Night Must Wait (25 page)

"Yes, and you've waited. Give me warning before you act, Lindsey. You can hit other villages and towns but keep Umuahia off the target zone a few weeks more."

Lindsey made an assenting noise but her gaze returned to the report.

"What is it?"

Sandy hadn't noticed until Wilton asked, but yes, Lindsey's mouth was tight in anger.

"A report from my people on the Biafran side. Read it. Did you know this already?"

Sandy busied herself with pouring Wilton a glass of water. Wilton always had a thirst on her.

"Damn Gilman," Lindsey said. "She must fancy it's romantic. Harlequin Book romantic. Why did she have to get involved in such a stupid way?"

"Involved?" Sandy questioned, at a loss. She looked at Wilton as though she might find a clue in Wilton's bent head. The pages fluttered in the ceiling fan's pulse.

"You're sure...?" Wilton asked.

"Oroko's sources are reliable." Lindsey's pale cheeks showed a stain of color. "They always are. You said he was good."

"Hey," Sandy said, annoyed at the evasions. She could see Wilton draw in. "What's Gilman doing?"

"Bedding a white merc," Lindsey said. "Playing the slut."

Wilton winced aloud and stood up, the pages scattering, her hands clenched. She turned from both of them as if she could not bear to read or hear more, and with a sudden violence opened her fists and thrust the palms heel first through the thin glass of the bookcase door.

Sandy returned from the run to the clinic with Wilton. She slammed into Lindsey's office, glancing about to check that the glass and blood had been cleaned up. Hardly a sign of the earlier incident remained, save that the desk had been drawn away from the bookcase, which stood with its door removed.

Lindsey walked across the floor in a rare display of restlessness, pacing, her pale face cold. Sandy sat down on the edge of the desk and waited. This would be bad. Whatever Lindsey had to say, Lindsey didn't want to say it.

"Spit it out, Lindsey."

"Wilton," Lindsey said.

"You thinking what I think you're thinking?" Of course she was. Sandy felt rage, honed by the scrambling frantic past hour. The eerie silence of Wilton while the medic removed splinters of glass from her oozing fingers and palms. It turned Sandy's stomach. She jerked herself back onto her feet. Sandy felt her face flush hot.

"Wilton's unbalanced."

"Goddamn it, Lindsey, you've gone too far. You've become a fucking machine. You don't let anything show and sometimes I goddamn well think you don't even feel anymore. Look at you. It's un-fucking-believable."

Lindsey stared and the stare goaded Sandy.

"Come on, stop playing mind games. You and I used to know Wilton pretty damned well. Yeah, this war's hard on her. It's her own country, for God's sake, but she isn't frigging crazy yet. Don't you start getting ideas about putting her away, 'cause I won't stand for it."

Sandy shook her head. She was sure Lindsey had an objection coming. A counterargument, dispassionate and terrible.

"It's no easy time for the kid. You're a sodding ass if you don't understand that. She wants to smash something—pound on the wall, and has the farting bad luck to hit the glass. Now you're ready to lock her up."

"Sandy," Lindsey interrupted. "I'm not about to lock her up. Relax."

"Oh." Sandy paced across the carpet, feeling the heat dying from her face. She didn't feel relieved. She felt lied to, misled or misdirected somehow, though not by Lindsey. By whom? She had to say something.

"Sorry," she said. "Guess I went off the deep end. Gotta go take a drive. Take a walk." She headed for the door.

"I'll see you later," she said, barely hearing Lindsey's agreement.

Sandy hardly saw the corridors or the people she passed, moving her head in a nod when she heard someone greet her. She needed to get out. She'd claim her car from the auto pool, fight her way through the damned fucking downtown traffic and the beggars and goats and chickens and try to kill no one but herself. She took the steps two at a time. Action. Anything was better than thinking too goddamn much.

Sandy took the car keys from the uniformed attendant, slipping him two shillings as an afterthought, seated herself in the Bentley and turned the key. The world convulsed white and blue and green around her. She flung her arm up over her face, felt herself thrown, flying. She hit something, then came pain, and silence.

Chapter 50: Oroko

September 1968

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

"I am sorry," Oroko said. He looked at Sandy propped up against the pillows, her broken arm in its cast supported by the sling and he felt a burn of shame. Her eyes looked like they'd been punched into her head, bloodshot and surrounded by bruised flesh. He knew she would recover, but would he?

"I did not anticipate this. You should sack me."

"Hah," Sandy said. "Fucking hell, no. I know better. You've had me watched for months even though I'm not supposed to be a target and I never told you to protect me. Only her. I was pissed off at you—wondered if you were behind Lindsey telling me to stick to town and no more field work."

She took a deep breath.

"I'd have fired you for that, but I'm not a complete idiot and I figured out it wasn't your idea. Not your style. So they blew up my car. So I get myself a bodyguard too. End of discussion."

Oroko looked at her crooked grin, her face lopsided with contusions. He turned toward the hospital door, because he had too many words in his mouth and he did not dare to let them out, uncontrolled. He paused.

"I killed them." He managed to say that naturally enough and it encouraged him. He crossed back to her, looked into the face that held no laughter now. "I found out who ordered it and why. I killed him too."

Her eyes went wide.

"Yes. Many times they have attempted Lindsey's life without success. They thought you an easier target and that by taking you, they would cripple Lindsey Kinner. They thought you lovers."

Without understanding, he felt himself bend forward and down, then the warmth of her cheek brushed his lips. He fled.

Chapter 51: Gilman

September 1968

Uli Area, Biafra

Three weeks after the night she spent with Jantor, on a cloudy quiet day he appeared in her clinic doorway. Gilman was trapped by dreadful shyness. His uncertain smile made her grin back. He kissed her, his mouth lingering on her face, brushing her lips again before he let her loose. A laugh born of relief broke from her.

"Sit," she said. "I'll try to find you something to eat."

Gilman stepped out the door, relieved to escape his intent gaze. She walked over to the mess tent, trying to move with casual aplomb, giving a nod to the soldier guarding the kitchen. She gathered up a few items for Jantor's meal. Sister Catherine came into the kitchen while Gilman rummaged.

"They're back, Doctor." The sister's eyes seemed worried and kind behind her spectacles.

"I know." Gilman blushed a little, but looked Sister Catherine full in the face, meeting the silent inquiry.

After a moment the nun nodded. "There's a half bowl of egosi soup in that ice chest."

"Thank you." Gilman watched the white-clad figure leave. So someone had seen and someone had talked. Well, she decided, it didn't matter. She was no teenager to skulk around and deny she had a lover. And a great one too. She gulped down a giggle. She hadn't giggled in a long time. She went for the soup and took an extra second to straighten out her face before heading back.

Gilman rearranged the flurry of papers on her desk while Jantor ate. She spent more time looking at him than at the notes she handled. Then came a light knock on the door.

"Come in," she called, frowning over a page of Allingham's knotted scribble.

She glanced to see who it was when the door opened and sprang to her feet. Wilton, nearly as brown as any Biafran, stepped in, allowing Gilman's hug. Gilman felt her stiffen—was that the physical contact, or was that Wilton noticing Jantor here with her?

"You're here, great, wonderful, welcome, Wilton. How are you? You okay? So much has been happening. I discovered a better way to deal with those ligatures I was fussing about when you were last here."

Gilman was glad to see Wilton. She wouldn't explain about Tom—Tom, sitting right here with them looking on with interest. Was Wilton waiting for her to say something? Did Wilton already know? Was it guilt that had Gilman sweating? She didn't feel guilty. She was grown up and what she did in private wasn't anyone's business.

She went on about the slipknot ligature. She talked about elephantiasis treatments. She told Wilton about her latest fatality from cerebrospinal meningitis.

"Wilton," Gilman said. "Where'd you come from?"

"'From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it...'"

But Gilman paid no attention to the quoted answer though it had a familiar and slightly unpleasant ring. She grasped Wilton's wrists and turned the fingers to the light. She traced the barely healed ridged scars that ran jagged across. Little white marks from stitches.

"Jesus," she said aloud. "What did you do to your hands? Tendon damage?"

The hands of an artist.
Look at that.
Gilman could not help trying to straighten the right forefinger to see if it could move that far. Careful, careful. Would these fingers ever regain their old flexibility, or ever channel again the inspirations that only Wilton knew? She remembered the painted dragon on the wall of Wilton's room so many years ago and blinked frantically to stem her absurd tears.

"Are you doing exercises to…"

"They're healed." Wilton dragged them away and put them behind her back. "Lindsey and Sandy say hello."

"Glass?" Gilman asked. Her mind hummed with unasked questions—surely the accident had happened in the last two months. She felt Jantor studying them both, but he remained silent while Gilman's mind considered supplemental therapies for Wilton's hands. Restricted extension of the fingers. Glass might make wounds like that. But she read the finality when Wilton looked away and for once Gilman shut her mouth.

"How did you get here?" Jantor asked.

"Flew. Spent last night in town."

"How come I didn't hear about your arrival? What came in with you?"

"Second-hand M16s, ammunition, a few crates of stockfish. I didn't have a reservation."

"Hell. Hope Steiner got his…But it's too late now. Last night should have been all medical and food."

Gilman considered Wilton. Had she always been like this, so rigid, so disapproving? No, she'd changed since their last meeting. Was she quite a stranger? Wilton looked at the bowl in front of Jantor.

"Hungry?" Gilman asked.

"No. I need water. Only that. I brought more medical supplies, courtesy of Lindsey and Sandy."

"I bet Lindsey had a
lot
to do with it," Gilman said.

"Gilman," Wilton said, "take my word. Lindsey contributed just as much to the project as Sandy did."

"Sit down, Wilton," Gilman said, both ashamed and annoyed by Wilton's behavior. "You know I didn't mean it. Let me go find you some water and a bite of bread."

She headed back to the kitchen wondering what Wilton and Jantor would make of each other. Best be quick. When she returned with her supplies, she found both silent, but it felt to her like the silence that comes after talk.

"I remember meeting you months ago," Wilton said in her dry voice to Jantor. "You didn't shoot me."

"A couple of months ago. Yeah."

She took Gilman's offered water and bread with a smear of Marmite.

"Who is this Lindsey?" Jantor asked.

"Lindsey Kinner. Once an adjunct to the US Embassy. Occasional economic and general advisor to various persons. In Lagos. An old school friend of ours."

"The same Lindsey who's on the War Council? Strange place for an American."

"Yes." Wilton leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. "How rumors fly. Some are true."

Jantor whistled. "I always figured that Lindsey was a man. The doctor has interesting friends."

Gilman stopped herself from saying Lindsey wasn't a friend. No need to upset Wilton.

"One of my guys said you grew up in Nigeria. Which Region?"

"Half the time in the West, half in the East here."

"Missionary?"

"Of a kind. You might say a missionary of education."

"Those hands still hurt you?"

Wilton didn't answer.

Jantor looked at Gilman with a very slight nod. What did that mean? He was frowning as if he had something to tell her.

"Looks like a self-injury," he said later, alone together in her tent. She knew that, but it seemed wrong for him to say. He sat on the bed and she came over to stand against his knees.

Jantor shrugged as if he wanted to apologize.

"I know," she said then, feeling that she had to answer. "But accidents happen. There are times people fall into a window or something like that. I remember having to stitch up a girl who walked right through a glass door at her home once. The sheet of glass had been washed and she didn't see that the door was closed."

"Gives me the creeps." He reached to touch her hair.

"What does?"

"Hurting yourself. On purpose. Never understood it, unless it was a try for an honorable discharge by injury. Didn't really understand that either. It's a court martial offense if you get caught, but at least it has a purpose."

Chapter 52: Oroko

October 1968

Ibadan, Western Region, Nigeria

Lindsey had left on one of her banking trips to the North, telling Oroko to watch over Sandy. Oroko opened the apartment door after his distinctive patterned knock and gave Sandy a searching look.

His amazement at the copper in Sandy's hair when sunlight gleamed in it like something magical never ceased. Long light, end of day and end of work. She sat alone at her dining table in the late sun. He'd made a habit of frequent checks on her ever since the accident in the carport. But they'd scarcely spoken, and he couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing.