Night Must Wait (24 page)

Chapter 47: Sandy

July 1968

Lagos, Nigeria

Sandy hadn't asked questions when Wilton arrived last night too tired and dirty. When Sandy erupted back into her office, Wilton sat on the bench as if waiting for her. Wilton looked pretty much okay today, and goddamn it, Sandy had to talk to someone. How could Lindsey want to keep her safe?
Safe?
That wasn't what they'd come here for. Not for safety, not to be controlled, that was the shit they'd left behind in America.

"But she does," Sandy said to Wilton. "What Lindsey wants does control me, because of so many things. The servants, the armed camp we live in both here in Lagos and in Ibadan. We've got to think of her safety."

Maybe she shouldn't be saying these things to Wilton, who sat there so quiet, her face turned toward the window with its frantic street sounds muted by the louvered glass.

She walked around the table and Wilton tracked her, black eyes intent.

"Wilton. Listen to me. What's Lindsey doing? I live here in the same city she does, share the housing, pay the servants, but God, what's going on? There are people who know she's a spook for the USA, people who want her out of the way and her influence blocked, but it's gone personal. She ruins people. She eats it up. I feel like I'm blood sister to a Mafia don, and you know I still…still like her—it isn't that I'm mad, exactly. I mean she annoys me, but it's gone different."

"Will you stop going out for field work? Stop prospecting?"

Sandy didn't want to answer. She pushed her hair back from her eyes.

"How could she want to stop me? So she won't feel guilty if I have an accident?"

Sandy turned her back to Wilton. Terribly, inside herself she felt her rant go on as though she were pounding out words before Lindsey, not Wilton.
How long before you decide it's better not to have me around as a liability, Lindsey? Will you worry about me talking? And then what? Trust you? I've done nothing else all these years and I think I'm the greatest fool of all.

"Why do you stay in Nigeria?" Wilton said. "You like the work in the field, but that's never been the whole story for you. You're not getting rich, you don't have a love life, what's here for you?"

"Freedom," Sandy said. "It's like I never had to leave college, or at least that's how it felt before this goddamned war. Before Lindsey put a chain on me."

"Do you miss home? Do they miss you?"

"I write. That's all they need to know. They're better off without me and I'm better off without them. We embarrass each other."

Wilton would never understand. Sandy checked Wilton's expression, but it was so unmoved she wondered if Wilton listened. Sandy simply didn't want to talk about it, especially with Wilton of all people. God she was angry. It made her think unforgivable things. Exaggerate. Dramatize. Sandy looked again at Wilton. The poor kid seemed too small for this, too turned inside herself. Wilton didn't need more worry. Get a grip, return to what they both knew in this cuckoo place and time.

"Maybe I'm crazy," Sandy said. "Lindsey's what she's always been. You'd sense if that wasn't true, wouldn't you, Wilton? She's been my best friend all these years. Maybe it's the war, maybe it's that I really needed to get out of Lagos and away from all these people for a couple of weeks, get a sunburn and some free air and she said no. Sure, I'll be able to talk her down. She's not keeping me in a fucking canary cage."

"You think she'll change her mind?" Wilton said. "I go where I want when I want. You could too."

"But that's just it," Sandy said. "She trusts me not to do a bunk on her and so I can't. If she put Oroko to watch me then it'd be fun to see if I could sneak out, but this way I can't. She's trusting me. We'll have to fight it out."

Chapter 48: Lindsey

August 1968

Lagos, Western Region Nigeria

In an air-conditioned room with thick red curtains, Lindsey sat at a massive mahogany table after greeting Major Yakubu Gowon, commander in chief of the Federal Government. What a setting—luxurious in an old-fashioned way that matched Colonial days of elegance and polish-darkened wood trim.

Gowon in private disliked ceremony. He brought his idiosyncratic austere Christianity with him to any meeting, even when it inconvenienced or offended. His teeth flashed in a warm smile for her and he glanced down again at the folder open on his desk. It was too easy, Lindsey reflected, to win this man's trust. He assumed everyone worthy until proven false. And yet, he wasn't stupid.

"I need information about our foreign volunteer pilots."

The Biafrans called the Federal foreign "volunteers," mercenaries. A difference of perspective. The Biafrans had their own but didn't fuss as much over the terminology. Paid volunteers made for a funny definition of the word. She had her own doubts about the outsiders manning Nigerian Federal bombers. Russian, Egyptian and East Eurpoean pilots dropping British-made bombs on Africans. Bad for public relations with other nations.

"I hear that they're compromised by old friendships that run across Biafran and Federal lines. Mercenaries hang together." Rumor had it that the mercenaries on both sides of this war played tag in the sky. So many of them believed foremost in the brotherhood of soldiers of fortune, not the abstract politics of an African war.

"Would you consider Anann's proposal?"

Anann wanted the foreign volunteers paid a bounty on hits, not by air hours.

"I might." His lips closed stubbornly with the look she knew so well.

She dropped the subject. She'd return to that later.

"Sir," she said. "We're seeing increased problems with intelligence. Nothing has yet been done about the lack of effective air reconnaissance. I need not emphasize how vital..."

She spread several sheets from her attaché case. Gowon smoothed his short mustache with one finger, his clear interested eyes following her actions.

"I delegated an examination of our intelligence operations to Abiola," he said and accepted what she handed to him. "His report stated that our air photography division served adequately."

She watched him scan the papers and his frown when he read the figures. Privately, she sighed. Now he would get distracted by the fact that Abiola was unreliable, and this would take time. But she'd expected that. Equations—why didn't he see this was a simple set of numbers? Personal betrayal wasn't important. Facts were. You made a mistake when you took matters personally. Gowon looked up, his expression disappointed and severe.

"So Abiola is unreliable. I shall speak with him tomorrow."

Lindsey barely saved herself from smiling. No matter how serious the crime, Gowon always had the same answer. Even the army officer who'd attempted Gowon's assassination two months ago was invited in afterwards to discuss his grievances with his intended victim before receiving a pardon and dismissal. One of these days Gowon would get himself killed with such notions of mercy. She would never make a mistake like that.

"Sir Voinadagbo is right when he says we must face that foreign charitable aid is the reason we haven't finished this war. An all-out assault on civilian targets and charity units must commence."

She saw the objections gathering in his posture, the way he turned to her.

"Sir, I know you feel we must act as civilized as possible to palliate the international community…"

"Not act civilized," he said. "
Be
civilized."

"But there could be errors," Lindsey said. "Mistakes in maps. We could be very sorry, afterwards. That would be sufficient."

"You will be at the War Council meeting tomorrow," Gowon said. "My secretary will contact you."

He nodded permission for her to leave and Lindsey almost missed her cue to rise, blood burning in her face. The War Council. She had made it at last. Keep your face still, unmoved, nod a polite good-bye, replace the chair.

The War Council. She hardly felt the floor under her heels.

Chapter 49: Sandy

August 1968

Ibadan, Western Region, Nigeria

Have it out. Easier said than done. Pacing over the path alone in the overgrown garden at Ibadan, Sandy couldn't phrase her argument to Lindsey in a neat package. There must be better words. She turned, and saw something among the green leaves. Wilton had tried to teach Sandy to spot snakes, so when she noticed something in the hedge under the west dining room window, Sandy's first alarm said snake. Still, unmoving, velvet brown. No, not a snake at all but a patch of rounded brown skin. Human. A child almost entirely concealed among the branches.

Wilton always scolded that vegetation up against the house endangered them. Especially here, in an old Ibadan house whose gardens butted up against the Agricultural Experiment Station with its rubber and cocoa tree plantations. A wilder area than many in the suburb, almost forested in patches, with all the animals that came in for the shelter of thick plantings. Chameleons, hedgehogs and snakes, innumerable birds.

But Lindsey only smiled.

"I'll take a few risks for my flowers. I think I'm owed a touch of color. Besides, Wilton you go clambering about in overgrown places without a second thought. Don't overprotect us. We deserve a little fun. In the long run it won't hurt us."

Sandy agreed. The servants spotted snakes with great skill and chopped them up with machetes even in the house itself. But neither she nor Lindsey ever encountered one on their own.

She heard someone moving toward her, fast, and looking up saw Oroko, his face intent as a hunter, coming right at her with a gleam of metal in his hand. Revolver. God he was fast. How'd he known something strange had happened? He must have been watching her, but from where?

This might just be another human being, who hid here in the bushes, but suddenly her mouth went dry and her heart pushed in her throat and she backed away from the hedge, moving aside onto the lawn so that she'd be out of Oroko's way. A person hiding in the bushes of their private garden. But it had to be a kid.

"Oroko, lay off. It's a child. A kid. Don't shoot."

She addressed the hiding person and saw the brown skin twitch.

"You'd better come out," she said. "We see you."

Oroko's hand on her arm pressed her back, firm and urgent. The patch of skin remained where it was between the leaves, as if the owner imagined that stillness might erase what she'd said. A prank? A relative of one of the servants come to beg a job?

The branches shuddered then a boy about twelve years old rolled out onto all fours, looking up, slitted wary eyes and a narrow compressed mouth. Oroko had him covered.

"Who are you?" Sandy said.

The face wasn't good. Made her think of eavesdropping and theft.

Oroko shoved her back, shocked her.

"Go in, madam," he said. "It's no child. This man is here for murder."

"But you can't," Sandy said, looking into the quiet of Oroko's face behind those harmless spectacles.

He was steady on task, not even a flicker of a glance at her. It seemed that he spoke to her by his stance, saying that of all the words she could possibly use to him—
can't
—was not one.

Sandy saw now an age of feature in the boy that she'd missed before, and settled lines about the mouth. Only the whites of his eyes and the way they showed now in the pitted brown of his face had any illusion of youth. Thin, not young. Dwarfed. Raging. Waiting for any opportunity to reverse the situation.

She had to get out of Oroko's way. She backed up, then moved faster, feeling her chest hurt as if it tightened against her lungs. The man she'd found would run, if not now, then later, and Oroko had given her an order.

This was why Wilton sent him. To kill for them.
This.
Maybe it was some change in the whites of the captive's eyes that told her he would break. She felt a coward for hoping he would wait until she couldn't see.

But he didn't. He jerked into movement, running.

Oroko's revolver made a sharp pop. The intruder spasmed in midstride, flung down upon the stones and grass with a sliding thud. She saw some blood on the back of his shirt, but not as much as she expected. He moved, his arm reaching, making a noise without words. Oroko looked, then turned back to her as though he knew he didn't have to do anything more.

"Was it my fault?"

"He was here for Lindsey," Oroko said. "Go on in, madam."

Sandy came across Wilton in the hallway by Lindsey's office. Wilton had been using their Lagos guest room but Sandy hadn't seen her in days. Thank God Wilton missed the man killed in the garden. She'd make sure no one mentioned it.

"Look what the cat dragged in," Sandy said and was sorry for the choice of words.

Wilton looked indeed too thin and beaten, her posture bent. Had she been roaming again on her strange secret business, hair hidden in a wig, boy's clothes and skin dye giving her passage? Was there a trace of dark color in the creases around her fingernails? Could be. Sandy didn't know how she could verify anything without making it clear to Wilton what she suspected.

"C'mon in," Sandy said. "I think Lindsey's back from her meeting with the boss."

She watched Wilton from behind and thought about that pounding Wilton had taken in Lagos when Oroko had rescued her. Wonder if those old wounds ever ache?

"So, I finally get to see you, Wilton," Lindsey said when they came in. She settled into her chair, pushed the clipped pages away from her and then drew them back.

"I had to observe. I need to tell you what I saw," Wilton said. "You must bomb civilian targets, the Catholic charities, the Protestants. They hold the Biafrans together, feeding and supplying them. That must stop, or this war will go on forever. Hear me, Lindsey."

"You do nothing the easy way, and that's your choice." Lindsey looked down once more at the typed report on her desk. "You said this before."