Night Must Wait (37 page)

His feeling of loss would pass. He'd wait until he could ignore it. This was no time for remembering. He wondered if there might be a way to say that to Lindsey, but he felt an anger that included her which kept the words blocked. He pushed back the idea that she was the one who should be dead. Fantasy, that. What was true, and what his duty to that truth required, was all that mattered.

He would observe everything as he always did, and he'd become normal again following the patterns that always brought him strength.

He noted the pallor of Lindsey's face and the odd delay between some of her words. When she changed what she stared at, her eyes didn't react as quickly as usual. She faced the papers on the desk, the map on the wall, the heavy louvers of the metal shutters, but did not see at all.

"She wouldn't expect me to take her back. Wilton would understand I'm no good to her now."

She pushed the pencil on her desk.

"We let Gilman alone for now," she said. "If we can take her lover down, good, but she's in hell now and she can stay there. When Biafra falls, if she survives we shall let her think she got away. But she'll look for Wilton, so we'll know where she is and what she does, and the longer and lonelier the better. When I'm tired of that, we'll meet again. Yes, indeed, for the cold revenge."

Oroko felt no need to respond. Lindsey would do as she chose. She wasn't talking to him. She talked to the wall and the louvers and the papers on the desk.

"Oroko, find me a professional nurse, female. Someone who speaks English and has experience with psychological cases. Credentials in psychiatric nursing."

Interesting that she conflated the two. Psychology and psychiatry. Oroko almost requested clarification, but he stopped. Lindsey didn't care. She made the motions she thought looked right, but she didn't do what Sandy would do. She didn't feel as Sandy felt.

He experienced a shift inside, as though Lindsey altered part of his mind by making the decision to send Wilton away with strangers. Like a shutter, closing off a feeling before he questioned her heart. Maybe Sandy had been her heart and now the fracture ran right through her.

"Yes," he said because the pause went too long.

Oroko moved and missed his step. He caught himself on the table, felt his hands slip on the polished wood. Startled, appalled, he felt as if Sandy had reached out. He felt the shock of her rage, as if Sandy somehow got into him and knocked him off stride. He balanced, moved away from that unreal moment. Lindsey didn't seem to notice.

Chapter 83: Gilman

April 1969

Uli, Biafra

An elegant restaurant. Gilman admired the ceiling chandeliers. Beneath each glittering cluster of crystal drops, white rounds of tables sparkled with cut glass, sterling and china. The clientele were equally select. Tuxedoed young doctors from the best of New York's private hospitals, Lagos's military elite in be-medalled dress uniforms, exquisite women in gowns of rose satin and silver lamé. She looked at Jantor, who sat across from her in his smoke-and-sweat-stained flak jacket. She was hardly better in her surgeon's greens, blood speckled. There had to be a dress code in a place like this. She prayed that the maitre d' would not spot them.

A hand filled her glass with a full-bodied red wine. The ruby color caught the light from one of the chandeliers and refracted it over the table in quivering circlets of red. She felt hungry, not thirsty, and aware of waiting an unconscionably long time for her dinner. She turned to complain to the waiter, but he'd vanished. However, just as her hunger grew unbearable, a large filet mignon materialized on her plate, garnished by burnished braised carrots and tawny roasted potatoes. The steak was done to perfection, crusty brown on the outside, dripping red within, giving way like butter to her knife. She stabbed a slice with her fork and raised it to her lips. Someone called her name.

"Gilman."

The voice sounded urgent, familiar.

"Gilman."

She located the voice, turned toward it and froze. The maitre d' pointed at her. He stood near the fire exit, an old black man in tails, with a face like a skull and a gaping hole torn in his throat. Perhaps that was how he spoke without moving his lips, and why his voice seemed so inappropriate to his body. He floated toward her and she struggled with her inability to scream or run. He grabbed her shoulder, she flinched in terror and then, with a sudden rush of relief, woke to the fact that both voice and touch belonged to Sister Catherine. Gilman opened her eyes in the darkened hospital tent and remembered she'd thrown herself down on an empty cot, too exhausted to return to her own tent and undress.

"Sorry I startled you. Are you awake? Really?"

"Yes," Gilman said. The meager pillow felt impossibly comfortable. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Three. If you'll sit up, I've got coffee, or what passes."

Gilman forced herself to a sitting position. It was unusually chilly in the tent and she gratefully gripped the hot mug. She hoped she wasn't about to have another bout of malaria.

"Why'd you wake me?"

"Two things. The falciparum who came in this afternoon's been convulsing."

"Stopped now?"

"For the time being."

"Temp?" Gilman got to her feet, shaking, and swallowed a great gulp of coffee.

"It's 109."

"Shit." Fried brains. Gilman took another scalding mouthful and winced. She looked at Sister Catherine. "I'll get right on it. You'd better take over here."

Gilman pointed to the cot and cut off the nun's unformed protest with a practiced stare.

"The other thing..." knowing better than to argue, Sister Catherine sat down on the bed and handed Gilman the letter she carried.

"What the..." Gilman wondering, turned the object over. Heavy expensive paper. An invitation, she thought for one loopy moment. She tore it open and pulled out the sheet of parchment, reading aloud.

"To Gilman:

Incompetent even in murder.

I survive. Your agent Paul killed Sandy in my place.

Be sure of me, for you cannot be sure of anything else. Watch for me always. Everywhere. Until we meet again."

She stared over the rim of the paper at Sister Catherine.

"What the hell? I saw Sandy a week ago. Nothing was wrong with her."

Even as she spoke the words, she looked down again at the paper.

"It can't be Lindsey's handwriting…Sandy? Dead? No."

She saw only an answering puzzlement in Sister Catherine's eyes.

"Sandy's one of your American friends?"

"Yeah. Where'd this come from?"

"A boy gave it to me. Half an hour ago, I guess."

"It can't be. This is sick," Gilman said. But she didn't know. She turned from Sister Catherine, seeing Sandy's face.

"It can't be," she said again. She swallowed hard. She turned as if she could turn from the idea and went from the tent out into the darkness. "No, impossible," she said again into the night. She tried to feel if Sandy was dead—would she, could she know, wouldn't she sense a loss so basic to her world? But Sandy was healthy, strong as ever, ready to keep the faith. Rumor could be pitiless, and mistaken. Malice, well that was far more likely, though she couldn't imagine who hated her so much. She walked away from it, but the idea followed her, a shadow, a puzzle rooted in dread.

Chapter 84: Lindsey

April 1969

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

Lindsey came to see Wilton. In a few minutes the nurse would sedate her for the journey to the airport. Wilton looked a little more composed. She stood free in the room. Lindsey, pinned by the blank frightening gaze, didn't know what to say.

"It's all right, Wilton," she said. "You're going home."

The door behind Wilton opened and Lindsey saw her friend shrink in terror at the abrupt sound. Lindsey's anger subsided at the bland calm in the face of the nurse.

Lindsey looked once more at Wilton—was there a wrenching loneliness in the unnatural eyes? We say good-bye for the long run, here. Now. She remembered much, words and acts of the past came unsummoned.

She took Wilton's shuddering hands in hers and stilled them. She looked at Wilton as though the intensity of her emotions could communicate through all barriers. Lindsey's voice came thin. Words should have been unnecessary between them.

"Of what I owe you," she said, "there can be no reckoning…There is no measure."

She noted that a flicker of curiosity surprised the impassivity of the nurse's face, but no response in Wilton. Lindsey released Wilton's hands and stepped back.

"We're ready to take her now," the nurse said. She opened her carrying case, brought out alcohol and cotton, put down a syringe box and tiny bottle of clear fluid.

"Yes," Lindsey said. "Take her away."

Chapter 85: Gilman

April 1969

Uli, Biafra

The incandescent light glowed in this small hot room with sparse wooden furnishings, shadows black on the uneven floor. Low-watt bulb in a heavy brown shade. The air hardly moved, thick with humidity after the rain,

Gilman turned at Jantor's voice and read bad news in his stance. He was looking at her too hard.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry. Gilman, the crazy note you got…Your friend Sandy's dead. It's true. She died in Ibadan."

Gilman drew in her breath and sat down, staring at the chart in her hands. Jantor clasped her shoulders, steady hands. Always there, stabilizing her.

"How," she said. "Tell me please."

"An assassin, Masters says. That's what's going round in rumors."

"An
assassin
? Why would anyone kill Sandy?"

She wouldn't cry. It would be unfair to Jantor if she cried. Maybe her tears had all dried up, anyway. Maybe she'd seen too many deaths she couldn't stop, too much suffering she hadn't helped.

"Someone slipped a snake into Lindsey Kinner's bedroom, only she wasn't there. It took out Sandy. Big spitting cobra, sounds like the sacs were almost full. The antivenin must not have worked..."

"When did this all happen?"

"Couple days after you left her and Lindsey in Lagos to come back here."

"Christ fucking Jesus," Gilman said. "They couldn't use antivenin—Sandy's allergic to the stuff. It must have taken hours for her to die. Not hours. Days."

The tears she thought absent stung her eyes and she dropped the chart on her chair, hid her face in his flak jacket.

"It shouldn't have been Sandy," she said. What a fool thing to say.

"They found some bastard, Paul, the guy you traveled with to take the fall. That Biafran politico you took when you flew Wilton to Lindsey. He confessed."

She swallowed tears, trying to make sense of that.

"Oh," she said. "That idiot. God. That's why someone unloaded him on me for the trip? I can't believe he'd kill Sandy—he's got to have been after Lindsey."

She pushed free of Jantor, horrified.

"Paul. I helped him. Damn his rotten soul to hell. He used me for cover. So that's why Lindsey thinks it was me. The poor stupid bitch. She was already pissed at me.

"But she'll figure it out—don't you think she's gotta figure it out? Paul wouldn't tell them it's me who made him kill Sandy—it's only Lindsey's grief talking. I'll get a chance to settle with her after this is all over. We'll sort it out. Poor dear Sandy. Damn him, damn him."

After this is all over. She thought about the phrase later and wondered what she had meant by that.

Chapter 86: Gilman

May 1969

On the Western Front, Biafra

Gilman hated to see the rains. Everything would be more difficult, new fungal infections among the malnourished, fecal contamination of the water supplies and all the diseases that would result. Cholera, dysentery.

Clouds spread in torn sheets across the sky, releasing only fitful gleams of colorless light. Depressing. The rain pounded for hours, and all along the crumbling raw edges of the rivers the thick orange clods tumbled and melted into the thick milky fluid. Heavy with clay, the water twisted and gurgled in its courses like serpents writhing through the jungle. Maybe she could hope that floods would slow the Nigerian advance against Biafra.

Gilman, Allingham and Sister Catherine joined the medical unit with Jantor's troops. Neutrality—Gilman didn't dare think the word. Using the weather as cover, their unit picked its way through the mud westward to ambush the Nigerians.

Gilman felt grateful to be going along. She always imagined bad things when she waited at Uli for Tom's return. Sister Catherine came grumbling, but on leaving Uli behind, cheered up. Sometimes any change helped. Even Allingham irritated Gilman less than usual, maybe because he knew he shouldn't be following the Biafran troops and hoped no one would mention that.

In the evening Masters, Jantor, Gilman, Sister Catherine and Allingham sat in the low-slung shelter of the tent and drank the whiskey Masters had brought. It warmed them in the dank night while they listened to each other's boasting and the slow rhythms of the rain. Susie, a German expatriate and Masters' girlfriend, showed up halfway through the evening with a fresh jug.

"Hey, Doctor," Masters said to Gilman. "Did you get to talk with that pilot, Skip Turner?"

"No," she said in surprise. Why would she?

"Aw, hell. I told him you'd be interested. Had a drink with him and got all the news. Your crazy friend Wilton, poor bird, she's gone back Stateside."

"Good God!" Gilman sat up straight. "Is she okay?"

"Hell, I guess." Masters waved off all responsibility. "All I know's what I've been told."

Gilman leaned back. In the pleasant golden haze of whiskey, all things seemed possible. Masters's sources usually came up with the real goods. So Wilton had been cleared for a trip home. She met Sister Catherine's eyes across the room and shared a smile of glorious relief.