Trinity

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."