Night Must Wait (16 page)

The diesel fumes nauseated and she nodded with fatigue, no more able to acknowledge her position than a patient in a fever. Dependent on inertia and those protective hands.
White people mean well,
she could almost hear them thinking around her
, but you have to take care of them when they go where they don't belong.

Chapter 26: Sandy

August 1967

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

Sandy stepped out of Lindsey's office, and stopped at the sight of Wilton's filthy face and shabby dress. Out of place in the white walls and teak of this room, all right angles and polish.

"My God. Wilton. Guess who's coming to dinner, Lindsey?"

She swung around and Lindsey followed her through the doorway.

Wilton leaned in her chair like someone who'd waited a long time, the smug desk clerk looking in surprise at all their faces. Obviously, he'd thought Wilton some trivial missionary kook with her box and bag and dirty sunburned cheeks. Didn't he have better sense?

"You'll remember in the future," Lindsey said to the receptionist, "that Professor Wilton has free access to me always. Immediate personal access."

The man bobbed his head until Lindsey looked away. Then he exited in haste, closing the door.

Oroko stood a little behind Lindsey. No touch of recognition or reaction to Wilton, which made Sandy wonder. Wilton and Oroko knew each other, she had evidence aplenty of that. Yet no greeting or look passed between them.

Wilton looked too tired to care, but she straightened. Sandy scooped up Wilton's things and followed when Lindsey and Wilton went into the office.

Oroko shadowed them, his brown eyes calm behind his steel-rimmed glasses. Once in the office he walked over to the window and stood there as though he could stand so forever.

Sandy took down the bottle of water Lindsey kept on a shelf behind her desk and Wilton accepted the glassfuls Sandy poured, swallowed them with careful greed. She made Sandy feel thirsty.

"You need something to eat," Sandy said. "Bet you're dehydrated."

"Lindsey, use your contacts, use your connection with your head of state, Gowon," Wilton said, as if Sandy hadn't spoken. "Let the appropriate people know. The war comes to you, into your home. Better that you blow up that Niger Bridge, for all the millions it cost. The Biafrans want the Mid-Western Region, the middle of the country, either for part of their new nation or as a cowed ally. They're coming now on my heels. Invading. Forward this warning," she said, and for the first time, Sandy heard the note of an order in Wilton's voice. She saw Lindsey tighten.

"Couldn't you have sent an earlier message?" Lindsey said.

"Not for this. You would have wasted time checking anything else for tampering. You would have doubted."

Wilton sat down and leaned back into the softness of the couch. Lindsey asked Wilton questions about numbers and approaches, jotting notes, and Sandy sensed a tension between them that felt personal. Lindsey never took orders and Sandy could see how Wilton melted down into public exhaustion as if to hide her previous authority.

"Tired," Wilton said, her dust-reddened eyes closing. "I'm too dirty to sit on your couch, Lindsey."

But she didn't get up. Instead she turned her face against the back of the couch as if she'd realized she'd come to safety and could afford the luxury.

Lindsey studied her, but Sandy could tell nothing from her expression.

"We'll stay put here in the capital," Lindsey said. "It'll be crazy, but we want to stay on top of everything. In the long run this place will suffice."

Lindsey jotted notes then got up and left the room, Oroko moving with her. A faint snore came from Wilton on the couch and Sandy hated the thought that kept her watching Wilton's eyelids for any slight flutter that would have spoken of sham. Nothing. Surely Wilton was really sleeping while Lindsey followed Wilton's orders?

"Sarah, Sarah, I need to talk to you."

Sandy woke in a cold sweat at her mother's voice, then in her warm dark room the dream sound melted into a deeper stronger voice and the summons of a fist on wood. Well past four in the morning by her alarm clock.

"Madam, madam." Oroko's fist rapped staccato.

No finesse in him now. No time for it and Sandy jumped from her bed, pulling her pajamas straight before she hurried to the door and peered through the peephole Oroko had insisted on.

Oroko pounded on Lindsey's door across the hall. When it opened, Sandy saw Lindsey's fully dressed distorted shape in the fisheye glass. Maybe Lindsey never slept. Oroko bowed slightly to her.

"The Biafrans are coming, madam," he said. "They've reached Benin."

"Indeed?" she said.

"Yes, madam."

"Where's Sandy?"

"I'm here." Sandy yanked her door open.

"Tell me exactly what you heard," Lindsey said.

"The Biafran army crossed the Niger River. They invaded the Mid-Western Region and declared the sovereignty of the Mid-West as a new nation and ally. The Federal Army is still in the North."

"I see. Thank you. Bring me news when you receive it."

"You do not wish to leave? I have a car ready."

She looked at him, displeased.

"Why?" she asked aloud. "I see no need. Thank you."

He made his bow to the closing door. He looked at Sandy and his face twitched. Yes, these were her teddy-bear pajamas. She felt her face heat.

"Beautiful sleepwear," he said.

"Oroko." Sandy clenched her fists, but an idea hit. She forgot to be embarrassed. Her words tumbled over each other. "Get our neighbors—the Chidikes, the Odufias, those people from Otukpo who live on F Street. Any Easterners. Bring them here before it's light. Keep quiet and get them in downstairs and warn the servants not to talk."

He pushed the glasses back into place on his nose, his face no clue to what he might be thinking. Lindsey's door opened again and she stood listening.

"Please hurry," Sandy said.

"What will you do if the servants tell?"

"Threaten you'll kill them," Sandy said. "For me."

He laughed and gave her that slight bow before he sped down the hall and away.

Sandy faced Lindsey, but all she could see for a moment was the slumped body of the murdered Igbo clerk in Lindsey's old office with his blood-spattered white shirt and the gay red streams writhing over the papers on his desk. She didn't care what Lindsey said. This was something they had to do.

"Yes, a great idea," Lindsey said as if answering her thoughts. "I should've thought of it first. Where's Wilton?"

"Sleeping like the dead," Sandy said after checking the next room. "Like someone drugged her or cracked her one on the head."

"Guess that means she trusts us," Lindsey said.

"Of course she does." Sandy went back into her room to pull on some real clothes.

All day Sandy paced or sat restless in their living room waiting for something to happen. Oroko was with them, and she felt he wouldn't bother to be there if he had no concern.

Wilton read as though catching up on months spent without books. Fiction, nonfiction, classics. She read without discrimination, apparently caring only that there be words on paper.

Sandy watched Lindsey look down from her position well to one side of the window into the muddied street, holding the blind barely out of her way. Oroko had trained Lindsey in this habit. There were always men out in buildings across the way looking for a profile at this window, he said.

Right now, he stood silent, apparently approving of Lindsey's caution, since he didn't interfere. Sandy wondered what Oroko thought about behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He had such a capacity for being still, but he never seemed distracted or sleepy.

"How many are you hiding downstairs?" Wilton asked.

"Thirteen Easterners, two Mid-Westerners," Lindsey said.

Sandy went over to the window and peered down, copying Lindsey. The roads seethed with people. In Nigeria, wherever a crowd moved, music and chatter and argument came naturally. Not today. No cheer, no gossip, no bargaining. The crowd held a sinister quiet. They moved about, seeking, shifting from street to street.

Wilton settled on the couch, bearing a handful of paperbacks. Sandy bent to consider the plate of sandwiches on Lindsey's desk. She picked one and handed it to Wilton. Canned ham. Wilton tore a corner from her sandwich. Curiously, she seemed more worn now than upon her dramatic arrival four days past.

"Meat. Canned ham. Biafra will run out of protein," she said. "Nsukka was once one of Biafra's best sources for crops, and you've occupied the town. Refugees don't farm. The bombings will displace more onto the roads. We never grew much meat. All our beef came from your Northern Region herds."

"What is this 'your' and 'our,' Wilton?" Lindsey asked. Sandy saw tension, possibly anger in the line of her mouth and a note of criticism.

"A manner of speech," Wilton said.

"Eat it." Sandy pointed to the sandwich Wilton still held. "It's good for you."

She glanced around the room for something to talk about and stopped at the little bag of kernels on the side table.

"Movie night," she said. "I've got all the reels for
The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance
and bootleg popcorn to go with it. Let's have our movie night a couple days early and break out that flat of Fantas in the storeroom. Keep all our guests happy."

"Movie night?" Wilton asked as if Sandy had just crashed through from some other world.

"Yes. It was Lindsey's idea in the beginning. Once every two weeks or when we can get the reels from the Embassy after they're done with them, we run our own cinema here—downstairs or sometimes at our place in Ibadan. These guys have never seen our movies. Most of what we get are kinda old, but no one minds."

"Like
The African Queen
?" Wilton finally took a good bite out of her sandwich.

"Did that one a couple months ago. You shoulda heard them cheer when the torpedo blew."

"Perfect," Lindsey said. "That will do. Keep every servant under observation for a few hours at least."

Sandy scooped up her little bag of popcorn.

"I'm gonna make this myself," she said. "Jonas can sure mix a drink but he likes to take the lid off the popcorn too soon."

"Can you blame him?"

"He laughs hard enough to piss himself, that's for sure," Sandy said.

Chapter 27: Sandy

October 1967

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

"It's over. Biafran lines tore like wet toilet paper," Lindsey said.

Lindsey, Sandy and Wilton sat down at dinner together in the Lagos apartment. Rice and chicken, some boiled greens and a lot of spices. Sandy breathed in the scent. The new cook did a good job—he was a Mid-Western Igbo, one of the folk they'd hidden and shown movies during the invasion. He'd been a cook for a batch of Brits in pre-Nigerian-Independence days.

"So the war's practically over," Lindsey said.

Sandy eyed Wilton with unease, thinking of the curious collection she'd seen in Wilton's room after one of the houseboys complained. Stacks of cans of fish and meat, packages of what Sandy considered utterly inedible dried stockfish, and a box full of medicines doubtless intended for Gilman. It was the room of someone who knew the war wasn't over.

"But the frigging Biafrans keep fighting," Sandy said. She didn't want to quarrel with Lindsey, but complacency seemed like asking for trouble. "Not gonna be so easy."

"Nigeria had to get serious." Lindsey picked up her fork. "In the long run, there's only one possible outcome. Biafra's what, a quarter the size of the rest of Nigeria? They need other countries' recognition and that, they're not going to get."

Oh, that explained a lot. No American support then, for Biafra. No declaration and no supplies.

"Outsiders will keep this war going. Caritas and other nonprofits shipping food and medicine, American and European charities pumping in all they can." Wilton tilted her head like one of her sparrows. "Can you stop it?"

"Gowon countenances the aid," Lindsey said. "He thinks it looks noble and civilized to let food, medicines and supplies reach the enemy."

"Or maybe he knows that with every day of war more die. The longer the conflict, the fewer the rebels. The charities only reach a few." Wilton studied the braised pepper chicken on the platter and finally took a leg. "The minority tribes never receive significant supplies."

Sandy felt sure that Wilton stinted herself at every meal they'd shared, so it was good to see her taking food. Wilton seemed too fuck-all nervous. Give her a chance and the next thing you knew she'd probably be sick.

"Wilton, what in hell are you doing?"

Wilton was wrapping the leg of chicken in her paper napkin, corners tucked with care. Wilton's hands jerked. "I don't know," she said. "I really don't know."

She replaced the meat on her plate and Jonas appeared to take her soiled napkin away. He slipped a new one onto the table at her side. Sandy decided Jonas should get a bonus this month.

"Don't go screwy on us. Eat the damned thing," Sandy said. "You can't take it with you."

"Yes," said Wilton, "I'm going back to Biafra."

"How are you going back?" Lindsey said. "Curfews and armies aside, it's a stupid idea. There's no reason to risk it."

Sandy saw Wilton straighten and look at Lindsey, stare at her as if they could be enemies, and to her surprise it was Lindsey who glanced down and adjusted her fork. Had Wilton won a point? Yeah, well, Wilton probably did supply Lindsey with information, and maybe Wilton had some work to do in Biafra for Lindsey. But Wilton wasn't right these days. She needed peace and rest, not spy work.

"The way I came is the way I shall go," Wilton said, not touching the meat on her plate. "The lines are full of holes."

"They were. But you're always the first to say beware of assumptions." Lindsey made a delicate gesture with her knife as though to puncture Wilton's quoted words.