Fever

"It has to be you. The call was urgent. You're a doctor. The cover requires a doctor."

"Here in France?"

"No. Africa. You'll be briefed in Nice."

"I don't know. It's pretty soon. This one was rougher than I thought it would be."

"It involves Doctor Christophe Colbert of Doctors Across Borders. You can get closest fastest."

I sucked in breath. A former lover. One who had made my walls shimmer and the muscles ripple. One of the few who had reached me and made love to me in my most vulnerable, soft core. One marked by a bad breakup.

"I hear you," I answered. No use trying to argue my way out of it. "Until we meet again then."

"And an Irish blessing to you too."

"You're not Irish."

The man clicked off. That was outside of protocol. No useful information was to be given over such connections. But he had mentioned Chris. He'd broken protocol first. He wouldn't be more pissed than I was. And it wasn't his ass that burned.

I stopped outside of Nice at an expensive male brothel I knew of and bought a rent-boy of my own for a couple of hours, using some of the money Nyoni had stuffed in my wallet. I picked out a big-cocked and body-builder muscular Spanish sailor I was told worked there part time when his ship was in port. I paid him extra to make love to me, not just to fuck me.

He lay between my legs, with me clutching his butt cheeks with my hands and rubbing the backs of his meaty thighs with the heels of my feet while he languidly plowed me and French kissed me. I used him until he too, with length more than capable of the trip, was able to reach to my vulnerable, soft core until the muscles of my passage were undulating over and caressing his thick cock shaft and making me hum and purr. He did me well, getting deep into my core and spreading and kissing my walls there with his bulb. I came twice in great, arcing globs of multishot cum. After Nyoni and his thugs, I needed someone to make love to me. He claimed it was his pleasure and that someone like me shouldn't have to pay for it. But he took my money all the same—and gave me his private cell number.

On the way out, the manager of the house admitted he had been watching and offered me a place in his stable. "You're American, aren't you? And such a good body. Natural blonds do very well here. Your performance, when he was deep inside you, was very impressive. Your exhibition of totally open submissiveness and surrender would win you large tips. It made me shoot my load. If you came to work here, I'd pay for you to bottom for me myself."

I told him thanks, but I already had a job that fucked with me more than enough.

* * * *

"I didn't, in a million years, think I'd see you out in a bush like this, Wade. If anyone is the Manhattan sort of person, it's—"

"Is that why you're out here, Chris? To avoid me?"

"Man, you get right to it, don't you?" he asked. We were standing in the baggage arrivals area of the airport in Bamako, Mali. Christophe Colbert still looked good to me—tall, slender, very French, meaning he couldn't not look sexy no matter what he was wearing or how scruffy he was. He wasn't scruffy at all at the moment. He looked like he had dressed as carefully as he could to make me want him. I didn't want to want him, but of course I did. He had aged a bit since he'd walked away from me in Manhattan, but the slight graying at his temple looked great on him. Of course it would. Standing next to him, was a shorter, muscular, and very interesting-looking-in-his-own-right young black man, who had been introduced to me as Assane, the driver.

"I don't want us to act like it didn't happen, Chris," I said. "But I don't want you to think I've come out here chasing you. The clinic at Kongoba is down a doctor; this fever business is approaching dangerous levels, I hear; Doctors Across Borders is paying well; and I was available. I didn't even know you were here before I signed up. So, where to from here?"

"It's too late in the day to go to the clinic," Chris answered. "And the roads around here aren't safe at night. There's been some local revolutionary activity and the French army has come in to give support. The revolutionaries are particularly unhappy about that. Tonight we stay here in Bamako—at Le Grand Hotel. We'll go to the clinic in the morning."

My bags came up on the carousel, Assane hefted them with a winsome grin, and we followed him out to the parking lot, to a yellow Toyota FJ Cruiser so covered in mud that I had to remark where that, rather than dust, was be found in the Mali scrub.

"Kongoba is in marshy area," Chris answered, "near the banks of the Niger River." Assane just wagged his head and smiled in agreement. He was becoming easy to like, and the way Chris put his hands on the young man as we moved out to the vehicle gave me the strong impression that the randy Frenchman—I'd always found him randy—had found Assane quite easy to like—and to obtain—as well. That had been the problem between us. Chris was a magnet for men happy with a one-night stand and had thought I wanted more commitment than he was willing to give. I hadn't necessarily wanted more commitment. I'd wanted a little more consideration, though. He'd wanted to bring other men into our bed, and I wasn't ready for that at the time. I'd grown to like it occasionally, but not until after he'd moved on.

Assane wasn't there, in the hotel dining room, where Christophe and I had reached the dessert and coffee course with just occasional chit chat that was avoidance nonsense, not dealing either with Chris or me. The conversation hadn't focused on the work of the Doctors Across Borders clinic in the bush here in Mali, either, or certainly, what had brought me here, both why Christophe thought I was here and why I really was here. Assane's absence, though, with a Mali native of his station not being welcome in the dining room of a hotel with Le Grand's history, gave me the opening to delve deeper.

"Is there a problem between you and Assane that he couldn't join us for dinner?" I asked. "I haven't known you to be color conscious before."

"No, certainly no problem with Assane. It's more Mali, and Assane is a man of Mali. Malians have and accept their traditional roles. The Le Grand Hotel is the height of colonial tradition. If we hadn't paid for the meal in our hotel package, I wouldn't have hesitated to include him at another restaurant, but he might have been shy with you there until he'd gotten acquainted with you. I, of course, told him what a grand, democratic guy you are, but he'll want to learn that for himself."

"You've told him about me? Have you told him we once were lovers?"

"No, of course not," Christophe said, with a snort and a laugh. He looked around the dining room to see whether anyone might have heard that. Two attentive waiters—both black Malians—were standing close enough to hear, but they remained stone faced. I didn't really give a fuck if they heard me. I was in the mood to give a few slashes to Christophe's smug, carefree shell. But he surprised me.

"And why would he care if we were? He's a submissive bottom and so are you," he countered.

It was my turn to glance at the waiters to see if they were following our conversation—and, I guess, for Christophe to assert that I couldn't embarrass him that easily.

"Are you fucking Assane?" I asked.

"Again, why should you care? You and Assane are both bottoms. But, yes, of course, I'm fucking Assane. You can see for yourself that he's irresistible."

"Are you afraid for Assane?" I asked, twisting the knife in a different direction.

"What do you mean?"

"We have to discuss this eventually, Chris. The clinic isn't just short a doctor. You are in the edge of an epidemic. The Doctors Across Borders are very concerned. A fever that takes otherwise fit native black men within twenty-four hours with no apparent way to save them. And rumors have reached the organization's headquarters in New York that the clinic is responsible for that rather than helping to prevent it. They want me to look into this and give them an independent report. But Assane, who is, I presume, working at the clinic where these men are brought is of the Fila tribe, if my observations are correct. Isn't it just the young men of this tribe who are being affected by this fever?"

The elegance of this explanation for why I was here was that it was, on the surface, true, while my deeper assignment was to put a stop to it if, as the rumors had it, there was experimentation going on here by a rogue doctor to develop a virus that induced such a fever. And, further, I was to consider Christophe Colbert as possibly being that doctor—or exonerate him from that possibility.

"Yes, it's only Fila tribals who have been affected yet. And, yes, you are right. Assane is of the Fila tribe. But we are careful with our precautions at the clinic. I'm not that worried for Assane."

That didn't make me feel good about Christophe. If there was some sort of pogrom in the works on young, military- and procreating-age members of the Fila tribe, with the Fila including some twenty million people spread over much of Africa, why wasn't Christophe more worried for a young man who he admitted was his lover? One explanation—a hideous one—was that Christophe controlled who got infected and who didn't.

"Most of the Mali staff at the clinic are from the Mandinka tribe—the particularly tall tribal men you see winning foot races—and the fever hasn't shown in them. Yet." Christophe obviously didn't want to talk about Assane anymore in this context.

"Is there still a Father Felix in Kongoba, at a Catholic mission near the clinic?" I asked, changing the subject—and doing it purposely to see Christophe's unguarded reaction to the question. He did seem to be surprised by the question, but he quickly withdrew into his aura of self-confidence.

"Yes, Felix is still at the mission school. How do you know him and why do you ask?"

"I don't know him. But Doctors Across Borders wants me to consult with him. They want me to ask some questions of someone not connected with the clinic. Apparently he made quite a fuss when one of the Fila tribesmen who worked at the mission school became one of the fever victims. He is suggesting that a doctor at the clinic gave the young man the fever."

"Ah, that would have been Yossibo. Yes, he died of the fever. And, yes, Felix was upset about that. Felix was fucking him. I'm not so sure that Father Felix is a reliable source. American Catholic priests don't get assigned to outposts like this if they are all that trusted. But if you wish to meet him, I'll be happy to introduce you to him. He had only just acquired a taste for Malian blacks with Yossibo. Before that—before the other American priest who was at the mission was suddenly reassigned—Felix had preferred pretty-boy white blonds. Like you, as a matter of fact."

He smiled at me what I recognized as his victory smile. He'd known I was trying to prick him—that we were bantering in a realm of hurt feelings. And he knew that I hadn't gotten through his protective veneer.

I called it a night.

"Assane is waiting for us at a club not far down the road," Christophe said as he folded his napkin and placed it on the table. One of the attentive waiters, recognizing the "I'm finished here" signal stepped forward immediately to clear his coffee cup and cheesecake plate. I also caught a smile from the waiter and a brush of Christophe's hand that clearly signaled the young man had heard our conversation and was interested in Christophe. I wasn't surprised. Christophe exuded sensuality for any man who wished to lay under another man. And the waiter was signaling availability—even without knowing what I knew about Christophe.

"You go on without me," I said. "It was a long flight from Paris, and I got no sleep. There was an Italian civil engineer beside me who kept hitting on me and I was afraid to even close my eyes." That was the truth, even though I wasn't as tired as I was making out. The Italian businessman also was very alluring. He had scared the hell out of me, though, by some of his suggestive talk of what he liked to do with his fist.

Truth be known, I didn't want to fall into an old groove with Christophe—and certainly not until I had cleared him of any involvement in nefarious activities with this fever business. I would do what I had to do if I found something sinister in all that. I didn't want it to be hard to do if I found Christophe was involved.

I went to my room; took a shower; covered myself, otherwise naked, in a hotel robe; and read a bit in an Alan Furst thriller on the Spanish Civil War that I'd bought to read on the plane. Restless, I rose from the bed and went to the window. My room overlooked the front entrance of the hotel, and I can't be surprised that I caught sight of Christophe leaving the hotel—nearly an hour after he's suggested we meet with Assane in a nightclub. Nearly plastered to him was the waiter who had signaled to Christophe at dinner. They parted, but not without a hug and a feel.

I supposed Christophe would go on to the club to meet Assane and later that night he'd be fucking Assane in a back room of the club, perhaps with a third man. That was the Christophe I remembered. It was the Christophe who could have multiple men in a night—both sequentially and together.

Neither was I surprised three hours later, when, after having returned to my novel after a doze on the bed, I heard the sound of slurred voices in the hall—two men—and opened my door a crack to see Christophe and Assane entering Christophe's room across the hall from mine.

Then too, a few hours later, having lost track of the time because I had drifted off to sleep on the bed again, I answered the knock on my door to find Christophe there, wearing a sloppy grin and a hotel robe of his own—obviously as naked under it as I was when I opened the door.

He fucked me to a swift mutual ejaculation, with me on my back at the foot of the bed, raising and spreading my legs as wide as I could to provide as open a channel for him to reach deep inside me with his impossibly long cock—the distinguishing feature of his that I supposed the dining room waiter now knew about. Christophe could reach deepest into the quick of me of any man I'd ever had. It's why I stuck with him as long as I did in New York and why he left me rather than me leaving him, even though all of the infidelity had been on his side. It's why I had let him in my room tonight.

After a swift fuck to establish that I would let him in again, he pulled me up onto the bed and into his chest, my buttocks nestled in his crotch. I looked up, the glass cylinder of the syringe having caught the light from the lamp on the nightstand and murmured, "No, Chris. I haven't done that shit since you—"

"Shush," he whispered. "You know it gives you a high from the fuck like nothing else can."

I whimpered as he found a vein in the crook of my arm, but I didn't fight him. We were doctors; we'd always been able to control this shit. And he was right. I'd never been higher than the combination of him and this shit.

He pushed my bent left leg up into my belly, entered me in a side split and, while embracing me close, sank into the quick of me and played my vulnerable inner core like a violin for some twenty minutes or more, as I danced on the clouds, before he creamed me again. To me he was a foot long and baseball thick now, as I groaned, moaned, and sighed for him. And he was Superman too. Fucking and seeding me repeatedly. Exhausted, I drifted off into sleep, and this time I didn't wake until daylight was streaming in my window.

When I woke and was coming out of the cloud-dance haze, it was to Christophe lying on his back in the center of the bed, embracing and turning me to him with an arm around my back and fingers playing with one of my nipples. We were kissing, and thus it took a few moments for me to realize that Assane was straddling Christophe's hips and was riding the Frenchman's cock and had a hand encasing mine. I, of course, was hard. What was happening had some relationship to the wet dream I had been having and as I came to I came for Assane. When I realized that, I bounded out of the bed, escaped to the bathroom, locked the door, and stood under the shower until I was able to stop seething. They were both gone when I came out of the bathroom.

I seethed all the way to the clinic in the yellow Toyota off-road vehicle, not being able to see Assane's expression at all, as he was in the driver's seat, but clearly being able to see that Christophe, riding in the passenger seat, was buoyant and in the best of spirits.

At one point Christophe smiled at me, with his head turned to the backseat where I was sulking, and said. "You fucked him too, you know. We had a good old time, Assane, you, and I."

I answered, "Just shut the fuck up," and he turned eyes forward again, with a laugh.

* * * *

I wondered why, having built a state-of-the-art clinic, albeit with mud brick outer walls, the Kongoba clinic staff was still living in tents circling a campfire—at least I wondered that until that first night, after dark, when I realized they kept the tents for atmospherics. They were large tents and electricity had been run to them. There was a brick structure at the side that enclosed a functional kitchen, a lounge, and a dining room, but as soon as supper was over, and the sun had gone down, we all were pulled out to sit around an open fire within the circle of tents. Smoldering smudge pots circling the area helped keep the mosquitoes and other night creatures at bay.

Despite the electricity, the tents were lit by candlelight, and the canvas was transparent enough to see distinct shadows of those moving around inside. I was to learn that wasn't by mistake. We were entertained by a series of sensual shadow plays.

I also was to learn that after the doctors, nurses, and orderlies had worked hard through the day, they partied hard at night—and this included liquor and drugs.

The staff wasn't shy around me. They had immediately accepted me as a competent doctor and thrown me at the patients with as much alacrity as they took in taking on work themselves. And there was plenty of work to do. In addition to the usual patients walking long miles to show up to a free clinic, the infirmary was filled to overflowing. The fever epidemic was taxing our limits. I was not spared doing what little was possible for the fever patients, all young, male Fila tribesmen. All who had come in before the doctors arrived in the morning had died before we went back to the camp that night. I willingly worked with these men, giving them comfort to the end and trying my best to figure out what was taking them away, and I thought I had gotten an inkling of something. All of the ones I helped into the other world had drug mark tracks on their arms, but none had been users for very long. But then I found that they were being given morphine by injection to ease the pain that went with the fever.

It was little wonder that the staff came back to the camp wanting to forget and to live life to the fullest. In addition to me, there were three doctors: Christophe, the Frenchman; Gafar al-Saadi, a Saudi, and the senior doctor; and Gretta Schmidt, a German female. There was an Australian male nurse, Ken Kelso, who also lived in the staff area. The other nurses were Mali women who lived in their villages with their families. There were two men of the "big men" Mandinka tribe, Moussa and Baba, who worked as orderlies in the clinic and were in the camp after supper, although they didn't seem to have tents of their own. They were handsome giants, each closer to seven feet tall than six, both with well-developed bodies, wearing only shorts that evening, and both obviously bull hung given the bulges at their crotches. Two Fila tribesman also stayed on past supper: the driver, Assane, and a cook, Ahmad. Assane, as I'd already learned, was a sexy young man. Ahmad was a grizzled senior, although still with good muscle tone.