A Man Overboard (12 page)

“Can I help you?” a voice from behind the counter asked.

As Jack came closer to the source of the voice, he saw a young blonde woman looking up from a computer.

“Yeah. I’d actually like to speak to Dr. Timonen, my wife’s primary.”

“What’s your wife’s name, sir?”

“Stacey Green.”

“And you are?”

“Jack.”

“Are you a patient here as well, Mr. Green?” Her fingers were clicking away over the keyboard.

“I’ve been here a few times.”

She looked up at him again, questions dancing through her blue eyes. “May I ask what this is about?”

“I just have some questions about her cancer.”

His statement seemed to startle her, and all the questions floating through those blue irises scattered instantly. “Uh…” She squinted, looking back over her shoulder and to a female doctor that had just stepped into the office. “Michelle, this is Mr. Green. Stacey’s husband,” the receptionist said.

The woman named Michelle lifted her eyes and smiled. “Jack.”

He nodded and managed a polite smile of his own.

The doctor stepped up to the counter and extended her hand. “Michelle Kelly. I’ve heard a lot about you. Your wife is a wonderful woman. You’re lucky to have her.” She shook his hand.

A lump formed in Jack’s throat. “Yeah…”

She sensed his unease and tilted her head, her eyebrows pinching. “Is everything okay?”

The receptionist said, “He’s here to talk to Dr. Timonen. About Stacey’s
cancer
.”

Dr. Kelly looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “Cancer?”

“Yeah…”

“Uh,” she looked around before lowering her voice. “Dr. Timonen isn’t in today. Hasn’t been in for a couple days, actually. No one can seem to get a hold of him.”

“He’s missing?”

She studied him quizzically for a second. “Why don’t you come on back, Mr. Green.” She indicated that he walk through the door positioned beside the counter.

He followed her into a room and sat down in a chair beside the single desk. Pictures of the human body and some of its specific ailments decorated the walls from beneath framed glass, the bed with the paper lining stretching out from the room’s opposite corner.

Dr. Kelly crossed her legs. “How is Stacey?”

“Uh…” And he found himself reaching for some kind of an answer that wouldn’t require repeating the whole story again. “I’m not exactly sure.”

Alarm crossed the soft features of her face. “Did something happen?”

“We were on a cruise.”

She uncrossed her legs and stiffened, some sense of what was coming gripping her.

“I was thrown overboard.”

“What?” she blurted out.

“Obviously, they saved me. But Stacey’s missing.”

“Oh my God.” Her hand flew to her mouth, and the pleasant softness of her face fell away like a melting mask.

“We just wanted to have a good time, you know, before the cancer took over our lives.”

She wagged her head, her red ponytail swaying back and forth as tears formed in her eyes. After taking a few moments to compose herself, she said, “I don’t understand. Who told you she had cancer?”

“She did. Timonen did. Check her file. Her mammogram came back positive.”

“She had the hospital send the results here?”

He shrugged.

“Hold on a sec, will you?” She sniffled, rubbing her swollen eyes as she stood and left the room.

Jack sat waiting for almost ten minutes, spending the time pondering his conversation with Johnson and questioning his own theory that his house was burnt down to cover something up. But what would someone want to cover up? The picture and the novels? Who would they threaten? How? And then there were the letters and whatever Ivan wasn’t telling him. Something to do with the SVR and FSB. Something that made even less sense.

When Dr. Kelly came back in the room, she had a bunch of files and big envelopes tucked under her arm, and she didn’t apologize for making him wait. Instead, she wordlessly extracted one of two white envelopes and handed it to him. Setting the remainder of the pile down on the desk, she crossed her arms and watched Jack pull the glossy films from the packet.

Jack held them up to the light. “These hers?”

“Her name is on it. They were in her file.” She wiped a teardrop from one of her eyes. “At least that’s what it says.”

Jack looked confused. “What do you mean?”

She handed him the other envelope. “Has she had a biopsy yet?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then you don’t know for certain that the mass is malignant.”

He shook his head again, the look on his face growing more and more uncertain. “I don’t understand.”

“What exactly did Stacey tell you?”

He thought back, the new envelope still sitting unopened on his lap. “Uh… She got a phone call from Dr. Timonen one day. I guess instead of the letter she usually gets when the results are normal.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“He told her the mammogram showed a mass and that she should have a biopsy right away. She thought it was strange because he hadn’t detected anything during the physical exam. Apparently, from what he told her, the mass was pretty significant.”

She pointed to the images he’d already removed, at a large white circle that looked like some lunar lake in an old satellite photo. “It’s very big,” she confirmed.

He stared at it for a while. It was, after all, the very reason they were on the ship in the first place. “She went to pick up the images, to drop them off at the biopsy place and schedule her appointment. I think she had to sign for them. They told her not to open the envelope, that it was for the doctor’s eyes only. Of course she opened it as soon as she got in the car. Who wouldn’t? There was a piece of paper along with the images. It said, ‘Biopsy ordered to confirm malignancy.’”

“But she never actually had the biopsy?”

“No. She never even dropped the images off. They’re still in her closet…” He trailed off, remembering that there was no such place anymore.

“I don’t understand,” Dr. Kelly said. “Why was she so certain she had cancer?”

“Because Timonen told her she did. The radiologist was ninety-five percent sure. Thus the note.”

“I didn’t know anything about this,” she stated, suspiciously.

“Were you supposed to?” Jack asked.

“No. But I’m pretty close to your wife. Dr. Timonen is her primary, but she’s seen me just as much as she’s seen him over the years. And I would think Dr. Timonen would’ve told me if he was sure she had cancer.”

“Well, I guess he didn’t.”

She nodded toward the contents in his hands. “Open the other one.”

Without question, he dumped more black and white film into his lap. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at here.”

“Your wife’s breasts, Jack.”

His eyes met hers. “I know. What about them?”

“How big are they?”

Her use of the present tense seemed forced, but Jack was able to circumnavigate the insinuation. “Her breasts?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged. Under any other circumstances, he might have blushed, and he remembered the verses from Song of Solomon that he quoted over dinner the last night he’d been with her. “Big enough.”

Pointing at the images, Dr. Kelly asked, “You see any evidence of a mass in those?”

He sighed, holding it up. There was definitely no moon lake on this planet’s topography. “When were these from?”

“The previous mammogram.”

“That’s kind of fast, isn’t it? For a mass to form that big?”

“What concerns me more than that, Jack, is that those breasts,” she pointed to the normal film, “are
not
those breasts.” She moved her finger to indicate the other photos.

Jack held up one of each, comparing them.

“I don’t have to be a radiologist to tell the difference between a B-cup and a double D.”

He looked at the images again. “What the hell are you telling me?”

“Have you noticed Stacey’s breasts shrinking?”

“No.”

“Then the film with the mass can’t be Stacey’s. Besides, a mass that big would be detectable during a routine exam. Timonen would know this.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how the photos could’ve gotten mixed up. Or how Timonen missed it.” She grew silent. “It doesn’t make sense.”

But Jack was a step ahead of her. “And you said no one knows where Timonen is?”

She nodded, her eyes distant. Then they focused, and she looked at him. “Your wife doesn’t have breast cancer, Jack.”

* * * *

Stacey didn’t have cancer…
He should be jumping for joy through the parking lot, dancing in the rain and singing at the top of his lungs. If, of course, the implications weren’t so dark. As much as he wanted to believe that the whole thing was just an innocent mix up—Stacey’s images getting switched with someone else’s—it simply wasn’t a piece of the puzzle that fit anywhere. As Dr. Kelly had said, Timonen would never have missed it. And now
he
was MIA, too. What happened on the ship had been planned in advance, the masked men boarding in Miami with a specific mission to carry out…the
cancer
being the very setup for the cruise!

But the whole idea of taking a cruise was…
Viktoriya’s
. She, in fact, had even
paid
for it. And she had packed up and disappeared with Joseph.

He dialed Donny as he pulled out of the parking lot, his heart thumping in his chest.

Voicemail.

“Hey, Don, it’s Jack. Listen, I need to talk to you. Call me back as soon as you can.” He ended the call just as another was coming in. “Hello?”

“
Pull over.
”

“What?”

“
It’s Johnson. I’m right behind you. Pull over at the McDonald’s
.”

Looking into the rearview mirror, Jack saw a black Ford sedan flashing its lights at him. Slowing, he pulled into the driveway and stopped beneath the famous golden arches boasting of billions served, one of the reasons he was sure America was so fat and unhealthy. He wanted to shoot the sign. It was just one of those days—a Michael Douglas
Falling Down
day.

Johnson came running up alongside the passenger door, knocking on the window before Jack could get the pistol out of the glove compartment. He motioned for Jack to unlock the door and slid into the seat and out of the rain. After taking a second to adjust his jacket and tie, he turned and faced Jack. “I heard back from the cruise line.”

“Yeah?”

“The tapes were erased.”

“What?”

Johnson stopped him by holding up a hand. “I know. I also had someone check on your wife’s cell. There’s no signal at all, which it creates even when it’s off. I pulled the phone records and got the person that texted your wife’s phone the night of…” He trailed off, not wanting to walk Jack back through those moments.

Jack nodded, saving him from having to finish the thought.

“It wasn’t Vadim, but it was registered to a Russian male. Coincidence?”

Jack took a deep breath. A Russian man sends some bizarre text to his wife hours before they’re abducted? He couldn’t help but think of the FSB and wondered again what Ivan was keeping from him. “Did someone review the letters yet?”

“Someone’s working on it as we speak.”

He debated whether or not to tell him about Ivan and his SVR theory, and ultimately decided to sit on it for now, to see what the FBI came up with on its own.

“One of your mother-in-law’s credit cards was used at a gas station in Connecticut,” Johnson was saying.

Viktoriya
… “The cruise was her idea,” Jack said. And when Johnson didn’t respond, Jack turned. “My wife didn’t have cancer. Her mammogram results were switched or doctored. And now her primary is missing.”

He nodded his head toward the doctor’s office that was now sitting half a mile behind them. “You just find that out?”

“Yeah.”

Johnson fell silent, his gaze again locked in the distance as if answers were hidden across the gray sky. “Donny trusts me, Jack. You should, too.”

Jack was taken aback by the comment. “I
am
trusting you.”

“Donny came to a dead end with the picture you gave him. So he sent it to me. I
know
you don’t trust me like you trust him, but—”

“Trust
you
the same way I trust one of my best friends? You’re one of
them
, Agent Johnson. Ruby Ridge, Wacco, Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center—”

Johnson sighed. “I’m not one of
them
, Jack. But…”

“But what?”

“You have a decision to make, so let’s look at what we know so far. Your wife
doesn’t
have cancer. The person who told her she did is missing. Your mother-in-law sets you up on a cruise. Three masked men throw you off the ship, and your wife disappears after writing a suicide note. The ship’s security tapes are erased. Your mother-in-law takes off with your son. Someone with a key to your house tries to burn it down after removing certain things of Stacey’s. Someone shoots at you. Someone
does
burn down your house…”

Jack nodded, but it sounded like the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. This wasn’t some badly scripted TV movie, this was
his
life. It was happening to
him
! “What’s your point?”

“I passed the picture along. It’s not the Vadim in the letters. This man was a KGB agent that died in 1982.”

If the entire solar system crash-landed in his lap, Jack wouldn’t have been more surprised. “Are you telling me that my wife kept a picture of a dead KGB agent hidden in her closet?”

Johnson sighed. “I don’t know what else I’ll be able to uncover on my own, Jack. That picture is raising eyebrows in the bureau, and it won’t be long before other agencies get a whiff of what I’m digging up. So here’s where you have to make a choice. Either drop this thing now and let all the dots remain unconnected and focus on finding your son…or let me open up an official FBI investigation.”

He thought about it. “What else
can
you do?”

“Not much. And anything I do is going to take time. I’m relying on favors here. It could take me weeks to find Viktoriya’s car. Or it could take me hours with official support.”