Tanner mumbled. “Nurse, get me some saline, and let’s get some serious light down here in the chute.” Someone handed him a fresh bottle of saline and he slowly poured half of the one liter bottle over the shredded pulp; Tanner pulled the overhead lamp closer and closer, looking at the mangled mess while he took mental notes. “And start some ringers,” he added, looking at the nurse by the IV tree.

“You gonna have to amputate?” the butcher asked stoically while he watched Tanner probing the pulpy mess.

But Tanner kept looking at the remnants while he poured saline over the tissue, looking for hidden structure in the muck with the metal probe in his gloved hand. Every now and then he made little clucking noises with his tongue as his head moved from side to side, but other than that he seemed completely absorbed with the problem at hand… 

“Does this machine come apart? Like…maybe right about here?” Tanner asked the butcher as he pointed at the main body of the grinder.

“No, not the chute,” the butcher said. “That’s solid aluminum there, doc.”

Tanner moved, looked down into the machine’s feed chute, from the uninjured side of the man’s arm. “Tell me about those blades in there? Do they reverse?”

“No, doc. The gears just turn one way.” Tanner studied the machine for a moment, then he stood up:

“Nurse, call someone down in maintenance and have ‘em bring up a metric socket set and some vice-grips.”

“What?” the nurse said. “What did — you want…what?”

Tanner turned to the nurse. “A metric socket set and some vice grips, and maybe some WD-40.”

“You want some duct tape too? Just for good measure?” she asked sarcastically.

“Wouldn’t hurt,” Tanner added, seriously.

“What are you gonna do, doc?” the butcher asked again. “Amputate?”

Tanner looked at the man; he saw eyes full of fear beyond the crumbling bravado. “What’s your name?”

“Jake. Jake Bushman. Sorry I can’t shake hands.”

“Well Jake, I’m going to disassemble this grinder and remove whatever is keeping those gears from going into reverse. Then we’re going to turn the gears slowly, by hand — only in reverse — then we’ll pull your arm out the way it went in, trying not to mess up any more tissue than we have to. Once we get that done we’ll take you up to an operating room. We’ll try to reassemble the radius and the ulna, repair the veins, and see if we can’t save this hand.”

“You gotta shittin’ me!” one of the paramedics whispered.

Tanner looked up, scowled at the paramedic: “Nope. Piece of cake.”

“Fuck! I thought for sure I was gonna lose my arm!” Jake said.

“No guarantees, Jake. But we’re gonna give it our best shot. Okay?” He turned to a nurse, ordered some blood chemistries and a couple of surgical trays, then pulled up a stool and began looking at the machine.

When a janitor walked into the room with his toolbox he looked at the butcher and the surgeon, then at the gleaming machine and the pulpy mess of arm hanging from the spout, just before he passed out and fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

+++++

Tanner left the hospital a little before noon the next day; he crawled inside his ancient BMW 2002 tii and drove out of the physician’s lot and headed down to the marina, parked and walked out the interminably long pier to his boat, a pristine Crealock 40 pilothouse he kept in immaculate trim. While he walked down the pier he looked at his feet, trying to ignore the world around him. When he got near his slip he stumbled to a stop, looked at the suitcase on the deck by the cockpit, then he saw Macy sitting in the shaded cockpit and he sighed.

“Ah, the ghost of girlfriends past,” he mumbled as he took a few more steps her way. “It must be Christmas already.” Though they’d broken up last summer, a spectacularly uneventful parting of the ways, hers was one of the few faces he did remember. Fondly, as a matter of fact.

“Hey Doug,” the girl said when she saw him. She seemed upset, not at all like the Macy he remembered.

“Hey yourself.” He said as he climbed on-board; he sailed right past her and unlocked the companionway, lifted the boards and walked below. He went to the breaker panel and flipped on the air-conditioning, checked the battery monitor and flipped a switch to cycle the bilge pump, then he walked to the little fridge in the galley and pulled out a Coke. “Want something?” he called up.

“Whatever you’re having.”

That was vintage Macy, alright. Never asked for anything, never wanted anything, but she resented the hell out of you when you didn’t give her what she wanted. Pure passive-aggressive. He grabbed another Coke and walked up the steps into the cockpit.

“And to what do I owe this honor,” Tanner said as he popped the top and handed her a Coke.

“I’m pregnant,” she said directly. She was looking him in the eye, daring him to say something smart.

“Oh? Really?” he said as he met her eyes.

“Don’t worry,” she said, suddenly looking guiltily down at her hands, “you’re not the father.”

“Great, but am I missing something.” She seemed to be hovering over plains of a great despair, and he could sense that she was hiding her feelings. “I mean, like why are you here? And, why me?”

“I lost my job. I need a place to stay.”

Jake looked at her, lifted his hands and shrugged. “And…what? You suddenly remembered good ole Doug and decided to come on over, move on in?”

She smiled unevenly, laughed a little: “Yeah, something like that.” Then she looked at him again, a little more closely this time. “I didn’t know what else to do, Doug. I had to move out of my apartment last night.”

He nodded. “What about the father?” He studied her eyes and her hands as she acted and reacted to his words.

“Nada. Threw me out when I told him.”

“Sounds like a nice guy. Real father-of-the-year material.”

“You have to go back in soon?”

“Nope; got 48 off.”

“Think we could go out?”

“Out?”

“Sailing?”

Tanner sighed, looked at the sky then at her forehead, thought about his berth down below and how much he wanted to sleep. “Hadn’t planned on it,” he said, but what the hell. Looked like a nice breeze out there and maybe he could figure out what it was she really wanted from him.

“Please,” she said. “I used to love going out there with you…”

“Well, why don’t you put your stuff up forward, give me a hand with the lines…”

He raised sail as the boat slipped out the cut from Dinner Key, pointed toward Key Biscayne as he steered across the shallow, blue bay, with downtown Miami off their port quarter. It was cool out, in the hi-60s, a typical mid-December day, and there was almost no one out on the water mid-week so it was like they had the whole place to themselves. The boat knifed gently through the calm water, the wind little more than a breeze. Macy took the wheel and Tanner went below for more Cokes and to make chicken sandwiches. They ate in silence; Macy seemed to bask in the sun for a while, then she curled up in the cockpit and fell into a restless, twitching sleep. Every now and then she moaned; Tanner took her pulse and felt her forehead from time to time, getting more and more worried by the sheen her felt there.

So Tanner watched her while he sailed, he jibed the boat slowly and pointed the boat south, toward Homestead, then he set the auto-pilot and put his feet up for a while, regarding the girl while she slept.

A gust passed through the sails, the boat heeled a little and knifed through a sudden, big wave, water flying aft through the air, spraying the cockpit with a fine, cool mist.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he heard her ask.

“Why me?” he said again.

“Because you are who you are,” she said openly. “I know you, your smile…and I knew you’d help.”

“Why’s that? Because I’m the biggest sucker you know?”

She shook her head. “You’re not a sucker, Doug. You’re anything but.”

He looked at her, looked at her tiny belly. “How far along?”

She shrugged.

“Macy? Have you seen an O.B.?

She sat up and laughed, then she shrugged away the question. She turned into the afternoon wind, her hair streaming past her shoulders. Classic Macy, all her evasions good natured and guilt free.

“No foolin’, Macy! You been gettin’ check-ups or not?”

She shrugged. “I can’t afford all that stuff now.”

“What…what happened? I thought you were pretty high on the seniority list.”

“Not high enough, I guess. They let about three hundred of us go.”

She’d been a flight attendant with a major carrier for years, but everything seemed to be falling apart this year; the only real growth industries in Dade County seemed to gunshot wounds and drug overdoses.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry; I know it’s been a bitch all over. But don’t you have Cobra, or some kind of policy?”

She nodded. “Yeah, but the premium’s are pretty steep, the co-pays worse…and there’s just not enough to go around.”

He nodded. “It’s been tough for a lot of folks.” he said. The ER was awash with these new, cruel realities — he sutured-up the grim truth of this reality day in and day out, though few could afford to even walk in the door. Until it was too late, anyway.

He looked at her for the longest time, tried to think of what to say, or even how to ask her, but then he came to a decision:

“So, right, feel free to stay aboard as long as you want. ‘Til you get your feet back under you, anyway.” He looked at her, looked at her gentle smile. Maybe that was all he wanted out of life, he told himself; to see people smile, see them get a fair shake every now and then.

“You see, I told you.”

“What?”

“You’re…you know…you’re the most decent human being I know, Doug.”

He laughed, blushed, looked away. “Right, that’s me. The very soul of compassion…”

“You see the truth, that’s all. And why do you always put yourself down?”

“It’s an old habit,” he said, “I learned from my father.”

+++++

Tanner eased into the slip just as the last of the sun’s light slipped away, as the sky drifted through purples and oranges into sinking waves of cobalt that led down to the hazy purple-black of Miami’s neon skyline. But there were no stars out here, there never were, not here under layers of bright city haze. Tanner chopped the throttle, jumped onto the pier and made fast his lines, hopped back aboard with power cords and hooked them up. He squared away all the “stuff” that went along with sailing, went below and switched the ships systems back to shore power.

“Man, you got some sun today!” he said as he helped Macy below. “You’re gonna burn, there, on your shoulders.”

She reached up, felt her skin: “Youch!”

“I’ll get some aloe…” he said as he went to the fridge for the bottle he kept there. “Sit you down; let’s get some goop on that…” She sat, he rubbed. He remembered the way she felt now, while he touched her, like his skin on hers unlocked some vital store of memory. He thought of her, of the time they’d spent together, and he had to admit the memories were good — now that he’d found them again. He rubbed her shoulders, the tops of her arms, then up her neck…before he felt the downy hair there and remembered the way it used to smell when they made love.

“You’re still in love with me, aren’t you?” he heard her ask as he slipped away in blond shaded echoes of distant sun-drenched afternoons.

He heard her words, shook himself back into the present, stood and put the aloe away. “You hungry?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m not sure. I feel, maybe, well yes…”

“Me too.” He slipped into the aft cabin, grabbed his shower things and walked up to the shower building. He enjoyed this marina despite its size; once upon a time it had been a Pan Am flying boat terminal; now it was a huge marina full of live-aboards, overflowing with herds of South American pilots and families with kids and retired people off to see the world — only taking a little time out along the way to too late. He showered, walked back to the boat, saw a mother and her crying daughter waiting by the boat. And of course the little girl appeared to be hurt…

“High Amy,” he said to the freckle-faced girl as he got close enough to recognize her, “what’s wrong?”

“Oh Doug,” Amy’s mother said, “she picked up another splinter, a real biggie this time, playing a while ago.” Mary Ann, the girl’s mother, was sweet and caring and she’d taken care of him too well once or twice. The little girl looked at him stoically now and held up her foot so he’d know which one. He bent over and squinted in the darkness.

“Youch! That IS a biggie, alright.” Tanner said. “Well! Let’s see if we can’t fix you up.” He jumped below, heard Macy barfing in the forward head while he got his bag out; he walked forward and knocked on the door: “Morning sickness?”

“Oh boy oh boy am I gonna chop off the next dick I come across!” — she said before she retched again, followed by a deep moan… “I swear to God I’ll never touch another fucking penis as long as I live…”

“Uh, right…I’ll be back in a second, got a splinter to remove…”

“Right…” More retching followed. He shook his head and went to the panel, turned on the cockpit lights and went back up to the wheel.

“Is Macy back?” Mary Ann asked. The marina was like any other small town — news traveled fast along the grapevines here. Her husband was a pilot for United and he was gone all the time, so… 

“Lost her job and her apartment,” he said while he opened the cockpit table and laid his tools out. “Okay Amy, let’s see that honker!” He helped get her foot on the table then he bent over and looked at it. “Well, doesn’t look as bad as I thought but it IS in there real deep. You want to be a trooper and tough it out or do you want me to use some Novocain?”

“Is that a needle thingy?” a suddenly very wide-eyed Amy mewed.

“Yep. But that’s a real big splinter, Amy. If it was in my foot I’d want the shot.”

“Okay then. But only if it’s what you’d do.” Not too long ago Mary Ann had told him her little girl had a crush on him.

He got to work, cleaned up the wound and bandaged it, gave her a tetanus shot and sent them on their way; he went below, found Macy on the v-berth up front shivering in a pool of sweat.

“You’re burning up, kiddo,” he said. He returned to the galley, got his bag and a cool washcloth and went back forward, put it on her forehead. “You hurt anywhere?”

“Here,” she said, pointing to her lower left quadrant, “and here,” now at her mid-groin.

“How bad?” he asked as he reached down and gently palpated her belly.

“Bad!” she moaned when he touched just to the left of her navel.

“Okay. If you think you can walk, I reckon we’d better get you to the ER; if not I’ll call an ambulance.”

“Why? — I mean, what’s wrong?”

“Not sure,” he lied. “Better check out a few things and make sure the baby’s okay.” But he was thought she might have an ectopic pregnancy, so right now he needed to keep her still and get her to the ER as quickly as possible. “Think you can walk?”

“I don’t think so,” she said carefully, obviously in excruciating pain. “I don’t think I can move.”

“Right.” Tanner walked back to the chart table and got his phone and dialed 911; he gave the operator directions to the boat, then went back and took her blood pressure before he wiped even more sweat from her face.

He heard the ambulance a few minutes later, went topside when he heard the paramedics getting close, then helped them load her in the ambulance, riding with her to the ER. He called a social worker while an OB did her work up; he wanted to get Macy set-up with Medicaid before her bills got out of hand. He went back to check on her but by then they’d already taken her upstairs to an OR. And then he remembered he didn’t have a ride back to the marina. He looked at his watch; it was now three in the morning and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept.

“Great!” he moaned. “Ain’t that peachy…”

“Hey, doc! How’s it going?”

Tanner turned, saw one of Miami’s finest, a good-natured cop everyone called Mannie. “Hey yourself. What are you doing down here? Krispy Kreme not open yet?”

“Ha! I don’t eat them hi-dollar donuts, Pachuco!”

“Yeah? Looks like you’re eatin’ ‘em somewhere, Mannie! Whoa, dude, you’re packing on the pounds!”

Mannie Hernandez looked down. “Yeah, I know,” he said quietly.

“Something wrong?”

“Yeah, everything.”

“You on duty?”

“Overtime. Came in with a big MVA, a DUI—homicide. Headed back to the station now.”

“Good, you can give me a lift?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” the cop said.

“Thanks. Now, what the fuck’s wrong?”

“Oh, man, it’s my old lady…”

They stopped off for a couple dozen donuts on the way…because Tanner had learned that trick a long time ago. If you ever needed a cop to talk, it paid to take ‘em to a good donut shop.

+++++

He spent the morning with Macy, and the other half of his day off cleaning the boat; he had finally put his feet up in the cockpit and opened up a book when an old couple walked up… 

“Dr Tanner, you have a minute?”

He looked up, smiled. “Bill, right? And Lucille? What’s up?”

They nodded and smiled: “You still giving out flu shots?”

“Yeah, I think I got a couple left. Y’all didn’t get yours yet, I take it?”

“No sir, we sure didn’t, and we heard it’s going around. Do you think you could get us one?”

He put his book down and went below to the fridge, opened a fresh box of the pre-loaded syringes and had them read and sign the County’s release, then he gave them their shots, had them sign a book he kept for the County Health Department – and that was it.

“Dr Tanner, I’ve got a fresh pot of turnip greens and a pot-roast on. Would you like me to bring you a plate?”

“Is that what I smell down there’?”

Lucille smiled, blushed.

“My word but that smells fine.”

“I’ll go fetch you some…”

“No-no-no, I’ll come over if that’s alright with you two.”

The couple seemed pleased with that and scuttled down the pier to the old cabin cruiser they called home; Tanner walked along slowly in their wake.

“Y’all came down from Tennessee, on the river? How was that?” he asked when he read the hailing port on their boat’s stern.

“Yessir, we came down the Tenn-Tom Waterway,” Bill said. “Real pretty trip, too. Best thing we ever done.”

Tanner broke bread with these funny old people and he couldn’t help but think of Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River; he laughed with them as they recounted their adventures on the water, he held their hands while he listened to their heartaches, and though he talked with the old couple for hours and hours he couldn’t have been happier. When he went back to his boat he soon fell into a deep sleep and when he woke the next morning he found himself whistling Moon River as he drove his ancient Beemer into work.

+++++

He went in early, talked with Macy in her room. She was beat up both physically and emotionally, was adrift after losing the baby she’d never know. Yet Tanner thought she seemed a little too depressed, thought he’d better tell the charge nurse to add ‘depression?’ to her chart.

“You’ll be here today, maybe tomorrow,” he added before he left for the ER. “When you’re ready I’ll come and get you, take you down to the boat.”

She smiled, turned away, looked out a window to some faraway place.

And yet the look on her face almost frightened him. “I’ll come by again in a little bit. You get some rest, okay?”

She said not a word, just drifted away into the hazy confines of a life that would never be.

+++++

The paramedics said she was a hooker, that she’d overdosed on horse and sometime during their transaction she’d gotten into a fight with her ‘john’ over the quality of services she’d rendered; the guy knocked her around a little, then shot her twice — once in the arm, once just above her collar-bone — and then they really got into it. The ‘john’ was in Trauma Six, his penis hanging on by a thread; the hooker was in Trauma Three, and she was a mess. Though it was four in the morning all twelve trauma rooms were full, several with gunshot or knife wounds, people hit by drunk drivers or wives beaten by angry husbands. Mannie Hernandez stood in the corner watching Tanner work; he had, by law, to remain with an attempted homicide victim until the docs could tell if she would live or die.

The hooker was in and out of consciousness but her vitals were pretty good — so she was labeled ‘stable’; Tanner held her latest x-rays up to the light-box, looked at the bullet lodged in the woman’s neck. He wanted to pump her stomach while they waited for an O.R. to clear, watch her fluids and vitals, but he was afraid if she vomited the movement might push the bullet against her spine. He called the neurosurgeon upstairs and explained; the surgeon wanted her stomach pumped, didn’t want her vomiting with a tube down her throat on the table, so that was that.

He got the tray ready while nurses strapped her neck brace to the board, then Tanner ran surgical tubing up her nose and threaded it past her glottis and into her esophagus, then down into her stomach. He put positive pressure on the tubing and listened with a stethoscope, made sure the tube was in her belly and not her lungs. A nurse mixed activated charcoal and saline into a wet slurry and filled a huge, syringe like pump and handed it to him. He fit the first syringe to the tubing and pumped the black sludge slowly into her stomach; a nurse listened to the stuff enter the stomach and gave Tanner a thumbs up. Another nurse mixed saline and ipecac, an emetic that causes near instantaneous vomiting.

Tanner looked up, grinned at Mannie.

“Say Mannie, you wanna come over here and hold the bucket?”

“Hey, fuck you, homey. I ain’t standin’ next to no fuckin’ volcano! No way, no fuckin’ way! All them scrambled eggs and shit! Shit no, no fuckin’ way!”

“Hey, you know, just thought I’d ask…” He fit the second syringe to the tubing and pumped the ipecac in, then listened before he quickly pulled the tubing out the woman’s nose. As soon as the tube was clear a nurse held the woman’s neck while everyone else rolled the woman on her side. An orderly stood beside the table with a fifty gallon trash can ready to go, a mask over his nose.

“Oh, crap,” the orderly said seconds later, “here it comes!”

The woman’s eyes opened momentarily, just before the deluge; she managed to say “what the fuck!” before she let loose. She convulsed violently then settled down a little, then kept barfing into the can, moaning between upheavals.

“Hey, Mannie!” one of the nurses said. “How’d you know she had scrambled eggs for dinner?”

“Fuck you, man! Just fuck you!”

Everyone laughed, everyone but Tanner. He ran his fingers through the woman’s hair, leaned over and whispered something in her ear. She moaned, smiled a little before she closed her eyes. He continued rubbing her head until he was sure she was asleep again.

+++++

He got off after thirty hours on, went upstairs to Macy’s room.

“Howya’ doin’?” Tanner asked as he walked into her room. She seemed brighter today, not quite as down.

“Better, Doug. Thanks.”

“Yeah. Say, your chemistries look good; they wanna cut you loose. Feel like taking a ride?”

“Doug. I mean it. Thanks. You saved my life.”

“Bah! Nonsense!”

“I was gonna go get a hotel room. I would have been alone. The nurses said I’d have bled to death.”

He looked into her eyes and nodded.

“Doug? You ever think that some things happen for a reason?”

“Maybe — I don’t know.”

“You don’t, huh? Imagine that. I thought you knew everything…”

They laughed at that, but Tanner felt a little off balance now. “So, I brought you some things. Why don’t you get dressed and I’ll come back in a few minutes…”

+++++

He drove slowly, let her get used to the sun and the air and the greenness of her own life once again. The sky was pure bluebirds, not a single cloud could be seen anywhere, and the air was cool and fresh. The world smelled of mangos and freshly mown grass, girls on roller-skates and dudes on skateboards crowded the sidewalk by the beach, Frisbees flew just above the sand and out over the silvery-blue water beyond the beach dozens of sailboats crowded the cut from the marina out to the deep water beyond the protected waters of the bay.

He watched her, thought about what she’d been through, about the hopes and dreams she might have had, about the nightmare that had come calling in their stead. He helped her from the car when they got to the marina, walked arm-in-arm with her down the pier. There were fresh flowers ‘from all of us here in the marina’ and Lucille stood by as they passed, followed them and handed Tanner a huge pot of greens and corn bread.

Macy was pale and light and he had to admit it now: he had never really stopped caring for her. He fed her and put her in his berth in the aft cabin, drew the little curtains and crawled in next to her and held her while she dreamed through the night. He held her when she cried, he held her while she slept, and he brushed the hair from her face and kissed her eyelashes as gently as a breeze. She looked at him, held him in her eyes and she smiled from time to time and that seemed enough for him.

“See,” she said, “I told you. You still love me.”

“You were right.”

“I know.”

It was her turn now. She held him, held on to him as tightly as she could.

+++++

Tanner went in early the next morning — it was an off day but a third year resident had called in with the flu. When the Chief was short she knew who to call. Because Tanner never said no.

Sundays were slow days. They didn’t usually get mad until evening rolled ‘round, but even so most Sundays were easy. And so it was this Sunday. Medicine was busy, lots of flu presenting, and psychiatry was roaring along, too — because this was, after all, Miami. Paramedics came by with a teenage-girl strapped down to the gurney a little after noon; she’d slit her wrists — “the way they do it on TV” she told him, and he repaired a tendon and sutured her wrists while she went on and on about how life wasn’t worth living because her boyfriend had dumped her… 

“Just curious,” he asked her at one point, “but what would make life worth living?”

She mentioned something about a new cell-phone or a Mercedes like her mom’s and Tanner smiled as he looked at her, while he steri-stripped the margins of the wounds and covered them with four-by-fours. A resident from psychiatry came by, and when out of the room she asked Tanner what he thought about the girl:

“Looks like a classic cry for help,” Tanner said, “except her feet are filthy, there’s a load of dirt under her fingernails, and she’s malnourished. She acts like ‘little miss rich-kid’ but I’d lay odds she’s alone and on the street, maybe a runaway. I’d call Social Services right off the bat.” The resident nodded and made notes before she walked in to meet the girl. A little later they rolled the girl down to psychiatry; she waved at Tanner when she saw him and he smiled, waved at her while he wondered when and where The Big Mistake had caught her.

It was like a law of physics with kids like her. The Big Mistake came for them out of the blue, caught them unawares and left them compromised for life, alone now to struggle with the consequences. Loneliness hit the force multiplier of guilt and then the long slide down into the shadows began, and once you landed in the darkness you finally realized just how much trouble you were really in, and how impossibly alone The Big Mistake had left you. Slit wrists and fentanyl overdoses hit these kids hard.

“Gunshot wound inbound,” came the crackling voice from the overhead speaker. “Paramedics advise five minutes out.”

Tanner was the senior resident on the floor. Two first-years surgical residents and a gaggle of interns hovered expectantly, watching and waiting for him to say something. An emergency medicine doc was hustling down from the cafeteria. The oldest resident, Doris Tayloe, a woman who’d graduated from med school on her 48th birthday, looked ready to go:

“Right. Doris, go get the trays set up and ready to go, would you? Take a couple of interns with you, and tell ‘em to tuck in their goddamn scrubs this time! And trust your nurses!” He was tired of finding loose hairs on his sterile field; heads would roll soon if he saw another sloppy intern walking around with their scrubs not tucked-in!

He got on the phone, called the doctor advising the paramedics in the field: “What do they have?” he wanted to know.

“Six year old African-American male, at least two gunshot wounds, one in the gut, one looks like it got the femoral artery. They’ve got trousers on the kid.”

“Right, have you notified vascular?”

“Yeah. Collins is finishing up a chest, he’ll be down as soon as he can. I called your chief, too. She’s on the way.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“Okay, they’re turning in now. Seeya…”

Tanner hung up the phone, walked down to Trauma One and filled in the team. Everything looked ready.

He saw the ambulance screech to a stop and back in to the loading bay, two patrol cars roared in and pulled raggedly into spaces marked Police Only. Mannie Hernandez jumped out of one, another officer he didn’t recognize followed.

Orderlies got the ambulance doors and firemen helped pull the gurney out; one of the paramedics was bagging the kid, another held IVs overhead as they rolled the kid into the ER:

“Go to One!” Tanner called out; he saw the emergency medicine doc running down the corridor. “Thank goodness for small favors,” he said as he followed the gurney into the room.

Orderlies and nurses began cutting away the kid’s clothes; Tanner saw the boy’s eyes roll back in his head and moved to the kid’s gut. “It’s a fucking mess in there,” he heard one of the paramedics say. “Must have been a .357 or something, maybe a 41 mag; there’s a big fucking exit wound where his right kidney used to be…”

Tanner started calling orders, supervising the residents and nurses, letting them do their jobs while he did his. “Okay, I can palpate the aorta; it feels intact — good pressure — the renal might be okay too but I kinda doubt it — Doris, let’s roll him… I wanna have a look at that exit wound before we take the cuffs off his legs — sheez, what a mess! — Somebody call for a gas-passer — the renal is intact but I can feel bullet fragments all around his kidney — goddamn hollow-points! Has anyone called Urology…?”

He heard, in the periphery of his mind, Mannie out in the hall, and then an hysterical woman screaming, probably the kid’s mother, probably taking all Mannie’s strength to keep her out of here, then — “get a cut-down and lets get those cuffs off, I’m gonna go in and clamp off the femoral…”

“But it’ll retract…” one of the interns commented.

“No shit, Sherlock!” the emergency medicine doc said angrily. “Now get the fuck out of here and go read a comic book!”

Tanner palpated the inner thigh, thought he felt pressure and made an incision from the scrotum down his thigh about eight inches. There wasn’t much fat, not much muscle, either; he stuck his finger into the shattered tissue, felt the artery, felt it pulsing lightly. “It’s just… still mostly intact… oh, no! Clamp!” he shouted. He felt the clamp slap in his left hand and guided it down to the deteriorating artery; he got it on the first try. “Got it! Shit, there’re bone frags everywhere — better call ortho, somebody!”

Tanner stood, looked at the monitors: the kid was holding his own but the screaming in the corridor was getting out of control.

“Mannie! Bring her in here, now!”

“You sure, man!”

“Bring her in!”

A black woman, maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty, thundered into the room; she shuddered to a stop when she saw her baby boy. She started wailing big time when his reality slapped her in the face.

“Ma’am,” Tanner said gently, “I need you to be quiet, and I want you to listen to me, alright?!”

The woman struggled to control herself.

“Ma’am, I need you to listen to me…okay?” 

She calmed noticeably when she looked at Tanner, as if she took comfort from the strength behind his voice.

“Awright, doctor, I’m listenin’.”

“We’ve got a lot of the bleeding under control. Your boy’s stable right now. Now, do you believe in God?”

“Yessir, doctor, I sure do.”

“Alright. I want you to go to the chapel with Officer Hernandez and get down on your knees and start prayin’! You here me? You stop prayin’ when I come and tell you too. You hear me! Your boy needs you to do that, okay?”

“Yessir,” she said. “Thank you, doctor.” She had somewhere to focus her strength now, and backed quietly from the room.

In the sudden quiet, Tanner hoped, things would go smoothly, then maybe things would start looking good…and prayer sure wasn’t going to hurt anything right about now.

+++++

The man was huge. His bald head just barely cleared the automatic sliding doors when they slid opened for him, and he must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. His black skin glistened with sweat; he was wearing ragged denim overalls and old work-boots caked with dried mud, and nothing else: his bare chest appeared to be solid muscle, his arms too. He was looking for his step-son; the kid had taken twenty dollars from his wallet and that had, apparently, been the last straw…because he’d felt something inside snap and give way after that… 

He saw his wife standing outside a little chapel, a cop between him and her. He took out the pistol in his overalls and aimed, shot once at the cop. The noise was overwhelming in the closed corridor; people started screaming and running for cover, interns ducked behind counters while the cop fell over, slid down to the floor, blood coming from his mouth and nose.

The woman turned, saw her husband and ran into the trauma room, tried to hide from him there.

The man followed her, walked into the trauma room, saw his wife hiding behind a doctor…or was the doctor trying to shield her, protect her…he couldn’t tell…but really, it didn’t matter now… 

He fired once, then again and again, his eyes burning pyres of blind fury.

Nurses and doctors flattened against the wall, tried to get out of the line of fire, then they heard another gunshot, this time from behind the man, then another and another. Brain was exposed on the left side of the big man’s head as he stared into the darkness, his eyes lifeless now, the fires all burnt out of them as he fell away.

Doug Tanner lay on the floor, bleeding; he saw Mannie across the room on the floor, blood pooling under his head; he tried to move, to help him — but he couldn’t. The world grew light and distant, and as he felt himself falling into cold light he wondered what came next.

+++++

He woke up, recognized an ICU nurse and wanted to ask her what she was doing in the ER. He tried to talk but couldn’t, tried to swallow but again he simply could not. He felt a wave of panic, knew he was the patient but had no idea how he’d gotten here. Then a nurse was overhead, looking down at him…

“Doug? Doug, you were shot, down in the ER. Neck wound. There’s a drain in now; that’s why you can’t talk…”

He heard her talking, heard her say something about his mouth and tape and everything was going to be fine… and then he felt himself drifting off again…

++++++

He felt his head lifting, heard a motor whirring away under the bed; he opened his eyes, saw doctors looking at his neck and talking. The room was dark, but he could tell the curtains were drawn and only faint sunlight was seeping through. Wind and rain were pelting the glass, and for some reason that just didn’t make any sense at all.

“Oh, hey Doug. You awake enough to talk?” one of the doctors said.

“Yeah,” he croaked. His throat hurt like hell.

“Good! The vocal cords are fine! I think we can take out the drain, Bill.” Tanner ignored them… 

…because he saw Macy behind them; she looked anxious and moved close when the doctors left a moment later. He watched as she started crying, as she began shaking uncontrollably. He reached out and took her hand. “How are you doing,” he asked her.

“How am I doing? Me? Oh God, Doug!” He felt her head on his chest, smelled her hair, felt her body shake as tears convulsed… 

“Hey, Pachuco!”

“Mannie?”

He felt Macy stand, saw her turn and look at the cop as he wheeled in.

“Hey, amigo, brought you some donuts…”

“Right!” He looked at Mannie, then at Macy: “Try and save me at least one, will you Macy. That man is a donut fiend. He’ll snatch ‘em right off your plate…right out of your mouth, even…”

Everyone laughed at that, even if the truth did hurt a little.

“What about the kid, Mannie? Did he make it?”

“Yeah, sure did, his mom too.”

Doug Tanner smiled when he heard that, but Mannie decided against telling him about the two nurses who hadn’t made it. He’d hear about it all that soon enough.

+++++

A year later the economy was rebounding and Macy was flying again. She wanted to try the whole baby thing again too, only this time with Tanner, and despite all the very real risks she’d face he’d agreed. Maybe because he understood her better now, her strengths and hopes and dreams, and beyond the love he felt for her there was a fair measure of respect. Motherhood was a force of nature, after all, yet he also had grown very protective of her, though for a while he assumed that went along with the whole fatherhood thing… 

“You know,” he told her one evening, “all those pressurization cycles can’t be good for you.”

“Is there anything about it in your textbooks?”

“Rudimentary stuff, kiddo, like limit flying after six months. I can’t find squat about ectopic risks, but it just feels wrong to me.”

“Wrong? Like how?”

“Like it scares me.”

“Scares you? Now that I did not expect.”

“Macy, there’s no certainty here…I mean the odds are you’ll have a normal pregnancy, but…”

“Doug, show me anything concerning pregnancy and childbirth that’s risk free…!”

“Okay, point taken, but…”

“There are no buts, Doug. Either I carry to term…”

“Or you don’t.”

She saw the look in his eyes, knew what he felt. He was scared of losing her for good this time, that she’d bleed out and there’d be nothing he could do to save her. Everything had happened so fast, and once the bleed had begun in earnest she’d literally almost run out the clock. It had been that close, but he’d always kept that part of the story from her and she had begun to wonder why.

“I wonder if it means something, ya know?” she said as she looked at him.

“Like what?”

“Like…maybe I’m not supposed to have children.”

This was terra incognita for her, and the sudden change he saw was startling. “What makes you say that, Mace?”

“Just a feeling, I guess. Lurking around somewhere. Like in the shadows, maybe.”

“We could adopt, ya know?”

She looked away, wiped a tear as sudden implications washed over her doubt. “Or I could just keep flying, Doug. Stay on the pill and just work away the years.”

He shook his head. “That’s not a real option, Macy. Not if being a mom means that much to you.”

“What about you, Doug? What does it mean to you?”

“I just don’t want anything to happen to you, Mace. I guess I have a hard time seeing past that.”

She shook her head. “That’s not good enough, Doug. If you don’t want this at least as much as I do, I can’t see this ending well.”

She seemed distant after that conversation, and one evening about a week later—when he returned to the boat after work—he found she’d taken all her belongings and had simply gone. She left behind not one thing, not even a note of explanation. He learned some time later that she’d moved to Chicago and was flying out of O’Hare and as unpredictable as her actions might have seemed at the time, for some reason a part of him understood. She’d decided he probably wasn’t good father material because he’d always been too wrapped up in work, and he thought that maybe it really was like his own father had told him once upon a time: he was too focused on dealing with other people’s problems to ever take care of his own.

So, maybe his old man had been right all along; maybe he’d always been that way? Who knows…maybe he’d always be too self-absorbed, but what if this was the price he’d have to pay to see into other people so clearly…?

+++++

He began to see patterns in the chaos. Simple things, like violent crime increased when times were tough. That Thursday nights were the worst because that was the day before payday and family arguments almost always revolved around money. He talked to Mannie about these things, too. Like…did violent crime increase around the time of the full moon? Turns out it did, yet that was almost counter-intuitive. Shouldn’t crime go up when the moon was dark?

Tanner began compiling statistics after that. His curiosity engaged now, he’d wrap up each shift by going over the socio-economic backgrounds of his patients, and he soon began to see into these events with new insight. The poorer you were the more likely you were to be shot or stabbed. Same if you were African American, except you were much more likely to die in the ER if you were black. Affluent white girls were most often seen in the ER for drug overdoses and attempted suicide. Most white people, generally speaking, ended up in the ER after being in an automobile accident or having a heart attack, while most blacks involved in auto accidents were pedestrians run down at night. At first he looked at some of these conclusions suspiciously, like there were racist undertones in these findings—but then he had to shake that off because raw numbers tell a truth all their own.  

But one of these sets of numbers got to him. That blacks died violently, and their rates of survival just didn’t compare to the rates of other groups. So he began to focus his attention there, among the survival rates of ER patients by race. And within weeks new patterns emerged.

If you were white, you were ten times more likely to make it out of the ER than if you were black—and that held true even after accounting for the severity of the initial injury. ‘But I’m not a racist!’ Tanner told himself after going over his latest round of statistics. ‘But what if I start keeping track of deaths per physician? What will that tell me?’

And the result was so obvious his stomach turned. The rate was the same for every doc on the floor.

‘No more,’ he told himself. ‘No good can come from this.’

Instead he resolved to watch his residents more closely, and what he found then was almost equally upsetting. White kids with bad lacerations received careful suturing, while the work done on black kids was barely adequate, so he made an attempt to get to know the residents better, see if he could better understand why this was happening.

Yet he couldn’t detect any overt racism after he talked with the physicians he worked with. So was this, he wondered, an unconscious process? And if that was the case wasn’t he looking at something systemic, something beyond easy homespun remedies. And now thoroughly unsettled after trying to deal with these revelations he found himself consciously drawn to caring for the poorest of the poor, to the completely marginalized and the destitute. And, by and large, these were almost always black people—and that realization sickened him. Could it be that, fifteen years into the twenty-first century, we were still dealing with the aftereffects of slavery and the institutionalized racism of the Old South?

He remembered his father talking about his experiences of the summer of ‘67, when America’s post Civil War legacy of institutionalized unemployment, abusive policing, and poor housing all came to a head. Race riots broke out all over the country starting in May, with huge, pitched battles taking place in Newark and Detroit by July. Things seemed to settle down after those convulsions, at least until Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were gunned down. But then Richard Nixon won the election in ‘68 and everything started to go downhill after that. Fast, too.

His father had just finished the second year of his general surgical residency in May ‘67 when he received notice of his eligibility to be drafted, so after a brief discussion with members of his local draft board he’d opted to go into the Navy. As a surgeon, he reasoned, he’d sit out his “enlistment” in Hawaii or more likely San Diego, and after a few years working on his suntan he’d muster out and resume his post-doctoral education. Probably in LA, or maybe even Hawaii. It would be…fun.

Except things hadn’t worked out that way.

After a quick detour through an abbreviated officer’s training program his father landed in Hue City about two months before the Tet offensive kicked the war in Vietnam into overdrive, and he spent the first year of his war at a battalion aid station just north of Hue City; the second he spent on aircraft carriers working off the South Vietnamese coast, at Dixie Station. And at one point Doug Tanner learned there was no amount of liquor he could get into his old man that would loosen him up enough to talk about what he’d experienced over there. After just one attempt his mother warned him off.

But his mother was gone now, though his father was still alive. He’d been living, alone, in the same house in Rockport he’d purchased when he came back from Vietnam. And even that was odd,  too, because his father never left the Navy; he did his twenty then managed to keep practicing until failing eyesight finally turned the clock past midnight. Now the old house stood like a monument to the war between a father and his son, a never-ending series of skirmishes and retreats that signified nothing much beyond stubbornness and injured pride.

So, the one constant between Doug and his father was a distance that could never be bridged, and that constant still held true. They didn’t call one another, neither did they write. The last time Doug had seen his father was at his mother’s funeral, and they said not a word to each other; Doug assumed that was the way things would end between them.

And then his sister Meghan called one evening, about a year after Macy left.

“I’ve moved in with Dad,” she told Tanner. “He can’t see much now and the neighbors have had to call the police a couple of times.”

“Because he can’t see?”

“No, Doofus. He walks out into the middle of the street. Marjorie says it’s like he wants to get run over.”

“Are you ever going to stop calling me Doofus?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m your big brother and I can still outrun you.”

“In your dreams, Doofus.”

“So, you moved back into your old bedroom?”

“Yup.”

“What’s that like?”

“Weird. No dust, anywhere. Clean sheets and towels.”

“Pure Navy,” Doug sighed. “Some things’ll never change.”

“He’s changing, Doug, and fast.”

“Oh? What’s up?”

“He’s not, for one thing. I never saw him playing the depressed old man, but he’s working the role for all it’s worth right now.”

“Dad? Depressed?”

“Doug, I know you two never saw eye to eye, but I think it’s time you came home and broke bread. I think you’re running out of time, if you know what I mean.”

“Can you pick me up at Portland?”

Sure she could. Which was why Tanner happened to be on a flight from Miami to Maine two days later. Which was when he bumped into Macy Beresford. 

Isn’t life strange? The way the unexpected slips up from behind and taps you on the shoulder?

+++++

Meghan watched her brother as he stepped out of the terminal and into the driving snow, still dressed like he was headed out to dinner in Miami Beach. Then she saw he had brought one small duffel and knew he wasn’t planning on staying long, so she felt let down. Again. Which was nothing new between them. She tooted the horn and he looked through the ripping snow until he saw her, then he bent into the gale and made for her ancient Honda, wondering for the millionth time why on earth anyone would voluntarily choose to live in Maine.

She reached over and unlocked the door just as he reached for the handle, and he crawled inside after he tossed his bag into the back seat. She watched as he buckled in then slipped into the light stream of traffic, heading back to the interstate. “Bring anything warm?” she asked.

“As long as no one threw out my old stuff I should have a coat or two.”

“What? You haven’t gained any weight since high school?” she asked.

And he shook his head. “Doubtful. Might have lost a few, but I don’t really spend a lot of time on the scales.”

‘Ah’, she thought, ‘the first subtle dig of the spur.’ Meghan had struggled with weight all her life and now probably weighed fifty pounds more than she had as a senior in high school. “How long can you stay?”

“Until I get a handle on things.”

‘The second attack, and so fast! Big brother rides in to save the day. Again — because I’m so incompetent!’ She shook her head. “You wanna stop off at Bean’s for some gloves?”

But he just shook his head. “Who is he seeing locally?” he asked.

“Peterson. You remember him?”

“Yup. You’ve talked to him, I assume?”

“No, I haven’t, Doug. Dad told everyone at the clinic not to talk to us.”

“Isn’t that special,” Tanner sighed. “Any idea why?”

“Other than hating me and not trusting you? No, nothing else comes to mind.”

“Okay. So, tell me about you. What’s going on?”

“Still teaching in Camden. No change.”

“New partner, anything like that going on?”

“No,” she snarled. “What about you?”

He leaned back for a minute then exhaled. “Had a close call a couple of years ago, lasted a year. I hadn’t seen her in ages but she turned up on my flight.”

“No shit? What was that like?”

“She was one of the flight attendants. She’s married now, sounded happy. It was good to touch bases.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Call it closure. Watch it…that’s black ice up there…”

“You wanna drive, smart-ass?”

“Nope. Take my word for it, I haven’t driven on snow in ten years.”

“I know.”

“So, you think dementia’s set in, something like that’s going on with him?”

“Not my area of expertise, Doug.”

“Okay, so…what if it is? You thought much about that?”

“Doug, whatever you might remember about him, well, he’s gotten really mean.”

“Meaner than he was?”

“Yup.”

“And you moved in with him?”

“He’s my father, Doug. Yours too, I seem to recall.”

He turned and looked out the window, lost in thought. How many times had he taken this same route, from Rockport to Portland. A thousand times if it was one, and even the trees looked unchanged. He looked out in the general direction of the sea as they crossed the bridge in Bath, then she pulled into the big Irving station outside of Damariscotta and he filled up her tank.

She thanked him but she finished the drive in an old, familiar silence, a silence that seemed have found them all too easily. Maybe like fighters who had retired to their respective corners to plaster an old wound or two, wounds that had suddenly come undone. Not exactly unexpected but certainly not welcome.

After winding their way through Rockport, Meghan turned on Winter Street and then into the driveway to her father’s house. To the house she could never bring herself to call home. Her brother watched her for a moment — in that way physicians’ often do. Visually taking a measure of a patient’s response to subtle questioning on the way to a working diagnosis…taking a measure of the moment. He saw the pounding vein in her right temporal region, took note of the twitch under her eye and the sudden shaking hands.

“You okay, kiddo?” he asked.

And she shook her head. “No, not in the least. I’m afraid what you two are going to do to each other.”

He nodded, but all the same he reached over and took her hand in his. “If it gets too bad, just tell me to back off, okay?”

She kept nodding, then she started slowly shaking her head. “I don’t feel right, Doug. Something’s not right.”

He came around and opened her door, noted there was already about six inches of snow on the ground and that it was coming down hard now. He helped Meghan stand and just held onto her for a while, and she melted into him more than he’d imagined she might. When she was ready they turned to face the music and began walking up the old brick walk to the front porch. And when he saw the front door was open about an inch, he too began to feel something was off.

“Stay here,” he said to his sister, then he stepped into the entry.

His father was sitting in his favorite chair by the fireplace, and the fire was still burning nicely, casting shadows enough to just make out the devastating self-inflicted gunshot wound in the flickering light. His father’s old Commander Model 1911 Colt had fallen to his lap, and Doug walked over to him and out of stony habit he felt for a pulse. The top half of his father’s face was gone now, but that oh-so-familiar skin of his was still warm. Probably the fireplace, he thought as he walked over to the phone and dialed 911.

“Can I come in now,” Meghan called out.

“No, not just yet,” Doug Tanner said carefully. “Give me a minute.”

+++++

Realtors were already circling the house like sharks, leaving business cards with their practiced notes of condolence. His father’s affairs were in perfect order, naturally, and he’d left everything to his two children—again, naturally. And he’d passed a wealthy man, leaving his kids an estate worth something on the north side of five million dollars, give or take market valuations. Tanner read through his father’s chart at the clinic, saw the inoperable glioblastoma diagnosis entered after an MRI completed a week before his death, and it all fell into place right then and there. His father knew the score and he’d decided that was one road he didn’t want to take. Only now…there were so many things he wanted to talk to his dad about, and that lack of closure hurt. That, and his old man hadn’t even wanted to say goodbye, to either of them. ‘How true to form,’ he sighed.

Meghan wanted nothing to do with the house, nothing to do with her father’s money, so Tanner did what he thought best. He transferred everything to a trust, because one day his sister would come back to life and he wanted things to be ready for her. He called a friend from high school, a contractor now who had a decent reputation, to go over the house with a practiced eye, so Tanner could keep everything in good repair. And once all the paperwork was out of the way he took his sister with him back to Florida, away from all the cold and death and the never-ending babble about taxes and what to do next.

She stopped eating for a while, but then he took her sailing—over to the Bahamas—for two weeks. She swam and ate conch fritters and he fixed her strong drinks full of potent rum and she finally started to come back to him, to life. She’d let herself go long before, of course, and the road back wouldn’t be easy, but it was his place to do these things now. Because it was a road he’d have to take with her to see it done right. 

But of course he went back to work and work pulled him in deeper and deeper with each passing shift and soon enough he saw Meghan falling into the same kind of despair she always had. Their father had abandoned them to work, left their mother to assume all the duties of parenthood, and that was a role so unfamiliar to her that she had been doomed to fail from the beginning. Good teachers and a caring neighborhood had helped carry the load for a while, but in the end their mother ate her way out of her misery until an early heart attack took her away, but the damage had by then been well and truly done. Yet Doug escaped this benign neglect, while Meghan had been buried under the weight of their helpless mother’s simmering frustrations. Even so, Doug had long ago concluded that his father was the real villain of their story.

+++++

Another year down.

Meghan in graduate school, back in Maine and living in the Old Man’s house. 

Tanner still alone. Still working ‘eight days a week.’ SSDD, as in Same Shit Different Day. His last year of residency, when big choices loomed, the year major change became unavoidable. Questions like where to start a practice, but little ones trailed along, too, like ‘do I fix the transmission again or break down and finally buy a new car?’ Or: he almost liked Miami Beach but in the end he really disliked Florida, especially the endlessly oppressive humidity. He liked living on the boat but he was waging a constant battle against mold and mildew. He wanted a dog and a yard and yeah, he wanted a wife and kids—yet the boat might not be the best way to go about doing that, ya know?

And when those thoughts came on hard and fast it always seemed like a fresh parade of broken dreams would come in through the ERs doors to remind him of all the hazards ahead. Another mangled marriage, more blood on the gurney, another gunshot wounds to the groin only one way furious resolutions were arrived at. Another overdose, or do we call it what it really is? Suicide, without the courage to face the pain? Or was that one a cry for help? Or, God forbid, a real accident? How many good people chased the dream only to find that it wasn’t in the cards. Not for them, anyway. Bad choices seemed to develop a momentum all their own, and the courts and the prisons were ready and willing to change that course for you, once you were discharged from the hospital, that is. Then all your bad choices turned into a cyclone of penal servitude and mounting court imposed debt. And don’t forget you still owe the hospital about a hundred grand for pumping your stomach.

And then it hit him one day. Was that what the realization his Old Man had run into, once upon a time all his own? Was that why so many of his colleagues in ‘Nam ended up in dermatology or cosmetic surgery after the war spit them out? Burned out before they could even finish their training? He’d seen as much already, of course. As in peers switching from general surgery to something a little less…stressful? Like after a really bad experience, some even going back to med school…only now to teach?

And he was in his thirties now. Highly trained, certainly, but adrift. The hospital might offer him a position on staff, but then what? Just slip into the grind and watch the years drift by until things went from “maybe tomorrow” to half-past too late? He could, theoretically, even join the Navy—but every time he thought of that he saw his father in his chair with the top of his head blown away—because, in the end, would the outcome really be so different? He was his father’s son after all… 

But ‘like particles’ tend to repel unless acted upon by external forces, right? Just as ‘opposites’ attract? So, had Macy been his opposite, or more similar that that? He’d seen her as an opposite, so what had torn them apart? He’d been more than willing to commit to her, but less so when it came to risking her life to try for a baby again? Had that been the difference? And if so, could such a union ever endure?

And every time he asked that question he saw his mother’s broken body laying on a cold slab at the funeral home. 

His father’s son, indeed.

+++++

Tanner chose the easy way out. He accepted a position on staff. He had the boat hauled and slapped a new coat of bottom paint on her hull. He sold the old Beemer and remembered his father’s admonishment that physicians should drive Buicks, not fancy German sports cars. And maybe that was why he picked up a new 911, because he could now so why not? 

The hospital parked him in a surgical practice with a dozen other cutters; no more ‘eight days a week’ but regular office hours. On-call duty one night every two weeks and one weekend every two months. Nights free unless something really off-the-charts happened, like a major pile-up on the freeway. He started going out with old friends, and he made new friends too, and it didn’t take long for the inevitable. He was like red meat now, after all.

Her name was Sandy. Sandra McClellan.

She had long red hair and deep green eyes, and she knew exactly what she was looking for in a man. When she met Tanner she latched onto him before he knew what had hit him. She took him to meet her family at one of the local country clubs and “See, you fit right in, don’t you?” was the first thing she said. And in a way he began to see through her in that moment, but attraction and love are not at all the same thing. And twelve years of self imposed academic exile had made a blind man of Douglas Tanner, MD.

“Do you always smile like that?” her father Rupert McClellan asked the first time they met.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve been watching and you always seem to be grinning like a fool. I don’t know what to make of that, do you?”

And because it wasn’t, really, the first time someone had mentioned his smile he tried to brush aside the comment. Besides, his smile really wasn’t exactly a conscious thing, it was just that it tended to put patients at-ease and so it had, in a way, become one of the tools of his trade. “Maybe I started smiling more when I began to deal with patients.”

“You mean you started smiling like that when you went into residency?”

And he had to stop and think about it, because that wasn’t exactly the truth, was it? No, he’d been smiling all his life, so much so that even his father dropped a few snide comments along the way. 

“Well, I guess maybe I’ve been smiling since I was in grade school. I’m sorry, I didn’t ever think it was that big a deal, certainly not enough to bug someone.”

“I don’t trust people who smile all the time,” the 300 pound politically connected stock broker said just before he downed another scotch and water.

Tanner smiled. “Gee, I never thought of it that way,” he said to the hulk as he turned and walked away.

And looking back a few years later, that moment summed up his 8 month marriage to Sandra McClellan. He’d begun to really see through her a few months too late, and Tanner began to think of her father’s bullshit as just a dodge for his own endless scams. Keep people off guard, never let them see the big picture – never let ‘em see you coming. And who knows, maybe it worked. It didn’t take too long to see that her plan all along had been to file for a quickie divorce and fleece him for all he was worth. She was her father’s daughter, after all… 

Too bad he’d put most of his income in a trust, and so well beyond her grasp. Still, he’d bought her a house and sold the boat by then, so she got that much from him. 

And yet it was about then that a couple of cutters in his group asked him about doing a volunteer stint with MSF in Ethiopia or Sudan later that year…

“Isn’t that the French group?” he replied. “Doctors Without Borders?”

“Yup. Three or four of us go over every winter; we typically spend about a month there.”

“What’s it like?” Tanner asked. “Primitive, I’d guess?”

“You have the basics,” Beth Gruber said, her matter-of-fact expression open and honest, “but if you get sent away from the main hospitals, living conditions can get pretty basic.”

“What kinds of cases to you see?”

“‘Bout the same as here. Hot bellies and lots of gunshot wounds.”

“You mean…like street gangs?”

“Warlords and the usual cartels. Everything from drugs to spices.”

“So…you mean like open warfare, right?”

“Not in the modern sense. No airstrikes, no napalm, none of that stuff. Small arms fire and land mines are the usual modes. Lot of kids caught in the crossfire, too, and lots of amputations from landmines.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Tanner muttered under his breath. “Sounds like a lot of broken hearts, if you ask me.”

“It’s worse when there’s no one around to help,” Gruber added, looking him over. “So, you tell me. What’s worse, broken hearts—or the total despair of no medical care?”

“Is that why you do it?” he asked Gruber.

“Why I do it isn’t really the question, Doug. You’re pretty good at this stuff and your time would be appreciated, and that’s really about all there is to it. The question is, to put it bluntly, are you in or not?”

He’d looked away then, but after a moment he nodded: “Let me look into it and I’ll let you know.”

“Why don’t you join us for dinner? The four of us going this year are meeting up this Saturday at my place. Bring your questions and we’ll hash ‘em out, okay?”

+++++

Which was how Doug Tanner found himself at Washington Dulles International Airport two months later, in August, boarding an Ethiopian Airlines 787 Dreamliner bound for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Beth Gruber and Jenny Peterson, two surgeons from his practice, were flying over with him, but only Peterson was going with him all the way to the teaching hospital in Gondar, located in southwest Ethiopia. Gruber was headed to a refugee camp near the border between Eritrea and the Tigray region of northwest Ethiopia, and as this was an area of incipient guerrilla activity and ongoing political instability, only more experienced physicians were allowed in that region.

When their flight was called he walked down the Jetway behind Gruber and Peterson, queuing up just outside the forward door, and then he caught a glimpse of the the flight attendants. All black women. And as he’d never seen anything like that before it caught him off guard. And then, once he entered the cabin he looked into the cockpit—and saw two black men, and once again he felt a little flutter of disorientation…as in…‘what the fuck am I doing here?’

He’d booked a ticket in business class, much to the disappointment of his traveling companions, and when his flight attendant brought him French Champagne he felt a little stir of resentment, like what the Hell is this African woman doing serving me—ME!—Champagne?

And then he thought of all the disparities he’d seen in the ER, the second rate care, the veiled racial disparities, and he held up that glass of Champagne and looked at it for the longest time before he finally broke down and took a sip. He turned to the window as the Boeing was pushed back from the gate and he saw his reflection in the plastic there so he studied the features in his mind’s eye and compared them to what he really saw there.

‘I’m just another racist,’ he sighed inwardly, ‘despite all my pretensions to the contrary.’ He looked into his eyes, not at all liking what he saw but trying his hardest to accept this simple truth. 

‘Okay, so what do I do about it?’ he asked himself as the Boeing turned onto the runway and began its sprint into the evening sky. And then he held his hands up and stared at his fingers for the longest time, knowing that whatever good might come from him would be delivered by these hands.

“Are you alright, sir?”

He turned and looked at his flight attendant and he nodded, then he smiled at the woman. “Yes, I think so. I was just lost in thought…”

“You look troubled,” the woman added.

He sighed while he nodded once again. “I’m off to Gondar to work in the hospital there. It’s my first time.”

“Médecins Sans Frontières?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“My brother is in medical school, in Paris,” she said, smiling politely.

“Small world,” Tanner sighed with a shrug.

She weighed his words against the measure of her own experience, though she smiled once again. “Let me know if I may bring you something?” she added as she turned and walked forward to the galley.

Flying from the sun now, darkness enveloped the Boeing as it streaked through the remains of the day, and all the while Doug Tanner wondered what revelations the next day would bring.

+++++

The jet touched down lightly and slowed in time to make the first turn out, and he was surprised once again by the terminal he saw as the jet taxied to the gate. Maybe he’d been expecting thatched roofs and dusty old Land Rovers waiting under shade trees in a sandy parking lot, but what he saw now was a modern airport that might have looked right at home in any large US city. Black glass and polished aluminum and a few dozen jumbo jets greeted him and yet one more time he was left to confront the reality of his skewed perceptions.

When he walked off the Boeing he smiled at his flight attendant yet was a little surprised at her reaction. She seemed almost annoyed, and he wondered if his doubts were really so readily apparent?  Some people wore their racism on their sleeve, like right out there in the open, while others were more practiced at concealing such feelings of hate. Which one was he, he wondered?

He waited for Beth and Jenny outside the Jetway, then they walked down to customs together, and after they cleared, they collected their luggage before heading on to their connecting flights. It was only a 250 mile flight on to Gondar, while Beth had a 350 mile flight up to Aksum, near the border with Eritrea, but he was surprised when they learned they were all on the same outbound flight. He and Jenny would deplane in Gondar, while Beth would remain onboard for the last leg of the flight.

They boarded a new Dash-8 Q400 this time, and now he hardly gave the matter of who was flying a second thought. Once they were in the air he wondered if it was only a matter of being in a new environment. Had that made him question his values and assumptions? He sat just ahead of the massive engine with its huge scythe-like propellor, looking at the semi-arid landscape below, and Jenny pointed out a few sights along the way…

“How many times have you been over here?” he asked.

“Oh, I come to Gondar a couple of times a year, but I prefer Aksum, really. Aksum is, I think you could say, more like being on the front lines of the war zone while Gondar is safe and secure.”

“What do you mean, like a war zone? Is it really that bad up there?”

“Oh, sure, it can be, but what’s most difficult to wrap your head around is that many of these regions were occupied by the Italians in the 20s and 30s, and that set in motion all kinds of animosities. Not to mention you can get a really good lasagna out in the middle of nowheresville. It takes a while to get used to all the changes, I guess.”

“Will Beth be safe up there?”

“Beth? Oh, no worries there; she was born for this stuff. Everyone knows who she is, and I guess everyone loves her. She doesn’t pick sides, doesn’t judge people. She just fixes ‘em up, no questions asked.”

“And you?”

“Me…what?”

“What do you do here?”

“In Gondar? I usually spend mornings in the OR, afternoons at the medical school.”

“So, you teach? What about the language barrier?”

“It’s not that big a deal, and I help students in their clinical rotations. Kind of a general introduction to surgery. I doubt you’ll have time for much of that this trip. They’ll be looking you over pretty good, by the way. If they like you, you’ll be invited back, then you’ll ease into teaching.”

“I didn’t really come to teach, I guess.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be busy either way, and as long as you’re cool the residents and surgeons will work with you.”

“Cool?”

“You seem pretty uptight so far, Doug. You’ve got to keep in mind this isn’t America. You’re the visitor, the outsider here. And you’re never really going to ‘fit in’ over here, so try to think of yourself more like not trying to stand out so much. Do your job and you won’t have to try to make friends. Friendship will come naturally unless you push these people away. And, oh, you can’t pretend here so just let go of all your preconceptions…”

“Let go? How do you do that?”

“Don’t think things through so much, and maybe just kind of follow your heart. We’ll be at the MSF compound and most of your time there you’ll either be asleep — or trying to get some sleep. The rest of the time you’ll be in the OR, so just go with the flow.”

“Funny, I was expecting…”

“Oh, don’t worry. Shit comes up all the time. One day you be in a helicopter going out into the bush and the next you may be in the OR all day. You just never can tell, but you’ll never get into a rut while you’re here. Oh, and tomorrow is just a jet lag recovery day, so I’ll show you around town.”

He didn’t know what to say so he just nodded and looked away; a few minutes later the wallowing turboprop was fighting a stiff crosswind to line-up and land in Gondar—and the enormity of what he’d signed up for began to fill him with dread. There’d be no Mannie from the police department looking out for him here, and there’d be no cocoon-like boat to run home to after a tough day. No…everything was going to be new — and relentlessly unfamiliar, so there’d be no comfort zone to fall back on, no safe haven, only a compound where he might find some cheap sleep and maybe something to eat.

So why had he come here? Why had he signed up for this? To confront some unknown inner demons, or simply to run away from Sandy Collins and all her broken dreams? Or maybe he’d wanted to impress the other surgeons in his group – by showing his willingness to play their game on his terms? Maybe all of the above? Or…was it none? Like…was he still running from his father?

The airplane suddenly dipped and wallowed and dropped so hard and fast that his seat belt dug into his thighs so hard he cried out, then the power came on and the Q400 was climbing again, back up into the clouds, and for a moment all his petty otherworldly concerns seemed to wilt away. Suddenly it felt like a more immediate death had come out of nowhere and now seemed to be calling his name. The cabin grew dark as it entered the clouds, and cold air sprayed little droplets of water out the overhead vents. Lightning arced seemingly just outside his window and when the aircraft lurched and dropped again Jenny instinctively grabbed his hand, and suddenly human skin on his own felt good. More than good, really. It was galvanic and comforting…

Three more steep, banking turns and then Tanner saw runway lights in the distance, the Q400 was still yawing wildly as the pilots battled the stormy air, then everything disappeared in blinding rain and impossible darkness. Jenny’s grasp was now so fiercely tight his own fingers felt like they were bending under the pressure and he turned to her and smiled when her eyes met his.

“Aren’t you scared?” she cried out over the frantically revving turboprops.

“Nah, just another day at the office,” he sighed, holding her in his eyes with his smile.

And that did it. She relaxed as she basked in the warmth of his smile and he felt her hands ease a bit, and maybe even the storm felt his warmth and decided to let up for a while—because just then the Q400 popped out into bright sunlight and the ferocious turbulence eased. The pilots coaxed their beast down to the earth again and everyone in the cabin burst out in cheers and wild applause. But Jenny’s eyes never left his.

“Is the weather around here always so sedate?” he asked Jenny, and she started laughing so hard that Beth, just across the aisle from them, looked at her like she was a nut case. Then she saw Jenny’s hand still clutching Tanner’s, so she looked away to hide her smile. Like any surgeon, Beth Gruber liked clarity, and something new had been born in the sky that afternoon.

+++++

Tanner had gone to medical school in Baltimore, at Johns Hopkins, and while the area surrounding the campus wasn’t considered a ghetto, there were areas not so far away that easily qualified as such. And they were, by and large, areas consigned to the poorest of the poor, in other words, consigned to members of the African-American community. Boarded-up windows spray-painted with gang related graffiti could be seen almost everywhere you looked, and as none of the homes were air conditioned heat related illness was a standard fixture of life there. Many homes were burnt-out shells, and destitute people wandered the streets at all hours of the day or night, while drug dealers owned the streets after the sun went down.

So he’d almost expected Gondar to look like the Baltimore of his memories. But now, driving into town, he no longer knew what to expect. They passed through distinct neighborhoods, each imbued with distinctive characteristics and he mentioned this to Jenny as they approached the medical school.

“Don’t think of Ethiopia as a homogeneous state,” she said. “Neighborhoods tend to reflect well defined divisions within the country, and these, in general, reflect very old tribal divisions. Other divisions tend to be ethnic or religious.”

“What about crime? Like street crime?”

“It’s probably safer than you think, but don’t be naïve.”

“Drugs?”

She sighed. “Did you notice how lax security was when we arrived?”

“I guess.”

“Well, Ethiopian Airlines has one of the largest route networks in the world, and many of their routes flow through areas with rather intense narcotics production. The word is that customs is so lax because literally tons of drugs flow through Addis Ababa, though some of that traffic arrives in-country by overland routes…”

“So you’re saying that drugs are an issue, right?”

“Yes and no. Most people here are socially addicted to khat leaves, and…”

“Khat? What’s that?”

“Almost like coca leaves. It’s a mild stimulant that produces a euphoric buzz if taken in large enough amounts. It’s also legal here, and it is throughout the region, so don’t look down on people who use it—you won’t win over people if you do. And its use goes back literally thousands of years, so consequently what you might call drug use is pretty much limited to that stuff. As to the hard stuff? Well, it’s more like Ethiopia is a major trans-shipment point, and most of the locals aren’t involved.”

“So no gangs…stuff like that?”

“Not much that I’m aware of, at least not as far as drugs are concerned. What you might think of as gangs around here revolves around political and military power structures…”

“You mean, like warlords and such?”

“Yup.”

“And these distinct neighborhoods are…”

“You got it. Each neighborhood is vying for political dominance, because that’s where the money is. Political patronage is power, and power is money. Just like it is at home, only more so here. And right now the Chinese have all the money, so they have all the power.”

“The Chinese? What are they doing here?”

“Building railroads right now; I think the biggest project is a line to the coast in Djibouti, ostensibly to help industrialize the region. The main thing is if you run into them, be real nice ‘cause they can cause problems. Got it?”

“Geez…anything else?”

“We’ll be briefed on local conditions tonight, but just remember your training, and for God’s sake – don’t accept rides from people you don’t know…”

He’d been through the two mandatory orientation sessions—the main topics covered included how to avoid kidnapping situations and what to do if taken hostage, but also helicopter and aircraft procedures. Those sessions had been a real eye-opener, but then he’d gone over the list of vaccines he’d need at least a month before departure and he’d almost changed his mind about the whole thing. As hypocritical as it was, he’d hated shots all his life and if anything he hated them now more than ever…and of course his shoulders had ached for days.

Their ride dropped them at the MSF compound and he carried their bags to their rooms—and that was about the last thing he remembered. A mass casualty event had just occurred and they both ended up pulling thirty hour stints in the overwhelmed and understaffed local ER.

+++++ 

A week later he was sleep-walking from the hospital to the compound, and still wearing scrubs, when a car pulled up alongside; two armed men politely pushed him inside an ancient Fiat 124 and slipped a black nylon hood over his head. No words were spoken, and with nothing else to do Tanner leaned back and took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep. At least he tried to.

The old Fiat bounced and rattled along a deeply rutted muddy track off into the bush, stopping twice to pass impromptu checkpoints along the way, then, after about an hour of this the car stopped in the middle of nowhere and he was helped out. The sun was setting and swarms of mosquitoes were out in force as he was escorted into a very large olive drab colored canvas tent, and he found he was now inside a fairly complete military field hospital, complete with injured soldiers and for all intents and purposes without a doctor. A handful of propane lanterns was lighting the interior and still without any words exchanged he walked over to the most seriously wounded man, an older fellow who appeared to be a rather high ranking member of this cadre, and he looked over two gunshot wounds in his thigh and groin. Another soldier, this one no older than twelve or so, was holding his belly and Tanner soon understood that the kid was keeping his intestines from falling out onto the floor. Both had been sedated with multiple ampules of morphine, which would normally only complicated matters. Yet, with no anesthesiologist on board, morphine would have to do.

He pointed at the surgical lights overhead and shrugged, so someone went outside and started a gas generator; soon he had lights, suction, and a respirator that appeared to be a fairly recent Chinese knock-off of a Byrd Mk IV. He found bottles of saline and iodine prep – all with labels in both Mandarin Chinese and English – as well as sterile IV kits and cut-down sets, so he set about stabilizing the boy before he  cleaned up the old man’s gunshot wounds.

He turned to one of the men who appeared to be in charge and asked him about moving the boy to the hospital in Gondar.

“Absolutely no!” the man shouted in halting English.

“I can’t save the boy without the equipment there.”

“Why this so?”

“You understand x-ray? Need x-ray to find things inside, need help to find all the holes in his gut, need to put boy asleep to operate, boy need hospital for maybe month after.”

“No do!”

“Then boy die.”

Guns were produced, Tanner was threatened, but he held his ground.

“Who is the boy’s father?” he asked the man.

“I father.”

“Let’s get him in the car now,” Tanner said, smiling gently. “We are running out of time.”

The father looked at his son then at Tanner, then he fell into the embrace of this stranger’s oddly reassuring smile; his resolve vanished and he called men to help load the boy into the back of a small pickup truck, then they set out through the night.

+++++

A week later the local MSF coordinator called him to her office.

“Your ambassador in Addis Ababa apparently has a hot belly and a positive Murphy, and as it seems you’re the best cutter in-country right now to handle a hot gall bladder your embassy has asked that you fly over on the afternoon shuttle to handle the situation.”

“The embassy doc can’t…?”

She shook her head. “You’d better pack a bag for three days.”

Tanner grumbled.

“And you’ve got an hour and a half to get to the airport.”

So a driver picked him up and ran him to the compound; he tossed a few things in a duffel before the truck ride out to the airport. It looked like the very same Q400 waiting for him out there on the tarmac, and he smiled just for good measure as the sky was full of towering cumulonimbus clouds. He made it on board a few minutes before the door closed and he buckled in for the ride, looking forward to—hopefully—a good half hour of sleep en route. 

The embassy’s chargé met him at the gate and drove him directly to the hospital, explaining the situation as best he could. The local doc wanted to do the case but the ambassador was a full-blown southern racist and he was refusing to let a ‘goddamn African’ physician anywhere near his belly, so nerves at the hospital were already way beyond frayed…

“So, what you’re saying is I shouldn’t step on any toes?”

“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”

“Why the hell is a racist our ambassador over here?”

“No opening in the Ireland, I reckon. These postings are usually nothing more or less than political indulgences.”

“Ain’t that ducky,” Tanner sighed.

The chargé walked him into St. Paulos hospital and took him straight to the ambassador’s room, and as he walked up to the bed a sudden wave of rage descended on Doug Tanner. Because it turned out the new ambassador was none other than his ex-father in law, the oppressively obtuse Rupert McClellan.

So Tanner did his level best not to smile. “Hello, Rupert,” he said as he walked up to the bed. “I hear you’ve managed to insult everyone here. Good for you. Now, is there something I can do for you? Like slit your throat, maybe?”

“Balls! Don’t tell me the grinning fool carries a grudge? Shit, boy, I thought you were made of sterner stuff…”

“How nice it must be to live in a bubble like that.”

“Okay, Doug, enough with the adolescent bullshit. Look, once I heard you were here, well, no one else would do.”

“Have you considered the ethical situation? I mean, other than us hating each other you were my father in law…?”

“Sure I have, but you’re the best man for the job and you’re in-country. And besides, even if I was back in Miami I’d have beat feet straight to your door.”

“For gall stones?”

McClellan sighed before he turned and looked away. “I got a feeling, Doug. Like something real bad is going on down there. That’s why I insisted you come.”

“Okay, Rupert,” Tanner said gently. “I understand.”

“Would you call Sandy when I come out of surgery?”

“Yes, of course. Does the chargé have the number?”

“Yeah. He’ll hook you up.”

Tanner went over the latest chemistries and imaging, and while the CT wasn’t the best he’d ever seen there were a couple of areas that raised alarm bells. Laparoscopy wasn’t an option here which meant a full exploratory procedure was scheduled for later that afternoon, and as soon as he was inside the full scope of Rupert’s premonition became clear. Cancer, in the liver and the bile ducts. Spread to the abdominal nodes noted, then more around the pancreas. 

St Paulos was a teaching hospital and the medical school’s head of surgery was nominally in charge of the OR and he concurred with Tanner. There was no need for resection, no need for chemo or radiation. McClellan might live six months, but even that was an optimistic assessment.

Tanner looked at the man under veiled layers of surgical drapes, at the open belly under his hands, and for the first time in his career he felt like crying. There was quite literally nothing he could do to help save this man, but then again Rupert wasn’t just someone off the street. He saw flashes of a wedding and a reception as he stared at the open belly, and he felt once again the anger of his sudden divorce, and standing there in the looming shadow of death he came to terms with the reality that this was no stranger he was talking about, and that yes, he was ethically compromised.

“Do you concur?” he asked the medical school’s head of surgery.

“There is nothing we can do. I would close now.”

“Would you do that for me, please?”

“You know this man, don’t you?”

Tanner nodded. “Not very well, but I thought I knew his daughter — once upon a time.”

“You do not look well.”

“I don’t feel so hot right now,” he sighed, “and I’ve got to call his daughter.”

“Does he have a wife at the embassy?”

“No. Not for a while.”

“Go then, make your calls, and please, come by my office when you have finished. I would like to talk over tea, if you have the time.”

The chargé had Sandy’s new number in Boca Raton and he asked for help placing the call.

“Doug?” she asked when she picked up the phone. “Is that you?”

“Yup. It’s me, the man you loved to hate, once upon a time.”

“How is he?” she asked, ignoring his sarcasm. Again.

“Not good, Sandy.” He explained the procedure and his observations, then he passed along his prognosis and when he heard her tears for some reason he wanted to be with her again, if only to hold her one more time.

“What now?” she asked. “I mean, what’s the next step?”

“He comes home, I assume. He’ll probably want to see an oncologist but at the very least he’ll need home care, then palliative care. It might be prudent to look into hospice options too, I suppose.”

“Oh, Doug, I didn’t imagine anything at all like this.”

“I know, I know,” he sighed. “Look, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks and if there’s anything I can do just let me know.”

She broke down then, told him she’d never wanted a divorce, that she’d filed just to get him to pay more attention to her, that she couldn’t stand his being at work all the time, and he found he almost believed her, but not quite. And it was funny, he thought as he stood there in an Ethiopian hospital, because the more she spoke the more he realized how little he’d ever really known her. And the more he listened the more he regretted not taking the time to get to know her better.

He talked to the chargé as he walked to the ICU after the call to Sandy, and he filled him in on the results, and their implications. Oncology wasn’t an option, he said. Cancerous tissue was everywhere, even in the lymph nodes and pancreas. If it had been limited to the liver and possibly even the bile ducts, a transplant might have been a possible way out, but with spread noted in the pancreas no transplant registry would take him. Chemo was a long shot at best, though it might buy him a few months, and that was all the diplomat needed to know. He’d call Washington with the news and he thanked Tanner before he left.

He made his way to the chief surgeon’s office and straight away the man offered him a job. “Even if you can teach just a month over your summer break it would make a vast difference,” the man pleaded.

He left the offer hanging in the air with an “I’ll think about it,” then he realized it was now quite late and he had nowhere to bunk out.

“You must stay with me and my family tonight,” the old surgeon said, “and I will see you to the airport after you speak with the ambassador in the morning.”

+++++

He found he most enjoyed clinic days in Gondar, when he could tend to minor injuries and interact with his patients. He enjoyed listening to stories about their lives, and he smiled when he realized that there really weren’t so many differences between their hopes and his dreams. Because their schedules were similar, Jenny Peterson spent almost all her free time with him, and it wasn’t long before he developed feelings for her, but he felt more like she was a little sister than someone he’d pursue. They took their meals together, they walked among all the medieval castles scattered around town and he watched, bemused, as she photographed quite literally everything from every possible angle. She used a boxy old Hasselblad camera and spent minutes composing each shot, and he wondered why anyone would spend so much time and money on something so trivial. He watched her staring down into the boxy viewfinder and found her vaguely pretentious and ultimately more than a little annoying.

One morning two new docs appeared, both Americans. Patty McKinnon was an internist and Gene Harwell was, like Tanner, a general surgeon. They’d been working in Mexico and had recently completed their MSF training in France; they were slated to work in a new clinic south of Lake Tana. Yet as he watched them he felt there was something troubling about Harwell, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on, but when he mentioned it to Jenny she agreed. “There’s something in his eyes,” she sighed. “Something desperate, almost haunted.”

“See if you can take a picture of him, will you?” He didn’t know why he asked her to do that because Jenny Peterson wasn’t a spy, she wasn’t trained in surreptitious surveillance methods, and even though she asked to take their picture Harwell watched her fiddling with her camera before she fired off a couple of shots of him. Harwell left and made a call after that, just before they departed for their new posting in Zege, on the southern shore of the lake.

Then one morning Beth Gruber appeared, and her arrival marked the end of Tanner’s deployment in Ethiopia, and he had a hard time sifting through the cascade of emotions that washed over him as he made his way to the compound one last time. With their bags packed and teary-eyed promises to return out of the way, he went to the airport with Beth, leaving Jenny there for the time being, as she had two more weeks on her current deployment. He looked around the crenelated stone airport while he waited for his flight to be called, and an hour later he boarded the Q400 for the bumpy flight to Addis Ababa, sitting next to Beth this time. They talked about her experiences near the war zone, and he told her about his kidnapping.

“What happened to the boy?” she asked.

“He’s doing okay, but his gut was a mess. Peritonitis had set in and it took a while to get that under control.”

“You were lucky, Doug. Some docs aren’t released for months, sometimes years.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard, but I reached an understanding with the kid’s father.”

“An understanding?”

“We had a stare-down. I won.”

She shook her head. “Like I said, you were lucky.”

“No way. It’s all in the smile, Gruber. It’s gotta come from the heart, ya know? Doesn’t matter where you are, either. It’s like a universal language; people can smell insincerity from a mile away, and fear is a weakness to be exploited.”

And when she looked at him he was smiling at her and her heart melted. “Goddam, you sure are cute, ya know? Like a little boy kind of cute, if you know what I mean?”

His smile deepened and he put his hand on hers. “I do, as a matter of fact,” he said, still smiling. “That’s exactly what my mom used to tell me…”

 After changing planes in Addis Ababa he found his seat on the Dreamliner for the flight back to Washington-Dulles, and he looked out the window with Gruber by his side this time. She’d upgraded – because she wanted to bask in the warmth of Tanner’s smile for a few more hours. They talked about Jenny and his job offer in Addis Ababa and then about his marriage to Sandy McClellan  and her father’s surgery. And so the time passed, but Tanner felt like the time up in the air marked an ending.

A week after their return Tanner and Gruber learned that an attempt had been made on Jenny Peterson’s life while she’d been walking from the compound to the clinic. The attempt appeared ‘targeted’ as opposed to random— or so the embassy said, and that was something that rarely happened to MSF physicians — in Ethiopia or anywhere else in Africa, for that matter.

When he listened to the FBI agent delivering the news the first thing that entered his mind was Gene Harwell, but he decided not to speak up just yet.

Instead, he went to talk with the former ambassador to Ethiopia, who was still recovering from his surgery though now in Miami Beach. Tanner voiced his suspicions about Harwell and Rupert called his former chargé at the embassy; agents were dispatched to Zege, more photographs would be taken and a surveillance operation set up. 

+++++

A few weeks passed and he’d yet to hear from McClellan, then one evening agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency approached him while he and Gruber were walking to their cars after finishing up for the day.

“You’ll need to come with us,” one of the agents said, pointing to a black Suburban waiting in the parking garage.

“What? Why? What’s going on?” Tanner asked, his voice incredulous and anger welling up inside.

“We’re taking you into protective custody. There are at least to men closing in on you right now, and we need to get you out of here.”

“Closing in?” he asked. “What the devil does that mean?”

“Assassins, Dr. Tanner. As in, two people who’ve been paid a lot of money to kill you.”

Tanner stopped in his tracks. “Does this have something to do with Gene Harwell?” he asked — and when the agent nodded Tanner seemed to accept his fate.

“Doug,” a very confused Beth Gruber asked, “what’s going on? What’s this all about?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, “but we’d better go with them.” He turned to the agent then, suddenly concerned for his sister in Rockport. “I have a sister up in Maine. Will she be safe up there?”

“We have agents on the way, Dr. Tanner.”

Tanner nodded, then he looked at Gruber and sighed before he turned to the black SUV. When he opened the door he found a very frightened Jenny Peterson already in the back seat, and without saying a word she flew into his very surprised arms. Heavily armed agents surrounded the Chevrolet as they were ushered inside, and even though the air conditioner was running full-blast it didn’t take long for the interior to grow thick and stale. Winding through heavy evening traffic, it took a half hour for the little caravan to reach the airport in Opa-locka, and once there the Suburban drove out onto the ramp and right up to a waiting Gulfstream business jet. More armed men formed a cordon and Tanner led Jenny and Beth to the airstairs; they agents boarded quickly and took their seats as the jet’s engines started. Within a minute they taxied to the active runway and took-off. 

Once in the air the jet turned almost due north as it climbed out over the Atlantic, and the agent in charge came and sat across from Tanner.

“Harwell is in deep with the cartels,” the agent began, almost out of the blue. “Seems he was helping to distribute product near the end of his time in Texas, but he helped set up a bunch of our agents when his cover was blown. We ended up losing a half dozen undercover operatives because of him, but I’ll say one thing about the cartels. They protect the people who are loyal to them, and they got Harwell to Mexico and then on to France. We’d have lost him for good if you hadn’t…”

“So it was just chance that I thought he looked suspicious?” Tanner growled.

The agent nodded. “These are bad actors, Doc. And like an octopus, they have tentacles everywhere, and I mean everywhere. We moved in on him three days ago and our team was met by a large force, and that only means one thing.” 

“They knew you were coming, so they’d already penetrated your operation.”

“That’s our best guess, yeah, but at that point we’d already decided to get Miss Peterson and you two out of harm’s way. We picked up signs that a hit team was setting up on you, and that was that. Washington okayed moving you into Witness Protection.”

“Where are we headed?”

“Upstate New York.”

Wide-eyed now and with events sinking in, Tanner turned and looked out the little jet’s big oval window; they were climbing past the Kennedy Space Center, and a gnawing emptiness began tearing at his gut. Everything he’d every wanted was disappearing behind this jet right now—because of a bunch of fucking druggies, no less—and he felt shattered. Beth was sitting next to Jenny and she turned to the agent:  “You said there was a fight?” she asked. “What happened?”

The agent looked away, plainly thinking about what he could and could not tell her, then he shrugged. “Harwell got away. The girl he’d been with for a couple of years, this Doctor McKinnon, was wounded and taken into custody, along with her baby. She was treated in Addis Ababa and arrived at a high security facility in Virginia last night. We really don’t know what to do with her, either, as we’re not sure she’s broken any laws, either here or in Mexico, and besides, she’s not really cooperative right now.”

“So, protective custody…like us?” Gruber asked, then adding: “Do you have any idea where this Harwell is?”

“They fled west, into Sudan. There are active cannabis farms in the region so we assume the cartels may have an ongoing interest…”

“Fucking drugs,” Tanner snarled. “Why does it feel like half the world’s problems boil down to these fucking things…?”

The agent shrugged. “Maybe because that’s about the size of it. The appetite for these products is enormous and the profit margins make it impossible for farmers to justify cultivating typical cash crops. It’s a vicious cycle.”

“Upstate New York?” Beth asked the agent.

“Well, your cover is simple. You three are used to working as a team so we’ve found a town that could use a surgical practice.”

Beth looked at the agent, then quickly at Tanner before she shrugged and looked away. She was still too upset about all this to process the information, and after a full day in the OR she was already too tired to think straight. Now the idea that Mexican goons were after them was almost comical, almost as funny as her living in New York. She was from Ithaca, after all.

The lights dimmed and soon everyone was napping. Everyone but Tanner, anyway. He couldn’t sleep, and he was so upset he could hardly think straight.

The jet made a series of hard turns before it settled on a quiet runway, but as they taxied to the ramp he noted there were no aircraft anywhere in view – just empty ramps and a few deserted buildings. Yet another black Suburban met them at the airstairs and they drove off into the night.

“We’re headed over to Lake Placid,” the lead agent said, smiling.

And when Gruber looked at Tanner she thought he might just spontaneously combust.

+++++

The agents took them to what looked like a farm, but the place was actually a compound of sorts, with three houses and several outbuildings, including two barns, one set-up for a small dairy operation and another for horses. “You three will be in the main house over there,” the agent in charge said, and there’ll be at least two agents in the house at all times, at least until we get a handle on the opposition. There are a couple of horses in the barn if anyone wants to go for a ride.”

No one said a word. Beth wanted to mention that they had no clothes with them, and no toiletries, for that matter, but she just shook her head and trudged off to the big house, grumbling as she walked along the lighted bricked walkway.

Tanner turned to the lead agent. “You can’t be serious,” he sighed. “We may work together, but we’re not exactly roommate material, if you know what I mean.”

“Sorry. It’s all we could come up with in the time we had.”

“Do we have new identities, stuff like that…?”

“Yup, and we’ll go over all that in the morning.”

There was a husband and wife team already set up and working in the main house, and they’d furnished the bathrooms with all kinds of stuff. To Tanner’s delight, Mrs. Team Member had baked oatmeal raison cookies and had fresh, ice cold milk ready to go, and that was all he needed for a solid night’s rest.

Beth, on the other hand, loved to cook, and within a week Tanner had decided she was going to make someone a spectacular wife. She cleaned incessantly, cooked up a storm, and did everything around the house but yard-work and laundry. Agents took care of the yard and their laundry, which left Tanner with very little to do around the house. At least two agents went everywhere Tanner, Peterson, and Gruber did, from the clinic to the movie theater. And predictably, within a month Tanner was chafing at the bit, restless, irritable and grumpy. They were slowly setting up their own clinic while the agents went about securing bogus privileges at the two area hospitals, and until that work was complete the physicians had very little to do.

The lead agent, usually in Washington, dropped by the farm a month later and let them know that Harwell had simply disappeared, but then again so had the hit team sent to take them out. “If we don’t locate them soon we may have to move again…”

“What?” Tanner cried.

“Are you hard of hearing or something?”

“Did you say something about moving? Again?”

“Ah. You did hear me.”

“And you are out of your mind. We can’t just bounce around forever.”

“Well, we could let you sit here and wait for them to find you. How does that sound?”

“Are those the only options?”

“Unless you have another idea.”

“Let’s just stay here,” Beth said. “Let them come to us. You guys take them out and we can get back to our lives.”

“I’m not sure that’s the way this works, Doctor Gruber. If they don’t succeed they’ll come at you next time with a larger force.”

“You talk about these guys like they’re in some kind of army,” Tanner sighed.

“Well, in a way they are.”

“So? Why don’t you locate their headquarters and take ‘em out? You know, like in Iraq?”

“Mexico isn’t Iraq, and anyway, I’m not sure we want to invade Mexico, if you catch my drift…?”

Tanner shut up and went back working on the clinic’s computer system. When he returned to the farm that evening they told Jenny about the possibility of moving and she grew quiet, and then she seemed to grow depressed right before his eyes; Tanner shut up after that and was unusually quiet for the next few days.

“What do you miss most?” Beth asked him a couple of nights later, while Jenny was burning their dinner.

And he thought about that for a moment. “I think Gondar, actually. I miss the people there, taking long walks after dinner, the ruins…”

“…and getting kidnapped?”

“I wasn’t in any danger, Beth. Never. Not for a second. I did manage to built a little trust with those people, and that wasn’t such a bad thing.”

“So you’d go back?” Jenny asked as she joined them at the table.

“Tomorrow. Yeah. No doubt in my mind.”

“You mentioned something about a teaching gig in Addis Ababa?” Jenny added.

“Yeah.”

“Are you thinking of doing it?” she wondered aloud, her eyes growing kind of dreamy.

“I’ve been thinking about it. A lot, really. I guess what it comes down to is I felt like I was finally making a difference over there. Here…it’s always the same old crap, dealing with insurance companies and setting up shell corporations to shield assets from lawyers. Ya know, I went out to dinner with the managing partners not long after they hired me and they took me…”

“Let me guess…to Joe’s Crab Shack,” Beth chimed in, grinning. “Yeah, they take all the new guys there.”

Tanner nodded. “Yeah, but you know the thing that got me was after dinner they all pulled out these massive cigars and lit up, and the whole thing was so fucking pretentious it made me sick. They were all talking shit about women and menopause and…”

“Oh yeah? Like what did they say?”

“Oh, shit like women in menopause are beyond crazy, that they ought to be put out of their misery, how they’re no good for anything, least of all fucking. But there they were, sucking on those damn cigars and I wanted to laugh because it looked like they were sitting around sucking dicks and the whole menopause diatribe was just so fucking out of place, yet they were laughing their asses off the whole time.”

Beth shook her head – but she grinned, too. “I take it you don’t smoke?”

“No, never have.”

“Not even pot?”

“Not even pot. The whole idea of fucking up my lungs really bothers me, always has.”

“Ever do coke or ‘shrooms?”

“Nope. I guess, when you get right down to it, I really don’t want to fuck up my head, either. That, and I’ve always been a wuss about breaking the law…”

“Yeah, I notice you always drive the speed limit. Pretty uptight about it, too.”

“Yup. Always have been.”

“Maybe you ought to let your hair down once in a while, take a walk on the wild side and see if you like it.”

He shook his head. “Liking it isn’t the point. Liking it and being able to pull back…now that’s the place where I might have trouble. But what’s the point, Beth? Get fucked up, but maybe fucking up your life along the way, and for what? A few minutes of being high? Why not just go to Disneyland and ride a roller coaster?”

Beth shrugged.

“Have you done much of that stuff?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, between the shit I did in high school and then in college I did just about everything, everything but acid, anyway. Always wanted to to try that, too, but never ran into anyone…”

“Jesus, really? You don’t strike me as the type.”

“Oh, I had a couple of rough experiences but managed to pull myself out of the spiral, but in a way I kinda envy you, Doug. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gone down that road.”

“Shit, you mean you tried heroin?”

She nodded. “Yeah, and it’s as powerful as you’ve heard.”

“Did you ever get busted?”

“Yeah, once, down in Cancun on Spring break. My dad had to come down and get a lawyer, but in the end he paid some big bucks to buy my way out before my case went to trial. That was it for me, the bottom of the barrel and the end of the line; I stopped cold turkey and never went back. When I did my rotations I thought a lot about going into psychiatry, but in the end I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for all that. It took me a while…”

“Holy shit, Beth…” Tanner muttered.

“You know…I haven’t ever told anyone any of this stuff. Not even my mom knows what happened down in Mexico. Now you and Jenny know.”

“Oh? Why us?” he asked, not sure how to take the look in her eyes.

“Oh, you know, I think I’ve had a little crush on you from the first time I laid eyes on you, Tanner. That innocent little boy wonder thing you got going is like cat-nip to me, I guess, but you had me with that smile. I felt my legs melting, Doug. Still do sometimes, as a matter of fact.”

Tanner blushed. So did Jenny.

“Tell me about your marriage,” Beth asked, quickly changing the subject and trying to knock him off balance.

But he wasn’t going to play her game. “A crush, huh? I never picked up on that.”

“Oh, I didn’t…well…Jenny? I thought you had it real bad, so I kind of backed off a little when you two went to Gondar. You two got close there, didn’t you?”

“Well,” Jenny said, looking away, “maybe just a little…”

“See, I thought so,” Beth said, smiling. “Doug, why go back?”

“To Ethiopia?” he replied, and when she nodded he continued: “I guess maybe it’s the old cliché. I felt needed. That I had something unique to contribute, and maybe I feel a little like a cog in a wheel over here. If I break there’re a dozen more just like me waiting to take my place.”

“So, you want to go to the national med school, help train residents?”

And just then the senior agent from D.C. entered the farm house and he appeared agitated. “Sorry to bust in like this, but we have a problem.”

“Oh?” Tanner sighed, looking down and shaking his head.

“We moved Harwell’s girlfriend to a minimum security facility earlier today, and the cartel’s team hit the caravan. The have her now and as far as we can tell they’ve made it out of the country…”

“You can’t be serious,” Beth Gruber managed to say.

But Doug looked up, then he looked at Beth before he turned to the agent. “So, you guys are definitely compromised, right?”

And the agent nodded. 

“So…you can’t really guarantee our safety, can you?”

Beth and Jenny turned to face the agent, but the expressions on their faces had turned from bemused annoyance to concern…concern tinged with a little fear…yet for some reason Tanner had half-way been expecting something like this to happen. “What else do you know?” Tanner asked.

“Well, like I said, we’re pretty sure they’re out of the country, and we have two credible reports they might be headed to Chile or Argentina.”

“What does ‘credible report’ mean?”

“Air traffic control monitored a private jet originally headed from Monterrey, Mexico to Paris, and it made a scheduled stop to refuel outside of D.C. After it departed the pilot changed the flight plan for a direct return to Monterrey, but once they were out over the Gulf they changed their flight plan again, this time with Quito as an intermediate destination, and Santiago as their final. The jet is about an hour out of Quito right now, and we’re getting eyes on it as we speak.”

“You think you have a data breech or someone working for them on the inside?” Tanner added.

“I hope it’s a data breech. If we’ve been penetrated then the agency is fucked.”

Tanner chuckled at that. “And so are we.”

“So, what’s our play?” Beth asked. 

“We stay here. We reinforce. Or…” the agent began, but he stopped speaking now, not sure how to proceed.

“Or…what?” Beth asked.

“Or,” the agent continued, “we cut you loose.”

“And how would you do that?” Doug asked.

The agent produced three large envelops and he held them up. “There are new identities in these, for each of you. Passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses and everything you’d need to relocate, right down to medical school transcripts and licenses. And money. We couldn’t know where you’re headed, for obvious reasons.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Jenny sighed, looking away.

“There is, of course, another option,” Doug said reluctantly, indeed, almost quietly.

“And that is?” the agent sighed.

“Move us to a high security military facility, maybe a nuclear submarine base. There’s one in Georgia, isn’t there?”

The agent nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. Kings Bay, just north of Jacksonville. And there’s one in Maine, too, as well as Puget Sound.”

“So? Send us to one, or split us up and send us to …”

The agent shook his head. “You’d have to be commissioned officers, and you’d have to pass a thorough background check to be assigned to one of those facilities. I’m not sure we have time for that right now.”

Tanner looked at the envelopes in the agent’s hand. “So, if I’m reading you correctly you want us to take the envelopes and make a run for it. Is that about right?”

The agent crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “Simply put, the easiest thing to do is hole up here, bring in reinforcements and wait for them, but there’s a big down side to that. Collateral damage could be high, and by that I mean not just agents getting shot up but possibly a large number of civilians, depending on where the attack was staged.”

“Geez,” Beth sighed, “when you put it that way we really ought to take the envelopes and try to disappear.”

“But if we’re on our own,” Tanner grumbled, “that also means no back up, and if we do get taken out no one will know a thing about it.”

“I want to stay here,” Jenny said, suddenly feeling very vulnerable and alone.

“Me too,” Beth said, her eyes steely hard. “Just, like, give me a fuckin’ gun, ya know?”

The agent looked at Tanner, who simply shrugged. “If they’re staying, I guess I am too.”

The agent nodded. “Well, they got the McKinnon girl and her baby so maybe they’ll just disappear. Maybe the whole thing will just blow over.”

“But you don’t think that’s the case, do you?”

“No, as a matter of fact I don’t, and because we’re compromised I also take it to mean that they’re serious about getting to you. My guess is they think you were undercover operatives tracking Harwell all along, and if that is in fact the case I doubt they’ll let this go without exacting a price.”

Tanner nodded. “So…why not make it easy for them. Get the word out we’re in hiding up here but then quietly bring in a shitload of backup. Make the price too high in lives lost, then maybe they’ll back off.”

The agent nodded. “That’s Plan A, in a nutshell. If the three of you are sure this is what you want then I’ll put the plan in motion.”

They did, and it was.

+++++

And so a month passed, then another and another. The seasons changed, snow began to fall. Skiers came, knees were broken. When outside situations warranted, one of the three surgeons was called in to the clinic but a peculiar lassitude fell over the three surgeons. Tanner hadn’t skied in years but Beth and Jenny wanted to learn so he took them to the old Olympic venue at Whiteface and taught them, but as they rarely worked now Tanner felt useless, and he hated the relative inactivity. He knew that, as with everything else where an intense, highly specialized skillset is employed day after day, inactivity leads to a breakdown of those skills, and for a surgeon that could be dangerous in the extreme. As winter’s boredom deepened, Tanner’s gloom only increased.

And then early one spring day the agent from D.C. appeared and told them all that he could no longer see the need to keep three surgeons cooped up, and that the government had decided to cut them loose. And as long as they remained in the U.S., he said, they’d be able to request protection at a moments notice.

“What about the envelopes with the new identities?” Tanner asked. “Are those still available to us?”

The agent shrugged. “Not sure why you’d need them, unless of course you plan on leaving the country,” he said with a sly grin, pulling the envelopes out of a briefcase. 

+++++

Jenny Peterson took her envelope, too, and she and Tanner hopped on Amtrak’s northbound Adirondack in Plattsburgh, and the two of them traveled all the way to Montreal without saying so much as a word to one another. Something unspoken had developed between them, something like an unresolved need to finish what they’d started in Ethiopia, only now this thing had turned into something rather like an obsession. 

To Jenny, this obsession came by way of an unexpected lust for Doug Tanner. For Tanner, his took the form of a wholly predictable desire to make a difference, and for months he’d spoken of little else. About how in Miami Beach there were literally dozens of surgeons doing exactly what he had been doing, while in the entire country of Ethiopia there wasn’t a single surgeon trained in arthroscopic abdominal surgery. He was needed in Addis Ababa, and he’d made the case that he was desperately needed—at least he had to himself—and he had agonized for months about being just another cog in the machinery of modern American medicine. He would go to the medical school and teach. He’d do his time in the OR. He’d continue to work with MSF. He’d make a difference.

So when Jenny Peterson opted to follow him he’d been a little surprised. Yet Beth Gruber wasn’t, not in the least as it turned out. She’d decided to play the long game and see what developed between Tanner and Jenny, because she suspected Jenny would soon return to Miami with her tail between her legs, thoroughly chastened and utterly defeated. Beth had seen Tanner’s obsession take root and knew what came next, while poor Jenny couldn’t see beyond a sudden need to make babies. Beth sighed when she’d first recognized the symptoms of Jenny’s lust; it wasn’t Tanner the poor girl was after as much as it was a genetic time bomb ticking away inside her womb, and now she wanted a strong husband to take care of her new family.

So Jenny followed Tanner onto an Austrian Airlines 767 bound for Vienna, and she sat with him on the Ethiopian Dreamliner that carried them on to Addis Ababa, and still they hardly spoke to one another. In a way he seemed solicitous, even deferential towards her, yet at the same time he remained conscientiously distant. He spoke decent German and helped her decipher the menu on their way to Vienna, yet when she asked when he’d learned German he’d simply shrugged. It was as if he’d sensed Jenny’s oblique motivations and had already begun to distance himself from another impossible entanglement. In his almost paranoid worldview, men experienced lust and a momentary lapse of reason, while women seemed to grow attached to men as means to an end, so the word love meant two entirely different things. With no common ground to stand on, relationships were doomed to fail.

Yet sitting there beside him over the Atlantic she sensed his retreat. And she almost instantly began to talk about ongoing problems at the MSF facility in Gondar, and how she’d miss him after spending so much time together. Perhaps she’d hoped to throw him off balance, but she’d seen the unsettled look on his face when he helped her onto the afternoon shuttle to Gondar later the next day, and she’d smiled when he’d hugged her and said he’d see her soon.

As he’d been in touch with people at the university for more than a month, he found on his arrival that they’d set aside accommodations for him on campus and expedited his work visa, so he got right to work. He always had at least two early morning cases in the OR, and this was followed by one class with second year medical students and another with post-graduate physicians, and he was soon so busy that he forgot all about Jenny Peterson and Beth Gruber and his lost year spent in upstate New York.

So he was free now, free to make plans for his future. To return to Miami as required to maintain citizenship. To attend continuing education programs on the latest techniques, this year in Bali, next year in Las Vegas. He looked at purchasing a house in Addis Ababa, or maybe something in Tuscany—because Italy had always appealed to him. Be bought a Land Rover, a Defender, because…why not?

One Sunday Sandy McClellan called him – “Just to say hi!” – and they had talked about her father and his passing and he’d thanked her for all she’d done to help him during that trying year in hiding. She’d asked when he was ‘coming home’ and if he’d call her when he knew so she could set aside time for him – and the alarm bells started ringing in Tanner’s mind once again.

His sister called. She wanted to sell the old place “because property values are skyrocketing and we could make a killing” and he found he really didn’t care about all that stuff anymore. He told her to send the necessary papers by FedEx and that was that—and even his father’s ghost didn’t know what to say about this sudden parting of the ways. Neither, for that matter, did his sister.

Jenny flew into Addis Ababa on her way back to the States but he was tied up in surgery and didn’t get a chance to visit with her, and she cried all the way back to Dulles. Beth Gruber met her when she arrived in Miami, and while Beth had the good sense not to mention Tanner’s name, inside she was all smiles.

And so for Doug Tanner life slipped into a new and totally unexpected routine. He began to look forward to Bali and going to a quick medical instruments presentation in Munich. He began to think about setting down roots, if not here then perhaps in Italy, or even Austria. He thought about his old life on the boat and there were times he missed that vagabond’s existence, too. He could buy another boat and maybe keep it in Turkey, or perhaps Greece.

There were so many options now. Now that he was free of his past. Now that he had cheated death.

Yet there was one thing that Doug Tanner was not free of, and that one thing was Gene Harwell. He was reminded of this simple fact one evening when Beth Gruber called and told him that Jenny Peterson had been killed by a car-bomb that had detonated outside her condo in South Beach. She was now, Beth told him, on her way to the airport, and could he pick her up tomorrow afternoon?

“Why are you coming here?” he asked.

“There’s trouble brewing there, Doug, in case you haven’t heard.”

“You mean all that stuff up in Tigray?”

“Yeah…that stuff. Things are heating up, and MSF just put out an urgent call for physicians and nurses. Jenny and I were both getting ready to come, by the way.”

“Oh?”

“Man, you are one clueless son of a bitch, Tanner.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Really? You know, like Jenny followed you over there and you just ditched her, ya know? Broke her damn heart, and you’re really going to sit there and play like you had no fucking clue why? What the fucking hell is the matter with you, Doug?”

“I’m really not following you, Beth.”

“Yeah? Well, don’t bother picking me up. I’ll figure something else out, and I sure don’t want to bother you any more than I already have.”

Tanner listened after Beth hung up the phone on him, only now he waited for the secondary click that meant his phone was being tapped. When he heard the distinctive metallic sound he hung up and went to his bedroom to pack a suitcase, grateful that the witness protection agents had taught him that useful little trick.

It was time to run, and run fast – but where? If Harwell, or his cartel backers, was behind Jenny’s death where could he run? Where would he ever be safe? If all he was doing was buying time, where could he find the most time?

And an even simpler question roamed in the back of his mind: Even if he tried to run…could he run fast enough? How would he know who was on his tail, let alone how close they were to getting him?

There was really only one viable option, at least as far as he could tell right now. He needed to somehow turn the tables, change the paradigm, and that meant he’d need to hunt Harwell and take him out. As he wasn’t trained to do that kind of work he’d have to find someone trained to undertake such a mission. And that meant finding a secure channel of communication and contacting the witness protection agent in D.C.

When he finally got through, Tanner explained the problem and outlined his proposed solution, and he was surprised how quickly the agent agreed with him. “Go home as usual tomorrow night, and wait for contact,” the agent said somewhat obliquely.

And so the next afternoon he went to the airport and met Beth. She had cooled down a little and wasn’t overtly hostile to him, and as her flight to Mekelle had been delayed – due to insurgent activity near the airport – he took her to dinner before taking her back to the airport. And an hour after he returned to his house he heard a gentle knock on his door.

But he didn’t know what to do. Was he trapped, or was this the contact he’d been told to expect?

So he held his breath and opened the door. Two men stood there, pistols out and both staring at him. Before he could say a thing, the older of the two and the man who seemed to be in charge, held a finger to his lips as he slipped quietly inside Tanner’s house.

And once both were inside the younger of the two went to a potted plant and removed a hidden camera. He slipped the SD card out of the device and placed it into a viewer and the three of them stood silently and watched a time compressed view of the entire day; playback at normal speed began when the image showed a single figure entering the house and placing a bomb under Tanner’s bed, and before he left the assassin placed an audio recording device in an air conditioning duct in the kitchen.

The older agent wordlessly indicated that Tanner should stand by the front door while the two agents went to work, and ten minutes later they led him to a windowless black Mercedes Sprinter and helped him into the back. They drove a few blocks away and the younger man hit a switch, detonating the bomb under Tanner’s bed, then the older agent drove out to the airport.

The van pulled up to the open airstairs of a US registered Gulfstream G-600 and the older agent led Tanner up the stairs and into the darkened interior of the business jet. The pilots started the engines and immediately taxied to the runway and departed, turning to the northwest.

And while all this was happening the jet’s interior remained completely dark, but once airborne dim red lights came on – and suddenly he saw Jenny Peterson sitting across the aisle from him, smiling like it was Christmas morning and all her dreams had just come true.

Part III: Trinity

The woman sat on a camp stool just inside a large canvas tent, her face lined and shoulders drooped – as if she was used to carrying an oppressively heavy burden. The expression on her face was fragile, almost cold, and bitterly so. She seemed preoccupied, and to passersby they might have thought she was lost in a daydream, yet she was nervously chewing on the blue cap-end of a worn out ballpoint pen. Camouflaged UN Peacekeepers in dry, dusty uniforms drifted around her like old smoke, as oblivious to her as she was to the quiet, withdrawn sunrise that promised yet another day of relentless, oppressive heat. The troops, a mix of Pakistani and Kenyan men, were loading boxes of medical supplies and furled tents into white trucks caked in old red mud; in the stillness feverishly shocked refugees looked on from a line of cots beyond the woman. They seemed resigned to an unseen fate, like they knew death was coming and there was nothing to do now but wait for the inevitable.

The woman, middle-aged and somewhat tough looking, had a large portable telephone in her hand, a newish Inmarsat iSatPhone2 satellite telephone, and she looked at the thing with sure dread in her mind’s eye, the way one might hold a dead snake—one that was still squirming just a bit. She had been waiting for the call, yet even as she waited she knew the answers to her questions. They were stupid questions, she muttered to herself once again, and tiresome, too – yet only because of their stultifying futility. But, like the shattered children around her in this tent, she had run out of options – and now everyone knew the outcome, all her secrets were out in the media now. Aid agencies were being expelled from Tigray – because local leadership had been charged with War Crimes by the World Court. She’d tried to convince the court not to take this course, but by now she understood all too well that futility was just the institutionalized fear of inertia. The fear of taking responsibility for their failures, in this case.

Yet there were other trends that, like unexpected tidal flows, had changed this time around. The world had run out of options for these people – and because the vox populi, or in this case the so-called free press, had lost interest in Africa, and Africans – the shadows were once again growing longer. Everyone, or so it seemed, and almost everywhere you could find such trumpeting courts of public opinion, had constructed complex, interlocking walls of legal terminology to cushion the blow of all the hideous images coming from Tigray and northwest Ethiopia, and vacuous infotainment had once again taken center stage. Incessant blather about silicon boobs or Nascar races had replaced intelligent discourse about dying children and the never-ending problems of the displaced, so starving Africans simply would now vanish inside another night…the way homeless people hiding in plain sight often do. Yet, like the homeless, the kids in these tents had nowhere else to hide, for there are no walls to keep away the peculiar brand of darkness that stalks the refugee. Jackals circle beyond the shabby walls of their tents, stalking them in the shadowlands just beyond the crackling veneer of civilization’s embers, predators waiting to move in the next time yet another American Idol checks into rehab or drunkenly crashes into another house.

But if you had been in this particular tent you would have seen something odd on the woman’s face: taking care of these children had been her life, her calling, and she could not see beyond the Will to protect the innocent. Too much death had consumed her light, you might say. If you were patient enough, if you looked through her eyes at the world long enough, you might have watched the crushing bite to the jugular that comes stalking in the night for these children – but because she had lived this life for so long she had seen that death before – and you could feel the pain in her eyes as a measure of the Apathy that stalked these children. Yet now she methodically poked away at the sandy topsoil on top of her boots with the phone’s antenna, looking at the reddened dryness that had settled on her shoelaces, then she reached down to the ground and picked up some of the scorched red earth and sifted it through her slender fingers. “Sand in an hourglass,” she said quietly. If you were there beside her perhaps you would note she was speaking English almost out of habit, yet she is from France. 

The phone chirped as the last of the reddened earth ran through her fingers, and she brushed her hands on her thighs and powered up the phone: “Yes? Paul? Yes, it is a bad connection, I’m afraid!” she said too loudly. All the children stared uneasily at her, then at one another. They have seen her face and they know the tide is changing.

She listens, too tired to interrupt, too tired even to plead her case – one more time.

“The UN backed us, didn’t they? And still the government won’t back down?”

She listened, covered her free ear, yet for some reason it looked as if she was warding off blows from an unseen enemy.

“Will we at least have an escort?”

She listened again, shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Paul, you can’t be serious! That’s absurd! You simply cannot believe that…they’ll never give us safe passage! Not after this!”

Her head was in her free hand now, and she was almost in tears. She wanted to ignore the voice on the other end of the line but she couldn’t. She was as trapped as any of the other little patients in this war-torn clinic, and she could feel the spreading dread in the anxious faces looking her way. If you were, by chance, looking at this woman and at these children you might notice that the expressions on their little faces was simply a mirror of the expression on her’s.

“Paul! Please! Do you know how many new cases we have here now? More than five last night! Two more this morning. What? Yes, yes, confirmed meningitis. Multi-resistant TB is presenting now as well in some of the older men, in numbers I’ve never seen before. Have you been able to get…”

She paused, listened, then stabbed violently at the air with an outstretched finger. “Paul, no! That will not be enough and you know it.” Another pause; her hands shaking now. “I think a few will stay, regardless, but not enough. Yes, a few of the nurses, the local ones, perhaps. And a few of the nuns that arrived last week have said they will stay. But that’s fewer than ten, Paul, for more than ten thousand. And don’t forget that’s with a strong vector within the children. Okay, I know you understand! There are twenty five hundred kids here, and I mean under age ten, in this camp alone! And a fifty percent mortality rate! Do you understand?”

A young surgeon walked into the tent, stopped dead in his tracks when he heard the woman talking about these absurdly high mortality rates. He pretended he wasn’t listening to the woman while he checked his iPhone for messages.

“Goddamn it, Paul. You’re asking me to commit murder!” She listened again, but now her face was contorted and red with rage: “Gondar! You can’t be serious! Those camps are already overcrowded! What about something closer? Why can’t we…what? You can’t be serious! Paul! No!”

But apparently, the young surgeon thought, Paul was serious. He looked up from his phone, looked at the woman and not knowing what else to do he took her picture. She ignored the surgeon as one might a noisome fly; he took another picture of her then moved slowly to take pictures of the children, children in shadows bathed in fevered sweat. He watched the woman as she turned away from him, listened as she lowered her voice a little. He could feel the familiarity in her voice now, like maybe once upon a time she and Paul had been more than friends.

He turned and looked at her again. She was one of the French docs, some kind of infectious disease specialist from Paris or Lyon. She looked like she was forty or so years old, maybe a little older, but she was a willowy creature, wispy in a soft-faced kind of way, and he thought she was rather beautiful – even with dark circles under her eyes. He looked on while she told Paul she would check-in once the convoy was on the move, then she broke the connection and put the phone in a small canvas case by her side.

“I’m supposed to ride with you,” Doug Tanner said to the woman as he walked up to her.

The woman turned and looked at this new annoyance: “Excuse me?” 

He found her accent thick but her English precise. “Most of the convoy has already left. Someone told me I’m riding with Hasan. And with you, I guess.”

“Oh?”

“What was that all about?”

“MSF in Addis. The UN has ruled and that is that; we are to leave, and now. We have safe passage out of Tigray, but only for the rest of the day.”

“Peachy.” Tanner said as he looked around the tent. “You going to stay? Tough-it-out here with the nuns?”

The woman seemed to hesitate, then she looked at the young man: “Excuse me, but who are you? I’ve seen you around, but we’ve never been…”

“Doug. Doug—Smith.” He said quickly – as he held out his hand. “General surgery, but you probably haven’t seen me as I’ve been doing bellies over in the OR since I arrived.”

“Ah. I am Catherine DeSaunier,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “I am with the pediatric clinic here.” She looked him over, studied his hands for a moment, then his eyes. “You’re not with MSF, are you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am, but I’ve been teaching in Addis for a few months. I’ve been here about a week, flew in last Wednesday,” he added.

“Teaching? At the medical school?”

“Yes Ma’am, that’s right, but I guess someone thought I needed a change of scenery,” Doug Tanner said, his warmest smile now front and center.

The woman tried to smile at the young surgeon’s off-putting humor, yet as she looked at him she found his smile convivially warm – while also feeling oddly contrived. “Well, perhaps we simply follow where our dreams take us? One way or another?”

“I reckon that’s true, Ma’am. Can I help you with anything?”

She looked at the case by her feet and sighed, then bent over to pick it up. “No, and please, call me Catherine. And we should go now, I think?”

Yet before she moved to the small remaining caravan of cars and trucks waiting in the meager shade, DeSaunier walked over to an old nurse; they spoke for a moment, exchanged knowing looks and a brief hug, then DeSaunier walked with this surgeon, this Doug “Smith”, away from the fevered brows of dying children waiting for the jackals in their softly gathering shadows.

+++++

The air conditioning in the Toyota SUV belched foggy blasts of drenching mist from time to time, and Catherine wiped droplets from her arms after the latest dousing. Hasan, one of the drivers usually assigned to her, rattled on and on about Chinese technocrats and how it was they, not the rebels, who are the real threat in Tigray. Catherine detested the rat-faced man and his endless conspiracy theories; he’d come from Yemen with his parents ages ago and seemed to think he was somehow superior to the locals. His rodent-like eyes and twitching nose, she told herself again, did little to hide his true nature; he was rumored to be a plant, a spy, and it was assumed his real job was to report on the various non-governmental aid agencies present at the camp. He always wore new Adidas running shoes and was doused in a truly vile smelling cologne; with the windows up his extreme body odor and cheap cologne were beyond nauseating.

Doug sat behind DeSaunier in the back of the Land Cruiser, entombed within a huge pile of shifting cardboard boxes. She heard him growl when the Toyota hit a deep rut, but he had otherwise been quiet.

“Say, Bwana Doug, you ain’t CIA, is you?” Hasan asked, and DeSaunier couldn’t help rolling her eyes.

“What?” she heard Smith say.

“CIA? You CIA, is you now?”

“How’d you know?”

“What you mean, Bwana Doug.”

“If I was CIA, Hasan, I wouldn’t be riding in the back of this truck…”

“Oh yes, I see. Hah-hah. Yes, I see.” Even Hasan’s laughter was rodent-like, but she could tell he remained unconvinced.

Catherine, however, hadn’t considered the possibility, if only because the young surgeon appeared too inept to be CIA. She shook her head, looked out the window at the scorched landscape on the other side of the thin glass, suddenly realizing she needed to pee. “Hasan, how far to the checkpoint?” Though only 40 miles west of the camp, they had been on the road for two hours and her bladder was already aching from the rocky undulations embedded within the drift-strewn road.

“Oh, Doctor-missy, maybe five more miles. Thirty minutes, no more. Many land mines…so need go slow.”

“Hasan,” Doug said, “there aren’t any mines on this road and you know it!”

“Oh no, Bwana…many mines here.”

“It does not matter,” Catherine interrupted. “Stop here; I need some privacy.”

“Yes, Missy,” Hasan leered. She grimaced, heard Doug groan under his breath as he crawled out from under his pile of boxes. The Toyota had stopped on the drifting sand and she stepped out, walked unsteadily to the rear of the Land Cruiser and squatted in the shadows. She finished while Doug and Hasan walked forward to hose down their parcel of sand.

“Goddamn, if it isn’t as hot as a pistol out here,” Doug said in his feigned southern accent. He watched a marled, dog-like creature trot along a ridge off to the south not fifty meters away, and they never took their eyes off one another. Tanner felt a shiver pass down his spine as the jackal strutted off into the bush.

“You feel alright?” Catherine asked as she prepared to step back into the truck.

“Yeah, look at that jackal. Bigger than I thought they’d be.”

“Meaner, too,” she said as she reached for the hand-grip inside the doorway. “Here,” she said distractedly, “you want to sit up here for a while?”.

“No, that’s alright.” He took a couple of pictures of the jackal with his phone as it disappeared among the bushes, but he wondered if it might be part of a larger pack.

“Bwana Doug, we go now. Got to hurry, catch up to others at da checkpoint.”

“Right.” Doug hopped up into the rear and settled in among the tumbling boxes, and the Land Cruiser squirmed down the sand-covered highway once again. He felt the sand give way to pavement after a few miles, but the rising thermals and whirling dust-devils that roamed the morning desert remained. Within a few minutes the checkpoint became visible, hovering within the shimmering black asphalt ahead.

Troops stood between the road and a little concrete compound off the right side of the road; a village of low mud huts sat baking in the sand far off to the left, but no one was out in this heat. Dust from the main part of the recently departed convoy was still visible up ahead, suspended in the thermals over the road, so maybe they could make better time and catch up.

Hasan pulled up to the checkpoint and spoke with one of the soldiers; anger boiled in the steaming air, hostility seethed in the soldier’s penetrating eyes. Words, hostile, hate-filled words, passed like bullets between the two, but then the soldier waved them through – yet one of the soldiers glared at Tanner as they passed his position; other soldiers filled in behind the Toyota as it drove away and watched Doug through the back glass. One of the soldiers turned to speak into a radio. Tanner thought about taking a photograph of him but changed his mind when he saw the AK-47s the others held at their sides.

“Very angry,” Hasan said. “Army very mad now.”

“Why is that, Hasan?” Catherine asked.

“They say all you doctors are spies. All of you. You work for this Gebremichael now, so Ahmed want you gone.”

She nodded, yet couldn’t think of a thing to say. After working in Ethiopia and Sudan off and on for almost ten years, she was used to dealing with the closed, often paranoid minds of officialdom, but in Tigray institutionalized paranoia had reached new extremes over the last year. And now that oil had been discovered in the region by both Chinese and American geologists, any excuse to rid the government of meddlesome western do-gooders would come only as a welcome relief. That several hundred thousand ethnic Africans already in refugee camps would have to die to sate the world’s appetite for oil was a consequence of merest inconvenience to the authorities in Eritrea, Ethiopia and within Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Yet she knew that the West, too, had more than its fair share of blood on its hands, enough to last a thousand years, anyway. Words kept running through her mind: ‘For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,’ or words to that effect. She smiled at the thought, smiled at the grim worthlessness of such words in places like this.

China had simply moved to fill the void left after the collapse of European colonialism and African incompetence; they were simply the newest jackals circling in the dark. Catherine was sure they’d be just as effective stripping flesh from bone as the Americans had been, and the British before them, and the Portuguese and the Italians. Things don’t simply fall apart, she thought, her mind once again roaming to Yeats’ Second Coming. As grimly prescient as those words were, now it was Darwin’s turn to speak: the strong were simply picking apart the weak and eating them one by one — the way the strong always have. Soon these African’s would have a new set of masters, and the weak would once again be pushed along same path their fathers had taken.

The highway ahead grew smoother and soon they were southbound on well-finished asphalt. Catherine saw they were making good time now and found she was sleepy, so she closed her eyes. And soon enough she saw the cold black eyes of jackals on the prowl — and she turned away from them as nightfall came, seeking release.

+++++

She felt her head lurch, glimpsed sleep-born images of burning fevers and smoldering villages darting across her mind’s eye as she jerked awake, and she forced her eyes to focus on the harsh nightscape beyond the dust-caked windshield. Hasan was chewing some sort of twig; predictably it smelled awful – like cloves that had morphed into something almost like ammonia – and now he was listening to pulsating disco music. But she saw the main convoy ahead, now no more than a kilometer or so ahead, so she sat up and rubbed her eyes, then fought to suppress the overwhelming sense of relief that comes from a belief in strength in numbers. She heard Doug in the back and wondered if he’d slept… 

…and that was when the windshield exploded… 

…and she screamed reflexively as she covered her eyes. Shattered glass bounced off her arms, and she tensed when she saw the Toyota veering off the road towards a shallow drainage ditch… 

…then she heard gunfire, very close and apparently very accurate – because more shattered glass rained down on her head and arms… 

…just as the Toyota lurched and fell violently into the rock-strewn ditch… 

…the airbags deployed, the cabin filled with dust and more dancing fragments of shattered glass…

…and she heard Hasan gurgling as he tried to speak so she looked over, saw him clutching at a gaping hole on the side of his neck…

“Jesus H Fucking Christ!” she heard Doug growl from somewhere in back amongst the boxes. “What the fuck’s happening?”

…and just as the Land Cruiser slammed to a stop, nose down in the ditch, Hasan’s foot still pressing the accelerator pedal all the way down. The truck was jammed into a small depression, pinned in place by the ancient remnants of earlier floods, and while the engine roared with furious impotence the tires continued to spin wildly, throwing up huge clouds of sand, dust, and flying rocks…

…but more bullets slammed into the left side of the truck, and Hasan’s body jumped under the impact. Blood boiled out his nose, then frothily out his mouth and neck as he fought to breathe.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Doug cried, and though she heard his door opening she felt locked in place, terrified as the shadows closed in on her. Then her door flew open, she felt the night clawing past conscious thought and then felt the surgeon pushing frantically on her seat-belt release, then his hands on her arms, pulling her from the Toyota just as another volley of machine gun fire slammed into the front of the SUV. 

Apparently, he thought, they were not yet visible in all the stirred-up dust…

The back wheels were now off the ground completely, the front of the truck pinned in debris, but now there was a large space under the truck and Doug grabbed the woman and shoved her into the shadows, then he ran around and pulled Hasan’s body free and pulled him into the makeshift shelter. Doug gasped for breath, Catherine rubbed sand from her eyes while Hasan bled to death between them.

“Can you get my bag?” she whispered through the sound of close small arms fire.

“What? Where?”

“My bag, on the floor by my feet…”

Doug scrambled over to her side of the truck and looked around, stuck his head then his body into the open air before darting up between the open passenger doors. He grabbed her canvas bag and disappeared back into the safety of their little redoubt.

The physician pulled out a penlight and shone it on Hasan’s neck; there were two massive wounds visible, one rimmed with frothy blood pulsing from his wrecked carotid artery. She turned the light off and held his hand, wiped his forehead while he stared up at her, blinking occasionally as death came for him. Soon he lay very still. 

Then another huge explosion, most likely a mortar round, shook the ground.

“We’ve got to get out of…” Doug began saying, but bullets slammed into the truck overhead, then he heard men running down the road and in the the ditch, coming for them.

“Play dead!” he whispered coarsely as he fell to the ground. He looked on, aghast, as Catherine took some of Hasan’s blood and smeared it on their faces, then she melted into the ground and they both held their breath as men walked up to the battered Toyota.

He felt a gun-barrel roughly prod the side of his head and he let his head flop easily away, then someone climbed up into the truck and turned off the engine. The air filled with the sound the hissing and pooping as the engine began cooling, and now Tanner could smell antifreeze and gasoline. He chanced a glance at Catherine and saw she was curled up in a fetal ball, deep in shadow: perhaps they hadn’t seen her and that explained why she wasn’t being raped. One of the men was speaking Spanish, and Tanner knew then that the cartel hadn’t fallen for the ruse. Gene Harwell had come for him, at long last.

He heard renewed shouting, more gunfire, listened as one of the men screamed into a radio, and then this group took off down the ditch towards even more gunfire.

“We’ve got to get away from here, and I mean now!” he whispered; he saw Catherine nod and she reached for her bag, scrambled across the rocky scree to his side.

“Where?”

“Away from here, and fast.” He thought for a moment, trying to process everything that had just happened and coming up short. “We passed a ridge a while ago. and I thought I saw some caves there. Do you have that phone?”

“Yes…but…”

“Alright, bring it, and let’s go…” Tanner said as he pulled himself free of the Toyota, then he reached back to help her before he peeked over the shattered front end of the Toyota. When she was standing beside him he pointed down to a riverbed and pointed at some rocks a few hundred yards away. “Stay low, and let’s head for those rocks.”

She ran but not very fast; he stood, took some bottled water from the truck and crammed them into his little duffel bag, then he grabbed a piece of brush and ran along behind her, trying to wipe away their footprints in the sand. She was breathing heavily when he reached her; he threw the brush away and took her by the hand, pulled her along the riverbed until they were completely out of sight.

Still she breathed heavily, alarmingly so. He motioned for her to rest a moment, then climbed up the rocky embankment until he could get his bearings. He looked back toward the north, saw the outlines of the little escarpment he had seen earlier, and he reckoned it was about a half kilometer back and not too far from the road. The riverbed, he saw, would shield them from view at least some of the way. He slid back down the bank and looked at her. She was crying, breathing hard, and now apparently very frightened.

“We’re going to be alright,” he told her. “We’ve just got to keep our heads down and put some distance between us and whoever the hell that was.”

She nodded, fought to understand why this was happening, then she felt his hand take hers once again and she welcomed the feel of his strength as much as she despised herself for needing it. He pulled her along and they trotted along in the soft remnants of twilight until they came to a stunted tree. He made for the tree to rest but suddenly stopped short…

…when he saw an old man, an African as black as coal, who was sleeping there.

…but he was not a soldier for the old man was barefoot, wearing old khaki shorts and a tattered brown t-shirt. He appeared worn out, almost emaciated, and his brow glistened with sweat… 

…so the old man did not appear to be a threat… 

Tanner crouched beside the old man’s tree, yet their arrival startled the old man and he pulled inward, and he looked alarmed when he first saw them. But soon enough he relaxed, because the old man understood. He could see the fear in the newcomers’ eyes.

The old man said something and Tanner recognized the patois of disjointed French spoken by many in the region; he cursed himself for studying German in high school while he listened, trying to make out the flow of the conversation. Catherine, still breathing heavily, nodded understanding while she fought to get down as much air as possible; even so she managed to eek out a few words.

The old man laughed. Tanner heard the word Oromo more than once and understood he’d just become a part of Tigray’s civil war in a very up close and personal way.

“What did he say?” Tanner said as Catherine paused to take a breath.

“He saw our convoy drive by, saw the guerrillas setting up their ambush, but there was nothing he could do.”

“Is he sick?”

“What do you mean?” she said indignantly. “What would you have done?”

“No, no. Not that. I mean, is he ill? He looks sick.”

She turned and looked at the old man, asked him a couple of questions.

The old man lifted his arms, raised his t-shirt and uncovered his abdomen. There was a grapefruit sized mass protruding from under his rib-cage.

Catherine asked him another question and she nodded at his reply, then turned to Tanner. “He says it’s a tumor. I think he may be very ill.”

“Gee, really?”

“No sarcasm, please.”

“Ask him about those caves. Does he think we can get to them without being seen?”

She turned to the old man and began to speak.

“Not very safe place,” the old man interrupted in halting English. “Many animals, same idea.”

“Fuck,” Doug sighed.

“Indeed yes,” the old man said. “Fuck.”

The three of them laughed, but then the old man winced in pain.

“Oromo come soon here,” the old man said as his pain subsided.

“Well, I’m open to any and all suggestions,” Tanner said.

“Hope you choose empty cave,” the old man grimaced as he laughed.

“Me too.” Tanner said – while Catherine wiped dirt from her face. “What’s your name?” he added.

“Nimiri. You name?”

“Doug.”

“Ah. ‘And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’”

“What?”

“Doug. To make ready the people. This your cause. Why you here.”

“What are you talking about?”

The old man seemed confused. “The word of God. You understand?”

“Oh. You mean the Bible?”

“You will choose good cave. I think so now, yes.”

They turned as one to the sound of another explosion, saw more flames and smoke rising from the convoy in the distance, then more gunfire erupted.

“We’d better get going,” Doug said. He turned to Catherine. “We made about half a kilometer with that last sprint… think you can make another?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know…maybe…maybe not.”

Tanner stood, Nimiri too; they helped Catherine up and Tanner took her hand. He crouched a little then started down the riverbed once again – the physician in tow and the old man a few paces behind. Tanner ran a few hundred yards then pulled up next to another tree, waited for Nimiri to catch up. The old man wasn’t breathing hard but was obviously in a good deal of pain. Catherine was gasping for breath and now sweating profusely.

He waited for her to regain herself, then pulled her out into the riverbed again. He ran a few steps then stumbled to a halt. A long snake, probably a cobra, undulated across the sand in the moonlight, and it was perhaps twenty meters ahead before it disappeared into the brush.

“Fuck!” Tanner said under his breath.

“What?” the physician said. “Did you see someone?”

He turned and looked at her, saw she was bent over, looking at the ground. Nimiri, however, had seen the snake. He pointed to the opposite side of the riverbed, then said: “Follow me…”

Tanner fell in behind the old man. They moved more slowly now, smoothly down the riverbed until the escarpment was only a few hundred meters away — but now they were moving across open ground. Nimiri let up his relentless pace, waited for Catherine to catch her breath, then looked at Tanner. “Bigger cave, bigger animal may call home. Choose carefully. When you have, I will bring your woman.”

“My what? Oh, right.” Tanner shrugged, took off in a low run; he moved steadily between clumps of scrub-brush toward the cliff. In many places the wall appeared to be twenty, perhaps even thirty meters tall, but most of the broken ridge was much less than that. Hundreds of caves of all size dotted the cliff, some screamed mortal peril while others looked merely dangerous; it was like some long dormant part of his brain was hard at work interpreting signs he was completely unconscious of… 

One cave, however, seemed a good bet. He couldn’t say why but he trusted this impulse and made his way through the jumbled rock at the base of the cliff then scrambled upwards until he gained the entrance. It appeared to be about a meter and a half high near the entrance and disappeared into complete darkness beyond a tight turn several meters in. He picked up a rock and tossed it in, listened as it bounced off the walls.

Nothing. No movement at all.

He tossed another rock and waited.

Nothing. Only stillness within the shadows.

He walked inside the rocky opening, saw people had once made a campfire inside but whether that had been five days ago – or five years – he couldn’t tell. He sat deep inside the shadow and listened; when he was sure the cave was unoccupied he made his way back to the entrance and looked across the brush toward Nimiri and Catherine. He could just see them and he waved until he saw Nimiri return the gesture, then he slipped back into shadow and watched their progress through the moonlit brush.

He heard an occasional gunshot now, but not many and they sounded quite far away. It was as if the ambushers were mopping up the scene, dispatching the wounded and collecting all the loot, or perhaps the incriminating evidence. He thought he could see black smoke rising from behind a low hillock and he guessed the lingering flames were about three kilometers away — just less than two miles. Would that be enough?

Soon Nimiri and Catherine were at the base of the wall; Doug clambered down and helped her up and over the rocks and within minutes they were settled within their little sanctuary. She leaned back, wiped grimy sweat from her face, watched Doug open his bag and pull out a couple bottles of water and some candy bars, as well as a little yellow GPS unit. She thought of her own bag and reached for it, opened it up and dug around for the Sat-phone, then felt around for the little vacuum-bagged packages of smoked salmon she had stashed in the bottom. She left the food there, buried under a small pile of medical supplies, but she pulled out the phone and turned it on.

“Does your GPS work?” she asked. Doug set about giving the antenna a clear shot at the southern sky, then he pushed the power button, placed the unit on a rock near the entrance so it could pick-up valid signals. “Looks like it,” he said as he read out the coordinates on the display. She scribbled the coordinates down on a notepad and dialed the phone.

“Paul, listen to me. The convoy has been…yes, ambushed…Paul…please, be quiet and listen, write this down…”

Doug looked at the GPS; the batteries were fully charged, would last another 48 hours if left on continuously, but he doubted they’d move again anytime soon so he powered the unit off and listened as Catherine read off their position, then repeated the numbers for good measure. She listened for a good minute then cut the connection.

“Well?” Tanner said.

“He’ll call the UN, maybe the the prime minister’s office or the AU…”

“Ah, crap, not those idiots! They probably put on this little shindig!”

Nimiri frowned, spoke harshly. “Not AU. Good people in AU. Oromo did this. Not AU.”

“Okay, okay. Doc, you have any food in there?”

She shook her head. “Can you see anything from there?”

“Just some smoke. Fuck, did they pick a good location to hit us, or what! Between two fucking bridges! No retreat and no fucking place to run. And did you notice all the fucking black grass?”

“Yeah? What of it?”

“Fuck, man, they’ve been burning the locals right back into that town…”

“What town?”

“Fuck, man, you sure zonked-out back there. Big village, maybe five, ten clicks back. Lots of orchards and shit, too, then bingo — less than a mile and it’s like we’re on the dark side of the moon! Black fields, burned-out huts, a couple of bodies in the ditch off the side of the road. Fucking medieval shit, Doc.”

But the physician had had enough: “Mister Tanner, this is not a medieval country! It is Africa. Now. Today.” She was visibly fuming, clearly perturbed. “We are so sorry that offends your prim American worldview! But that is why we’re here. Why we came. To help. Not to pad our resume!”

Tanner stared at her, wondered where this anger was coming from. Nimiri looked at him and shrugged.

“Just because they didn’t show you cartoons of this ‘fucking shit’ at the country club doesn’t mean it hasn’t been going on right under your snotty little nose for the past thirty years! Understand?”

He looked at the woman again, then at Nimiri. He shook his head then took a sip of lukewarm water: “You say so.”

“You’re goddamn right I say so. I’ve been here in this medieval shithole for fifteen years, back when your mother was driving you around in her Cadillac to buy you hundred dollar video games! So just sit back and watch like a good American, and try to enjoy the show!”

“Look, I think you’re being…”

“And try not to think, either, Dr. Smith, or whatever your name is. I wouldn’t want you to hurt your ass!”

“You’re welcome,” Tanner said sarcastically.

“What?” Catherine answered as crossly.

“I said, you’re welcome. You know, for pulling your fat ass out of the truck, saving your life, that kind of shit. Hey, next time…”

“There won’t be a next time, Mister Smith. Count on that, would you? We’ll be lucky to get out of this medieval shithole alive. Do you understand what that means? You’re finally going to make it onto CNN!”

“Right. I think I have a pretty clear picture now. Thanks.”

“Do you. Really?”

“Yep.”

She looked at him, at the stuff around him: “Is that all the water you have? What, three liters?”

“Yep. Sorry, I couldn’t reach more, what with the machine gun fire and all. Why don’t you go back and get some more? I’ll watch.”

She snorted, leaned back against the smooth rock wall, then began to cry. Tanner looked at Nimiri. The old man was looking him directly in the eye, then he too turned and looked away. Tanner opened one of the candy bars and ate it defiantly.

+++++

Old Soviet-era Mi-8 helicopters make a distinctive wump-wump-wump as they draw near. Their inefficient airfoils don’t slip easily through the air, they beat it up, and there is no mistaking when they’re nearby because the earth rumbles for miles around. On this day, a single white UN Mi-8 helicopter approached from the southeast, flying low over the scorched earth, still well to the east of three people huddled in a shallow cave. The helicopter flew as fast as it could, purposefully just north of the smoldering ambush site; the pilot ignored the burning carnage between the bridges and he made a beeline for a low escarpment to the west.

The Oromo leader on scene had hidden his force hours ago, long before, in fact, he’d first heard the helicopter. Government air traffic controllers had been notified of the UN rescue flight and had dutifully passed this information on to the military. Because endemic corruption is what it is, someone in the military immediately notified the Oromo commander on the ground and he prepared his force by spreading them east and west of the ambush site.

The commander watched the helicopter, wondered why it was flying past the burning convoy towards a line of low cliffs a few miles away, then the helicopter banked to the south and began to fly toward his position.

“Take it out!” he shouted to his men hidden in the brush all along the river bed.

Two shoulder mounted surface-to-air missiles roared into the sky: the first missed completely; the second slammed into the underside of the main body of the aircraft. Flames and black smoke boiled from the cabin and the commander watched as the struggling pilot auto-rotated and flared too soon. The aircraft hit hard, bounced once and came down again. Before anyone inside could move the aircraft was slammed by heavy machine gun fire.

+++++

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Tanner shouted as the flaming helicopter slammed into the riverbed. He watched as three people tried to get out of the wreckage, only to get cut down by machine gun fire.

As per protocol, Catherine picked up her phone again and called MSF Headquarters in Lyon, France. She explained the situation to the duty officer and waited for instructions. She gave their location again and repeated it, was told to limit use of the phone in case someone was trying to home in on them, and given a contact schedule. She broke contact and put the phone away.

Tanner felt the change that had come over the physician: “Was your friend on-board?”

“What?” she said, her voice lifeless, almost flat.

“Your friend, Paul? Was he… in there?” Doug pointed toward the burning wreckage.

She shrugged, her face a blank mask: “I don’t know,” she said softly.

Nimiri made his way to the entrance, carefully watched as the Oromo surrounded the downed helicopter and extracted two people from inside.

“Two yet live,” he said, and Catherine darted to the entrance, pulled out a pair of binoculars from her case and looked at the scene below.

She watched, unaware that Tanner too was now by her side, as Paul was led away from the wreckage.

“See anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Paul?”

“Yes.”

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t… oh my God no!” She stood, started to run from the cave but Tanner grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back down just as the sound of rifle fire reached the cave. He took the binoculars from her as she crumpled to the ground, settled on the rock and watched as the Oromo fired again into the bodies on the ground before them. He turned, dropped the binoculars to the rocky floor, slid back into the cave, his eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to make sense of the darkness that lay ahead.

“Fuck…this can’t be happening…” he whispered as the scene registered again in his mind.

Nimiri, clutching Catherine by his side, guided her back into the darkness. “Do you know, Doug, for an educated man, you say very little.”

“Fuck…”

Nimiri could see the young man had suddenly come almost completely unhinged by what he’d just seen; the young man had drawn his knees up to his chin and now he was staring wide-eyed off into space. And yet Catherine too understood what he had seen; despite the pain she felt some deeper maternal instinct kick in: she went to the young man’s side and knelt before him.

“Doug?”

He said nothing. No response at all.

“Doug? Tell me, what did you see?”

Doug’s eyes welled up, he gasped for breath: “They’re going to kill us…all of us…”

“Doug! Tell me what you saw?”

“I don’t want to die like that…”

“How, Doug? Like how? What did you see?”

‘With a black sack over my head, a gun pressed-up against the back of my head,’ he wanted to say — but the words just wouldn’t come. To utter those words was to acknowledge their truth, the cold reality behind them, and he chose to turn away and run to the comfort of other, more familiar delusions.

“I didn’t see much,” he said at last. “They’re gone. I hope your friend wasn’t out there.”

“Paul? He was, Doug. He was the man in the red shirt.”

“What did they say on the phone?”

“They will do what they can. They know where we are.”

“What they can?” Doug said shrilly. “What the fuck does that mean?!”

“Doug, drink some water,” Nimiri said. “You must think with clearness now.”

“Clearness,” Tanner said, his voice a faint whisper. “When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me that. Clarity is the word. He was a doc too, in the Navy. He went Vietnam, and he even went to Iraq.”

“Doug?” Catherine whispered. “Violent death never makes sense. It is a shock to the system, it offends our sense of the sacredness of life, and yet to be reminded so powerfully how fragile life is. And how susceptible we are to such senselessness.”

Doug still looked unfocused, unbalanced.

“What did your father see in Vietnam?”

“I don’t know, really. He never talked about it. I mean, he wouldn’t…”

“Do you think he believed in what he was doing?”

“What?” Doug said haltingly. “Yes, of course.”

“Do you think he might have seen purpose working over there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Nimiri spoke now: “Doug, do you see purpose in your life?”

The young man’s face lurched, his eyes flinched: “I don’t know,” he whispered after some time.

The old man nodded, sat down on his haunches; Catherine eased down beside Doug and laid his head on her shoulder, ran her fingers through his hair. They sat quietly for a long while, until a brief outburst of gunfire startled them back into the present.

Catherine pushed herself up, went back to the entrance, stopped to pick up the binoculars as she crawled along the rocks. She peered over the edge, brought the glasses to her eyes and swept the landscape. She saw men running down a shallow slope towards the burning convoy, the guerrillas firing at the trucks. She focused her attention on one truck: there were people in the back, armed people! As the Oromo closed the relief workers in the truck opened up, shot several of the guerillas.

“What!” she cried out. “Why are they armed? That is against the rules!” This was, Catherine thought furiously, a breach of the most basic protocol: MSF workers, indeed no relief workers anywhere, went into a conflict zone as an armed force. The UN or some other military force always carried out protective functions. But now someone had violated that most basic rule and the likely outcome was too grim to think about.

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” Doug said. “Someone actually broke a rule?”

“Yes! If people break the rules only more violence will follow!”

“Lady, have you ever considered that there are some people who never follow the rules?”

“Of course! Don’t be naïve!”

“Moi? Naïve? Surely you jest.”

She turned to face down Doug but saw him stand up, only now with a rock in his right hand, winding up for a throw. Before she knew it the rock left his hand and whizzed past her head – she heard the air ripping as it soared by – then Nimiri reached for her and pulled her forcibly back into the darkness.

“Why did you do that?” she cried. 

But Doug was readying another rock; when the second was arcing past her face she turned, saw a long reddish colored cobra coiled up not a meter from where she had been just seconds before. Doug’s second pitch was perfect; the snake boiled and hissed and disappeared down into the scree below.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she said as she fell into the safety of the old man’s arms.

“Shit! Fuck-a-duck!” Doug screamed. “Holy fucking crap! Did you see the size of that fucking thing!”

Nimiri nodded, smiled. “You throw well.”

Doug tried to stand upright but his head hit the low ceiling; still, he seemed giddy, lost somewhere between shock and pride. “Third base, man! Fucking high school!” he shouted as yet more adrenaline washed through his system. “Fuck! That fucker was huge!”

Catherine saw the snake in her mind’s eye and recoiled inward, unaware now that she was shaking.

“It okay now,” Nimiri whispered in her ear. “I think snake gone.”

She relaxed, groped her way to the rocky floor and sat; the old man crouched nearby, watched her for a while, even as he watched Doug bounce off the walls as he came down from the adrenaline rush.

“What time is it?” she asked then.

Nimiri shrugged; Doug looked at his watch: “Almost five.”

“I have to call in now. Is it gone?”

“You want me to stick my head up and look?” Tanner said.

She nodded. “Please.”

“Fuck.” Tanner went near the entrance and looked around, then tossed a few rocks out the opening and listened.

Nothing.

He slowly closed the distance, rose over the rock where the snake had been — and half expected to be hit in the face — but he saw nothing. Rocks, red dirt, some greenish-gray grass — but no snake.

“Clear,” he said. He heard Catherine and Nimiri walk up, felt her placing the antenna on a rock clear of the entrance, then dialing the phone.

“Hello,” she said to a faraway voice, someone sitting behind a desk in an air-conditioned office a billion miles away. “Desaunier here.” She listened to the voice on the other end for quite a while, then hung up and shut the unit down.

“Excuse me, but you sure didn’t say much…”

“I am told they can home in on these transmissions. Anyway, protests are being made in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, but there have been denials from all involved here.”

“Interesting,” Tanner said, because he was thinking of Gene Harwell and the cartel.

“Exactly.” She sighed as she looked at the young man: “An AU force will come later this morning. A French force is coming as we speak, and something about your Navy was mentioned. They will attempt to reach us this morning. I am to call in every two hours and they ask that we monitor the Oromo’s location.”

“Okay, that sounds fucking doable to me,” Tanner said nervously.

“Doug?” Nimiri interrupted.

“Yeah, man.”

“You must find other word. I tire of this one word you use. This ‘fuck’.”

Catherine laughed as she put away her phone. “Nimiri, it is an Americanism. It means nothing.”

“I know America. This is not America. The word he uses means nothing. Less than nothing. It is a word that tells the world ‘here is a man with no self-respect’. Is that America?”

Doug looked at Nimiri: “You’ve been to America?”

“No, but I remember an American. A man called Kennedy. I remember him talking about standing up to oppression. People all over Africa remember this man, they still remember his words.”

Tanner nodded. “I’m not sure anyone lives up to that standard anymore, Nimiri.”

“Perhaps not,” Nimiri continued. “But that is a choice, is it not? But tell me, where else but America could these words have come? But do not tell me this ‘fuck’ word represents who you are, or what you have become?”

“I’m pretty sure it has, Nimiri,” Doug sighed.

“I remember Kennedy,” Catherine said. “Ich bein ein Berliner! I remember hearing those words when I was in school. He wanted to tear down walls and take us to the stars. My God, how spectacularly we have failed that vision…”

“Hey,” Tanner smiled, “the opera ain’t over ‘til the Fat Lady sings.”

Nimiri frowned and Catherine explained as the old man looked at Doug: “I think you is fuckin’ right. There is always tomorrow. Fuck ‘em ‘til fat lady sing.”

The three of them laughed, they laughed for quite some time, but soon the sun slipped over the horizon and daylight came for them as they sheltered from the coming storm.

+++++

The Oromo commander and the American physician looked at the bullet riddled Toyota, at the one dead, ant-covered man laid out underneath, then Gene Harwell remembered that the helicopter had flown toward an escarpment just west of the road and he wondered if survivors might not have escaped from this particular truck? The commander looked with grizzled eyes at the ground under the truck and ran his hand over impressions in the sand. More than one person had been under here; he could feel their presence even now. He walked around the truck, looked at the ground with his flashlight, saw footprints – even though it appeared someone had tried to conceal them, and he smiled. There could be no witnesses and no evidence, he told himself once again. Because the Americans will come here.

He barked orders at one of his lieutenants and tension rippled through the sunrise like leaves blowing across still water.

+++++

Deep shadows cast a black veil over the escarpment, while slivers of bright yellow light hit stray gray rocks; three humans sat near the entrance to the cave and looked out over the valley below. The young man passed another candy bar to his companions, and he opened a fresh bottle of water and took a swig before passing it to the woman.

“It’s so quiet,” she said as she sifted through her bag. “Where are the sounds of animals? I can’t even hear the breeze.”

The old man lifted his head into the light, cocked his head as he listened: “You are correct, Lady. Too quiet. A great beast hunts in the shadows. The small hide now.”

“That about sums things up, Nimiri,” Doug said, “for us too, don’t you think?”

“Oh yes.” As they resumed their patient watch she pulled two bags of salmon from her bag and began opening them up.

“I thought you said…”

“There is too much salt in this fish, and we have not enough water. But perhaps the protein will help… ”

“Yes,” Nimiri said as he took a piece of the pink flesh. “Perhaps this is our last supper.” He held the fish to his nose then shook his head: “What is this fish? He stinks mightily!”

“This fish,” Catherine said, “is from an ocean far away, where the water is clear and cold. It has been smoked.”

The old man turned away, pinched his nose: “You eat this fish?”

“Oh yes. It’s very good.”

“You say so. Not me.” She passed around the fish and Doug took a bite and sighed.

“Oh man, that’s good.”

Nimiri looked unconvinced but took a piece and sniffed it tentatively: “It smell like goat shit.”

“Go ahead, Nimiri, try it!” Doug said, so the old man took the piece and chewed it rapidly.

Then he smiled: “It is not bad, for goat shit.”

Doug pulled out his last two granola bars and the old man’s eyes lit up: “I guess you like chocolate, huh?”

“Oh yes. Chocolate very good.”

Doug broke the two bars into six pieces and passed them around, then they sat back and listened to the wind. Shadows moved with the arcing sun, grass rustled in the light breeze as the daily rituals of hunger and survival got underway on the savannah below.

“I wonder if they’ll get to us in time?” Catherine said after some time had passed.

“The way things have been going?” Doug commented, “I doubt it.”

“Have you always been so…optimistic?” she replied.

“Yep.”

“He carries a great burden,” Nimiri said. “He grows tired.”

“That’s me. The Burdened White Man.”

“The what?” Catherine asked.

“I was thinking of Kipling. The White Man’s Burden. And what you said, that ‘you reap what you sow’.

“Ah, ‘Doug 12:24’.”

“What?”

“‘Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?’”

“Not exactly what I had in mind,” the young man replied.

“Perhaps,” the old man sighed, “you do not yet think clearly.”

“I meant…”

“I know what you mean, Doug.”

The young man pointed to the sky: “Kipling wrote: ‘Take up the White Man’s burden, And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard…’”

The old man opened both his hands to the heavens: “I think you should put your trust in God, not this Kipling,” before he brought his fingers together, now as if in prayer.

“God always makes things so much simpler, doesn’t he?” Doug said – but he spoke a little too sarcastically.

“That is true,” Nimiri said, “because this life is simple.”

“Everything always has to have as purpose, right?” Tanner sighed.

“So some say.”

“And I suppose ravens never starve to death?”

Nimiri smiled: “Death comes to all things.”

“And always the ready come-back! Amazing!”

“Perhaps because God has thought of everything.”

Catherine watched, listening to their exchange and growing more agitated: “Some say that religion is the cause of all human suffering, little more than an opiate to the masses!”

“Perhaps so,” the old man said. “But did God do that?”

“But everything has to have a purpose, Nimiri!” Doug interjected. “You said so yourself!”

“Did I?”

“If religion causes suffering, then…”

“What has religion got to do with God?” Nimiri said, and the other two stopped and looked at one another.

“What?” Catherine said, perplexed.

“What has religion got to do with God?” Nimiri replied.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Did God make religion, or did man?”

“Man,” Doug said.

“Ah. But man flawed. From beginning. Everything man creates flawed one way or other. Even religion. Man overcome religion, only way to God.”

“Now there’s an interesting point of view,” Tanner said.

“Nimiri?” Catherine said. “Did you ever hear of a man named Yeats?”

“Yeats. I not know name.”

“Another poet, an Irishman. He wrote: ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ About a time when goodness retreats and mediocrity assumes the lead. He called his poem The Second Coming.”

Nimiri’s eyes shone in the darkness. “Indeed. And you think such a time has come?”

“Sometimes, yes, it feels that way.”

“I suspect,” the old man said, “it always feel this way. Each face time of darkness.”

“And?”

“And become the raven.”

“The what? But…why?” She looked at the old man, but he had turned away and was looking at the sky.

“Look!” the old man said as he pointed skyward. A jetliner was headed north towards Europe and it was leaving a long contrail across the morning sky.

Catherine turned, looked at the sky and wondered what had captured the old man’s attention.

“That’s an airliner,” Tanner said. “Probably on its way to Europe.”

“A what?” Nimiri said as he watched the contrails fade away to blue sky.

“An airliner, carrying hundreds of people to Europe.”

“Hundreds?” Nimiri said wonderingly. “You mean there are hundreds of people in the sky?”

“Two hundred or so, yeah.” The last of the moon was still visible low in the western sky and Tanner pointed to it now: “You know people have walked on the moon?”

“You are being serious?”

“Oh, yeah, Apollo. Five times, and ten men walked up there.”

“Apollo?”

“Yeah. You don’t remember that?”

“What? Men go there?”

“You heard about that, didn’t you?”

“I remember the Kennedy-man spoke of this. You mean, people have go there? To moon?”

The young man looked at the woman, then at the old man: “Yes. Almost fifty years ago.”

“Ah,” Nimiri said. “I in prison those days.” When no one spoke he continued. “You see, I killed a man.”

“Really?” Catherine said uneasily.

“Yes. I was young. I home one day, find soldier top of my mother and I kills him. I taken away, taken place where told I am wrong.”

“Ah,” Doug said, “lawyers. You gotta love ‘em.”

“Lucky you weren’t killed right then and there!” Catherine said.

“But a kid protecting his mother?” Doug sighed, shaking his head.

“Yes,” Nimiri said. “Interesting tyrant in law.”

“Amen,” Doug said.

“How old were you, Nimiri, when this happened?” Catherine asked.

“Oh, Lady, am not sure. Perhaps ten years. I remember teacher told about Kennedy-man, and what he say about moon. I never believe such thing happen.”

“Well, it did,” Catherine said.

“How long ago?” Nimiri asked.

“Fifty years. This summer,” Tanner added.

The old man turned and looked at the fading moon again.

“So. Your people walk there. How you look that and not have pride in people? Your people?”

“We were capable of so much more,” Catherine said, “but somehow we have turned against our own ideas.”

“Really?” Doug said. “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. Look around and you see fascists taking power everywhere, even in your country.”

“And what about France? The same thing isn’t happening there?”

“Of course it is. It is the same everywhere. Immigration. It is always about immigration. A fear of others unlike ourselves.”

“But you’re not afraid, right?” Tanner said. 

“Of course I am afraid, but not for the reason you imply. I am afraid we have failed to learn from our mistakes, that we will once again fall into the abyss of authoritarianism…”

“And why do you think that is?” Tanner quipped.

“I wish I knew. Some say it is a failure of our schools while others imply it is only natural for the different races to oppose one another, to regard The Other with a great suspicion.”

“And what about you? What do you think it is?”

“I can’t understand it. I can transfuse blood from a white man into an African woman with no obvious ill effect. We can transplant organs from one to the other, and we can do so because we are biologically the same, aside from the amount of melanin in our skin cells, yet this one little difference accounts for so much of the hatred we experience…”

“When I was in my residency,” Tanner said, “I noticed all kinds of differences in the way we treat white patients versus blacks. Nice neat sutures for white patients and quick and dirty for blacks. I began to see all kinds of other signs, too…”

“And what did you conclude?”

“That people who’d never consider themselves racist just might be the most racist of all. We’ve just buried all our various hatreds under layers of rationalizations and intellectual dishonesty.”

“But not you, I take it?” Catherine said.

“I wish that was so,” Tanner sighed. “And you were correct, my name isn’t Smith. It’s Doug Tanner.”

“So? What are you running from? Bankers or taxes?”

“As far as I know, a Mexican drug cartel.”

Catherine’s eyes widened. “What have you done?”

“I accidentally identified someone under the protection of a cartel to federal agents, and it appears the cartel has been after me ever since.”

“This ambush? Do you think it’s possible that these men are after you?”

Tanner nodded. “I heard someone speaking Spanish down there.”

“Is the rest of your tale a lie, as well?”

“No,” Tanner said. “I’ve been working in Addis Ababa for a few months. I was in a witness protection program before that, and with MSF before that.”

“And it was an accident, you say? This identification?”

“Yup.”

“And they have been following you for how long?” she asked.

“Over a year, I think. They’re very persistent.”

“So it would seem. It must be very confusing, but did you not consider this might happen?”

“I didn’t come up with this arrangement,” Tanner barked, suddenly angry at her insinuation.

“But how many people down there have died, and perhaps because of you?”

Soon they were arguing and Nimiri sat back, watched for a moment, then he cleared his throat: “You must consider where you are, please,” he said, “and that we need be quiet.”

Doug and Catherine separated then, and each moved into separate parts of the cave.

“You act like people you say you Hate,” Nimiri said into the darkness. “Yet you are lucky be alive, and still you fight. All you do is fight! You come here to take care of us and you fight. Have you ever considered that we might be better off without you?”

Nimiri watched shadows on the wall, wondered why two such intelligent people would act so contrary to their nature, yet as he listened neither said a word to the other. They had wounded each other and that was all they could do. Nimiri shook his head and in time he heard the woman breathing heavily, the young man snoring, and he turned and watched the sun as it arced across the sky. Soon he felt his own eyes growing heavy as the sun raced across the sky…

…but then he saw something out of the corner of his eye… 

…something low, reddish-gray, and moving quietly among the rocks… 

…he moved his hand slowly, found a rock, and began to lift it… 

…just as the cobra rose from the rocks and began his attack… 

+++++

The last of the sun slanted into the cave, hit Tanner on the face. He stirred as he swatted a fly and opened his eyes. He saw Catherine curled up on a smooth sandy spot a few meters away and, while he sat up, he rubbed away the sandy grit that had formed in the sweat by his eyes while he slept. He yawned, stretched and had begun to stand when he saw Nimiri sprawled out unnaturally near the cave’s entrance. Something didn’t feel right and he crouched down protectively, eased over to where the woman slept. He paused when he reached her, shook her gently, kept his hand lightly over her mouth to keep her from speaking.

She woke with a start, tried to rise but he held her down and she looked up at him with wide-eyed fright in her eyes – until she saw him motion her to silence with a single pointed finger over his lips. She nodded and he released her, she tried to sit and felt his hands helping her up, then she saw him pointing at the old man by the entrance to the cave.

Nimiri lay perfectly still and at once she knew.

She could see his chest: no movement. None at all. And no respiration. She could, even from where she crouched, see his neck and the stillness within: still no movement, so no carotid pulse.

Her first impulse was to run to the old man’s side, but some force gripped her, some deeper instinct held her back – and she felt the same response from Doug. He was on-guard, something menacing lurked in the shadows and he felt it too.

He pushed her back into the shadows but even so he remained protectively in front of her.

They heard footsteps now; sliding, grinding footsteps coming up the rocks outside the cave. Coming up, she had no doubt, for Doug Tanner.

+++++

Gene Harwell and his men paused ten meters behind their lead tracker.

The tracker had, he saw in the low slanting sunlight, held up his fist; the man had found something of importance – perhaps even dangerous. Harwell’s men stopped as one on the signal, they collectively held their breath as the tracker eased forward slowly, silently, on hands and knees.

A moment later the tracker motioned for the column to move forward – slowly.

One man stepped too far and slid noisily on the scree and the mercenary group’s leader cursed under his breath, looked at the offending man and made a cutting motion over his neck. The man nodded and Harwell watched the mercenaries behind him take-up positions on either side of the entrance to a deep cave. The group’s leader climbed as noiselessly as a cat until he too was beside the entrance; once there he watched the tracker, listened to the silence for any telltale sign of activity inside the cave, then he looked down.

An old man lay on his side, a three meter long cobra by his side. Both were dead.

The man had several puncture wounds on his hands, face and neck.

The snake’s head had been bashed-in by the rock in the man’s hand.

“That guy had balls,” Harwell said quietly, and the man next to him shuddered and nodded. The tracker stood, picked up a stone and threw it forcefully into the darkness…

“Nothing!” he said loudly in French a moment later. “Move on!”

But Harwell remained by the entrance, motioned to the mercenary by his side. “Sit here quietly, wait and watch,” he whispered to the man. When Harwell was sure the man understood, he too moved away quietly.

+++++

Doug looked down at his watch again. It had been at least a half hour since he’d heard Harwell and his men move back down the slope – but still his instinct told him not to move – or even try to leave the cover of these deep shadows.

“I really have to pee,” Catherine whispered, and he could tell she was still nearby. “I think I might wet my pants if I don’t.”

Doug listened, cocked his head to one side when he thought he heard some movement, then he edged forward, still in shadow, and pointed at the ground, motioned Catherine to go where she stood. He heard her undoing her trousers, then her water bouncing off the stone floor and running down rocks into the sand… 

…then she slipped and fell backwards, cried out when her tailbone hit a sharp rock… 

…and he listened as she regrouped, got herself together; but yes, now he heard more footsteps approaching again and he flattened himself against the side of the cave and waited.

Harwell and his men weren’t trying to conceal their approach this time. Dozens of guerrillas were sliding noisily up the scree, taking up positions on either side of the entrance. Doug felt his pulse hammering inside his skull, found himself wondering what it would feel like to die, when he heard their first demands…

“Venez des maintenant!”

“What did he say?” Doug whispered to Catherine.

“Come out,” she whispered back.

“Venez nous ou lancer des grenades!”

“What?”

“Maintenant!”

“We must come out now,” she said, “or they throw grenades in here.”

“Okay,” Doug said. “Game over.” He could barely see her in the darkness, but an odd feeling came over him as he stood there in the dark. “Ya know, I think I would have liked getting to know you.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed. You ready?”

She felt her hand take his and he started forward.

“Mettez vos mains en l’air!”

“Put your hands up,” she translated while she complied.

“What did you say!” Doug shouted as he inched towards the opening.

“Ah, there he is,” Harwell said, his smile a broken, mean line creasing his face.

Doug could now see his wiry nemesis, a tall, skinny man standing just outside the entrance with an AK-47 in his hands, but then he saw Nimiri and the dead cobra. “Yeah, I’m with the New York Times. A reporter.”

“Really? How nice for you, Doctor Tanner. Get your hands where I can see them or I will remove the woman’s head slowly while you watch.”

Doug got his hands up as he bent over to come out the entrance, but his second impression of Harwell was that he was astonishingly frightening looking, especially for a physician. He was tall and rail thin, and his face appeared quite old, as if his skin had been stretched tightly over a misshaped  skull, so tight that it revealed every detail of the bone underneath.

“So. You’re death, huh?” Doug said. “You look the part.”

Harwell laughed. “I’ve play the part all too well, I’m afraid. And perhaps too many times.”

“I’m curious…what happened to you?”

“I guess it’s just the way I was put together,” Harwell said lightly, as if that alone explained everything that had gone wrong with his life.

“Put together?” Doug replied, amused now. “Abused as a child, no doubt?”

“No doubt.”

Then time itself seemed to bend and hover for a moment, before the world outside the cave roared and filled with bright light; the first concussive blast knocked Doug backwards into Catherine and they both fell back against the cave’s uneven floor. Catherine felt a sharp pain in her lower back as she realized bombs were falling on the riverbed beneath the caves, and she saw Tanner was trying to shield her from the worst of the blasts’ effects. Minutes passed and then a deathly still fell over the area, only to be subsumed by the thrashing blades of several helicopters landing on the road on the far side of the riverbed.

Tanner got up and tried to wipe all the gritty sand from his face, but Catherine could see he was unsteady on his feet. He put his hand out to steady himself, then they both heard cries and whispers coming from just outside the cave, and a new surge of adrenaline seemed to push Tanner towards the cave’s entrance.

He found Gene Harwell lying there, his right leg a pulpy mess and blood trickling out his ears, so Tanner rushed to his side. He started assessing the physician’s injuries, first checking the sundered leg for compromised blood vessels before moving to Harwell’s head. Harwell didn’t respond to his voice and Tanner soon discovered the man’s right eye had a penetrating foreign body protruding, and a trickle of vitreous humor running down his cheek.

Tanner looked up, saw US Marines running his way from a half dozen helicopters and he shouted “Medic!” as loudly as he could, hoping to draw their attention. Moments later the marines were climbing up the rocky scree to his position and two came and knelt beside him, quickly getting to work. A stretcher was summoned, and moments later Catherine came crawling out of the cave. She had difficulty standing on her own and Tanner went to help her.

“Who is that?” she asked, pointing at Harwell and the marines.

“He’s the guy that’s been after us.”

“So all this happened because of him?”

Tanner nodded. “Because of me, really. I was the one that put the ball in motion.”

She looked at the smoldering caravan off in the distance and wondered how many people had died during the fight, then she looked up at Doug Tanner. “This wasn’t your fault,” she whispered, taking his hand.

“I think I feel worse about Nimiri,” Tanner sighed. “He sacrificed everything fur us, and what did he get in return…?”

She nodded. “Kipling again. What did you say, take up the White Man’s Burden?”

“Maybe we really don’t belong here, you know? Maybe it’s simple paternalism.”

“It’s a noble thing you’re doing, this teaching at the university. I hope you don’t stop because of everything that happened here.”

“Tanner?” 

Doug turned to the sound of his voice and saw Gene Harwell motioning for him, so he walked over the stretcher and stood beside him. “Can you hear me?” Doug asked.

“A little, kinda faraway. Listen up, okay? My wife is down at Lake Tana, at the clinic there. Goes by the name of Patty McCluskey now. If I don’t make it, would you see to her, please? Make sure she gets home, maybe?”

Tanner nodded. “Yeah, sure. Anything else?”

“I have money at the Citibank in Mexico City. A lot of it. Code number is my old social security number—reversed, access code is Trinity. Would you see that she gets it?”

Tanner nodded. “Of course.”

Harwell held out his right hand and Tanner took it, just before the medics started down the hill with the stretcher towards the waiting helicopters. Doug turned and held out his hand; Catherine looked at him and smiled, then she took his hand – yet they stood there for a moment, looking at Nimiri and the red cobra. 

“He seemed to think there was something important you need to do before you leave this place, Douglas.”

He didn’t know what else to say, so he went over and lifted Nimiri’s frail body and slung him over his shoulder, then started down the steep slope. There was nothing left to be done now but to give their friend a decent burial.

+++++

He stood in the bedroom of his house in Addis Ababa, looking at his shattered bedroom and the ruptured exterior wall and he was quite amazed that fire hadn’t broken out and burned down the entire structure. The university had hired a contractor to rebuild the shattered exterior wall and refinish the interior, and the work would be complete in a few weeks, but until then he was, in a word, homeless. He showed Catherine around the rest of the house and then they drove out to the airport together. She was headed home, to a small town outside of Paris, to rest and regroup. Or so she said.

Beth Gruber and Jenny Peterson were already at the airport when Doug and Catherine arrived, and MSF personnel joined them at the gate — with Patty McKinnon, Gene Harwell’s widow, in their custody. She was holding a little girl, a toddler, close to her face, and when Tanner looked at her she shot him a gaze full of seething hate. He watched her little entourage warily after that, even as their flight was called and boarding began. Tanner, as was his custom, had upgraded to business class and so was sitting with Catherine up front, while Beth and Jenny boarded and went to the rear of the jetliner.

As did McKinnon, along with her dour-faced minders from Doctors Without Borders.

A final few passengers boarded just before the main door closed and Tanner watched as the Jetway retracted, then the terminal as it fell away in the fading light of day. A few minutes later the Air France A330 was airborne and headed for Paris Charles de Gaulle – and another lovely flight attendant brought warm towels and chilled Champagne to Tanner and Catherine. Dinner was served and the lights dimmed… 

…and a stranger approached. Tanner looked up at the man and in an instant knew he was trouble.

“Excuse me,” the stranger said to Catherine, “but Doctor Tanner is an old friend. Would you mind if I sat and spoke with him for a few minutes?” The man’s English was flawless, even if he spoke with a faint accent, but Tanner had already deduced the stranger was nothing more or less than a message from the cartel.

“Of course,” Catherine said, excusing herself and walking forward to the restroom just aft of the cockpit. 

The stranger sat beside Tanner with an oddly exasperated sigh, then he turned to the younger man and smiled. “You have been quite a nuisance, Doctor, but I suppose you know that.”

Tanner shrugged. “I’m not sure why all this happened.”

“You were working for the DEA, were you not, when you identified Eugene?”

Tanner smiled. “Actually no, I wasn’t. Neither was Jenny Peterson. We both thought he looked like someone who was running from the law, so I asked her to take a photograph of him so we could pass it along…”

“To whom would you have passed it along to, Doctor Tanner?”

“Frankly, we had no idea.”

The man shrugged and smiled. “I’ve always disliked the idea of killing physicians,” the stranger said. “It seems a pointless waste. Yet Gene was my friend and there is a price that must be paid for his death.”

“I see. And what might that be?”

“We will need to replace him. I was thinking that you might be able to do that for me.”

“Go to hell.”

The stranger smiled, though he stiffened a bit — the kind of reaction Tanner expected of a man not used to being spoken to in this way. “I would advise you to consider the matter carefully, Douglas.”

“Excuse me, but would you mind telling me your name?”

“Oh, I am so sorry. My name is Luis, Luis Quintana,” the man said, holding out his right hand.

Tanner looked at the stranger’s hand for a moment, then he took it. “Before Harwell died he told me where his funds are located, and he gave me the access codes. I would imagine his widow would be interested in gaining access to these funds, don’t you?”

“What makes you think I don’t already have these funds in hand?”

“If you did we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?”

Quintana smiled, his grip on Tanner’s hand increasing fractionally. “Had you planned on keeping these for yourself?”

“No.”

Quintana studied Tanner’s face as he spoke, then he released his grip and leaned back, sighing – just as Catherine returned from the restroom – so he stood and gave way to her. “Perhaps we could speak once again? After we arrive in Paris?” Quintana said pleasantly enough. “I’d love to conclude our arrangements before I catch my connecting flight.”

Tanner nodded noncommittally and he watched Quintana walk to the far side of the cabin and take a seat, then he felt Catherine’s eyes boring into his.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“I think that gentleman is the head of the cartel Harwell worked for, and he says Harwell was his friend.”

“Oh, dear God, no…”

“Precisely.”

“What does he want?”

“That remains to be determined.”

She buried her face in her hands and he could feel her trembling, so he put his coat over her shoulders and held her close. “What can you do?” she muttered through her fingers. “What else does he want from you?”

“Servitude, I think,” Tanner said.

She looked up, aghast. “You can’t be serious? What did you tell him?”

“That I’m not interested in that life.”

“And?”

“Again, that remains to be decided. In his mind there is a price to be paid, so…”

“How many people must die on account of this bastard Harwell?” she cried. “How much blood must be spilled?”

“Well, as they say…it’s an insatiable market, so as long as people buy this crap the blood will flow.”

She shook her head again. “Then it never ends.”

Tanner nodded. “No, it never ends.” He sat back in his seat and looked out the window, not knowing what to expect next. He closed his eyes and against all odds he fell into a fevered sleep. Dreams came on hard and fast, dreams of an endless cave. A cave full of red snakes writhing on a smooth stone floor. In the distance an opening, but hundreds of cobras remained between him and the opening, so he was trapped. The only way out was to confront certain death…

When he woke the sky was a pale gray and the checkered green landscape was coming up to greet the airliner. The flight attendant was walking through the cabin, checking on seat backs and tray tables and smiling with her warm towels and cheerful “good mornings.” Tanner sat up and rubbed latent dreams from his gritty eyes, then he looked at Catherine and smiled at her brave face. 

“Did you manage to sleep?” he asked.

“No, not at all. That was not the case with you, however. You snore loudly, by the way?”

“I do not.”

“Oh, really? And I suppose you don’t pass gas, either?”

“Never.”

She smiled. “You were restless at one point.”

“I was in the cave. With a bunch of snakes.”

She nodded understanding. “Perhaps that is why I chose not to sleep.”

“You are very wise.”

She took his hand, looked in his eyes. “What is to become of us, Douglas?”

“Oh, I predict a long life together, making you breakfast on Sunday mornings. I see a sunny patio and roses everywhere, and a little dog.”

She closed her eyes and smiled, and he leaned over and kissed her once, gently, on the lips. “What else do you see?” she said.

‘A cave full of cobras,’ he felt he needed to say. but instead he squeezed her hand, then he kissed her again. “I think soon you and I must make a few decisions, about the future,” he sighed.

“I think so too,” she replied.

He turned and saw hedgerows and little roadways give way to hotels and warehouses and massive highways and then the Airbus settled on the runway and he wondered where the day would take him next.

+++++

There was a kind of unspoken acknowledgement when Tanner and Catherine met Beth and Jenny at the end of the Jetway, and regardless of intent Jenny could see it in the way Doug and Catherine stood together. They smiled congenially then started for customs, though Tanner studiously ignored Quintana all the while. Catherine walked through the EU portal and waited for them, and when they separated Tanner told Beth and Jenny that he wasn’t sure what his immediate travel plans were but that they might be fluid…

“Fluid?” Beth asked.

Tanner nodded. “Yes. Someone from the cartel contacted me on the plane. They aren’t through with me just yet.”

“Jesus, Doug!” Jenny cried. “What are you going to do?”

“Play it cool, for one thing,” he admonished. “No scenes, okay?”

“Right,” Jenny said, trying to collect her thoughts. 

“What are you going to do, Doug?” Beth asked. “Call our contact in DC?”

“They’re watching me,” he replied. “Probably all of us, so no, stay away from your phones for now, at least until you’re sure no one is watching.”

But it was at this point that Luis Quintana walked right up to them. “There’s no need for such secrecy among friends,” he said, smiling brightly at Jenny Peterson. “You will all be coming with us, to Mexico, for a brief holiday. We’ll be leaving as soon as you collect your luggage, and we have a schedule to keep.” Two rather beefy mercenary types then appeared beside Quintana – as if to underscore the nature of their predicament.

So Catherine DeSaunier waited and waited for Doug Tanner and the others to come out of customs, but after an hour she grew worried, and another hour passed before she called MSF to ask what she should do. By the time the authorities were alerted a Dassault Falcon 8x, ICAO registration T7-666, was well over the Bay of Biscay on a flight plan filed for Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was listed, illegally, as a ferry flight with no passengers onboard. 

As the aircraft approached the Leeward Islands the pilots filed an amended flight plan and diverted to Mexico City. Interpol was, at that time, alerted and agents from the DEA and the FBI converged on the airport, only to learn that, at the last minute, the Falcon had filed another amended flight plan listing Puerto Vallarta as the aircraft’s final destination. It was by then, of course, too late to carry out any kind of interdiction.

+++++

Tanner woke up and looked around the massive bedroom, hardly believing the lavishness of Quintana’s residence, or the splendor of the view beyond his bedroom. There were, quite literally, no windows here, just a wide open expanse of patios and pools and then rocks and breaking waves, all with nothing between his bedroom and the sounds of the sea. He stood and stretched and went to the head to brush his teeth and dress for the day, then he walked out onto his patio and continued on to the rocks, and there he stood, staring out at the breakers about twenty feet below. Sea lions were basking on the rocks and there was nothing at all to keep them from coming up and going for a swim in one of the pools, and he found the realization as baffling as it was ludicrous. 

“Ah, good, you are an early riser!”

Tanner turned to the voice and saw Luis sitting beside one of the smaller swimming pools. “Good morning,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“Come, please join me. I am having a simple breakfast today, but there is plenty to share.”

Tanner walked over and saw platter upon platter of fresh fruit and bolillos, an untouched French press full of coffee, as well as a bowl full of what appeared to be yogurt.

“Please, Douglas, sit and join me.”

Tanner sat. “You’ll pardon my saying so, but this is rather awkward. I mean, we are your prisoners…”

Quintana seemed hurt on hearing that. “Prisoners? No, not at all. You are my guests, and after your ordeal in the desert I assumed you needed time to recuperate. And truly, I can’t imagine a better place than here. You must admit that the view is splendid, after all…”

“It is that,” Tanner sighed, looking at the many swimming pools arrayed around the back of the sprawling residence, but just then a coconut fell from one of the nearby trees and splashed-down in the pool just behind him.

“The fruits of my labors, Douglas. Perhaps it would surprise you to learn that I built this house for my friend Gene, and just a few years ago. Yet he insisted on going to Africa and I’m afraid I will never understand that.”

Tanner shrugged.

“What I find most strange is how much alike you and Gene are. Or rather, were. And excuse the observation, but by that I mean the impulses that guide and inform your decisions seem very similar. Like two sides of the same coin, perhaps.”

“I’m afraid I never knew him.”

“A pity. I think you would have enjoyed his friendship.”

“Perhaps.”

“So, what would you like to do today?”

“Go to Paris, I think.”

Quintana smiled. “Perhaps…when you are more rested, but we can talk about that in a few days.”

“Well then, what would you recommend we do?”

“Ah, well. Do you go diving? There are many interesting sights in the area. A few sharks, as well, but they are rarely troublesome.”

“No, sorry. I never took that up.”

“Well then, perhaps this would be an opportune time to learn. I’ll have an instructor join us.”

“I see. Are we all going for a swim today?”

“Yes, yes, the water is delightful this time of year. Ah, here comes Miss Gruber! Excellent!”

He turned and looked at Beth, and her hair looked like a bird had nested there overnight and she was wearing a t-shirt that hung down to her knees – that said Puerto Vallarta Yacht Club on the front – so now at least Tanner had some idea where they were. She rubbed her eyes as she walked up, and she plopped down in the chair next to Tanners and tried to stifle a yawn.

“God damn but it’s fucking gorgeous here,” she said between yawns. “Is this breakfast?” she said, smiling at the fruit and breads on the table.

“If you like, yes,” Quintana said. “Or I can have the kitchen prepare something hot for you.”

“No, no, this looks great,” she said, spooning slices of mango and papaya onto a plate, then pouring a cup of coffee. “Did I hear someone say something about going diving today?”

“Yes,” Quintana said, brightening a little. “Are you a diver?”

“You can’t live in Miami and not be,” she said a little too cheerfully, pausing to attack a slice of papaya. “Is there good diving around here?” she added.

“I thought that perhaps we would go over to Islas Marietas. It is a remarkable place, and the dive there is more than interesting.”

“How’s the water temperature?” she asked. “Pretty cool?”

“No, no, it is not so bad as that. A lycra skin will suffice, but more for your protection.”

Patty McKinnon came out with her little girl next, and though she still appeared roundly depressed, Tanner could understand that. She’d just lost her husband, and here she was, being forced to relive that loss – just by his presence on the plane and here, at this table. So he stood and pulled a chair out for her, and then he helped her get settled at the table. “May I fix a plate for you?” he asked solicitously. 

“No thanks. I can get it.”

Still, Tanner studied McKinnon; first her mannerisms and her behavior towards Quintana, and then the way she responded to Beth – and then Jenny, after she finally emerged from her silk cocoon. He saw her furtive, sidelong glances, almost as if she felt insecure around Jenny and Beth, but then he considered that she probably just felt out of place, like he did. But hadn’t she gone to medical school down here? Is that how she ran into Luis Quintana? What was the link? Or worse still, what did he have on her?

But there was more going on here than first met the eye: McKinnon was jittery and it seemed as if she was on the brink, like maybe having a full blown nervous breakdown wasn’t out of the question, but then Luis would say something and she would rally for a moment and pull herself back from the edge. ‘Is it for the sake of the little girl?’ he wondered. ‘Or for Luis?’ He watched her for a while, then he watched Luis – and yes, there was something going on there… 

Because it was obvious that Quintana cared for Patty, yet not in the way a lover might. More like a father, or even the way a friend would take care of a departed friend’s wife. But…was it really possible Quintana did not have access to Harwell’s bank accounts? Was he, Tanner, indeed the last link to ready access to those funds? And if so, was that money the key to their getting out of this trap?

Beth and Jenny were now talking about Scuba diving in the keys, about some sore of statue of Jesus they’d visited that was about thirty feet down on a flat sandy bottom, and about how they’d run into a Hammerhead shark on the last dive they made there…

“It’s their backyard,” Tanner said, rejoining the conversation. “I hope you weren’t too surprised.”

“No, not at all,” Beth said. “Yet it almost looked like something primeval. Quite fascinating, really.”

“But it was big as shit!” Jenny added, shivering as she relived the moment.

“And that, Luis,” Tanner said, smiling at Quintana, “is why I never took up Scuba diving.”

“Really? I have been diving here many times and never have I seen a shark. I understand Hammerheads pass by here in large groups, sometimes as many as one hundred or more at a time, but I have not seen this. I think it would be most magical to see.”

“I’d shit myself,” Jenny sighed, and Tanner watched Quintana’s growing disapproval of Jenny’s choice of words. He was scowling now, and even Patty noticed, which was, perhaps, why she spoke up just then.

“Where are you going today, Luis?” McKinnon asked.

“I was thinking of Islas Marietas, and of taking our guests to the hidden beach.”

“I’ve always wanted to see that,” Patty sighed. “I hear it’s spectacular. Will you take your boat?”

“Sadly, no. She’s down for engine maintenance, but I have a friend who runs a nearby diving school. Perhaps we can get him to take us, as he has a compressor.”

“Count me out,” Tanner said. “I’ll be more than happy to sit here by the pool.”

Luis looked at him for the longest time, then he looked at Patty. “Would you like to join us? Perhaps Dr. Tanner can look after the baby while we are away?”

Patty looked at Tanner then turned back to Luis. “No, I think we should all go.”

And that seemed to settle the matter, at least as far as Quintana was concerned. “Good. I will make the arrangements.”

Before Jenny left for her room Tanner pulled her aside and advised her to cut out the four-letter words, telling her that Quintana seemed offended by her use of vulgar language.

“Fuck you, Tanner,” she hissed as she turned and walked off. “I don’t care what you think!”

Tanner nodded and went to his room. There were things laid out on his bed, which had of course already been made. A swim suit, t-shirt, and running shoes had been neatly arranged there, and a one-piece lycra bodysuit was there, too, still in its factory packaging. He looked over the items and smiled – if only because everything was the correct size. So, their things had been gone through somewhere along the way, probably while they slept, and why was that not surprising?

Two Suburbans carried the group down to a large marina near the center of a large city, and the mystery was soon put to rest when he saw signs indicating they were indeed in Puerto Vallarta. Luis led them out a long pier to a very large motor yacht, and this vessel had an extremely large aft swim platform, complete with an assortment of diving gear on the aft deck, and as soon as they boarded the lines were cast off.  And then a blond haired girl, a vintage southern California type, walked up to Tanner as the yacht motored slowly through the marina.

“So,” she said, “you don’t have a C-card?”

“What’s that?” Tanner replied.

“A certification card, for Scuba diving?”

“Never been, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to learn how today.”

She smiled. “My name’s Carol, and Luis told me I’m supposed to teach you what you need to know.”

“I see. I have an idea. Let’s say we did and then hang out at the bar. Sound like a plan?”

Carol grinned. “Not if you know Luis. He wants you to see this, and believe me, I know you’ll enjoy the experience.”

“I see.”

“So, you haven’t spent much time around the ocean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Does living on a sailboat count?”

“No kidding? Where was that?”

“Miami, for the most part.”

“And you don’t dive?”

“I don’t like the idea of swimming with sharks.”

“Ah. Well, there aren’t that many around here.”

“All it takes is one, I reckon.”

The boat cleared the marina and accelerated until it was up on a plane – and Tanner blanched at the thought of how much diesel fuel was being used. “Mind if I go up to the bridge?” he asked.

“No, come on. I’ll take you up.”

The skipper was American, and Tanner was beginning to see a trend. Luis Quintana had surrounded himself with Americans, but – why? ‘Are we less dangerous for him?’ Tanner wondered. ‘Was that how Harwell got mixed up in all this?’ He looked at the latest all-in-one NAV displays and found the fuel flow meters and tried not to scowl as he did the math in his head, but this little forty-mile round-trip jaunt would end up costing someone around two grand at this rate of consumption, then he looked at the radar overlay and counted all the other ships already out on the water.

“Lot of traffic out already,” Tanner said to the skipper.

“Yup, lots of fishermen head out around midnight. They’re heading in now, get their catch to market by nine or so. Cruise ships will come in around noon and their buyers scoop up all the good stuff that’s left, so you gotta shop early around here.”

“Cruise ships? Really? Where from?”

“Oh yeah, lots of ‘em come down from LA and San Diego. Some head on down to the canal, some go back north to LA. Usually a couple a day in here, too.”

“This seems pretty fancy for a dive boat,” Tanner said.

“Oh, it is, but this is more a party boat that caters to a clientele that happens to have a lot of divers.”

Carol tugged at his sleeve then. “Come with me, Doug,” she said, and even that was funny – because he’d never mentioned his name to her.

“Okay. Do I get the nickel tour now?”

“No, it’s time to get your gear sorted out, and we’ll start with your dive computer…”

“My…what?”

Then she just smiled before she turned to lead him aft, but before he left the bridge he looked at a return on the radar – and observed a large signal with no AIS identifier showing on the screen. As he walked aft he looked in the general direction of the return and spotted what looked like a navy ship of some kind knifing through the water, and he wondered, well, no, perhaps he hoped the DEA or the FBI had caught up to them.

Carol showed him the basics of putting on all the complicated looking gear, but after the yacht arrived at the larger of the two islets Beth and Jenny came aft and slipped into their stuff with practiced ease. Then Luis came aft and Tanner saw he was still fully dressed – but two of his thugs were now with him and they appeared ready to get in the water.

“So,” Tanner said to Quintana, “I take it you’re not coming with us?”

“No, I’m afraid something has come up that I must attend to. My associates will take you over.”

Tanner saw McKinnon and her daughter inside the main saloon, but now she was avoiding eye contact with them. And this exchange had apparently gotten Beth’s attention, too, for she was now studying Quintana’s face and was beginning to understand the situation. Only Jenny remained completely oblivious to their peril, but then again that was just Jenny being Jenny.

Tanner turned to Carol, but she just shrugged and stepped away, effectively telling him he was now on his own, so he looked at Quintana again and noted the odd smile on his face – and the remorseless calm behind his eyes.

“So, this is it, huh?” Tanner sighed.

Quintana shrugged. “The ship you have been watching,” he said, “belongs to our navy. They will be making sure that your swim is undisturbed. Now, would you care to tell me anything before you leave us?”

Tanner looked at the man and his thugs and he shrugged. “No, not really. At least not without assurances that the money will go to McKinnon, and to her alone.”

He watched the expression on Quintana’s face harden, and that was all Tanner needed to know. Money was money, after all, and Quintana wanted what he considered his, and his alone. He might keep McKinnon around and take care of her – or he might not – and in that case she’d be alone and quite probably broke. And if she was broke there was no telling what Quintana might force her to do.

“Enjoy your swim,” Quintana said, walking back into the yacht’s interior.

Now Jenny looked at the two thugs, both heavyset and menacing, and she suddenly seemed to get it. “Uh, guys, what’s going on?” she whimpered…

…and Tanner sighed. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we were kidnapped yesterday by the same cartel that’s been after us for months, and it’s my guess these two gentlemen are going to take us ashore and then kill us. Is that clear enough for you? Any questions?”

“You don’t have to be so sarcastic, Doug.”

Tanner looked at her and just shook his head. She was more dense than uranium and he just couldn’t stand the sight of her just then.

But Carol helped Tanner into his buoyancy control vest and then helped him down to the swim platform, then she carefully retreated, now avoiding all eye contact. He sat on the edge of the platform and slipped on his fins and then put the mask she’d given him on, placing the snorkel in his mouth before he pushed off and entered the water. One of the thugs jumped in and swan close to Tanner, treading water while he waited for the girls – and his associate – to jump in.

The water was more green than blue, and Tanner put his face down into the water and looked around. There was a rocky bottom below and not as many fish as he expected, and most everything he saw swimming around down there was less than a foot long…in other words completely uninteresting. He heard a splashing sound and saw that Jenny and Beth were in the water, then the remaining thug jumped in and the two of them corralled Tanner and the two girls and indicated the direction they would be going by pointing at what appeared to be a low cliff.

The girls were wearing full Scuba gear, while Tanner was using a simple mask and snorkel rig, and everyone took off towards the cliff – with one of the thugs in the lead and the other bringing up the rear. An airliner took off from the airport in town and Tanner looked up at the jet as it turned to the north, probably headed to LA or Dallas, and he wished he was up there going wherever all those people were going.

‘All of this has happened because of one goddamned photograph,’ he sighed, shaking his head at the thought. ‘And I don’t deserve this. None of us does!’ He turned and looked at the thug bringing up the rear and thought about trying to overpower the man, but the thug seemed to be reading his mind and simply shook his head.

As they approached the cliff an opening appeared and, waiting for a wave to subside the lead thug swam into the opening and powered through the rocky opening, then the remaining thug pushed Tanner towards the opening, in effect telling him to watch the waves and time his attempt so that he could ride a wave through the opening.

Tanner watched a wave and caught it, diving a little to clear the rocks just overhead, and when he surfaced he looked around in wonder. They were in what felt like a pool of clear blue water and smooth cliffs completely surrounded the pool, the walls of the cliff curving up to form an almost perfectly circular opening. They swam across the pool and the lead thug disappeared into another opening, then Beth and Jenny followed him – leaving Tanner and the other thug to bring up the rear.

This next passage was different. The water was quite calm and this passage was more like a long cave, though it was much longer than the first, and the only light inside the cave came from indirect sunlight hitting the sandy bottom perhaps twenty feet beneath the surface, so the rocks were bathed in a shimmering silvery blue halo that was most pleasant to watch. And while Tanner wanted to linger the thug coming up from behind was there to remind him that this was not a sightseeing trip.

A few minutes later Tanner emerged into another circular pool surrounded by yet another circular cliff topped by another circular opening, yet on one side of this pool the sandy bottom sloped up, forming a decent sized beach that was bathed in pure radiant sunlight, and Tanner thought it was the damndest sight he’d ever seen in his life. He swam over to the beach and took off his fins then walked up onto the sand. He helped the girls out of their gear and led them up onto the sand… 

…and then he noticed that the two thugs were standing in waist deep water, and now silenced pistols were in their hands…

…Jenny started crying then, and Beth moved over to comfort her… 

…while Tanner turned and stared at the men, and all he could think to say was “Fuck you.”

One of the men raised his pistol and then an impossibly loud shot rang out; this thug’s head disappeared inside a concussive spray of brain and blood…

…and before the other thug could react another shot rang out, and his face disappeared before his body crumpled and fell into the water.

Two men in black fatigues stepped out of the rocks, each carrying large rifles, and then the shorter of the two pulled out a radio and spoke into it: “Archer Base, Red 1, secure,” was all he said.

Then another voice could be heard on the radio: “Archer base, Blue 2, secure here.”

And a minute passed before a Blackhawk helicopter appeared overhead; several minutes later everyone had been hoisted aboard and the helicopter turned to fly west, out into the Sea of Cortez. Fifteen minutes passed before a chunky aircraft carrier appeared, it’s deck packed with nothing but more helicopters, and Tanner recognized it as a US Marine Corp carrier assault ship, and the men who had rescued them were a Navy Seal Team. Another Blackhawk landed after there’s, and Tanner watched as Quintana was led, in handcuffs and ankle-shackles, belowdecks, while Patty McKinnon and her baby girl were escorted by a DEA agent to the helicopter carrying Tanner, Jenny and Beth. Once she was aboard, their Blackhawk took off – and it turned towards the airport in Puerto Vallarta.

A small private jet was waiting to take Jenny and Beth back to Florida, while a jet from the embassy was waiting to take Tanner and McKinnon directly to Mexico City, and once they were on board one of the diplomatic consuls brought them up to speed after the jet was in the air.

“We’ll get to the city in time to get you to the Citibank Private Banking facility downtown, and Gene Harwell’s assets can be turned over to Dr. McKinnon at that point, assuming you still have the codes, Dr. Tanner.”

Tanner pointed at his head. “Still right up here,” he sighed, “where I left them.”

“Once that’s out of the way we’d recommend you both get out of the country, and as fast as humanly possible. We will not be able to protect you once you leave our custody. Is that clear?”

“I’m surprised the government is allowing her to keep any of these funds,” Tanner said.

“Oh, Harwell left a bunch of money in banks around San Antonio. The DEA seized all that months ago, but as long as Dr. McKinnon doesn’t enter the US with that money she’ll be okay.”

“Just what am I supposed to do now?” Patty said. “I mean, I can’t go back to the mission clinic, I can’t go home, and I…”

“You could go to Europe,” Tanner said. “From there you could park the funds before coming back to the States or going, well, just about anywhere.”

“Could you help me?” she pleaded.

“Me?” Tanner said. “Look, I thought you hated me.”

“I don’t even know you. How could I possibly hate you.”

Tanner shrugged. “Well, of course I’ll help you.”

The consul cough politely at that point. “Look, I’m not sure either of you understand what’s going on here. Your husband,” he said, looking at Patty, “had been siphoning money from the cartel, and for quite some time. We understand the figure is rather significant.”

Tanner looked at the consul. “You mean…”

“Yes, they’re going to want it back. So far they don’t know what’s happened to Quintana and they probably won’t for a few more hours, so we’ve got to get you in and out of Mexico City as quickly as possible. What you do from there is up to you. In fact, we’d rather not know what you do, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you have any idea how much is involved?”

“A lot,” the diplomat said. “I mean a whole lot.”

“So the cartel will want it a lot? Is that what you’re saying?”

“A whole lot. Yeah.”

“Can you set up a charter to Geneva? For tonight?” Tanner sighed.

The consul nodded. “Yup. I can do that, but I’d recommend Bern. Smaller airport, better access to the city, and our embassy is there. Oh, and I know people that can help get the ball rolling, if that’s an issue.”

“Do it,” Tanner said, then he turned to McKinnon. “What about you? Any plans?”

Patty held onto her little daughter as she slept on her mother’s shoulder, and Tanner could see she looked absolutely shellshocked. Not a week had passed since her husband had been killed and her daughter had no idea what had happened to him; now they’d both jetted halfway around the world only to get swept up in a failed assassination and a successful DEA arrest of her dead husband’s protector and business partner. She felt like a pawn being moved around the board yet the only thing she felt now was utter exhaustion. She shrugged at Tanner’s question, but her eyes remained fixed on his. “I feel like I’m out of my depth right now,” she said, her voice now husky, almost raspy. “If you have any ideas maybe you should just go with it.”

Both Tanner and the consul thought that odd. Tanner sighed and leaned closer to her, saw the woman was walking on the ragged edge and he reached out and cupped her face in his hand for a moment. “God, what you’ve been through…” he said, and then he smiled that smile of his and her eyes seemed to radiate the sudden warmth she felt inside. But his smile also seemed to bust the dam that had been holding her together; he saw her swallowing hard as her eyes filled with tears, and he unbuckled his seatbelt and went to her, held her while she fell into her first real release since her husband’s death. He managed to get an arm around her and with his other he cradled the little girl, holding them both now. “It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m here. You can lean on me.”

And so she held on to him for the longest time.

+++++

He usually looked back on that moment over the coming years with something like a sense of wonder in his heart. Life had always been somewhat predictable, Tanner told himself, until that evening flying to Switzerland. Patty had fallen asleep and he’d held the little toddler for a few hours, and after a bottle she too had fallen asleep – only she had done so on Tanner’s chest, her tiny hands clutching his shirt collar. He’d wrapped a little blanket around her and had tried to imagine what Gene Harwell had felt, yet his mind always raced in endless circles as he tried to understand what Patty had been feeling and, by extension, what she’d guessed might be in store for her little girl.

Retribution? That had always been first in mind. It might have taken years for the cartel to forget about McKinnon, and probably himself as well, but time was on the cartel’s side. Tanner had decided they’d have to keep a very low profile – and for years – in order to survive, yet Beth and Jenny would need to as well, and quite possibly Catherine, too. So Douglas Tanner had realized that he had five other people to protect – one way or another. 

Sitting in that jet that night, flying through the night alone in oceanic darkness, he had felt the little girl’s heart beating against the rhythm of his own, and impulsively he had run his fingers through her fine hair and held her closer still – and the wave that broke over him was the closest Tanner had ever come to feeling something like a parental impulse. The need to nurture, to protect, was all very human and yet here he was, approaching thirty five years of life and he’d never once felt anything like it. These new, inrushing feelings were overwhelming, literally, so much so that he was convinced he felt love for this little girl. And, by extension, mustn’t he have felt something like love for Patty McKinnon?

So it was all very confusing, the things he’d felt that night.

Harwell had indeed siphoned off money from the cartel. Over the years almost twenty million dollars of pure weapons-grade siphoning, and all of it earning interest in US Dollar accounts at the branch of an American back located in Mexico City. A few days after their arrival in Switzerland the money landed in a numbered account at Credit Suisse in Bern, and lawyers were secured to handle purchasing property. He used intermediaries to contact Catherine and then Beth and Jenny and he told them what he had in mind. All his thoughts were coalescing around the little girl he had held in his arms and one by one the others got on board and flew to Geneva.

Tanner purchased a modest chateau on the waterfront in Vevey and when, in the end, his story had come full circle he came to understand that he and Gene Harwell had indeed been two sides of one coin. Every step Harwell made had carried him deeper and deeper into the underworld – and Morpheus had finally come to collect his debt, while the dreams that remained were for Tanner. He gave McKinnon another daughter along the way to figuring out the whole love thing, and over the years the other three girls in Tanner’s life found themselves with child – but in the end no one talked about who the father might be. They were a family, as unconventional as that sounded.

In a house packed to the rafters with physicians all Tanner’s many children had little chance. Each walked the course that had been set for them, and in time each found their way to medical schools in Switzerland, France, and the United States. Beth and Catherine spend months at a time in Ethiopia and Sudan, while Patty and Jenny rarely left Tanner’s side. In this barely understandable way, life passed gently for the people at the chateau.

He wondered from time to time what had happened to Luis Quintana. He heard the old man had found suitable lodging at a SuperMax prison in Colorado, but that was about all he ever heard concerning Quintana or the cartels. Then again, he knew that one day they would come for him. It was inevitable, like living large on borrowed time, yet Tanner was determined to make the most of the time he had stolen from them.

Some nights, especially in summer when the light stayed late, he’d sit on the patio overlooking the lake and watch the moon rise over the Alps – and he thought of another night long ago. He thought of Nimiri and the red cobra and the first words the old man had spoken to him: ‘And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’ Then he would see a coin rolling through his mind’s eye and he wondered from time to time which side would show when it stopped and fell to earth.

Maybe the old man had, in his end, known what he was talking about. When Douglas Tanner heard his children running among the trees and the clouds he thought he knew that at least this much was true.

© 2009-2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse. This was a work of fiction, and note parts of this story were first posted 5.May.2009. © renewed 2022, AL|abw. Thanks for reading along, and see you next time.

[At The End of the Day \\ Spock’s Beard]

A few more pieces of the puzzle. Time for tea?

[Duncan Sheik \\ Good to Know]

Cracks in a Sidewalk

First Part

The old man enjoyed his morning walks more these days than he had in years, if only because time seemed somehow more precious now…and life a little too fragile. This was nothing new, of course, this feeling he had. Life had always been fragile and more dear than anyone imagined, yet it seemed in this day and age that precious few could see or hold on to this one most basic truth. Even less so now that life was moving so fast into the unknown. “Youth is wasted on the young,” he muttered under his breath, smiling at the cliché as he watched a kid on a skateboard rumbling his way. He stepped aside as the boy sailed past, then just shook his head and rolled his eyes at the utter vacuousness of youth.

He could smell fresh roasting beans on the morning breeze and for some reason that made this morning brighter still. And then, as if right on cue, the conjoined smells of bacon and eggs on a hot-top hit him and he almost felt like a kid again. “No skateboards for me,” he sighed to himself. “At least not today.” He thought of his mom and dad and Palo Alto and how far away all that seemed now, yet it wasn’t…not really.

He was, of course, not at all aware that he was talking to himself, and at times quite noticeably, too.

He could see his destination now, and the pain in his leg told him that was a good thing. The Spotted Zebra coffee bar, just off Ocean Boulevard in Venice Beach, had their roasters going this morning, and just the thought of a smooth double café au lait was enough to jumpstart his heart — maybe enough to face the day. He walked into the place and smiled once again when he saw that Ellie was working the counter, and he sniffed around once or twice, his nose leading him to the pastry counter.

“Fresh blackberry this morning, I see,” he said to the girl behind the counter, and she returned his smile as she came over to him.

“The usual for you today?” Ellie said.

“Think you’d better make it a double,” he grinned. “And I think that blackberry scone right there has my name written all over it.” He looked at her with practiced ease, noted the thin bead of perspiration on her forehead and then the red eyes, and he could hear her congestion was worse today.

She rang it up and he rummaged around in his coat pocket for some money, then went to his favorite table to wait for his coffee, picking up a discarded LA Times on the way. He read through the front page, shaking his head from time to time, then Ellie brought over his coffee and the scone. “Thank you,” he said, smiling up at her, but he could see how terrible she felt today.

She was, he guessed, about twenty-five. She’d told him once that she had grown up in South Central but that she’d been on her own off and on for years — and that hadn’t surprised him in the least. She was Black and a little on the pudgy side of the equation but she had an adorable round face and a lovely smile, and he came here more and more because of the way her smile made him feel. But she was a little down today and that bothered him — if only because, in his way, he cared about her wellbeing.

When she was around she was in charge of the bakery side of the operation and her scones were the stuff of legend. Come autumn she started making cheesecakes, and her sweet potato cheesecakes sold out within minutes. Hollywood types called ahead to reserve whole cheesecakes, too, a fact she was proud of. 

The old man made his way through the sports section and he read up on the Rams and the Chargers and their rookies progress at training camps. He finished up his coffee and left a five on the table before he stood again, and his hips and knees barked at him pretty good so he stood there a moment and let the pain subside a little, then he walked up to the counter again.

“You running a temperature, Ellie?” he asked casually.

“Whew, I don’t know…but I been runnin’ around like a chicken with his head cut off since four a.m. so I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

The old man rummaged around in his coat and dug out a scanning thermometer. “Lean over this way,” he said gently, and he ran the scanner over her forehead twice, then her left temple before he looked at the readout. “101.4,” he growled, shaking his head as he looked over his reading glasses at her. “You need to get off your feet for a day or two, before you get yourself really sick.”

“Sure wish I could,” she sighed. “But if I do that we don’t eat.”

“What time do you get off?”

“S’posed to be around noon, but ya never know.”

The old man looked at his watch and nodded. “I’ll be back at noon-thirty. We’re gonna take a little walk,” he said, smiling disingenuously.

“Noon-thirty?”

“Twelve-thirty,” he shrugged.

“Aw-right,” she said to him before he turned and walked out into the morning. She darted over and cleared his table, pocketing his generous tip before the owners could see the money and take it for themselves.

He started back to his place, the pain in his leg getting worse after two blacks, so he stopped along the boardwalk, sat on a low concrete wall to rub his knees for a moment. Youngsters on rollerblades drifted by with AirPods dangling from their ears, oblivious to the world around them, consciously ignoring the hundreds of tents and lean-tos set up on the beach and lining all the areas alleyways. Over the last ten years the situation here had only grown intolerably more dire, and the old man was in a better position than most to understand the true dimensions of the problem.

He stood again and rubbed his upper thighs, wishing he’d used his cane this morning but resenting the damn thing all the more because of the decline it implied, then he walked down to Breeze and turned inland. Out of habit he turned and checked his six for a tail, but in truth those days were long gone. The pain settled in again and he felt a little winded now, but this was the home stretch so he pushed on. 

His tent was in the disused corner of an old asphalt parking lot about halfway between Ocean and Pacific, and he’d left Darius out front to stand guard while he went for coffee. As he walked up he could see he already had about a half dozen patients lined-up and waiting; he nodded to himself and sighed as he got close enough to recognize a few of them.

Everyone smiled at the old man as he approached, and they parted to let him pass — yet they guarded their places in the queue, some more possessively than others. His “office” was a fairly old Coleman three room tent, kind of an ‘L-shaped’ affair, with one of the rooms a dedicated storeroom, the big central area an exam room, complete with a discarded exam table, and with the third room set aside as his personal space — which was where he slept most nights.

The city had closed all the free clinics in the area, and only his tent and the ‘illegal’ clinic set up in the basement of the nearby Catholic Church were all that was left to serve a population that at times numbered ten thousand or more souls. The church clinic was closed most weekdays, leaving his tent the only available option, but as the old man dared not advertise his services most of the homeless in the area had no idea he was even around.

He kept his patient charts on an iPad, and though several nearby practices kept him stocked with everything he needed, if the city ever discovered what he was up to down here they’d have had him drawn and quartered. That led the old man to move his tent every few weeks, but he got the word out and his patients never had any trouble finding him. He’d only been ‘discovered’ once, but by the time code enforcement officers arrived he and his tent were already long gone.

And this morning’s patients represented the usual assortment of issues found in homeless encampments everywhere. Scurvy and even malaria weren’t uncommon now, even in California, as with increasing temperatures mosquito-borne illnesses were on the rise everywhere, and by the time he wrapped up this morning’s queue about the worst thing he’d dealt with was a little girl with a bad cut on the bottom of her foot. He was grateful his hand was still steady enough to suture such minor wounds, but time wasn’t on his side.

Another one of his ‘foot-soldiers’ stood guard while he walked back to the Zebra, and as Ellie was still tied up in the bakery he asked for some hot tea. Two LAPD bicycle cops came by and and ordered coffee and as they knew the old man rather well they sat with him.

“How’s it hangin’, Doc,” Bud Kurzweil asked as he sat across from the old man.

“Down to my knees. You?”

“SSDD,” Kurzweil said, wiping a little sweat from his forehead after he pulled off his headgear. “Anything new we need to know about?”

“I’m running tests on two possible TB cases,” the old man said. “I’ll let you know if they come back positive.”

The other cop, a rookie just getting familiar with life outside of police academy, simply shook her head. 

A slight tremor passed through Kurzweil’s hands. “Damn, not that shit again. Man, you know if it pops here again they’ll restart the sweeps.”

“I know, I know,” the old man said. “Yet, if you really think about it that’s probably the wrong way to contain an outbreak. You can’t contact trace if you don’t know where the infected people are hanging out.”

“It’s all optics, Doc. There ain’t no policy anymore, there’s just politics.”

The old man nodded. “Same as it ever was. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask…how’s the screenplay coming along?”

Kurzweil nodded. “My agent got a good response from DreamWorks, so who knows…”

“Really? Bud! That’s fantastic!”

Kurzweil grinned. “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate all you’ve done. Really.”

The old man smiled at that, but then he saw Ellie and his smile vanished. She looked beat, and if anything her eyes were even more red now. Then he noticed she was a little unsteady on her feet and he got up to help her as she came out from behind the counter. “I’ll see you guys later,” he said to the cops as he helped her out the door. He’d brought his cane this time so he had her hold onto his left arm and lean into him as they walked back to his tent.

Darius was manning the fort now and when he saw the Doc and his latest patient he unzipped the tent’s opening and helped them inside. And perhaps not surprisingly Ellie had no idea this old man was a physician, or that he was one of LAs seemingly infinite supply of homeless men and women.

“I heard about you,” she said, her voice now quietly unsteady. “You the doc everyone always talkin’ ‘bout. Like you was a ghost or something, ya know?”

He smiled as he took her vitals and then he let her ramble for a while before he got down to business. He asked easy, direct questions about her sweats, about where it hurt, and if she’d been coughing much…

“Not much, usually at night,” he said as he palpated the lymph nodes in her neck and under her arms.

“Night sweats?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Pretty bad, too.”

“What’s your pee look like?”

“Oh man, kinda like iced tea, ya know?”

“Pain in the lower back?”

“Yes.”

“Can you point to where it feels the worst?”

She reached around and pointed to where her kidneys were.

“Any pain in your spine, like maybe when you bend over?”

“Yeah, a little.”

He listened to her lungs, her heart and then for her bowel sounds. “You eating okay?”

She shook her head. “Ain’t been hungry, ya know?”

He nodded. “You live with anyone?”

“My grandmother and my little brother.”

“Your grandmother…has she been sick recently?”

“She’s had a bad cough all summer.”

“Does she still work?”

“Uh-huh. She work at a nursing home, making beds and stuff, sometime she work in the kitchen.”

“Oh,” he smiled innocently, “where’s that?”

“Shady Acres, over on Pico.”

“She on Medicare?”

“Nope, not yet?”

“Health insurance?”

“You kiddin’, right?”

“How’s your brother feeling?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Any cough?”

She looked down and nodded.

“I take it you don’t have insurance?”

“Oh, I got it alright, but we gotta pay something like the first four thousand bucks…”

“I know,” the old man sighed.

“You know what I got, Doc?”

The old man shook his head. “Gonna have to do a few tests first, but has your grandmother had a TB test recently?”

“TB? What’s that?”

The old man shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, Ellie,” he said as he got pulled over a tray. “I’m going to draw blood now, then we’re going to see if you can cough up some crud for me, ‘cause I want to run some tests on that stuff too. And I’ll need a urine sample, too.”

“Hey Doc, like you know I can’t pay for none of this stuff, right?”

“Not a problem, Ellie.”

“What you mean, not a problem? Who gonna pay for this stuff?”

The old man just shrugged. “You won’t owe anything to anybody, okay? Ellie, you hearin’ me? And I want to see your grandmother and brother tomorrow.” 

“She be workin’ tomorrow.”

“No problem. Y’all come on down after she gets home. I’ll be here.” 

She nodded uneasily as he put what looked like a large rubber band around her upper arm…

+++++

He saw a dozen more patients after Ellie left and about half past six an old slate blue Land Rover pulled into the parking lot; Darius carried a cooler full of blood and culture samples over and put it on the floor behind the front seat, then he got into the front passenger seat. Once he was buckled-in the old Defender took off into the last of the day’s rush hour traffic.

The old man took off his exam gloves and finished up his patient notes on the iPad before scrubbing his hands in a foaming cleanser, then he walked out of the tent and pulled up a folding lawn chair and stretched out. He opened the cooler Darius had left for him and popped the top on an ice-cold Diet Dr. Pepper, downing the can in one long pull. He pulled out his iPhone and checked his messages and then his email, hoping the caffeine in the soda would keep him alert for another hour or so…just as Bud Kurzweil pulled up on his bicycle.

“Hey doc, you done for the day?”

“You know, for some reason I feel certain that’s not the case.”

Kurzweil chuckled at that, but he quickly did an about face and turned serious: “What are the symptoms of TB?”

“Generally speaking, persistent cough, fatigue, fever, night sweats and loss of appetite. Blood in the sputum is also a pretty good predictor. So, what’s goin’ on?”

“I think we might have a cluster down by the north jetty.”

“Isolate ‘em. Call Public Health.”

“Doc, you know if I make that call they’ll just make a sweep and push ‘em off into the weeds.”

The old man sighed and pointed to another lawn chair. “Want a DDP?”

“Sure,” the cop said as he opened the chair and sat. He took the offered can and popped the top, then he slammed it down, waiting about thirty seconds for the desired effect to take hold — which started out as a low hiss before it burst out into the open as a plaster-cracking belch. “Goddam, I love this crap.”

The old man nodded as he burped. “You know it,” he added, as a little extra hiss-burp slipped out his nose. “No better cure for bloating out there.”

“So?” Kurzweil sighed. “Do I make the call?”

“I can’t walk that far, Bud.”

“No problem, Father. We got ya covered.”

“See if you can get me a couple of paramedics down there. Better yet, call Daniel Freeman and get some kids in training. They could use the experience.”

“Anything else?”

“A nurse and a lab tech wouldn’t hurt my feelings any.”

“Got it. Where’s Darius?”

“With Deb, off to the lab.”

“How’s he doin’?”

The old man shrugged. “Oh, you know. Good times, bad times.”

Kurzweil shook his head. “Man, he was good. One of the greats, ya know?”

The old man nodded. Darius Jenkins had played with the Rams for seven years — before a career ending block wrecked his right knee. He’d been a wealthy man for a few years after that, until the hangers on slowly but surely bled him dry. The old man had found him living in a tent down here a few years ago; now he worked for a friend of the old man and was getting his life back together, piece by slowly broken piece.

“You had anything to eat today?” Kurzweil asked.

“A scone, I seem to recall. When do you two get off?”

“Off? Hell, we’re on OT now — but then again we’re off for two whole days — starting at midnight, I do believe.”

“Where’s the rookie? Down at the jetty?”

“Yup,” Kurzweil nodded. “Got a car down there with her.”

The old man sighed. “You got someone in mind to drive me there?”

“They should be here any minute.”

“Am I that predictable?”

Kurzweil grinned as he shrugged. “Yo no se, Amigo…”

“Pues…porque asi es.”

“Truer words, Father. Truer words.”

The old man fired off a text just as a black and white squad car pulled up beside the old man’s tent, and a rookie stepped out to stay with the tent until Darius returned. “You going to ride with us?” the old man asked Kurzweil.

“In this traffic? No way!”

+++++

He finished up after midnight and walked back to the beach parking lot at the end of Speedway, and he smiled when he saw the blue Land Rover was already waiting there for him. Kurzweil and his rookie were long gone now, but Bud had promised to drop by in the morning and check on him, maybe grab lunch if the old man had time. Hopefully he’d have results from the lab by then, because Gene Sherman had a very bad feeling about what was happening down here.

© 2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…and note this story is fiction, pure and simple…

Harry’s tale is rapidly drawing to a close, so hang on tight.

[supertramp \\ know who you are]

88/69

Debra Sorensen watched the General as he strutted around the underground facility, and she concentrated on his ever-shifting aura. Unlike her father, or even Delbert Moloch, this man rarely displayed the oily black shimmers of overt evil that those other two had, yet even so she picked up patterns and colors that upset her. While he wasn’t exactly evil, he wasn’t the benign character he so often pretended to be—despite all his airs of calm passivity. But now, with Callahan’s and Goodman’s disappearance, his aura had flared once again, filling the space around his seething eyes with hideous green streamers.

Then she parsed his thoughts.

He was angry because a tracking device had failed. Because the tracking device could only follow people traveling back in time. But not into the future. He was, for some reason, now thinking about Franklin Roosevelt, the depression era president. But why? What could someone who had passed away almost eighty years ago have to do with the future? She struggled to remember Roosevelt and grew faintly disoriented when she thought she recalled meeting him recently, but when she saw Roosevelt in the General’s thoughts her sense of disorientation only grew more diffuse, almost like a heavy fog had settled over her. Then she saw huge, misshaped beings, squat triangular white-skinned things that moved with ponderous heaviness, and she saw the General talking with Roosevelt and one of these beings…

Krell. They called themselves Krell, and Debra wondered why that sounded so familiar?

She followed him to the huge orca pool on the lower level, and she watched the General’s aura as it shifted from red to green and finally to a gentle cool blue, so she naturally concluded that he came here to relax—but as she looked on he waded out into the water – and then just disappeared. 

A minute passed, then two, and she ran out and looked down into the peaceful abyss and saw…nothing. No orcas, and no General. He had simply disappeared.

She focused on the water and tried to follow his thoughts but she found that way blocked, as if someone was deliberately trying to keep her away from the General’s thoughts. But…who among the people in the underground complex was capable of that? No one she was aware of, with the possible exception of Brendon.

So she made her way up to the living quarters, and she found Brendan in the dining room reading a book and waving at the sky. She picked up an omelet and went to a nearby table and watched the boy, watched his ever shifting aura, but all she could make out was a simple veil of swirling cool blues. When she entered his mind and began sifting through his thoughts he stopped reading and looked up from his book for a moment, then he turned and looked at her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Me? Why…nothing. Nothing at all?”

Then she heard his thoughts, now directed at her: ‘You don’t belong here. Leave. Now.’

She looked away then finished her eggs and, now ignoring the boy, she left the room, doing her best to clear her mind.

‘So, I’m not the only one,’ she thought. ‘Is that was this place is all about? Corralling us all in one place so they—whoever they are—can keep us under lock and key?’ That would explain why the General was so upset about Callahan’s disappearance, wouldn’t it? ‘But, where did he go? And why weren’t there any orcas in the pool?’

+++++

Jim watched as Callahan and the woman were put into stasis, but he was still not sure this was the best way to deal with the two humans. Callahan’s abilities were just blooming, but it was the woman who presented the biggest threat. She’d jumped, admittedly while she slept, beyond his ability to track, which meant she’d left this galaxy—yet she’d returned to her cabin within minutes. If this was indeed true she’d exceeded everyone’s expectations. And if this proved to be the case, as it appeared to be, then these humans were indeed in a race against time.

How long would it take this species to fully evolve this latest ability? On a planetary scale? A hundred years? A thousand? And then what?

And then what, indeed.

That was the real question, wasn’t it?

Humanity had proven to be a predatory species almost without parallel, but now they were standing on the threshold of becoming members of a very elite group. There were, at present, only a handful of species in this galaxy capable of roaming the universe, so the question being posed wasn’t a trivial one.

Should they be stopped. Now. Before a sufficient number acquired the ability to jump as this human woman had. The Krell had already voiced their opinion: humans should be left alone to develop without interference. The Aerons, at least the Pinks among them, had also decided against any interference, while the Blues and Greens were actively trying to manipulate the outcome. The Sidions viewed humanity as a plague and wanted them destroyed, but for now their political leadership was divided on how best to accomplish this. Active intervention would draw a violent response from both the Krell and the Aerons and that might lead to open hostilities the likes of which hadn’t been seen in the galaxy for almost a million years.

Which left Jim’s people, the Centaurons, as the deciding factor. If the Centaurons and the Sidions formed an alliance, war might be averted but humanity would in short order be eradicated. If his people sided with the Krell and the Aerons, humanity might be saved but at the cost of open warfare, as the Sidions seemed unwilling to negotiate any outcome that didn’t include humanity’s obliteration. Jim’s task was therefore quite simple: to determine which side the Centaurons would take in this dispute he needed to develop an understanding of how potentially dangerous humanity could become if turned loose on the universe.

But there was one other concern. An even greater concern.

The Others. The deciders, the final arbiters, the group known as the Phage. 

There was evidence that the Others had detected humanity’s first infantile interferences with time, and they never allowed such species free reign. And no one tried to stop the Others, for they were simply too powerful.  If they were indeed coming to this solar system, time was now of the essence, and a decision could not be put off for much longer. 

He regarded the two humans in stasis with something akin to wonder. Few species evolved to permit travel at the Speed of Thought, and fewer still evolved that could bend the laws of Time, yet this species was on the edge of the abyss, among the few that had evolved both abilities, and at the same time. The reality of this development was almost beyond comprehension, because if left on their own these humans could, in time, evolve to challenge the abilities of the Others.

And that one simple fact, more than any other, was what had long filled Jim with a sense of wonder. But now, a molten sensation of dread filled his mind—for even as he stared at Callahan in the stasis chamber the human’s form began to pulse and shimmer…just before it disappeared.

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…

[app \\ to one in paradise]

Sorry for the prolonged absence; I’ve been in and out and deep within some pressing medical issues once again. Thankfully these were not vision related but even so it was difficult to sit up long enough to write anything even remotely coherent. On the flip side, I did some mental outlining of a few new arcs to finish up Harry’s story, so maybe there was a reason?

[Bizet \\ Carmen Suite No 1: Intermezzo/Interlude]

88/68

The General stood over the console, staring at Callahan’s beacon as it drifted sometime in the past — but then it disappeared.

“Where is he now?” the General growled.

“I don’t know,” the operator said. “He’s disappeared.”

“What does that tell us?” the General asked.

“The future…somehow they’ve moved from the past to the future…”

“But that’s not possible, is it?!”

“It’s the only explanation that fits,” the operator sighed, resting his forehead on his hands.

Yet on another screen the General now saw Callahan and Didi Goodman thrashing around in the orca pool, and he bolted from the control room and ran as fast as he could for the pool area. When he got there both Callahan and Goodman were treading water while two orcas circled them, in effect preventing the humans from getting out of the water.

Yet now, as the General entered the vast cavern, the two orcas stopped and raised their heads, eyeing the General as he came to the water’s edge—and then they moved off, made no further moves to prevent either Callahan or Goodman from moving to get out of the pool.

“You two better get out while you can,” the General said from the water’s edge, but even from ten meters he could see that both Callahan and Goodman were blue again, so he called for a medical team to meet him in the pool area. Gurneys were summoned and about the time Brendan and Deborah Eisenstadt arrived Callahan was being wrapped in heated blankets, while docs worked on Didi Goodman.

“What’s wrong with Didi?” Eisenstadt said as she walked up to the General.

“Extreme hypothermia,” he said, “and it’s led to some kind of rhythm disturbance.”

“Rhythm? You mean cardiac?”

The General nodded and when Brendan began crying Eisenstadt moved to comfort the man-child. She looked at Harry as EMTs began pushing his gurney towards the clinic and he too seemed rigid with extreme cold, but at least he smiled once and shot her a limp thumb’s up.

“What happened to them?” Brendan sighed. “Where’d they go?”

“We’re not completely sure,” the General lied. “When they’re better you’ll have to talk to them. Maybe you can find out more.”

+++++

Two hours later Callahan lay on a hospital bed drifting in and out of sleep, his mind a hazy mist of shifting memory, the events of their brief trip to the red ship gone from memory. He still felt icy cold—despite the heated blankets and the warm fluid coming in by IV. Then he saw an intense and very brief flash of light through his closed eyes and he struggled back to wakefulness…

…only to find Jim, the very tall alien from the high desert, kneeling over him.

“Are you aware of me?” Jim thought into Callahan’s consciousness.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Do you know where you have been?”

“I’ve been somewhere?”

“Yes. Do you recall meeting people? Perhaps even important people?”

“No. I can’t remember anything that happened today.”

“I must touch you now. Do not be afraid,” Jim thought as he leaned close, putting the tips of his fingers around Callahan’s head.

Callahan felt an intense vibration then, just before a flood of unlocked memory washed through his conscious mind. And as his mind began to process these events he reeled under the weight of so many incomprehensible consequences of the people and places he’d just seen…

“You have not yet learned to retrieve these memories,” Jim thought now. “Tell me, what did Roosevelt tell you?”

Callahan told him.

“You are no longer safe here,” Jim thought bluntly. “You must come with me.”

Callahan looked at the ECG hooked up to Didi—and then he noticed that her cardiac trace had simply stopped, almost like the machine had frozen somewhere in time, and he started to say something to Jim…

…but Jim stopped him. “Time has stopped for you now, at least while I am here.”

“What about Didi? Shouldn’t she come with me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Are you saying the General might try something?”

“If he finds that he can manipulate time through you he could do great damage.”

“What about Brendan?” Callahan added, almost as an afterthought.

“The boy can do nothing without you…at least for now.”

“But—am I missing something?”

“He may change. We will reevaluate.”

“But if you think we’re in danger here, why not bring him?”

“He represents a danger to us that we may not be able to control.”   

Callahan nodded while he drifted through the implications of that revelation, then he made up his mind. “Okay, let’s go…”

+++++

The control room operator saw a flash on the monitor that was displaying a non-stop feed from the clinic, and when the monitor cleared both Callahan and the woman with him were gone. He hit the alarm button and began locking down the facility, and just moments passed before the General made it to the room.

“What’s happened?” he growled, rubbing much needed sleep from his burning eyes.

“Callahan and the woman with him…they just disappeared. They were both asleep, and then there was a flash on the screen. When that cleared, they were gone!”

“Kill the alarm,” the General sighed, “and alert the surveillance team up at Sea Ranch. Is the tracking beacon still on him?”

“No sir. You can see it there on the monitor, on the ECG stand.”

“It was on when he went to sleep,” the General muttered, “so how did he know what it was, or even where it was?”

+++++

When Callahan came to he was in a heated mesh cot of some kind, and a – physician? – of some sort was hovering over him, looking at a display that seemed to hover in the air over his “bed”. The physician adjusted something there and the bed grew warmer and Callahan felt himself relaxing for the first time in what felt like days. Still, he looked around and couldn’t see Didi and a wave of panic washed over him.

“Where’s the woman who was with me?” he said aloud, forgetting that Jim’s people were telepaths…

“She is in the room next to this one,” he heard in his mind. “Her hypothermia is much more severe. We are adjusting thyroid levels and boosting electrolyte infusions.”

“Is she in any danger?”

“No, not at all.”

“Where is Jim?”

“He will return as soon as I have finished my studies.”

“Studies?”

“Yes, you are my first human patients.”

“Uh, well, okay. Gee, have you ever taken a course in bedside manners?”

“No? To what are you referring?”

“Never mind.”

Jim came in just then and he walked over to the wall and operated a display; a portion of the curved white wall turned into a transparent window of some kind and Callahan saw a vast blue planet below, and one visible limb of the planet was bathed in a vast auroral display. Greenish pulsing labyrinthine glows snaked along the horizon line, yet just below the only surface Callahan could see looked like an endless plain of slowly swirling clouds.

“Where are we?” Callahan said aloud.

“You call this world Neptune. When we come around to the side closest to your home star you will be able to see Saturn and Uranus from here.”

“Is this another one of your outposts? What did you call the other one? A Dyson sphere?”

“No, this is a military ship, what you might call a type of aircraft carrier.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Harry, but there is much going on that you are unaware of, and several groups are now maneuvering into position. We fear some may try to influence events.”

“Influence…?” Callahan sighed. “What do you mean?”

Jim stood by the window, looking down on the storms raging within the swirling cloud deck below the ship, then he turned and looked directly at Harry. “There is no easy way to say this, so pardon me if this sounds thoughtless. There are two species on your world on the brink of profound genetic change…”

“Genetic?”

“Yes. These changes could directly influence the nature of time, therefore these changes have the potential to permanently alter the normal state of the universe. Many other worlds have sent teams here to study these changes, to estimate the potential for disruption before these changes manifest throughout either or both species.”

“But…you said you see the need for military intervention?”

“Not against any inhabitants of your home world.”

“You mean…one of these other groups could turn hostile? Towards us?”

“We are examining this. One group has been assembling military and political leaders from your recent past, with obvious implications. Another is gathering noted philosophers and thinkers and relocating them, but we have not discovered where or why they are doing this.”

Callahan thought about that for a moment, then: “So, why are you here?”

“The leaders of my world are concerned there could be war.”

“War? Between who?”

“There are four groups, not counting our own, presently studying events on your planet. It is thought that at some point open conflict may break out between these groups. Or even within one of these groups. If that happens we want to be in a position to stop such a conflict from spreading.”

“With this ship?”

“Yes.”

Callahan swallowed hard, his mind suddenly filling with dark images of impossible doom. “And how would you prevent such a conflict?”

“If there is no Earth, there can be no conflict.” Jim looked at him for a moment, then he spoke again. “I am sorry, Harry.”

Callahan nodded, but he could understand Jim’s dilemma. “That’s okay. I think I see what you’re up against.”

Jim sighed, if such a thing could indeed be transmitted by thought, then he spread his hands wide and shrugged. “This is why I wanted you here. I can protect you here.”

“I understand,” Callahan said, desperately trying not to think about his predicament while Jim was so close.

“When Goodman is well we will move her to this room.”

“Thank you.”

Jim and the physician left him then, but the window was still “open” and he watched as the auroral display grew closer and closer until it was almost directly beneath the ship, and he felt lost as he watched the writhing display – without once thinking that he was on a warship in orbit around a gas giant. At one point he thought it would be better if the lights weren’t quite so bright and within a millisecond the lights in the room dimmed. He experimented further, deliberately thinking that he was now too cold—and almost instantly warmth began to flow through the mesh into his body. He tried ‘I’m hungry’ next, and some unseen nutrient flow passed through the mesh into his bloodstream, and again within moments he began to feel satiated, then almost full.

The implications of such technology were staggering. ‘If I think I’m having trouble sleeping? Does that mean automatic sleep comes on? And what if I need to use the toilet?’ What were the limits of such a device, he wondered? ‘Can I ask it to take me back to earth?’

Then the obvious hit him, and hit him hard. He didn’t need this device to return to earth, because he already possessed the ability to move through time. No, now all he needed to do was wait for Didi to be moved into this room, then he’d make his move.

+++++

Jim and the physician watched Callahan’s thoughts take form on a monitor overhead, and though Jim regretted doing so, the solution he needed now was the obvious one.

“Put him to sleep,” Jim sighed.

“For how long?”

“Five of his years.”

“That may present problems. Their physiologies are not well suited to these conditions.”

“That cannot be helped. Do it.”

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…

[Gary Wright \\ Dream Weaver]

Back into Harry’s world as the eighty-eighth key begins to wind down to a conclusion…but don’t worry, you still have time for tea.

[insensatez \\ sylvia telles]

Chapter 67.1

Callahan stood by the edge of the pool — staring into the blue as if transfixed by something only he could see. Shadows passed by not far below, yet even deeper, perhaps hundreds of feet below the surface, he could just make out a faint, iridescent glow only a shade or two lighter — yet even so the whole scene appeared out of place. The water, he told himself, should have simply faded away to black, not grown lighter with increasing depth, yet when an orca swam by the creature was backlighted, and that most definitely was just plain wrong. But, then again, everything about this place seemed completely wrong.

The walls seemed to have been blasted away to create this “pool”, yet the pool appeared to cover several acres or more in total area, and it also appeared to be impossibly deep — and while he didn’t know a lot about construction he’d been involved in several large projects and he didn’t see how this cavern could have possibly been man made. But how could a natural formation like this exist, undetected, on earth?

The immediate conclusion he reached wasn’t as far-fetched sounding as it first seemed to Callahan. Hadn’t he just spent a year inside a Dyson sphere, allegedly billions of light years distant… 

But as he reached for a memory of his time there he found it missing. Indeed, now those first days inside the sphere seemed to be the only period he still remembered, but how could that be? 

He remembered the Air Force general, however, and that time just weeks ago when he’d flown to Hawaii with Brendan’s father. And right now this general and one of the men in lab coats was walking his way.

“Harry Callahan,” the General said, holding out his right hand. “Nice to see you again.”

Callahan took the man’s hand, trying to hide his disorientation behind a minor grin. “You too,” he managed to say.

“This is Ralph Richardson,” the General added. “He’ll be running one of the research labs here.”

Callahan took this man’s hand and he noted his firm grip and clear, direct eyes. “I hate to ask, but where the devil are we?”

Richardson spoke now: “About five hundred feet beneath Palo Alto. Do you know where the linear accelerator crosses the 280? We’re about a half mile southwest of there.”

“No shit? Given the size of this pool I assumed we must be on another planet.”

The General nodded. “We haven’t been briefed-in on that aspect of the project, but from what little I’ve been able to put together so far I assume it has something to do with teleportation.”

“What?” Callahan muttered. “You mean like ‘beam me up, Scotty?’”

The General shrugged. “Like I said, yo no se, ya know? By the way, you look a little chilly, if you don’t mind me saying so. Would you like to see your quarters now, maybe shower-up before lunch?”

“Quarters? You mean…we’re staying here?”

“After all the hullabaloo up at Sea Ranch, you bet you’re staying here. At least until we can get a handle on what that was all about?”

“I see. So, what you’re saying is you have no idea how we got here because you haven’t been briefed on some unknown aspect of a project that may or may not have something to do with teleportation? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Yes,” the General said, tossing in another little shrug.

“Well, ain’t that just ducky.”

“Depends on your point of view, Mister Callahan. You’re alive right now and we want to keep you that way. There are some very bad actors out there gunning for you and that kid…”

“Brendan?”

“Yes, Brendan.”

“Why? I mean, what are they after?”

“You both have certain…abilities…that could easily be exploited if someone was of a mind to do so.”

“Exploited? What are you…”

“Let’s not play this game right now, Callahan. There are a bunch of things going on around here you know nothing about, but this ability you have, the ability to bend the laws of time, represents a very serious national security challenge, and right now about all you really need to know is there are several groups out looking for you — because they want to get their hands on you. They want to know how you do what you do, and to that end we’ve tried to round up everyone you might have demonstrated this ability to.”

Callahan blinked rapidly, then he turned and walked back to the water’s edge and looked down into the cobalt vastness. He saw an orca swim by perhaps ten feet down, but a second later the diffuse blue glow seemed to blaze for a moment and he thought it looked like a doorway had opened. And that’s when he thought he saw several orcas disappear inside the ship down there—just before the glow disappeared.

+++++

Deborah Eisenstadt sat beside Harry at lunch, but she was worried about him right now. After twenty minutes under a hot shower he was still shivering, and just now, when he tried to pick up his fork, his right hand had jerked so madly the utensil flew across the table before it rifled to the floor. His eyes were narrow slits and his skin excessively pale, yet after ten minutes more trying to eat his lips started to turn blue, and then his nail beds. Classic hypoxia, she thought…but why now?

Then she saw that Didi Goodman, the spy who had essentially raped him down on the beach, and she was shivering and cyanotic.

The General watched them for a minute, then got up to leave the dining room — but not before he stopped beside Callahan to see if he was feeling better.

“You’re not looking too good, Callahan,” the General sighed, gently placing his hand on Harry’s shoulder.

Then the air around Harry and Didi seemed to dissolve inside a blackish mist — just before they disappeared. Again.

+++++

‘Air cold and very humid. Inside that bucket. So I’m back on the Titanic…’

He reached out and felt the wood slats, felt the almost frozen condensation running down the varnished mahogany, then he felt Didi by his side.

“It’s starting all over again,” she whispered.

“You’re not pregnant again, are you?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” she teased.

“You sure? I mean…Brendan didn’t…?”

“I think I’d remember if he did…”

“Here now! What are you two doing up here?” one of two seamen said. “You two ain’t supposed to be…”

“Oh dear God!” the other sailor cried as he reached for the ship’s bell. “Iceberg! Dead ahead!” he shouted towards the bridge.

Callahan and Didi stood and both could see that this new iceberg was immense, and the ship’s speed inexorable. One of the seamen, Reggie Lee, picked up the growler and called the OOD, the Officer of the Deck, then he was telling the ship’s First Officer, Mr Murdoch, that there was a large iceberg “Right ahead.” 

‘This isn’t like last time,’ Harry said under his breath, and just then he felt Didi pressing close, her hand feeling for his in the icy night.

The sharply pointed bow began to swing ever so slowly to the left, but even without already knowing the outcome they could see now the inevitable looming just ahead. A propellor was cavitating aft of the stacks, suddenly causing the entire ship to vibrate as the hull leaned slightly into the turn — all this just before first contact. Then a wall of shattered ice vaulted onto the foredeck and it seemed just minutes passed before raw seawater hit the boilers, causing vast plumes of steam to roar up and out of the four stacks, and everyone moved to cover their ears as the piercing cry of steam vaulted hundreds of feet skyward, shattering the still night.

“Harry,” Didi said, her eyes now filling with tears, “I’m scared.”

“You two best get yourself on down to the deck and find your lifeboat stations,” Seaman Lee advised. “And good luck to you both.”

Harry nodded and began making his way down the frozen steel rungs of the ladder, trying not to look at the listing deck almost a hundred feet beneath his feet.

+++++

 The General heard screams and returned to the dining room, only to find Callahan and Goodman missing. He nodded again then slowly left the room.

+++++

He stood in the center of the control room, looking at banks of displays.

“Do you have a positive track on them?” the General said, glad the tracking device he’d put on Callahan’s back was working better now.

“Yessir,” an airman said. “Spring 1912, nearing the Grand Banks.”

“So, it’s the Titanic again.”

“Looks that way, sir.”

“What’s the locking signal look like?”

“It’s the new one, sir. Helium times Pi.”

“Same as yesterday’s?”

“Yessir.”

“Okay, let me know when they jump.”

+++++

Callahan felt sick, like his skin and bones were being stretched and somewhere in the middle of his gut he felt a bundle of hot pinpricks trying to push their way through his skin to open space. He swallowed hard, closed his eyes to the disorienting flow of black light until, seconds or hours later he felt something like a hard floor underfoot.

He was shivering again, but not from the cold. This time it was, he knew, pure fear.

But he opened his eyes and then blinked as he tried to comprehend where they were now.

Curved walls, pure red. No real ceiling, just a walkway suspended — like maybe around the inside-center of a toroidal structure? Yet it was the deep crimson red that most overwhelmed his senses, because he’d never seen anything even remotely like this place before.

Turning around he saw a circular opening that appeared to be some sort of large hatchway, and yet the number 2 was clearly emblazoned in bright white on the right side of this door. Didi was, apparently, now too petrified to move, but as he started to walk towards the doorway she reached out for his hand and pulled him close again.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

“Look at that door,” he said, pointing, “and tell me what you see.”

“It’s round…but, w-wait…isn’t that the number 2. And I think I recognize the typeface, too.”

“Yup, so apparently we’re inside something built by human hands.”

Then he heard footsteps. Quiet, too, like rubber soles on soft flooring, so Callahan turned to see who it was. And he saw a man, perhaps a little older than himself, accompanied by two women; one much younger and the other little more than a toddler. The man approached—but veered off to the curved wall, and once there he located a button and pushed it. A large window recessed into the toroid’s curved wall appeared, and beyond the glass—Earth. And as the toroid was spinning to provide gravity, the planet appeared to be spinning away slowly only a few hundred miles away.

With Didi still holding his hand, Callahan walked to the window and looked out over the Earth for a moment, then he looked at the man. “Do I know you?” Callahan asked.

“Doubtful,” the man sighed. “I’m Franklin Roosevelt, and no, I don’t think we’ve met.”

Didi was staring at the woman, and even though she appeared to be ignoring both Harry and herself, Didi could see the faintest traces of a smile on the woman’s face. “What’s so funny?” Didi finally asked the woman.

“You have your father’s eyes,” Claire Aubuchon said.

Which seemed the most preposterous thing Didi had ever heard. “You know my father?”

“Oh, perhaps – just a little.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“Well, once upon a time I was his mother.”

Didi started to tremble in earnest now. “You…you’re…what?”

“I think that,” FDR said, grinning madly now, “makes her your grandmother. And, oh yes, by the way, I’d like to introduce you to your daughter, Dana.”

Didi Goodman started to say something…

But Callahan managed to catch her as she passed out, saving her from another nasty fall.

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…

An earlier version of this story (from 2009) is still out there somewhere, but that original telling always felt wanting to me, incomplete, and perhaps like the proverbial the red-headed stepchild he was looking for resolution. At all of nine pages the story lacked detail enough to create a real arc, so I went to work on it a week or so ago and now the story weighs in at fifty plus pages and the original storyline is just barely discernible. You’ll need a fresh pot of tea for this one, and hopefully you’ll find this version an improvement.

[Rashida \\ Jon Lucien]

moonglow

What is life if not a little bit strange? Or strangely predictable as the case may be, but who knows, really, when all is said and done. Some feel life is simply the result of random chance and, occasionally, in coincidence, while others believe in fate and destiny and see the hidden hand of God in everything. This split, this dividing line between chance and destiny, or between reason and faith, is often hard to see in our day to day lives, and yet perhaps it is this disparity that accounts for the feelings we experience within the stranger encounters we face during this thing we comfortably like to call life.

Because people are strange, though often in ways strangely unpredictable to us — even within those times we think we see patterns of predictability. With an open mind you can get a kind of feel for this dividing line, yet once again it is the unpredictability of chance encounters that often leads us to greater truths.

As in: just when you think you’ve really got a handle on things, when you can finally see the true and righteous path ahead – that’s when everything you’ve taken for granted seems to vanish in the shadows, right there in the moonlight. All your paradigms shift, the earth heaves underfoot — leaving you breathless and all too often unsure of your judgement. Maybe when your children grow up and leave the nest, begin lives of their own but take an unexpected turn. Or an uncle you hardly knew leaves you his prized Bill Evans collection — on vinyl, for heaven’s sake — which would be swell if you hadn’t given your turntable to the Salvation Army…fifteen years ago. 

Or maybe your wife bails on you and apparently for no reason other than she wanted a change of scenery, but a few months later you find out she has been doing it with your best friend — and for the life of you nothing makes sense anymore. All your assumptions about life — like where you were going to live and who you were going to live with — go up in smoke. 

Yet as the earth heaves underfoot the righteous path ahead seems to dissolve in tepid mists of gray ambivalence. Grass so green it used to hurt your eyes turns to somber autumn leaves, suddenly dry underfoot and dying — and now there is no longer any doubt that falling leaves are without a care in the world. And when you start to feel sorry for yourself you tell yourself that you should be so lucky. But perhaps that’s because you forgot which side of the line you used to stand…?

So you go to work, do your job — you soldier on, despite your feelings of ambivalence. Maybe you’re tired of the grind but too old to start over. Besides, you did that once and it made no difference. You carry around unhappiness like a turtle carries his shell; wherever you go it follows right along with you — like a shadow you wish would just go away and leave you be.

But…isn’t life strange? Somewhere along this path you begin to believe that your happiness has grown intertwined with another soul passing your way. Intertwined with her shadow, perhaps. Two shadows, if you will, standing in the moonglow.

So yeah, hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work you go. Up at seven and get the coffee on, shower and shave. Yet the coffee always tastes the same — the same as it did in that other life. When life still seemed new and full of the moment. 

But life ain’t so new now, is it? Not after she packed up and left you. Not after she closed the door on that past and your house grew quiet and still. Nothing tasted the same in that quiet, not even life.

Your hair is quite a bit grayer this year, but don’t kid yourself. That’s white hair up there now, Slick. The crow’s feet astride your eyes, your ‘worry lines’, are a little deeper too, but do you really feel so old?

Your wife calls you. Make that your ex-wife. She sounds all wrong, all kinds of unhappy, and for a moment you feel kind of happy as you bask in her unexpected misery— because she deserves it, right? Then she’s crying and you remember what those tears used to feel like, don’t you? Your old friend, she tells you, who also happens to be her new husband, is in the hospital and he’s been diagnosed with some kind of rare bone cancer. He has a few months “at most” she tells you, and she should know. And yet, why doesn’t the news hurt more? Can’t you feel pain now, or did she pack that up and take it with her? Did she really take that away from you too? Or do you really, maybe deep down inside, hurt for her? And for your old friend? The friend who stole your wife?

You don’t know what to say so you speak the liturgy of all you’re supposed to at times like this. Things like “what can I do to help?” or “Gee, I’m so sorry to hear that.” And who knows, maybe you meant what you thought those words were supposed to mean. But you’re not happy now, that much you do know, and you really don’t give a shit what she feels. Do you? 

No more shadows in the moonglow. You know that much is true because you’ve seen it with your own two eyes. You’ve felt that pain. She gave it to you.

The academic year is at an end. School’s out and this is going to be your first summer without her. The last few days of classes come and go and you walk from campus to your house. Exams are tallied and grades submitted, then you pack a suitcase and grab your old Nikon and hop on the T and head over to Logan.

Where to go this summer? Walk up to the Swissair counter and ask the woman there where the next flight is headed and she says Zurich so that’ll do just fine. You settle in a second floor seat inside an old 747 and look at all the bags being loaded and for a moment you wonder how so many people can fit inside one metal tube. Then you ask yourself ‘why would so many want to? Why are so many people running away?’

Maybe because, after all is said and done, we’re all the same? Walking along the same path — maybe even in the moonglow, right? Together? There aren’t any lines dividing us, not really. We’re all just a little confused about faith and reason so we’re just running now. Running and running, round and round.

A polite young thing comes down the aisle and offers you a moist warm towelette and a glass of Champagne and you stare at the bubbles, wonder where they’re going in such a hurry. ‘The same place I am,’ you tell yourself with an ironic little smile. All of us, all on the same road. Bubbles and all.

An hour after takeoff the polite young thing rolls a silver cart down the aisle and serves you freshly carved prime rib and creamed spinach and what, you wonder, could possibly be more absurd. A hundred years ago your immigrant grandparents were sailing to America across this same God forsaken ocean, and here you are going back in time, making the same journey in reverse as a polite young thing serves you prime rib while flying along inside a metal tube at six hundred miles per hour. Life has become so fucking absurd, hasn’t it? But when was it not? Can you remember a time?

You land in Zurich early the next morning and walk out of the metal tube into another self-contained glass and metal cube and then it hits you: you haven’t had a breath of fresh air in half a day and now you have to take-in this conditioned crap called air for another few hundred yards. Absurd. Even taking a breath has become an act of audacious absurdity.

So you take an escalator down to the basement and activate your Railpass and hop on the local to the main station on the river in downtown Zurich — and before you know it you’re inside yet another metal tube breathing even more conditioned air and now this just seems plain silly. You get off the train at the main station and look at the departure board and there’s an express to Interlaken leaving in a few minutes so you hop into the lone First Class carriage and find a nice single seat just as the doors close and the train pulls away slowly from the platform. And you’re breathing canned air again, aren’t you? Inside another metal tube?

You want to scream, but why bother all these nice breathing people.

You wander around inside a jet-lagged haze of stale coffee and dreamless sleep, burning eyes focused on urban sprawl then open pasture that springs up out of nowhere. Another polite young thing comes by with more stale coffee and you nod thanks, because…why not? You’ve been on this train a hundred times before and yet it almost always feels the same. Like home. Maybe because your grandparents moved to America from here long before the war. The first one. When you finished school you worked here, first with the Department of State, even if this was the least foreign posting in all the world — to you, anyway, and then with the UN. All that led to a job in the White House, and those were the worst days of your life. Until recently, anyway.

You still have family here, in Wengen. They used to keep a small dairy herd; now they manage small herds of tourists. You visit them as often as possible because for some reason these pastures and valleys still feel like home. America, you realized once upon a long time ago, is a country of the unhomed. Lost, perpetually wandering. No conception of the past — because there is no past. America has always been about discarding the past on the short cut to reinventing itself.

Interlaken glides into view and you smile at the pristine lake rimmed by towering peaks. You get off the train and grab a taxi for your usual hotel, the stately old Victoria Jungfrau, and once in your room you call your cousin and let her know you’re in town. Plans for the evening are made and you take a nap with the windows thrown wide open to the fresh mountain air. There’s nothing stale about this air, and you feel at ease for the first time in months.

Tradition reigns supreme in these ancient valleys, and so no one understands how you can be so suddenly divorced from a woman you promised to spend your life with. It makes no sense to your family here; most came to Georgetown for your marriage and when things like divorce happen people’s expectations change. Marriage is a forever kind of thing, and this uniquely American predilection for reinventing oneself seems particularly grotesque to them. Your cousins simply don’t understand the why or the how of such things. Even less so once they figure out that you too don’t understand any better than they do. When you tell them that the best man in your wedding betrayed you, they understand less and less. The subject is quietly changed when they read the pain behind your eyes, because all your life you’ve been like an open book to these people. So, they accept what is. The line between reason and faith grows a little blurry for a moment.

Elizabeth, your favorite cousin, is a little more empathetic, but then again she would be. She was famous once, a ski racer and a kind of icon in her own way. Now she is the rather stately looking matron of a family of young ski racers; her husband is an architect but he also runs the family owned network of hotels in Wengen and Murren. They are established here now, because they have always been rooted in the loamy soils of these valleys. As your family has been, for millennia.

And as an American you miss that sense of belonging to a place. You can’t understand why your grandparents left this valley. It makes no sense — because constantly reinventing oneself is a relentlessly exhausting ordeal. You can never just be — because you’re always too wrapped up with becoming.

You walk with her the next day, to the home beside the lower pastures where your grandfather once lived. “You seem so unhappy there,” she tells you. “Why don’t you come home now?”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” you tell her. “But I’m an American now.”

“That’s a foolish state of mind,” she reminds you. “You always seem so happy when you are here. You were born here. You are a citizen.”

You walk through the old home. It is spotless, of course. Pristine. Family still lives here but they are all working the high pastures now that the snow is gone.

“This is your home,” she reminds you and the words almost hurt — because you know the truth behind them. And the impossibility within.

You slice apples and cheese in the sunshine and talk about her children. She wants to know more about what happened. To your marriage. Because she really doesn’t understand how something so right could fall apart so suddenly. And here, now, the line returns, and it has grown more severe.

And it’s impossible, this talk of coming back to live here. You’re too different now. You’d never fit in. The hearts and minds in this valley are wrapped in granite, covered in snow, and you’d never be able to break through all that ice. Because you don’t want to. Because what they have should remain unsullied. Marriage is good. Marriages shouldn’t fall apart. Marriage has been the bedrock underlying everything in this valley — for a thousand years. Who are you to bring such a contagion here? 

You walk along the same old trails your fathers walked and the earth underfoot pulls at you. You pass a farm and there are puppies for sale, Bernese Mountain Dogs. Big, boisterous things full of big, loyal hearts. You talk to the people there and one of the pups seems to be following you around the yard and you can feel him calling out to you. You stop and pick him up and hold his face up to yours and the union is instantaneous, like a slap across the face. He is yours now, and you are his. The decision is made, arrangements set aside for another day. You walk away and are quite happy with this decision. Perhaps it’s time to leave all that other life’s nagging questions behind.

Like…he was your best friend. For years. And you left without talking to him even once, even when you knew he was going to die. Soon. Did all those years stand for nothing, not enough for even a simple ‘goodbye?’ Reason? Faith? Does anything really matter to you anymore?

And your wife? Your ex-wife? She was your friend too, once upon a time, and when she called to tell you her new husband was going to die you knew she wanted to hear comforting words from you. 

Did you meet her need as you’d met so many of her other needs? Was that why she left you? Solid, relentless work ten months a year followed by a couple of months of unrelenting wanderlust? Did you leave her in the dust of all her broken dreams? Dreams you’d spent so many years passing by? Did she hurt so much?

So here you are on the outside looking in. Did your grandparents feel this way, once upon their time? What made them run away from this valley? What makes you need this place? Why do you keep coming back for more?

Is it because sometimes you fuck up, even with good intentions stuck halfway in mind?  Did you cross that line between faith and reason one time too many? Like maybe you’ve been digging a hole for yourself for so long you’ve lost sight of the fact that you can’t stop digging. You kept on digging even when you knew your marriage dead—or maybe because you were just dead wrong. You could hide from the consequences of these questions during faculty meetings and even with your students, and maybe you were pretty good at keeping consequences from yourself, too. But she knew all about consequences — because she lived them every day. And she knew, in the end, what your silence really meant. Maybe she just got tired of waiting for you to see the truth. Maybe she lost faith in reason.

And it always comes back to that, doesn’t it? Like that time when a real smart-ass student asked you one of those really profound questions — something mind-bending like ‘Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?’ — and you were left so completely befuddled by the question that not even another pint of Guinness could clear away the rain in your brain. Because maybe you too had lost your faith in reason?

You figure out the details of importing the puppy to the States and the day finally arrives. You pick him up early in the morning and all your cousins take you to the central station for the train ride back to Zurich. Swissair allows him in the cabin — as long as he remains in his carrier — but really, just how much trouble could he possibly be? He’s just a puppy!

The very same polite young thing came around with her towelettes and Champagne and she cooed when she saw Odysseus in his little red carrier, then she asked to hold him. You were only too willing, weren’t you? She was, after all, a rather cute polite young thing.

Yet so too was Odysseus, and soon enough all the other polite young things came around for a coo and a cuddle. You even broke the rules and held him in your lap during takeoff, and he watched the world rotate then disappear beneath the clouds before he turned and licked your chin.

Such a good natured pup. Such a loving bundle of joy.

The polite young thing wheeled along her cart of prime rib down the aisle once again and this time she even offered up a slice or two for the pup and as soon as you unzipped the top of his carrier young Odysseus exploded upward like a sea-launched ballistic missile, careening forth with the velocity of a schizoid kangaroo on speed, ricocheting off the curved walls of the upper deck before landing at the top of the stairs just outside of the cockpit — where he dropped a Boston-sized turd the color and consistency of creamed spinach — before bounding down the gracefully curved stairway that led to the main passenger cabin.

You followed. Not particularly gracefully after you stepped in his steaming turd, but you flew down the steps in record time — just in time to see your pup racing towards the coach cabin at the rear of the airplane, with two more polite young things already in hot pursuit. 

They chased the wretched creature down one aisle of the 747 all the way through the coach cabin, and Odysseus arced around the aft heads — pausing there thoughtfully to dump another load — before coming up the parallel aisle on the other side of the aircraft. The pup really seemed to be enjoying this game, too, and lots of people were laughing and having a fine old time. Until you caught him, anyway. Then, after you managed to get him into his carrier again you looked at the remains of your lunch on the ceiling and all over the cabin floor before walking to the head to clean his crap off your shoes. No one seemed to think the pup was particularly cute by that point, least of all the polite young thing left to clean up the mess all over the cabin.

But another plate appeared and the polite young thing sat beside you for a while, playing with the puppy, of course, while you ate.

“Perhaps he didn’t want to leave his home,” she offered — politely — after you told her about the pup and your grandparents and all that. “Maybe that’s why he is so anxious.”

“I know the feeling,” you managed to say.

“Oh?”

“I had a difficult time convincing myself not to stay,” you told the girl. “Sometimes I feel like a tumbleweed, just blowing along where the wind takes me.”

“What stopped you?”

And you had a hard time answering that one, didn’t you? You swallowed hard and quickly turned and looked out the window, hoping maybe she wouldn’t see the tears in your eyes. You told her about your best friend and your (ex-)wife and all the unfinished business you’d left behind, notably not going to the hospital to talk with your oldest friend. You know, the one on his deathbed. 

“Okay, so you go home and you finish this business. Then what? Is your job so important?”

“Some people think so.”

“But not you?”

“No, not me.”

“If you are so unhappy, maybe it’s time you do something about it.”

“Maybe.”

She patted you on the knee before she got up to tend to the other passengers and that simple gesture felt utterly remarkable, didn’t it? Because no one had touched you with anything like this girl’s empathy, and you could still feel where her hand had been in that one little slice of time several minutes later.

And you realized that not only were you still on the outside looking in, you were really quite alone out there.

Except for that little ball of fur curled up in his carrier down there beside your feet.

A few minutes later the polite young thing drops by and asks for your telephone number and she doesn’t explain why and you don’t question her, you just pull out your old Mont Blanc and scribble the number down on the slip of paper she handed you.

You smiled at the polite young thing when you left the plane, and it was kind of funny how your eyes lingered on her hand.

+++++

Your stomach burns, and you can’t sleep, and by that point the puppy has eaten all your running shoes and what the fuck, where would you run to, anyway? Classes start in a few days and you are finishing up the reserve reading list for your senior seminar because that has to be filed at the Kennedy School Library by noon tomorrow.

Odysseus is now Ody, and not without good reason. Ody, you seem to recall, was the idiot dog in the old Garfield comic strip, and that Ody was truly clueless but always happier than hell. And so is your Ody. He could run into a rock wall and come back smiling, because that’s just who he is. Nothing makes him unhappy…nothing. Except being ignored. And…isn’t that odd?

But not so you.

Nothing seems to make you happy these days.

Your old friend the vice president called you the night before and asked you to serve on a presidential commission. You neither accepted nor declined, but told your old friend you’d let him know.

Could you do that again? Live that life? Didn’t you come to Boston to get away from all that? The state dinners at the White House. The endless parade of self-important buffoonery. Lunch at Cosmos Club and endless nights on flights to Moscow or Beijing with SecState. Wasn’t once enough?

You look in the mirror as steam from the hot water tap begins to obscure the reflection you don’t really need to look at anymore. The crow’s feet are deeper now, the gray hair a little more white, only now Ody is there staring at you, wondering when you’ll grab the leash and take him for a run.

You look at him and snarl: “Stop eating my shoes and maybe we’ll go for a run! Okay?”

He shakes his head and walks to the back door and you hear his discontent as he slips through the doggie door to the relative freedom of the fenced-in yard, which reminds you it’s time to scoop the poop again. The glassed in back porch is his now and he has a bed and a pile of toys and easy access to the yard, but your little backyard isn’t exactly a high alpine pasture, is it?

No, it isn’t.

The phone rings. It’s Margaret. Maggie. Your (ex-)wife, the one who left the broomstick in the corner by the ‘fridge. She’s calling from work. Tom, your oldest friend in the world, has taken a turn for the worse.

“Robert, he really wants to talk to you.”

“Any reason I should — that you haven’t mentioned already?”

“He’s dying, Bobby.” You remembered that pleading voice, didn’t you? How she only called you Bobby as a last resort. “Please,” she added, tossing in a little insult to go with the injury.

“I’ll try. This afternoon, maybe.”

So Ody came in from the yard right after you found an old pair of sneakers in a hall closet and at least he was happy now. After an hours walk around Cambridge Common he seemed content again…

And the phone rang again. 

“This is Heidi. Perhaps you remember me?”

“Heidi?”

“I was your flight attendant last month, when you returned with the puppy?”

“Ah, yes, how are you?”

“I have the day free and I wondered if you might like to meet up?”

“Sure, that sounds nice. What did you have in mind?”

“We are at the Hilton, at Logan. Could you pick us up?”

“We?”

“Oh, sorry, just a figure of speech.”

“Ah.”

“Say about noon? I am in room 412.”

“412?”

“Yes, just come on up.”

“Alright,” you say to the stirring in your groin. “About noon, then.”

Ody is staring at you again. His eyes sparkle, and he seems amused.

+++++

You pull the cover off the old 911 in the garage and as the weather’s nice you pop off the Targa and put it in the front boot. Trickle charger off the battery terminals then check the fluid levels before you start her up and let her idle for a minute, then back out of the garage and drive down the ancient alley and off you go, down Mass Avenue towards downtown. Traffic isn’t too bad and there’s a snap in the air that feels a little like autumn.

Windows up when you hit the Sumner Tunnel and you immediately regret leaving the top off, but that’s life. You park at the Hilton and take the elevator up to four and find her room. Then a gentle knock on the door and there she is, in shorts and a polo shirt and wearing a smile brighter than the sun. She slips into a pair of sneakers and grabs a little backpack and she’s ready to go.

“So,” you said to her as the two of you stepped inside the elevator, “what would you like to do?”

“First I want to see the puppy, then you will let me take you to lunch.”

And you smiled at that, didn’t you? You hadn’t expected someone so bold.

You opened the door to the car for her and she didn’t like that. “I expected you to have an old Mercedes cabriolet. Why a Porsche?”

“Timeless lines, I guess.”

“And that appeals to you?”

“It does.”

“You do not belong here, Robert.”

“I know.”

“I do not have to return until tomorrow afternoon. Does that appeal to you, as well?”

And you looked at the invitation in her oceanic blue eyes just before she smiled at you.

+++++

You walked around the Commons, the three of you, the next morning, and she held your hand for a while.

“Will you take the job in Washington?” she asked at one point.

And you shook your head. “No. I can’t go down that road again.”

“So? You will stay here and teach?”

“Do you mind if I ask you something?”

She smiled. “Of course I do. To answer a question with another question…?”

“What about you?”

“Me?” she asked.

“Yes. What are your plans?”

“Robert, this all sounds so very serious.”

“Okay.”

“I suppose I will continue to fly. Does this seem natural to you?”

“I have to teach this year, but after that I don’t know.”

“And what are you thinking of, dear Robert?”

“What it would feel like to wake up by your side — everyday.”

“Yes, this is serious. Oh, my…”

“And that must annoy you. Sorry.”

“I am not annoyed, Robert. I finally called you because I could not get you out of my mind, and I had to know…”

“I see. And what do you know now that you didn’t know before?”

“Your dog snores.”

“He does. And don’t forget…his farts stink.”

“I usually come her twice a week, and I have at least one night off. We could see if…”

“I know what I see, Heidi, and I know how I feel.”

“And after a year? Then what? You return to Wengen?”

And you nodded yes, didn’t you?

“You could turn your back on all this?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“And what if I wanted to come live here? Then what?”

“Then we would do that.”

“I see,” she said.

“Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“I think maybe this is so, to live here at least for a while. But…”

“But…?”

“There are other things I would like to do.”

“Okay.”

“Is everything so easy with you, Robert?”

It used to be. At least that’s what you wanted to say to her. “Actually, I think I’m rather grumpy.”

“Ah, so you are trying to fall in love, are you not? You are only showing me the easy side of your personality.”

“Isn’t that what everyone does in the beginning?”

She smiled again. “Only if you’ve something to hide.”

“I snore.”

“I know. And your farts smell not so good too, I think.”

+++++

You dropped her at the Hilton then beat the afternoon rush in time to take Ody out for a quick walk. You showered and changed then took the Red Line from the Yard down to Mass Gen, all the while trying not to smile at the remains of the day. 

Yet you had always hated this place, this house of dis-ease, mainly because it took Margaret from you. It sucked the life out of your marriage and left a dried out husk to wither in the sun. But what did you expect? She did her residency in oncology, and all that was to be expected. You knew that going in. Now, as you walked over to the Cancer Center, you took a too familiar elevator up to the patient floor, lost in thoughts of Heidi and Wengen and doing your best to ignore the hideous hospital smell assaulting your senses. A couple of residents got in and chattered about drug interactions until the elevator doors opened again, and it’s kind of funny, but why does “interaction” stick out in your mind even now? Maybe something to do with dividing lines?

But wasn’t that what this whole attitude thing of yours all about? Some kind of surreptitious interaction between you and Margaret and Tom that only you were privy to?

And there she was. Margaret, at the nurses station making notes and additions to patient charts as you walked up to her side, then you leaned over next to her, as ever your disarmingly charming self.

“Hey Kid.”

“Hey, Bobby. Thought you were coming yesterday?”

“Getting ready for classes. Something always comes up.” Oh, weren’t you punny?

She shrugged, flipped through a stack of lab reports, scribbled furiously on one of the charts, cursing under her breath as she wrote.

“Well? What am I doing here?”

“Tom wants to talk to you. And I’d like you to listen for once in your life, if you think you can do that?”

Maybe you can’t remember the way you crossed your arms reflexively, maybe even belligerently, and while you could tell Margaret was prepared to be pissed at you, for some unknown reason she didn’t go there. She seemed too tired that night to be angry at you anymore. Too tired, you thought, to feel much of anything anymore.

Did you do that to her?

“Alright. So, how is he?”

“Look Bobby, I’m not going to lie to you. This is it. Tonight, maybe tomorrow. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“He’s dying? I think I got that a while ago. What’s changed?”

“White counts.”

“Who’s handling his treatment?”

“Petersen.”

“Okay, so what else has changed? What new ground do we have to cover?”

“You know, Robert, I understand this is hard for you to grasp, but we were unhappy. You and I. We’d been unhappy for years. Everyone knew it. Tom knew it, he wanted to help…”

“I’m sure he did,” you said, troweling on the sarcasm extra thick.

“Just shut up and listen.”

“Right.”

“You’re wrong about that, Robert. He was the one that got me to a counselor, he was the friend that worked his ass off to keep us together, and I fell in love with him all over again because of all he did — to help us. Really, all he wanted was to help. I can’t believe you won’t accept that, Bobby. It wasn’t what he…he didn’t set out to break us apart. And neither did I. But, yes, you’re right. It happened.”

“And then God, bless his little heart, leaned over and tossed a few thunderbolts your way? Just rewards and all that…”

“Goddamnit Bobby, please tell me you don’t think that way. I mean it. Are you some kind of narcissistic child? Can’t you grow up? Or don’t you have feelings for anyone but yourself?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

You’d meant that sarcastically of course, but do you remember the way she looked at you? Like the truth had finally dawned on her?

He was your best friend, after all. Come to think of it, you’d been best friends since second grade. Since you were, what? — seven years old. You played ice hockey together all the way through high school, you both made it into Harvard, but then he went on to Johns Hopkins to med school while you stayed in Boston to finish up at The Fletcher School. And Margaret had been there with both of you through it all, hadn’t she? Well, at least since third grade. And he was Best Man at your wedding and it was awkward because everyone knew he still loved Margaret at least as much as you did. Once or twice in junior high they pretended to be an item, right? Remember?

Yet some part of you was always convinced Tom never got married because he was just waiting in the wings to swoop-in and take Margaret away from you someday. All the buddy-buddy shit doesn’t mean a thing when women are in-play. Isn’t that what you always told one another?

So, deep down you were kind of surprised when you said that, and then you saw not anger in her eyes, but something more like dread. Maybe even fear. Was that what you wanted to convey to her that night? Did you want her to think you’d been a psychopath all your life? Did you know you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams?

“I’d kind of hoped you’d be able to get past all that tonight, Robert,” she finally said. “Throw away the hate for just a few minutes. If anyone deserves your hatred, it’s me. Not Tom.”

“No problem, Maggie. I hate you. There. You satisfied now?”

But she’d turned then. Turned and walked away. Got in an elevator and disappeared. You saw a nurse had been listening and now she was shaking her head silently, reprovingly.

“What room is he in?” you sighed.

“I’ll walk you down. I’ve got to adjust his IV.”

When you walked in the door the sight of your friend ripped through your soul like a scythe. In your mind’s eye he was still playing forward, passing the puck to you against Andover, helping you score the winning goal one more time, and the State Championship was yours again. Winners never quit, do they? But this guy looked like he had quit, therefore it couldn’t possibly be Tom.

But there was no running from the truth of the matter that night. Truth was staring you down, and winning, so take your reason and shove it up your faithless ass.

You wanted to check the name on the door because there just had to be some kind of mistake. That pale yellow scarecrow wasn’t your friend; couldn’t be — no way! No fucking way! You could see his catheter bag hanging down almost to the floor and his urine was blood red, so now that his kidneys were failing the end was coming on fast. Human, after all, forever and ever.

And so there he was, and this was it. The eyes never lie and you could see Death in those same glassy-brown orbs you’d known all your life. You’d always loved him — in your way, and you knew he loved you, the way best friends do. That’s why this betrayal hurt so bad, right? Best friends don’t stab you in the back?

You went to the side of the scarecrow’s bed, looked down into the stranger’s searching eyes one more time. And what did you see?

Hope? Scorn? Or was that Pity you saw? No time for disguises now. You can run but can you run forever?

But, did you feel the love you’d known for decades. The love the three of you had known as kids and as students and on Friday night pub crawls and baseball games at Fenway. When your father died, who was with you? When his mother died, who did he turn to?

Why had it taken you so long to remember all that? Why had it been so easy to forget?

Can you remember that night? You took his hand in yours, squeezed gently because it felt like the bones in his hand might shatter. Death became really real, didn’t it? And where was your line between faith and reason that night?

“Thanks for coming, Bobby,” he’d said to you, and it was like the issue had been in some doubt. In doubt! Can you imagine that?

How could he think that? After all that you’d been through together?

Together.

Indeed. The line was dissolving even then, wasn’t it? How could God do this?

Yet all you could do was nod your head. You had to come. You needed to tell him goodbye.

You sat with him that night for a long time, came to terms you could live with, and even when Margaret dropped by for a while it almost felt like old times for a quiet slice of time. Sure, he’ll hop out of bed and off we’ll crawl to another pub – any time now. Death isn’t for the likes of you and me… 

But no. We didn’t do that.

And after a while you left his side, after Death came for your friend. And Margaret was out there in the hall. Waiting for this moment and hating you all the same.

Yet she hugged you and cried into your chest. For a long time. You leaned back, wiped away a tear running down her cheek just the way you always used to, then you kissed her on the forehead and even her hair smelled the same and it all came back like a fierce tide leaving you washed and dirty. Without saying a word you hugged her again, and in a way your hands around her still felt so right.

So right. Maybe because for a while the lines had blurred. Confusion is like that.

You sat in roaring silence on the ride back out to Cambridge, lost in passing memories that had all happened on the other side of this glass thing called ‘window.’ Memories of Margaret and Tom and a kid you used to know who still looked a little like you. The same hard steel rails, the same jarring ride, and when you walked out onto the sidewalk in front of the Coop the world was bathed in the very same moonglow. Silver light casting black shadows, and so what if you thought the full moon looked unnaturally hard and bright that night. Maybe you’d looked across this landscape a hundred times before but everything looked different that night. Really strange and different. Tom was gone now, wasn’t he? There’d be no new memories made with him. With the three of us.

Not even in these shadows. 

Because there were no lines in these shadows.

You stopped then, held your hands out in the silver glow and regarded your own gray flesh, your own remorseless humanity, and what did you feel? Did you find yourself wanting? All the elements that had come together to make Tom were on their way to the basement now. Tom was dissolving in the morgue. He’d make no more memories, and now all that was left was a dark, lonely feeling in the pit of your stomach.

“What the fuck am I doing?” you said to the silver air. “What have I been doing?”

You walked to your house, slipped the key in the lock and opened the door. Ody came bounding up to you and you picked him up and brought his cold little nose up to yours and you could still smell his puppy-breath and for a while he made your heart sing.

+++++

Tom wanted his ashes spread at sea and one of his friends came forward and offered to take you and a few other friends out onto Massachusetts Bay. You and Tom’s friends and Margaret sailed about half way out to P-town and a pod a shiny black whales came by just as Tom’s ashes fell into the black water. The whales circled the boat a few times and you wondered if they understood the words people spoke into the blackness. 

Sailing back into Boston you looked up as the boat motored along under the flight path of jets leaving Boston and you watched as a Swissair 747 lifted and climbed into the evening sky. Even Margaret noticed the smile on your face.

+++++

You knot the tie around your throat while you look at yourself in the mirror and you try to shake the feeling that a hangman has slipped his noose around your neck, and that suddenly your life feels like a never-ending trip to the gallows. You take Ody for a walk and he seems to notice that something is different this morning. That something in you has changed.

Without saying a word you slip from the house and walk across campus to the History building, and you walk unnoticed into the seminar room you will call your own for the next three months. You put your case down on the table and turn to write your name on the blackboard:

‘Dr Robert Drucker: American Foreign Policy – 1945-1989’

You scribble out your office number and student hours and take a seat, sit quietly  beside the podium while the early morning stragglers stumble in. Some wise-ass brings an apple and puts it on the table by your case. The kid smiles, says something witty and wholly unoriginal and you turn, look away, because the thought of having to deal with another pimply-faced Ivy League smart-ass makes you want to vomit. Your head hurts, you want to run away, and you think anywhere but here would do. Anywhere but here. But hey, no such luck. Not today. The puppet has his strings and so dance he must.

There are twelve people in the seminar, and the waiting list for your course is a long one. You’re very popular, or so you’ve been told. The kids love you. Politicians still come to you for advice, even though you decided against the offer to work in the White House one more time. Big deal. Once was enough. Never again. Everyone read about it in the Globe and for a moment you were famous again. Hah!

The fact of the matter is you are comfortable living in Boston. You gaze at The Yard through trees full and green with summer and at all the old red brick buildings everywhere you turn and this place feels almost like home. Teaching is what you do now, it is who you are. As you sit there looking at the new faces all the old passion returns for a moment, and now with the windows thrown open and the air full of the smell of sharpened pencils and new notebook paper, you’re almost happy to be alive again, to be here doing what you do best. You look at the assembled faces gathered around you, inquisitive faces alive with bright promise, and you smile — because Heidi will be here this Friday morning.

+++++

You’re walking Ody after lunch when you realize it’s going to be a problem, this leaving the pup home alone all morning. There’s simply not enough time between classes to walk home and back. The doggie-door works, but not for a Bernese Mountain Dog. They need to really get out and stretch those more than ample legs. Then you see Peter Kauffman leaving the faculty offices – with a huge Golden Retriever on lead – and he’s headed your way.

“Hey, Bob, didn’t know you had a Berner,” he said as he walked up to you. Ody tried to curl up around your ankles about that time, shaking like a leaf as the big Golden came up and began giving him the once over.

“Got her in June. Trying to figure out what to do with her while I’m in class.”

“Take her with you,” Pete said as he ambled along by your side.

“What?”

“Take her to class. At this age it’ll only take a few days to train him to sit quietly…”

“No rule against it?”

“Nope. Not for faculty, anyway. How was Switzerland?”

“Still calling my name.”

“Oh? Got a new girlfriend?”

“No, I get tired of the mess.”

“Ah. Like C. S. Lewis, a bachelor to the end.”

“Precisely.”

“Dogs are much more practical,” Kauffman said contentedly. “Right. Well, off we go!”

Seminar that next morning was a subdued affair – like you knew it would be. The first assignment you gave them required a solid two hundred pages of overnight reading, and as you surveyed the red-eyed, coffee-stained seniors struggling to keep their eyes open you just had to smile to at yourself, didn’t you. Except today you’d brought Ody along. You had him on your lap when the students filed in and all the girls in the class had to come over and ooh and ah all over him. Fun, wasn’t it, to see the promise of love in all those clear eyes?

+++++

That first Friday as office hours drew to a close you stared impatiently at the clock on your wall and closed the door behind you promptly at noon. Into the Porsche and across town and she was waiting for you on a bench outside the Hilton. The way she felt in your arms left no doubt.

“How many days?” you asked.

“All weekend. I return Monday evening.”

“What do you feel like doing?”

“Going for a drive.”

Ody sat in her lap while you made your way through town to Interstate 93 and about three hours later you pulled into the Mount Washington Hotel, a stone’s throw from the site of the post-war Bretton Woods conference. Jet lag had caught up with her by then and she crashed as soon as you got her in the room, yet just a few minutes later Ody commandeered the leash and off the two of you went.

It was already quite cool in the far northern reaches of New Hampshire, and this was the pups first real experience with cold weather — but he took to it like a duck to water. In fact he took off after some ducks in the water and when he came out he was wearing his favorite shit-eating grin — before shaking off all that water and covering you in the process. You took him back to the room and then you both took a warm shower, going through a half-dozen towels drying him off enough to finish him with the wall-mounted blow dryer. Heidi woke up a little later and she was starving. Not really for food, as it happened.

You spent two days with her, two very special days as it happened. You talked about the future and she listened to your hopeful incantations. It was snowing up on the summit of Mount Washington and the sight reminded you of Wengen. She squeezed your hand after that and everything felt so impossibly right. Maybe even like Destiny had finally played a winning hand.

+++++

You drove back to Boston Sunday afternoon and while you unpacked and started laundry she called and checked-in with dispatch. She’d been reassigned. A flight on Wednesday evening from JFK to Geneva, so now you’d have two more nights. Very happy now, you took her to dinner then walked around the tourist traps by the harbor before heading to the house to take Ody out for his long walk. You walked around Harvard Yard then over to the classroom building where you spent most of your life these days and for some reason all that seemed impressive to her, like what he did was almost magic.

You left her to teach your Monday morning seminar then met her for lunch and she spoke a lot about what life in Boston might be like—together. She could see herself living here, and she smiled at the sight. You smiled, too.

You liked taking care of her. Cooking breakfast for her. Rubbing her head while she pretended to sleep on your chest. The way she played with Ody. And with you. It was all so impossible, so impossible you’d already forgotten about Tom and Margaret and Wengen and all the other impossible contradictions in your life. And why not? Was this kind of happiness some kind of original sin? Not hardly. You told yourself that a lot that week.

You took her to Logan early on Wednesday so she could grab a shuttle down to Kennedy, and she told you to think about next Sunday as she was fairly certain she’d have the day free.

It was one of those crisp New England days, not a cloud in the sky, and she called you from JFK — “just to hear your voice” — and oh, how wonderful those words had felt, as pure as the light of the moon overhead. She had to go, but she couldn’t wait to see you on Sunday.

+++++

It was all over. On CNN, early the next morning. The Swissair MD-11 she had been on had somehow caught fire and crashed into the sea off Nova Scotia. So while you slept she passed from your life, and suddenly the line between reason and faith seemed very clear indeed. She was gone now, and there was no sensible reason for her going. Like Tom, there were no new memories to be had, none that you would share together, and oddly enough even Ody seemed to understand that something terrible had happened. You could see it in his eyes, too. Just as he had seen your grief.

You called Swissair, just in case someone had survived. You told them what little there was to know about your relationship and they were very sympathetic but no, there were no survivors. But now you were alone and there was no one to call, no shoulder to lean on, just the warm brown eyes of the friend by your side. He was still just a pup, though a very large one, but he came to you and held onto you while you cried. You tried to eat something and that didn’t work so you called your cousin Elizabeth in Wengen and tried to explain what had happened.

“When can you come home to us?” she wanted to know, clearly aghast at your loss.

But no easy answers came to you. Maybe Thanksgiving, definitely Christmas, but we’ll have to see.

She rang off but then she called you again an hour later. “I will be there tomorrow morning,” she said, and she gave you flight numbers and times before she told you she loved you. Yes, that word again.

And so you told her you loved her too. No hesitation. She was, after all, family, and you were beginning to realize that there are few things more important. That, and of course a nice big dog that eats all your running shoes.

A representative from Swissair called a few minutes later and asked if you wanted to go to New York for updates, but when you explained you had family coming from Switzerland to Boston you heard a subtle shift in tone.

“You are from Switzerland?”

“I was born there and I still have family in Wengen, so yes, I guess I am.”

“I show we have a diplomatic passport on file for you? Is this still active?”

“For special assignments only now, but yes, I’m still active.” She also wanted to know your cousin’s name and flight number, and where she would be staying in the States and you told her. She gave you her name and left her number and told you that anything you needed in this regard would be handled by the Swiss people. Then, strangely enough, she said I was now regarded as a part of the Swissair family and you thanked her for that even as the words tumbled around in your brain.

Part of the family?

And there is was again…that feeling of calm certainty. Of belonging to something greater than oneself, something with a feel of permanence about it. Was there a deeper reason for a feeling like this, something not simply to be taken as a matter of faith, perhaps? Something almost communal, passed along in genetic memory? Like need, the need to belong?

+++++

You had no idea how or why, but an hour later a reporter for the Globe knocked on your door and he wanted to ask questions for a story he was working on about the crash. Something about the “human angle,” about the survivors of tragedies like this. There wasn’t a whole lot to tell, was there? Heidi was all new, she was the way ahead. And now she was gone.

“What else can I tell you?” you managed to say.

“So, you fell in love with her after a flight you had been on with her?”

“Yes, that about says it all.”

And your story was on the bottom of the front page of the next morning’s paper, and just like that all your co-workers and all your students knew about that hidden part of your life. Essentially everything there was to know, too, because you’d left nothing out — but there wasn’t all that much to tell. Not yet. Your old friend the vice president called as you were leaving to go to the airport to pick up Elizabeth and he expressed his sympathy and told you he would pray for you because you were like family to him.

That word again. But the way it was bandied about…did it really mean anything anymore?

Elizabeth was a rock. But then again she always had been. She was the glue that bound you to all the other people in that faraway valley. To your family. Ody remembered her and he seemed to remember all the people in that faraway valley too, and you could feel the longing in his eyes — and in his heart — and for a moment you couldn’t see a difference between the two of you. Had you already grown so close? Something in the soil, perhaps?

Margaret came by around midday and she wanted to tell you how sorry she was. You wondered how she knew before you remembered the story in the Globe. Elizabeth was as ever welcoming and she hugged Elizabeth because they had been close once, because Elizabeth was family once — until she wasn’t. So odd. How did something so permanent become so disposable…?

The academic dean called and gave you the week off. The Swissair representative called and advised there would be a memorial service on the rocky shore close to where the MD-11 disappeared and you told her you would be honored to attend. 

And it was all so disconcerting. A week later all the ceremonies were over and done with and there was nothing left but the dance of the lawyers and the apportionment of blame, an endless game of avoiding the one true thing.

Heidi was gone. The future you had seen taking shape was gone. And soon enough Elizabeth returned home. A few weeks passed and grim details about how Heidi passed filled the papers but you couldn’t read about those things. You didn’t want to know. Pain is pain and what more did anyone need to know?

Margaret called one Sunday in October and asked to come over. She told you she couldn’t take living in Boston any longer and that she had taken a position out in California. You knew the truth of the visit even before she did. She was coming to say goodbye. She wanted to see you one more time, maybe just to remember other times. You hugged once before she left and all the anger disappeared after that, didn’t it? The little girl you’d known all your life slipped into memory, the same place Tom was now.

Your students were different after all that confusion. They looked at you differently, and some even talked to you differently. Almost deferentially. Maybe like you’d been to that place no one ever wants to go to and somehow you’d survived. They seemed surprised when you smiled at someone’s lame joke and as the term drew to a close it was a given that everyone of them loved Ody.

He had become the glue holding you together by then, and everyone knew it. Everyone but you.

+++++

“So, what are you doing for Christmas?” Sarah Bergstrom asked. She was the token Neanderthal among the faculty, a deeply conservative former NSC staffer now teaching national intelligence law at the Kennedy School.

“Oh, going home I suppose.” Ody stops and looks at you, then at her. His tail sweeps the sidewalk and you smile when you hear the little swish-swishing sound he makes.

“Where’s home?”

“Wengen.”

“Uh…where’s that?”

“Switzerland.”

“No kidding? And that’s home?”

“The only home I have now,” you add, though quite unnecessarily.

“Much skiing around there?”

“You could say that, yes.”

“Do you ski?”

“Only when absolutely necessary,” you tell her, now wishing she would disappear. She’s cute in the way fireplugs can be. Short, solid, kind of like a little girl’s version of a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. Tough, because the word is she’d gone through the Army’s Ranger school at Fort Bragg on her way to becoming a major in the DIA. She wasn’t a pretender, and you’d felt a curious respect for her determination and…grit.

“I’ve always wanted to learn,” she adds, now looking right into you, pleading.

“And…?”

“And…do you think you could teach me?”

And suddenly you feel like you’re walking along the razor’s edge and you don’t know why. You despise her politics and you know she can’t stand yours, so what the Hell is going on here…?

You take a deep breath. You look her in the eye.

“Sure. Why the Hell not,” is about all you manage to say but you have no idea why you said that.

“How do I get there?”

“Gimme your passport number and I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay.” Maybe she can’t believe what just happened and she looks more shocked than relieved, yet her face is an open book. Guileless. Open. Honest and at the same time curious. And like a little girls, maybe a little scared of what she’d just done.

Then she looks at you again and she smiles and it feels alright to you, almost comfortable. “Could I take you out to dinner?” she asks you, and you smile right back.

“Sure.”

“Tonight?”

“Why not…”

“Now?”

“I’ve got to go home and feed Ody.” He has been watching this exchange like he was watching a tennis match, his head bouncing back and forth as the words bounced between the two of you and you can’t help but wonder what he’s made of all this.

She walks along with you all the way across campus, all the way to your house and you ask her in. You feed the pup and get him settled on his porch then drop your briefcase by your desk. She asks to use the WC and you change into tennis shoes while she’s occupied then it’s off you go, hi-ho, hi-ho.

Ody could not fly so you booked passage on the Queen Elizabeth 2. Two staterooms. Then two rooms at the Victoria in Interlaken. You took Sarah shopping. For skis and boots and all the other things she’d need. You could tell she was having fun and, you had to admit, you were too. Life goes on. Right? Isn’t that what people kept telling you? That you had to move on? Why? Because nothing is forever? Because you have to keep reinventing yourself?

Elizabeth was a little wary, her response more reserved than you’d expected. And why not. She’d never done anything like this in her life; she wasn’t the impulsive sort. Come to think of it, neither were you. At least you hadn’t been.

So?

What had happened?

Had the line between reason and faith grown a little too blurry for you? Too blurred, even for you? But wasn’t all that just a matter of personal conviction? Why would she care? She was, after all, family. Yet you felt something in her voice, something unapproving, even after you explained that Sarah was just a colleague who wanted to learn to ski.

How very odd indeed.

+++++

Crossing the Atlantic in the QE2 in late November was hardly a good idea. Even Ody was seasick. Sarah was beyond seasick. She was green and any mention of food sent her back to bed. You called the ship’s surgeon and he gave her “the shot” and Sarah really went to bed after that. In the meantime you and Ody walked the canine approved promenade and the two of you stood with your faces to the wind, his ears streaming and when you leaned on the mahogany rail he stood next to you and you held him before you took off together on your walk. The next morning Sarah was up and starving, the seas were a little less boisterous too, and after breakfast she joined you and the pup for a steady five mile jog. She felt better after that, and so did Ody.

You took the train to Paris and connected for another that would take you onward to Basel and Bern and then finally to Interlaken. Sarah was a stolid traveler, she helped with Ody while you managed all the luggage and skis. Elizabeth was there at the station to pick you up, kind of an advance guard the family had sent to reconnoiter the situation. She joined you for dinner and went for a walk with you and Ody afterwards.

“Why did you bring this stranger, Robert?” she asked as you walked along the river.

“She asked.”

“That’s…absurd, and you know it.”

“It is, isn’t it? I’m sorry that I don’t have a better answer for you.”

“Do you love this woman?”

“Love her? Hell no, Elizabeth. I can hardly stand to be around her…”

“Don’t be sarcastic…”

“Sorry, but I’m not being sarcastic.”

“What? You can’t be serious…!”

“Liz? She asked me to teach her to ski. That’s all there is to it, okay?”

“Do you expect to bring her up to the house for Christmas?”

“If you want to invite her, fine.”

“Would you come without her?”

“Absolutely.”

She stopped in her tracks and shook her head. “Robert, you are an impossible human being. I mean…you know that, don’t you?”

And you looked down into the inky black water, then you pointed at a passing leaf. “See that? That leaf?”

She turned and looked. “The leaf? Yes. What of it?”

“That’s me, Liz. That’s me, just passing through. Lost on a current and headed nowhere.”

And she came close and took your arm in hers. “Oh, poor Robert. What are we going to do with you?”

But you didn’t hear her just then. You were too busy staring at that solitary leaf while images of Heidi danced about like sugarplum fairies around Christmas trees you would never share.

+++++

Sarah Bergstrom had, literally, only seen snow from the window of an airplane. An orphan, she’d never known anything about families, except that she’d never had one and quite probably never would. Because she wasn’t, she liked to say, date bait. Men didn’t ask her out because men were, generally, afraid of her. A priest had tried to rape her once upon a time, when she was about fifteen — or so she said — and she’d beaten the poor bastard quite literally almost to death. Even the boys in the orphanage didn’t pick fights with her, and that had suited her just fine.

Alabama, near Mobile Bay. Hot, humid summers and dusty winters. An ancient Catholic orphanage, older than old. A big, wide open dormitory had been her only home, and you could see the pain in her eyes when she talked about that place. And she’d gone from frying pan into the fire, enlisting in the Army as soon as she could. Fighting her way into college because she had unusually good language skills. She’s gone to Notre Dame then went through officer’s candidate school. She did it the hard way, but she fought and scrapped her way through, around, and over every obstacle put in front of her — and she always managed to come out ahead of the pack. And, oddly enough, she’d spent most of her career in the Middle East. Now she was teaching at Harvard.

She told her story the next evening at dinner, at Elizabeth and her husband Christian’s home, and all their many children sat around the huge dining room table absolutely enthralled. And Elizabeth looked at you all through dinner, still absolutely mystified. Her children had spent the day with you and Sarah, riding up to the Sphinx, the observatory and restaurant nestled in a notch between the summits of the Eiger and the Jungfrau. 

Sarah had of course never seen anything even remotely like the view she enjoyed there, and do you remember the simple pleasure you felt sharing this moment. Her red hair and her sprinkle of freckles, the round sunglasses that looked incongruously hippyish on her, and so very much out of character — or so you thought at the time.

You took her skiing the next day, all of you. Elizabeth had one Olympic silver and two bronzes and two of her kids were headed for the national team, yet they were all home for Christmas and everyone got into the act. It was, you soon realized, teaching by committee — but Sarah was game, the consummate ‘good sport’ — and by the end of her first day on the mountain she was plowing her way down intermediate slopes. It wasn’t, you mentioned to Christian, just her Army training. She was a gifted athlete, very coordinated and strong as an ox, yet she was determined to learn and that made all the difference.

Ody had spent the day with his own family, with his mother and father, and when you picked him up after your long day on the mountain he seemed rejuvenated. He pulled you down to the snow and wanted to wrestle, and even Sarah joined in then, everyone laughing so hard it hurt.

You had planned to have dinner with her at the hotel that night but everyone decided to join in the festivities. It had to be fondue, for Sarah’s sake, and by the time you got back to the hotel she was snockered and Ody was humming along in high voltage bliss and maybe that’s why, when Sarah kissed you, the room began to spin and spin. You put your arms around her, you held onto the feeling because you knew the moment was something precious, something to hold onto and to cherish before it too faded in the moonglow.

+++++

Winter. Snow falling through bare limbs and little by little piling up on little edges, waiting to fall on an errant breeze. Classes are more difficult to prepare for; as your hair thins and turns whiter and whiter you realize that you too are waiting for an errant breeze, waiting for the fall. Everything is the same but now everything is so different.

Sarah fell in love with you. Like a heat seeking missile she had homed in on you from the beginning, and she was a patient strategist, an able  practitioner of the Art of War. You, on the other hand, could never reciprocate, not now. Not after Margaret, and certainly not after Heidi. You’d fought your war and fallen about as low as you thought a person could only to get back on your feet just in time to get slammed down hard again. 

You weren’t just suspicious of love, now you were afraid of it. Afraid that there was nothing left of love but the pain after the fall. You weren’t crazy and you certainly had never been a glutton for punishment, so Sarah Bergstrom and all her impossible little diversionary tactics simply made no sense. Not to you. Not now. Who knows…maybe a few years ago you might still have been willing to at least try.

Yet skiing with her had been fun. Your family loved her, they took her in and for the first time in her life Sarah knew that feeling. And yes, it was all a trivial cliché but so what? Maybe for a few days she’d restored your…oh, wait…what were you going to say? Your faith—in humanity? Yet, in the end, reason won out one more time. After you returned to Boston, once again on that tired old ocean liner, you’d precipitously drifted away from all her impossible expectations. All her maneuverings.  After a while she stopped calling you, too.

You took long walks in the snow with Ody and he was finally in his element. He was happy now, happier than he’d ever been, and for some reason, yeah, reason, that was enough for you. You were working on your new book about JFK, writing taking up every waking minute of your day that wasn’t spent in the classroom. Running down obscure references. Scheduling appointments with the few remaining survivors of the Kennedy administration. Recording these interviews, graduate students helping to transcribe all your erudite questions, and winter turned to spring in a haphazard rush to finish writing each new chapter.

And one Saturday morning Elizabeth called and when she asked you about Sarah your pithy evasions were all she needed to know. She didn’t ask again. She did, however, want to know if you were coming home that summer. You were writing a new book, you explained, and she didn’t need to ask about that again, either.

Maybe looking back now you can see you were adrift. You’d cut yourself free from all your obligations to everyone but your work and all you had now was your new best friend, the puppy who never, ever left your side. Except he wasn’t a puppy now. Ody weighed more than you now, and recently you’d needed a real shovel to pick up his turds in the backyard. Still, when you crawled in bed at night there was something about the way he plopped down beside you, resting his chin on your chest as you scratched the top of his head.

Margaret called that summer. She was back from LA. Couldn’t stand it out there, too weird. No traditions and all alone, she’d felt herself…adrift.

“Me too,” you said.

“Think we should take a chance and go out for drinks?” she asked, and you could feel the tender wounds in her voice, the hesitation born of panic and loneliness. 

“Why not?” you just managed to say. “You doing anything tonight?”

+++++

She moved back in three weeks later. By the time classes resumed in August all the old routines had taken root again. Like when she said “I love you,” as she headed out the door and you replied “Love you too” and it was like your life was on autopilot now. Again. 

Ody got along with her. A good thing. And when Elizabeth called and you told her about all that you could hear the catch in her voice, the hesitation. Kind of like ‘are you out of your fucking mind!?’ Except those words really weren’t necessary between the two of you. She could still read you like the open book you’d always been—to her, anyway.

“So, will you be coming home for Christmas, or will you still be writing?”

“No, no, if it’s alright with you we’d like to join you.”

Yet the routines that had, once upon a time, unbound you to Margaret were your undoing. By mid-autumn she couldn’t take it anymore. “You haven’t changed!” she cried as she packed her bags.

“I didn’t know I needed to,” you mumbled as you hooked the leash up to Ody to take him for another very long walk. When you got back to the house she was gone again, though she’d left a note telling you that someone would be by for the rest of her things.

It was about that time that you began to think that maybe there was something wrong. With you. You found a highly recommended shrink and made an appointment, and both of you — Ody and you — went to the appointments. All four of them. The shrink was a pill-pushing idiot who apparently had no interest in talking to his patients. Take this pill now. In two weeks add this one. The pills made you sleepy. You couldn’t get it up. You flushed the remaining pills down the toilet and hopefully the micro organisms down there would be happier and more content as they went merrily on their way to the sewage treatment plant.

You ran into Sarah a few weeks before you were due to leave on the QE2 and she asked how you were doing.

“Horrible,” you said. “How ‘bout you?”

“The same.”

“What’s been going on?” you asked.

“Nothing, Robert. I think I realized that somewhere along the way through summer I wasn’t going to make it without you, then I heard your ex had moved back in with you.”

And you nodded. “She found her broomstick and flew the coop again.”

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

“I feel like shit. Other than that, I’m just ducky.”

“Like shit?”

“Like a ping-pong ball, bouncing around all over the place.”

“Emotionally?”

Remember how you nodded?

“When’t the last time you had a physical?”

“Right about the time Reagan was sworn in. Though suicide seemed a logical choice— at the time, anyway.”

The’s she’d put her hand on your forehead and you felt that little electric feeling. She felt it too, but then again that had never been her problem. “I’m taking you to my internist,” she told you in this weird take-charge voice that reminded you she’d been through Ranger training.

Her doc made it as far as your groin. One of your testicles, the left one, was the size and texture of a golf ball. A tech with an ultrasound machine appeared and the next thing you knew the internist was asking if you knew a good oncologist.

There were few moments you’d faced before like that one. You’re naked but for the little open-in-the-back gown you have on and your emotions are already splintering on the jagged edge, but when a physician asks if you know a good oncologist? That takes the cake. You tell her about your ex and she makes the call while you get dressed.

Surgery is scheduled for five in the morning. Tomorrow morning. Sarah stays by your side, she gets you home and in the door. She calls your academic dean then she calls Elizabeth. No one asks questions. Everyone, she says, will be praying for you. And you know—on some unconscious level, perhaps—that Elizabeth is on the phone right now making reservations.

The urologist Margaret set up for the operation meets you in the pre-op ward before. He tells you that when you wake up, if it’s before seven in the morning there was no spread to the cord and it would be clear sailing. If it was around ten, or later than that, then he would have done a so-called retroperitoneal dissection, and that would be bad news. The worst possible outcome. That would mean months of chemo and radiation. Possible urinary incontinence. Sex would more than likely become a memory, a thing of the past.

And oddly enough, as cavalierly as you’ve treated sex all your life, it was that possibility that hit you hardest. You will no longer, that little voice in the back of your head says, be a real man. You will be…what? A eunuch? The castrated court jester? That oddity people whisper about when you aren’t looking?

You are given something to “take the edge off” before you’re wheeled to the OR, and you look at the lights passing by overhead and they are almost like the lights on the subway. Until you are lifted onto the operating table. Those lights don’t go away. They are there to help trained eyes peer inside your guts, to help them see whether you will spend the rest of your life in relative normalcy, or if you will become the freak, the court jester.

You see the light being aimed at your nuts just as your eyes close.

+++++

Your eyes open and after the confusion falls apart they seek the big silver clock on the wall and it is eleven thirty and there is nothing left to do but cry for the passing of the man you used to be.

+++++

Elizabeth is there with you when Sarah pulls up curbside and an orderly helps you into the front seat. You drive home inside a silent snowfall but you really don’t care what time of year it is anymore. In a way you almost feel like the old you, but that’s just modern biochemistry at work. Doing its thing. Making the pain less painful. But…can it make the unendurable endurable? But…what happened?

Well, after the surgeon handed your nuts and cords over to the waiting pathologist the surgeons and nurses waited for the technician to make slides from your tissues. You know, the cancerous tissues. Inside your testicles They stood there, waiting, waiting for the results while you waited on the table, kind of almost dead to the world. The pathologist with his microscope pronounced the verdict in the court of such things, because he had then pronounced you guilty of cancer in the first degree.

So the surgeons gathered now gathered around your belly and sliced you open. They moved your very own sewage treatment plant out of the way and set about removing all the lymph nodes deep inside the tissues of your lower back, and then they put everything back where it was theoretically supposed to go before they sewed you up.

So now you either took a handful of pain medications every four hours or your midsection felt like an uncontrolled forest fire. You were not yet allowed solid food. Worst of all, Ody was not allowed on the bed—and he had no clue why he’d been pushed out of your life. Sarah took him for long walks. Elizabeth stayed by your side. She never left you unless it was to go to the restroom. 

Margaret took care of the rest. The lab work. Setting up chemo. Pain management. In a way, she did all the heavy lifting, the stuff that counted. The things that saved your life, or at least postponed your death. Then again, she’d done all this before, with Tom. Before it was his turn to go to the basement and dissolve. So she knew the score.

Yet she was hopeful. So Elizabeth grew hopeful, then Sarah did too. The Christmas tree went up in your living room and almost everyone that wasn’t racing for the Swiss national team came over to break bread and open presents. And despite it all, Christmas that year didn’t turn into some kind of morbid death watch. It was just Christmas. Candlelight around the big table, Sarah still mesmerized by the comings and goings of family. Ody stealing the show and carrying the day, the center of everyone’s attention. Even yours. Margaret’s too, because she was still a part of this thing Elizabeth called “our family.” When Margaret gave you a gilded nutcracker for Christmas even you laughed.

You had a light load scheduled that winter, just two graduate seminars, and you secured permission to have your students come to the house for class. There were only a half dozen students in each, so it promised to be fun. Elizabeth wouldn’t think of returning home just yet, not until you were back on your feet, and Sarah usually came to these seminars, at least when she could. Ody was still the star of the show, but by the time the term was at an end your students were complaining that they’d never had a more grueling academic experience. C’est la vie, you explained with a shrug. You gotta learn to roll with the punches.

You started your sabbatical one term early because the worst of your chemo was just ahead and you didn’t want to put your students through that. No one, Margaret told you, should go through what you were about to go through.

+++++

You were bald then, and very frail. In and out of Mass Gen, depending on how low your white count dropped. The idea of food wasn’t merely nauseating; when Margaret forced you to eat you cursed the gods for allowing you to be born. Deep ridges appeared on your finger nails and the whites of your eyes just didn’t look right. When they started to turn a little yellow Margaret cut back on the chemo, but as soon as they cleared she resumed with a different elixir. 

Then came radiation. Which, surprisingly, didn’t hurt. Until it did, usually a few hours later. Same results. Nausea, vomiting. Then the good news; the radiation blew out your pancreas and we’re so sorry about this but you are now an insulin dependent diabetic. Hope you don’t mind giving yourself shots in the belly twice a day for the rest of your life.

Margaret didn’t drop by as usual one afternoon but she called you that night. She was going under the knife in the morning. Ovarian cancer.

And she laughed. Long and hard. Until she started to cry.

“We always did everything together, Bobby. And now this. We get to do this together, too.”

You didn’t know what to say, did you?

All that blather about faith and reason now sounded trivially meaningless.

“Where are you?” you asked her. 

“My condo.”

“Pack a bag. Bring it over. We’ll take care of each other now.”

Funny the way Elizabeth accepted that decision. Like…she’s family. Of course we’ll take care of her.

And so you did. At least you tried. You all did.

+++++

Nine months later and you’re back on the QE2. Sarah is there by your side, yet so to is Margaret, only she is dead now and you have her ashes with you. And some of Tom’s too, because she wanted a little of him to be with her. Elizabeth and Christian are here too, and so are her youngest kids, those not skiing on the circuit. Christmas at sea. That was what Margaret wanted. And she told you both as much as long ago and as far away as last summer. 

She saved your life, yet you couldn’t save hers. That doesn’t seem fair now, does it? There was no reason behind this outcome, and no faith could help you make sense of the emptiness you felt.

It is midnight now and the stars so far out to sea shine so brightly they almost make you forget why you are here.

She wanted you to do this by yourself, out here in the star-shine, in the moonglow. Open two urns and let the wind do the rest.

You promised to set aside a little of her, and of Tom, so the three of you could be together again, but now, out here in the moonglow it only takes a few beats of the heart and they are gone. They are together again. You thank her for your life, for the life she shared with you and the life she saved, and you apologized for not being a better friend.

You looked down into the passing wake and you could feel her stretching off into infinity and you wondered, for a moment, what nothingness was really like.

+++++

The book did well. Your friend the vice president ran for president and the Supreme Court declared his opponent the victor. Airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, another turned to dust in a field and the handwriting was all over the wall now. All the things Kennedy had tried to do were now undone, all the Old Guard had passed on and now the forces of mediocrity were alive and running free. And it was then you realized your work was over, your time to make a difference was at an end.

You turned in your letter of resignation. You called a realtor and put the house up for sale. It was time to go home. You’d lead a comfortable life, but it would be a quiet time. A time to reflect on all the things that had been left undone.

Bernese Mountain Dogs are huge but their size works against them. A ten year old Berner is an anomaly. Most pass by eight, a few live to see fifteen. Now Ody was five and already he had trouble running. Boston was, you knew, not his home either and it was only fair that you take him home and give him a few years to play with his family on the high alpine pastures you called your own.

Christian had already drawn you a small chalet and construction would begin as soon as you got home and signed a few papers. You and Ody would stay with Elizabeth and Christian until your home was ready.

Sarah had exhausted all her tactical know-how and been defeated by your obdurate refusals to take her in, but she wasn’t a quitter and you never really saw her coming. Her final assault was a fast and furious affair that left everyone breathlessly waiting to see if she had finally worn you out and beaten you down.

Because everyone was counting on her to have done just that. Bets had been placed, and money had been wagered. Yet somehow no one realized that Elizabeth had rigged the game and that you never really had a chance.

+++++

She took you to the airport. She parked and helped you into the E Terminal and up to the Swiss check-in counter. Ody was a paying passenger this time, too, with his own ticket and everything. You’d declared him as your service animal and that you couldn’t manage without him—which just happened to be true. And he sat there at the counter in his leather harness looking at Sarah, wondering why there were tears in her eyes and not at all sure what to do about it.

Sarah kissed you there one more time and then she ran from the terminal, and still Ody looked up at you and perhaps he was wondering what was wrong with you. Like maybe you really didn’t you know much of anything about love?

You let a customer service rep take you out to the airplane, some kind of Airbus, and a polite young thing led you to your seat. She helped Ody get his seatbelt hooked up to his harness and he sat there looking out the window like he was looking for Sarah to come running up to the plane any time now, but it never happened. When the jet lined up and sprinted down the runway he looked at you for reassurance then he watched the earth fall away. Once the plane leveled off he curled up by your feet and slept the night away.

But not you.

You kept thinking about Sarah. Your mind lingered in the moonglow of that last kiss. In time, you thought about Heidi walking through the last few days of her life with you by her side, and Ody had been there too. You ran your fingers through the fur on the top of his head and you thought about the way she kissed you that last time. About the way you kissed her. No reason behind it. No lines between that kiss and her passing from this life. There had only been a brief flowering of love, of life, and then it had passed. As Margaret had, and Tom. As you would—one day.

The question now, you thought as your fingers sifted through the memories embedded within this pup’s fur, was simple enough to understand. What of the way ahead? Did you really want to walk all those old roads by yourself?

Sure, she was younger, but not by so many years. You’d never have kids, true, but you’d have a family all your own. Maybe you could raise puppies, more just like Ody? Wouldn’t that be something? And wasn’t something better than nothing?

But didn’t she deserve better than that? After the things she’d been through, the life she’d lived. Didn’t she deserve someone who would love her unconditionally? Why would she settle for anything less? How could you offer her anything less than pure commitment? What would be the point?

“Drucker? Bobby Drucker?”

You turned to face the voice. You didn’t remember his name now but he’d been at the Fletcher School with you and he’d gone on to work for Scoop Jackson in the senate. Strange. You’d always been good with names…

“Jensen. Pete Jensen. Yeah, yeah, of course. How’re you doing?”

“I’m working over in the EOB for Cheney. Say, what are you up to these days?”

“Retired, going home to visit family.”

“Home?”

“Figure of speech.”

“Retiring? Aren’t you a little young for that?”

“Not from where I’m sitting.”

“Say, I read the Kennedy book. Learned a lot.”

“Did you indeed.”

“You still have ties to State?”

“Tenuous at best, why?”

“We’re looking for someone to take over as ambassador in Bern. Until we can round up a replacement. You interested?”

“For how long, do you think?”

“One month. Two at the most, unless the senate holds up the appointment.”

You were thinking then, weren’t you? Like you always did when opportunities like this rolled around. Bern was hardly a half hour away by train from Interlaken and for the next several months you were going to be, well, homeless. You could do it for a month and would forever thereafter be addressed as Herr Doctor Ambassador, with all the rights and privileges thereto conveyed.

“Worth considering,” you’d said, but deep inside you were excited as hell. What a way to go out? On top and recognized for all the years of hard work.

Funny, you thought at the time, the way things work out.

+++++

“You’ve done what?!” Elizabeth cried when you told her about your “temporary appointment” to Bern. “Ambassador Bobby? You can’t be serious!”

You’d just shrugged it off, of course, like you always did. All bets were off now.

Christian went over the plans for the new house and he of course had all the paperwork ready. Construction would begin as soon as soil conditions permitted. The three of you had lunch in Bern the very next week, then you took them to the main embassy building for a quick tour. You hadn’t met your staff yet as you were still just settling in, but you promised you’d come home for the weekend.

And Elizabeth had just smiled. She knew you all too well.

+++++

Your first full day at the embassy and the chargé announced your staff one by one. Attachés from the armed services were introduced, followed by department heads from Commerce, Treasury, and State.

When your attaché from the NSA was announced you rubbed your eyes and stifled a yawn — just before Sarah Bergstrom sauntered into your office — and right about then everything clicked. All her tactical maneuvering fell into place in the span of one heartbeat.

Peter Jensen hadn’t just appeared out of nowhere on that flight out of Boston. He’d been pre-positioned there, put in place by someone with real cred in the NSA. And her smile said it all. Plain as day.

The chargé closed the door behind Sarah, and you could see traces of a faint smile on his face.

+++++

Of course one month turned to two. Actually, it turned into six months. The house Christian had drawn was almost finished by the time you walked out of the embassy that last time, and so glad you were that when you hopped on the train you didn’t look back. Not even once. Ody hopped up onto the seat next to yours and resumed his duties by slobbering all over your trousers, so all was right with his world again. And yours, too.

Elizabeth met you on the platform and took Ody’s leash while you manhandled the chubby little rolling suitcase you’d brought along, then you sat back and enjoyed the short drive out of town and up the valley to her house. There was, you were certain, nothing quite like this valley in summer. 

You rolled down the window and Ody’s ears were soon sailing on the breeze. His jowls, too. And after the car rolled to a stop you let him run free—because leashes weren’t a necessity up here. His parents soon came bounding up the drive and within seconds they were a tumbling bundle of fur, before they took off up the mountain looking for squirrels or birds or whatever caught their fancy.

“How old is he now?” Christian asked.

“Five, I think. Sometimes I forget.”

“All too conveniently, I suspect,” Elizabeth added, chidingly reminding you of your track record. 

“You should get another puppy,” Christian said, “from a different breeder. Have puppies. He won’t live forever, you know?”

“Well, with any luck at all our batteries will run out on the same day.”

“I added facilities in the lower floor in case you decide to.”

“To do what?”

“Breed puppies.”

“Indeed.”

“You might as well, Robert. I’ve never seen anyone who loves dogs as much as you.”

“That’s because,” Elizabeth sighed, “no one does. They couldn’t possibly…”

“Precisely,” Christian barked. “Just so!”

Elizabeth looked at her watch. “Why don’t you two get going? The bank closes soon.”

Remember her smile? All innocence and without a shred of guile in sight. You asked her to keep an eye on Odysseus then hopped in Christian’s Volvo and off you went. You had more papers to sign at the bank, to authorize final payments to contractors, then he slid through traffic over to main railway station. 

And unbeknownst to you, Sarah had just arrived. She was standing near the taxi stand with two huge suitcases and when you looked at Christian he had to look away to hide his grin.

That’s when you hopped out and ran over to give her a hug.

When more pieces to the puzzle snapped into place.

‘Damn military minds,’ you grumbled. ‘Always think of everything.’

You let her sit up front this time. She’d have to learn how to drive here soon enough. Dinner that night was a pleasant summer affair, fruits and a salad, some sweet white wine. Then the four of you walked up to the house, the new house, and Christian gave her the deluxe tour while you and Elizabeth threw sticks for Ody and one of his new brothers. You were looking down to the valley floor watching a train heading up valley, picking up the last of the day’s tourists coming down from the Eiger run, and you just had to shake your head.

“It’s paradise, you know? This valley, this life. I still cannot for the life of me figure out why our grandparents left this place.”

“Oh, perhaps a thousand years in one place was enough for them. Time for a change, you know?”

You felt Sarah come up beside you and she reached for your hand. A simple enough gesture, innocent in her way. She wasn’t going to gloat, was she? She and Elizabeth had been in cahoots from the get-go.

“I like your house,” she sighed. “Room for a kennel, I see.”

“Our house,” you replied. “Me and Ody.”

You felt her deflate just a little, like maybe she’d won a skirmish but not the war.

Then you added: “And yours too, if you think you could stand living here.”

She was still way too strong and when she squeezed your hand you thought you heard bones snapping.

+++++

Once upon a time, when Sarah was a teenager and not long after a certain priest tried to rape her, she and a bunch of kids from the orphanage were taken to see a James Bond movie at a cinema in Mobile, and to this day it was her favorite. It was the one with George Lazenby as Bond, the one where Bond’s new wife is killed at the end. She’d cried and cried when she saw that movie, but she still loved it all the same. Whenever she heard Louie Armstrong sing We Have All The Time In The World she still got all choked up. Pretty weird stuff for an Army Ranger.

Bond’s lair was filmed up on a mountain across the valley from Wengen, above the tiny village of Murren. The place is called Piz Gloria, and from time to time they hold special events up there. Wedding receptions and such, but usually Bond reunions. Friends of yours from Boston and Washington came for the wedding, and of course all your family was there. Even Margaret and Tom were there, in their way. Blofeld did not appear out of the shadows and kill your wife, which was, all things considered, a good thing.

You kept writing, because—why not. You still had things to say, histories to pass along, and time enough on hand to find the work relaxing. Sarah started writing spy novels, which was more up her alley. Ody and Brigette got to work and started churning out puppies and that turned out to be the most physically challenging thing you’d ever done in your life. You’d never realized just how much crap could come out of something so tiny, but, then again, reality is a firm teacher. Wasn’t that what you told your students, once upon a time?

And you forgot all about long walks in the moonglow, at least for a while. The dividing line between reason and faith grew more obscure, or perhaps just a little less relevant, like now—when times were good and life was sweet. You were finally living the American dream, deep inside the warm bosom of an ancient Swiss valley, and you had to admit that life was really pretty good, all things considered.

Carrying big bags of puppy chow was soon a little more trying than it had been, but what did you expect? Your hair was now as white as pure, driven snow, and though your hand was steady and your mind as sharp as ever, something was changing. Aches and pains were to be expected at your age, and once you accepted that you just shut up and got back to work, because nobody likes a complainer.

But one morning the pain in your lower back felt different. In your pelvis, around the lower spine. Over the next few weeks it was obvious your pee was coming out with a lot less force, then one morning you saw blood in the toilet. When Sarah was out with the pups you called and made an appointment with your doc down in town. You had Elizabeth drive you to the appointment. You asked her to come in and wait with you.

Bloodwork followed, then another ultrasound, and there it was. New cancer, in your prostate and it had probably spread up through the spine. Funny, but you’d already guessed that was the case. Odd how you recognize Death when he comes knocking on your door. So the question you asked your physician didn’t exactly come out of the blue.

“If I do nothing, how long will I last?”

Then came the inevitable double-speak: ‘It is impossible to say without deeper diagnostics, more tests and a thorough evaluation by the oncologist,’ and you sighed as you listened to the exhausting liturgy of this new religion. Your first wife had preached from this altar and you knew the lines all too well, and despite all your lingering misgivings the line between reason and faith began to reappear, and with feelings of dread you quickly understood that reason would begin to reassert its hold over the contours of your day-to-day existence.

Elizabeth sat beside you as you absorbed this new reality, but she chose not to speak just yet. She waited until you were back in the Volvo.

“Of course you’ll go see the oncologist,” she stated flatly.

“Why?”

“To fight, Robert. You can’t give up now. You mean everything to Sarah.”

You turned away and looked out the window as the Volvo made its way through the outskirts of town and the way ahead was nothing but snow capped peaks, cold and hard. You swallowed hard to, and maybe you wanted to wipe away an unseen tear but you felt all dried up.

Ody was almost ten now, ancient by the standards of his breed, and he walked up to you ever-so-slowly as you opened the car door. He came up to you and looked into your eyes, then he let slip a long, slow moaning sound. Forlorn, you thought. Because he knew. But Sarah was coming down from the high pasture just then, leading a parade of puppies through ankle high grass sprinkled with bright yellow flowers.

And as you looked at the happiness on her face you turned to Elizabeth. “Okay. Call her back, have her set up the appointment.”

“So? You’ll fight this thing?”

“I’ll fight.”

And she took your hand just then, yet she looked away because she was crying. “I couldn’t stand to lose you, Robert. Please, please, I will help all I can…”

“I know.”

“Now you must tell Sarah.”

“I know.”

But Odysseus has other plans, for this is his journey too. He stands and puts his hands on yours and then he scents your hand before he licks and licks. “Yes, old friend,” you hear yourself say, “I promise I’ll fight. I won’t leave you, so don’t you even think about leaving me.”

He looks at you and you’re eye to eye now. His eyes are so deep and brown, the love you find there infinite—like it could go forever and ever. He licks your chin and you nudge the tip of his nose with yours because he understands what that means. He hears Sarah and Brigette just then and he leaves you to go see his children and you know he will go on and on. Forever.

“Is there anything you’d like to do now?” Elizabeth asked.

“Oh, you know, maybe this weekend we could take the train up top, to the observatory?”

“Up the Eiger? Really? Why?”

“I’m not sure, really, but it almost feels like you can see forever when you’re up there.”

“Forever?”

You set aside your misgivings as you look at her, at this the beating heart and bosom of your family, and she smiles her perfect smile at you. You close your eyes and wish away all the pain and the fear, and you hear them then. Margaret and Heidi, away in the moonglow and on the far side of forever. They are calling you now, and you smile.

© 2009 renewed 2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…image: Klimpt, The Kiss.

[November \\ Duncan Sheik]

“It seems strange to have to lie,
About a world so bright.
And tell instead a made-up story,
From the world of night.”

[Genesis \\ Keep It Dark]

88/666

He always enjoyed this stretch of Highway 79. The mountains here reminded him of the High Sierra, especially the jagged spires beyond Mammoth Lakes, yet for some reason the air here felt cleaner, more pure than California, while even the villages here seemed like something out of a distant, though somehow more comforting past. He leaned back in the limousine’s plush rear seat and rolled down the window, letting gales of crisp Andean air wash over his jet-lagged body, and he closed his eyes and sighed. 

He felt the Mercedes slowing and barely opened his eyes; he could make out the first rustic chalets of the Colonia Suiza just ahead and he asked the driver to stop at his favorite little bistro — as he usually did after so long a trip.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the driver replied. “I’ve been instructed no stops allowed today. I’m to take you directly to the Eagle’s Lair.”

Ted Sorensen nodded and closed his eyes again. ‘They’ll probably kill me,’ he thought — yet he really didn’t care one way or another. Not now. Everything was coming together nicely, on time and under budget. Beyond that…nothing else really mattered.

+++++

Moloch was waiting for him. Moloch was always, or so it seemed, waiting for him.

“We lost her again,” Moloch sighed as they met, and Sorensen nodded.

“Where was she this time?”

“British Columbia. North of Vancouver. And she had help…sophisticated help.”

“Such as?”

“Air support. Planted assets designed to throw us off.”

“So…military — or an intelligence service?”

“More than likely both, so yes,” Moloch grumbled.

“So, you underestimated Taggart. Again.”

“I’m not so sure this was his operation.”

“Oh? Who do you…?”

“I’m not sure yet. What happened in California? I’ve heard it did not go well…”

“That’s a long story, and I’d only like to tell it once.”

The Chancellor’s secretary summoned them, asked them to follow him to the conference room off of the Chancellor’s suite, and Sorensen stood and followed Moloch through several layers of security to the distant room. The Chancellor and his advisors were waiting, and they did not appear to be in a good mood.

And the first thing Sorensen noted was the absence of a chair for either Moloch or himself. ‘So, we are to be made an example of,” he sighed. ‘What else does he have in store for us?’

So the two men entered the conference room and just stood there, waiting, for the Chancellor turned away from them and picked up a telephone and talked for about ten minutes, angry one minute then laughing hysterically the next. Sorensen shifted weight from one leg to the other while trying not to appear too put out, but this callous reception was simply unwarranted…even it they had failed.

Then the Chancellor hung up the phone and turned to Moloch.

“We have gone over your report. Anything to add?”

“There are no new leads at this point, sir.”

“Very well. You may leave us.”

Moloch turned to leave, and whatever moral support Sorensen might have hoped for evaporated. The Chancellor remained silent until the door closed behind Moloch. Then:

“What happened?”

“I’m still not sure, sir. We assumed the boy was guarded only by the ex cop, Harry Callahan, but that appears to have not been the case.”

“You are saying he too had outside help? By any chance do you know who?”

Sorensen shook his head. “No sir, and we have no leads. As far as we can ascertain at this point, the boy is no longer on site — yet despite having assets in the area watching every possible egress route, we did not see him, or Callahan, leave.”

“You are sure they are gone?”

“Yessir, and there is an additional element we weren’t counting on.”

 “And that is?”

“We literally destroyed the man’s home, yet a half hour later one of our drones photographed the area and there’s no visible damage — anywhere. Even our assets on the ground disappeared, and the area looks completely untouched, like nothing there ever happened.”

“So, it’s true. The boy can manipulate time.”

“So it would appear.”

“You have a different assessment?”

“I think it’s possible Callahan may have similar capabilities.”

“You knew him, did you not? As a child, I mean?”

“Yessir. But if he did have such abilities they were unknown to me.”

“You were friends at one point, were you not?”

“Not really a friend, sir. At one point I considered him something more like a big brother.”

The Chancellor’s left eyebrow arched. “Indeed. And you were willing to kill him?”

“He’s simply an obstacle now, sir.”

“Unless he has knowledge we need, you mean?”

“Of course.”

“Then perhaps we may need to focus our attentions on this Harry Callahan for a while?”

“Possibly. But first I’d say we need to determine who’s assisting him, and what their capabilities really are.”

“When I was a boy, Ted, I hunted with my father. We used dogs, of course. We used them to flush our prey, to scare them from the safety of their place of hiding. Perhaps you could do the same, no? Perhaps you could find a few of Herr Callahan’s oldest friends…and perhaps do something terrible to them?

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…image: Lucifer, by Franz Stuck.

A little snippet to add to the previous little snippet. Come to think of it, isn’t life just a series of little snippets?

[Begin the Beguine \\ Artie Shaw]

88/66.5.1

The Huey landed at the CAThouse adjacent to the old Presidio, and the Doc escorted Deborah and Brendan to a waiting Land Rover — and then, after DD and the Doc got in, the four of them drove over to the Wharf for lunch. Deborah had a million questions she wanted to ask, but all DD was willing to talk about was the unseasonably warm weather the Bay Area was experiencing. After arriving at Scoma’s the Doc studied his menu with assiduous effort, finally settling on a coquille St. Jacques and the Dover sole amandine, recommending the same to Brendan. DD had her usual seafood Louie — while Deborah watched the unfolding proceedings with something akin to astonished agony bubbling away just under the surface of a steaming caldron.

Then she finally broke down and blurted: “I thought Frank Bullitt had passed on?”

“So he did,” the Doc replied casually.

“But…” she cried, “he was there!”

“So he was,” the Doc replied, again without so much as a sniffle.

“But…how can you explain that!?”

“I can’t.”

“Aren’t you at all curious?” Deborah wailed.

And after both DD and the Doc shook their heads Deborah just shrugged and let the matter drop. Brendan, of course, had no idea who Frank Bullitt was — beyond what was revealed in his sky-bound equations — so he really didn’t care at all. Yet Deborah waded through the stultifying lunch with more and more questions boiling to mind with each passing minute…

But when lunch was over, and after the Doc paid the bill, DD drove them back to the CAThouse and everyone re-boarded the Huey — and a few minutes later they were northbound passing the Golden Gate. Forty minutes later the Huey circled Harry’s house and Deborah stared at the scene in disbelief — and she was soon about to burst as the scale of things began to unveil before her eyes…

…for it looked as though nothing had happened earlier that day. The wrecked house and the burning studios were now intact and, apparently, undamaged. There were no mangled helicopters and no crumpled bodies in the street, no shattered glass and the copper roof on the house looked brand new.

And as the Huey settled on the old asphalt pavement she saw Harry and Didi walk out of the house, and Harry was Harry again. He was old now and his stainless steel prosthetic gleamed in the midday sun, while Didi too seemed her cheerful older self once again. Harry came up to the Huey as the rotors spooled down and he helped everyone out before walking back up to the house, and for some reason even Brendan wanted to let bygones be bygones as he sidled up to Didi and walked back to the house — only now he was holding her hand!

‘Has the world suddenly gone crazy?’ Deborah thought, walking along behind Didi and Brendan, and with DD and the Doc bringing up the rear.

And yet the insanity continued once back inside the house. Nothing was damaged. Harry’s Bösendorfer was right where it had been yesterday and the day before that. The slate floors were as new, undamaged and almost looking at they might have the day they were laid, and it was the same everywhere she looked. Curious now, she went to the bedroom and the palm scanner in Harry’s closet was gone, and now there was absolutely no sign it have ever been there…

She sighed and went back to the kitchen and was about to put on water for tea when she noticed that everyone was down on the rocks and headed for the beach — so she followed them as quickly as she could. At one point she heard the helicopter taking off and turned to watch it leave, then she resumed following everyone down through the rocky passageway to the beach…

…yet when she arrived on the beach no one was to be found…not even a footprint in the sand…

…yet now there was only a lone orca waiting beyond the nearest line of breaking surf, and it seemed to be waiting for her… 

© 2016-22 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse…

[Loggins & Messina \\ Watching the River Run]