Night Must Wait (19 page)

She looked up straight through the leaves. She stared into his eyes over the thirty feet that lay between them. How does one know when you meet another's eyes? She felt it. She stared and her eyes stung.

With slow deliberation, she got to her feet, dusted off her knees, shrugged like a high-school girl back home caught running off to play hooky. American body language was her best bet.

She stood and waited. He dropped down out of the tree, but she didn't use that brief moment when he hit ground to make a break. She'd have been a fool to do it. He could have winged her so fast she wouldn't have made two steps. When he beckoned her, she walked straight upslope to him.

He was young for a mercenary, late thirties at a guess, and American. Her luck still held, thank God.

"Not another fool newspaper reporter?" he said. "Keep your hands on your head."

"Not today." She watched him examine her, a flickering wary glance. She carried nothing but the bundle strapped to her back.

He poked the bundle, flipped open the top, probed. Paper, binoculars, clothing. Paints.

"Where'd you think you were going?"

"Biafra. I'm Kate Wilton, here to see your Dr. Gilman. Dr. Katherine Gilman."

"Yeah."

"I didn't know if the Feds held this ground." She moved in response to the gesture of his Schmeisser to walk in front of him, as if they both had danced this dance many times before. There was agreement in the sound of his grunt. The lines could change in a day or night, even looping like a wounded snake, cutting compatriots off from support.

"Coming up that slope was a fool's trick," he said.

"Not much choice. The Feds hold the bush over there."

She didn't make the mistake of moving her hands but instead indicated the direction she meant with the turn of her head and eyes.

A few paces then three of his men shifted out of the high grass as though he'd called them. They saluted. Nice. He must be good. The man on the right held his machine gun balanced and easy.

"Major Jantor, sah."

"Take over my post," he said. "I want to check this one out. Obika you come with me—keep an eye on her while I drive."

He took her to a hidden Jeep. They jarred over the rough track for perhaps a quarter hour before reaching another group of men and vehicles. He transferred Wilton to another truck, one headed back to base with wounded, then swung up to join her in the back of the open bed.

"I can help," she said, "if you let me get my hands down."

He nodded and watched her check wounds. Wilton tightened a binding on one man's arm, checking to make sure his hand still had a pulse—that she hadn't overdone it. She didn't like the look of the man lying rolled in a tarp and placed the quick back of hand to his sweaty forehead to check for fever. But there was nothing to do for him. The truck lurched and Wilton balanced, moving over to the third man.

"You a medic?" the American asked. "We could use you."

"Amateur compared to Gilman," she said. He was too good looking and he knew who Gilman was. Wilton could draw lines between points. She knew Gilman was a romantic.
You'd think being a doctor would take that out of a person.

"Nurse?"

"No."

"What then?"

"A birder."

"You're joking."

"No, cross my heart and hope to die," she said.

He laughed.

Outside the hospital the mercenary swung down and offered Wilton a hand, which she ignored, hopping down like one of her birds. She pulled her bundle of belongings after her by the strap.

He gestured. "Go ahead. I can see Doc's in the office."

He followed Wilton and she knew he wanted to see how she was received, to make sure Gilman recognized her.

"Doctor, you have guests," Gilman's nurse said.

"Dr. Gilman." Wilton tried to suggest she and the doctor were on formal terms. She stood to one side of the door acting unsure of her reception.

But Gilman's head jerked up, her pen skittering across the page of notes. Her startled attention went first to the Major, then to Wilton.

"What the...Wilton? Thank God. Thought we'd never see you again."

The mercenary nodded, sketched a joking salute and started back to the truck.

"I've been having kittens over you," Gilman said. "Where in hell you been?"

Wilton saw the mercenary twist his head back as if he wanted to eavesdrop. Then he moved on and she took a deep breath.

"I used to think that Lindsey did everything for effect."

"So you think better now," Wilton said. She sat in Gilman's small office on a rickety metal chair. Through the screen door she could watch the sun go down. Like thunder, Kipling said, as abrupt as that. No, she had it backwards—Kipling had written "where the sun comes up like thunder.…" The other half of the sun.

Gilman was finally free of work, the two of them drinking gin and water alone together. There was the fragrance of cooking on the air. Garri and hot sauce with palm oil. No smell of meat or beans. Carbohydrates only.

"Yeah, now I
know
everything she does is for effect."

"Gilman, what am I to do with you?"

"Oh, I'm not jealous, Wilton. You always think I am. Bugs the hell outa me and always has. Nope, I'm sorry for her, don't you know. Sandy's the only thing keeps her human. Back in our Wellesley days, you ever listen to the girls in the dorm talk about Lindsey?"

Wilton said nothing, knowing her friend was about to go offensive, but Gilman grinned and looked around the shadowy room as if to make sure no one else listened.

"Talked about her like a rock star, movie star, making up all sorts of romantic legends. They'd take any scrap of information that floated their way from the hero's past. Tragic hero. Can you imagine anything less tragic than Lindsey?"

"You said you felt sorry for her." Was it worth reminding Gilman of that?

"Shit yeah, but not like that. Not romantic—impaired. Isolated, fearfully controlled. A constipated personality. Wouldn't know what to do with a good red-blooded emotion—except for ambition. If that's an emotion. I used to think she liked babies, that she had that much of human vulnerability. Now I know better. She doesn't even like babies except in the abstract. She'll donate to an orphanage, but never change a diaper."

"You change diapers?"

"Shut up, Wilton."

"You were saying?"

Gilman laughed, embarrassed perhaps. But the jealousy came through to Wilton. She distanced herself. This was no time to get angry with Gilman. The doctor had to feel lonely here even with Sister Catherine sharing quarters.

"Childhood canings by cruel nuns, murdered parents, even a myth about Lindsey as a baby abandoned on the church step on a cold winter's night. Believe you me, that's the kind of stuff they used to whisper."

"You never thought there might be a truth buried behind those fragments?"

"Sure, maybe. Well I know she lost her parents as a teen. But nothing so outrageous special to make her different from the rest of us. We're the expatriates who don't go home. We're all the same, even you with your high calling and your fantasies of power that bend us to your will. Don't think I'm blind to what you do, Wilton."

"I never think that."

"But sometimes the trap snaps tighter when the victim walks in wide eyed." Gilman said.

"Oh yes." Wilton laughed, and her heart lightened at the comment.

"So what do you think of our mercenary contingent?"

The sound of Gilman's voice was too casual, and Wilton wished they'd lit a candle so she could see Gilman's face.

"I've only met the one who decided not to shoot me," she said, focused on every inflection and the stir of Gilman's body in her chair behind the desk.

Was it possible to stop Gilman? Probably hopeless and Wilton would alienate her friend as well as the merc. But mercenaries didn't last long. They left or they died.

"It doesn't matter," she said to Gilman. "Tell me more about the types of diseases you're getting here. Did you see the usual dry season outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis, or did the refugee situation change family habits enough to break transmission patterns?"

Christopher met up with Wilton in the early morning. He spoke with her on the bush path by the hospital where the trees and vines gave good cover. Wilton heard about Thomas Jantor.

"He says to Masters, that South African mercenary Major, 'Doesn't matter about intentions or good feeling. You can get a knife in the gut or a knee in the balls all the same if you don't know the language.'"

Christopher's mimicry was good and made Wilton want to smile.

"His men fear him, but they're proud. They say he cannot be shot. He knows about women. He leaves wives and girlfriends alone. He goes with good-time girls but only two, three, so far."

Wilton guessed Jantor knew the old laws without any translation needed. While the troops wanted to know he was a man, they didn't want him too distracted or taking women from other men, soldiers or civilians. That would get men killed. So a white woman would be better than a black and that meant Gilman was at risk.

Maybe Jantor understood more than was safe. Wilton needed to figure him out, because he already knew more about her than she wanted. She hated the thought that he had watched her on that slope. He would know she had done that kind of work before and her cover about the birds would not convince.

But he'd be easy to take out, between translation problems and the natural suspicions of any leader of a rebellion like Ojukwu. The stakes of betrayal paid so high, and a mercenary was for hire, so planting doubt should be easy. The least suspicion that Jantor was bankrolled by the wrong people and Ojukwu would conclude he was a traitor. She must consider, wait and watch. She saw a smooth motion in the powdery soil and leaves by Christopher's toes.

"Be still," she said.

Christopher's body and even his eyes fixed. He didn't question. Wilton took up a stick and pressed down the end across the neck of the little brown snake that paused close by his bare foot. It tried to slither free. Before it became angry, she plucked it up. The tail wrapped swiftly about her wrist. A somewhat stumpy shape, lovely in a camouflage chevron pattern copying broken and moldering leaves. A night adder, back fanged, sluggish, but still poisonous in spite of its size.

"What the hell are you doing, woman?" Jantor's voice broke in on them.

"Not deadly," she said, though it wasn't true and Christopher knew it. "I'm moving it so no one gets frightened. It's not big enough to eat."

"You handle snakes?"

"She sends witches away too," Christopher said.

She wished he hadn't said that in this man's hearing. Wilton walked a distance farther into the brush and released the snake. She dusted her hands.

Jantor looked at both of them and she could nearly hear his thought—likely looking young fellow—why isn't he in the army? She needed to get Christopher away from this town.

"God, you won't catch me doing that, or exorcising witches, birdwoman," Jantor said, and walked away with his slight limp obvious.

Wilton watched him go.

"Madam, thank you for taking the snake. I know the kind," Christopher said. "Will you perform exorcism while you are here? I know families who would ask you to turn their luck."

"I must leave," she told him and knew herself a liar. She shuddered at the idea of another exorcism. Would she find she had wandered even farther away from God down her own path? She couldn't shake Christopher's faith by letting him know that she no longer had enough power to share against evil. "It doesn't bring luck anyway. I must be gone tonight and you also, or you will surely wake up in the army one morning, my friend."

Chapter 36: Gilman

April 1968

Uli, Biafra

Balancing on the empty crate that served as a chair, Gilman took a fast swallow of her tepid beer. Now she could look up, guardedly, at Sister Catherine and Allingham on the other side of their makeshift table outside the little Biafra Sun Bar. Here in the shade, the light didn't hurt her eyes as much as the walk over in scorching afternoon sun. Cheap warm beer but God, it helped the soreness of swallowed tears and snot in her throat. Couldn't believe she'd just lost it in the operating room, in front of Allingham too, with all his supercilious ways and selfish face.

She blinked, stared at the glass, wondering how many parasites she'd ingested by now. Even with care she knew she couldn't avoid every worm, or God forbid, fluke, that thrived in this tropical paradise. Yeah, paradise of parasites—it had a certain ring and it distracted her from other thoughts.

Neither of her companions looked at her. Considerate. She almost felt an affection for Allingham and that scared her. Stockholm syndrome or a version of it. Isolation and stress could do wonders.

Why were there particular patients that pushed you over the edge, whose cases couldn't be closed with the learned resignation she assumed was part of her training and history? Today, the young woman who died in childbirth and the baby with her, had hit her somewhere there was no armor, and she had lost it. Nice that her companions stared at their beers. She'd pull herself together if they gave her something like three minutes. She'd be fine.

Instinct yanked her alert, her tired eyes focusing. Disturbance, a fight, she guessed. Soldiers, a cluster of them opening out into a loose ring. Now she could see two men. So fast and smooth—the taller man had the other by one wrist, and then a quick shift of grip, the smaller spinning away with a shriek, falling with an arm turned wrong at his side. The other following him down, to set a knee in his back, hauling his face out of the dirt with a hand clasping his chin.

Gilman got to her feet, moved forward without knowing how she'd decided. A broken neck would come next. Some part of her brain registered that the fingers cupping the downed man's black chin were white.

A growl of words she couldn't quite make out and then the victor stood up and stepped back. It was her mercenary, Jantor, the guy she'd taken to the graveyard. The Biafran soldier at his feet had stopped making any noise, but Gilman could see the grayish color in his face and how he panted, his eyes watering with pain. Nothing like a dislocated shoulder. She went forward. She saw with a sense of shock a familiar look in the merc's face, that gloating greedy look she'd seen before in the face of a bully at high school long ago. Her stomach clenched with revulsion. But Jantor stopped. He had that much control over what clearly gave him satisfaction.