Sanjay said, his voice shaking a bit, “Oh, they’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
“Sure,” Karen said. But I couldn’t agree with him, not at all. The van backed down the road, made a reverse U-turn, and then was gone, the little Australian flag flapping bravely in the wind from the radio antenna.
WE STAYED UP there by the blasted on-ramp for most of the morning, and, surprisingly enough, Jean-Paul accepted Sanjay’s suggestion about keeping watch on the highway. We brought the Land Cruisers down and found a place to park them, behind a high stone wall, and while Karen and Sanjay took the first watch, we waited. And waited. A slight mist was forming and for a while I sat in one of the Toyotas, playing cribbage with Miriam. Then I decided I had to walk around. Besides the fact that Miriam beat me, four games to nil, I felt enclosed and trapped inside the vehicle. Charlie was out on a high point of the perimeter, keeping watch, and he was wearing a black wool watchcap instead of his usual UN blue beret. Jean-Paul was sitting on a tarp, leaning back against the stone wall, working on his own laptop. When he spotted me he said, “Samuel?”
“Yes?”
“A moment, if you please.”
I came over and he said, “Peter went down the hill a couple of minutes ago, for a bathroom break. If you don’t mind, it’s time for Karen and Sanjay to get relieved. I’d like to send Peter and you up there.”
“I’d rather go with Miriam.”
“Yes, and I’d rather be in Marseilles having a wonderful hot bowl of fish soup, but that’s not going to happen, now, is it? Now. Please run along and get Peter. He went down that trail, over by the far Land Cruiser.”
So I went, droplets of mist dripping down on me from the trees. Miriam was inside the Land Cruiser I had just left, reading a paperback. She waved at me and I waved back.
THE TRAIL WAS wet and covered with grass and patches of soft mud, so I didn’t make much noise as I went into the woods. Peter and me, keeping an eye on the highway. What fun. I shivered from the cold and remembered that wonderful motel we had stayed at, what now seemed ages ago. A roof and electricity for a while, and even a hot shower. Paradise. The woods I was in were a mix of hardwood and pine, but there weren’t many leaves on the ground. I felt sure it was different back home in Ontario. All the leaves would have fallen by now.
I went in a few meters and was going to call out for Peter when I heard a voice. I stopped, waited, and then walked some more, slowly. Yes, a voice all right, muttering something at a rapid pace. I crept forward a bit, listened. The wind shifted and I could make out individual words, but not enough to make sense. But it was enough to determine that the voice belonged to Peter. But was he talking to himself?
Another couple of steps. No, he was talking to someone, it seemed like, for there would be a pause, a reply and then another pause.
The voice sounded closer. I went off the trail and into the woods, walking as slow as possible. There was a shape, crouched by the trunk of an evergreen tree that had fallen. The wood was beginning to rot, falling away from the trunk in chunks of gray and brown. And there was Peter, on his knees, talking into his hands. The wind seemed to shift and I heard the word “grace.” It struck me as odd: could he be praying before a meal? Peter?
I watched and saw him move his head. Then I noticed the little plastic earpiece, snug in his right ear, with a wire running down to something clasped in his hands.
Radio. Peter was talking, all right, but not to himself. And who was he talking to, and why?
Well, that was a puzzler, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to find the answer now. Maybe Charlie could have gone in there, demanding to know what was what, or maybe Jean-Paul. But not me. I had a creepy spine-tickling feeling that if I went in right there and confronted Peter about what he was doing, then something quite bad would happen. To me. And Peter would amble back up alone to Jean-Paul, and I would be missing, and would remain missing, and my father would hear from the UN in a month or so that I had disappeared, and he would harrumph and say, “Figures.” And that would be that.
So I crept away back onto the trail, and then moved a couple more yards further away. I called out, “Peter! Hey, Peter! You around here?”
Then Peter came crashing through the underbrush, zipping up the front of his blue jeans.
“Yeah?”
“Jean-Paul’s looking for you,” I said. “He wants us to relieve Karen and Sanjay, up on the rise.”
“Lucky me,” he said, finishing his business.
“My thoughts exactly,” I said.
He grunted and looked at me, and I avoided his gaze. I don’t know. It just seemed that if he kept on looking at me, then he could figure out that I had been observing him earlier, speaking into a radio, doing God knows what. Or maybe he’d reckon I’d been watching him that other night, in the motel parking lot, when he had come back alone as though he had been somewhere secret. I remembered the stand-up interview with the Australian television crew earlier today. Saboteurs at work, making sure that none of the UN groups working out here would ever find out anything about Site A.
Saboteurs.
“Well?” Peter demanded.
“Excuse me?”
“Let’s get back up there, unless you want the group thinking you and I are doing what Karen and Sanjay are no doubt doing.”
“There’s a thought,” I said, and my back tingled again, looking at those big hands of his. “Tell you what, after you.”
“Whatever,” he said, and I felt just a bit safer, following him instead of having him follow me.
Just a bit.
WE WENT THROUGH the area where the vehicles were parked, and this time Miriam didn’t see me, her head still buried in her paperback. Charlie and Jean-Paul were still at their same stations, hard at work, Jean-Paul on his laptop, Charlie with his binoculars, weapon and hunter’s eye. We got back on the road and Peter had his hands in his pockets, whistling a little tune I didn’t recognize. Our boots sounded loud on the asphalt, and up ahead, by a pine tree on the right, I could see Karen and Sanjay, keeping watch on the quiet highway below them.
“Beautiful sight, isn’t it?” Peter said. “Woman from California, married man from India. Finding true love in the service of the United Nations, investigating war crimes.”
“I guess a poet would say you love where you can find it,” I said.
Peter looked over at me, the light catching the stubble on his face. “Poetry? You’re going to start quoting poetry at me?”
“I wasn’t thinking about it.”
“Good.”
“But,” I went on, “if it seems to tick you off so much, maybe I will, after all.”
“Hah,” he said.
I looked around at the countryside, at the bare trees and falling oak leaves, thought about Halloween coming up. One of my favorite holidays as a child. Going out trick-or-treating, deciding what kind of costume to wear. Talking to schoolmates, learning which homes gave out the best candy, and which homes should be avoided because they gave out apples or—shudder!—granola bars. I was going to ask Peter if he had ever trick-or-treated as a youngster, and decided not to. I couldn’t imagine this sour man having a childhood, not at all, and I was still flustered at having seen him earlier, talking low into a radio.
“Christ,” Peter said, “if something doesn’t come by on that highway in …”
I heard something, but Peter was still yammering; and I said, “Hey, shut up for a sec, will you?”
That surprised him into silence. I thought he was going to snap back at me when maybe he heard something as well. We both turned and looked down the road. Nothing.
“Well?” he asked.
“I thought I heard something,” I said.
“Something or someone?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. Hold on.”
So we did. A breeze came up, blowing dead leaves across the equally dead road. From behind us I could make out the voices of our two comrades, up by the tree.
“Come on,” Peter said, “We�
�ve got to get to Karen and Sanjay.”
“Wait,” I said, seeing something move along the side of the road. “There’s something there.”
“Jesus,” he said, turning away from me. “You can stand here and just wait. I’ll go on and relieve those two.”
I didn’t say anything. Peter took a step, and then stopped. I held my breath, thinking maybe I would lose focus otherwise. Then the shape took form. It was a man. Walking slowly up the road as if he was an old man who’d been freed from a rest home or a hospital, moving with great dignity and purpose, but slow, all the same. His hair was a mess but his clothes were good, nice pair of slacks and a trench coat that came down to his—
“Damn it, that’s the Aussie TV guy,” I said. “It’s John.”
Peter didn’t say anything but he followed me as I started walking toward the slowly moving man. He walked right up the middle of the road, and he looked tired, like he had been walking quite a distance. Breakdown, I thought. Their van must have broken down and he was coming back here for help. That was all. Just walking back for help.
He slowed down, looked up and saw us. He gave us a weak wave.
“Peter, it’s—”
“I know who it is,” Peter said. “I’ve got eyes, haven’t I?”
John slowed even more and began to weave some, as though he had been drinking. I started walking toward him and then speeded up. Peter was behind me. More voices could be heard as Karen and Sanjay finally spotted us.
“John,” I called out. “You OK? Where’s the rest of your crew? Where’s Mick and Alice?”
He managed a smile. But just as I got close enough to see the chalky color of his face he collapsed on his knees and said weakly, “There’s trouble.”
Then John fell forward full-length onto the ground before I could catch him. I knelt down beside him, looking at him, looking at the blood covering the back of his coat.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Remembering my training, I rolled John over onto his side to check his breathing. But Peter pulled me away and then Karen was there, speaking crisply and professionally, saying, “Sanjay. Our vehicle, my tan leather pouch. Bring that and the first-aid kit. Get Miriam over here, too. And tell Charlie there’s bad guys in the area. Tell Jean-Paul as well.”
I stood up and stepped back, my hands sticky, saw that they were covered with John’s blood. His breathing was coming in low, rattling gasps. Karen and Peter were working together, Karen examining the newsman’s back while Peter cradled his head in his lap. Peter’s voice now had a soothing tone, a type of voice I had never heard from him before, and I had to look at him twice to make sure it was the same Peter. “OK, John, try to relax, try to take it easy. Where’s your people? Where’s the van? Who did this to you?”
I could see John’s lips moving, saw Peter bend down and listen. “Louder,” Peter asked, but not in a demanding way. “Please, John. Tell me louder.”
“Here,” Karen said to me. “Help me with his coat.”
I knelt back down on the pavement, helped Karen to undo John’s coat. It was hard going because John was lying on his side, holding the coat down. Peter said, “Samuel, my inside coat pocket. There’s a folding knife. Get it.”
I reached into the open coat, conscious that John’s blood was now smearing Peter’s shirt. But neither of us cared. I got the knife and snapped it open, passed it over to Karen. Then I heard John moan again and barely audibly say, “Go right … Go right …”
“OK, John,” Peter murmured. “We hear you, we hear you.”
Karen said, “Ah, shit, where is everybody? Here, start pulling away the coat while I start cutting.”
She went to work with the knife, her hand moving swiftly and surely, the blade cutting away the fabric of the expensive coat. I pulled away the pieces of cloth, nausea rising up in my stomach, seeing the shirt now soaked completely through with John’s blood. I held something heavy in my hands. The man’s wallet. I flipped it open quickly, saw the glassine photo pages inside, his driver’s license, press identification, picture of him on a beach, holding the hand of a woman and a young child, nice family portrait, back in warm and safe and sunny Australia. I closed the wallet and let it fall to the ground, along with the remnants of his coat. John was now shivering and Peter said, “He’s going into shock, Karen.”
“No shit,” she said, her hands now completely stained. “OK, I’ve got at least three entry wounds in his back. Peter, you got anything up front?”
“No.”
“Damn it, he got chewed up really bad—Christ, finally.”
Lots of voices, trotting figures, all carrying something in their hands. It quickly became even more chaotic as Charlie demanded in a loud voice where the bad guys were, while Jean-Paul kept on asking information on where John’s companions were, and Miriam and Sanjay and Karen talked among themselves, ignoring everybody else. Except once, when Karen spoke up sharply and said, “Charlie and Jean-Paul, shut the fuck up, will you? We’ll be lucky enough to stabilize him for a medevac chopper, if those assholes feel like flying today.”
Peter was still there as well, talking quietly to John, using that soothing voice that probably came in so handy when he was working the mean streets of London, comforting the injured or the bereaved. Sanjay said, “Samuel, make yourself useful! Hold up this IV bag!”
I stepped forward, dropped a piece of John’s coat that I had been holding. I grabbed the soft plastic bag and held it up, while Sanjay slipped the needle at the end of the tubing into an exposed forearm. A thin Mylar space blanket covered most of John in an attempt to keep him warm, and the area around him was messy with his blood and with empty plastic containers and bandage wrappings. A small green oxygen bottle was near his head, and Peter slipped a clear plastic oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Miriam was working side by side with Karen and they were speaking to each other in technical phrases and acronyms, none of which I could understand or follow. Their hands moved like those of two concert pianists. Charlie looked almost frantic, squatting down and sweeping the area with binoculars, M-16 at his side. Jean-Paul was talking again into his satellite phone, trying to arrange a medevac, trying to reach somebody, and what little French I knew told me that he was having problems communicating with the regional headquarters.
I stood there, my legs tired, holding the IV bag still, not daring to move it, fearful that I might pull the needle out or do something else to make the situation worse. Karen and Miriam were tending John’s back, and Sanjay was at his front, running his hands up and down his chest and abdomen, looking for exit wounds. From my vantage point I was looking down at John, his face gray-white, his eyes wide and staring up at me. I smiled down at him in my most reassuring way, as if to let him know that a dedicated group of men and women were doing their damnedest to help him live, to bandage him up so that he could get to a real hospital, where he would recover and get back to Sydney or Melbourne or wherever, with a prizewinning story of how he had almost ended it all on the world’s latest killing fields.
I kept smiling at him all the time until he closed his eyes and died.
WE SAT AT the side of the road, exhausted. Karen was weepy and Sanjay had his arm around her, while Miriam looked despondent. I sat down next to her and she leaned against me and said, “Oh, Samuel.”
I held her hand and she squeezed it back.
Peter and Charlie had moved John’s body to the side of the road, placing it in a hollow by an outcropping of two boulders. They had carefully stretched the Mylar blanket over him, securing it with small rocks so that the breeze wouldn’t catch it and blow it away. Now they were talking to Jean-Paul, and while I expected a lot of shouting and arm-waving and red faces it didn’t happen. The three of them were standing in a circle, looking solemn, motioning every now and then toward us and then to the covered body of John. Miriam said, “We have to go look for the others.”
“I know.”
“Charlie won’t like it,” she said. “I’m not sure Peter will like it either,
but we have to look for the others. And right now. We shouldn’t be waiting around.”
I squeezed her hand. “You’re absolutely right.”
And I got up and walked over to them.
CHARLIE SAW ME first as I came closer. “Yes?”
I looked over to Jean-Paul, who still held on to his useless satellite phone as if he was expecting an apologetic message to come through at any moment. “Why are we still here?”
Now all three of them looked at me like I had come over and had just ordered a pizza or something. I carried on and said, “John’s dead. But we don’t know what happened to the rest of his crew. Why are we still here? We should be looking for them.”
Charlie said something about the terrain being dangerous and Jean-Paul said something about trying to regain communication with the regional UN office. But Peter shook his head and spoke over them, saying, “He’s right, you know.”
I wasn’t sure who was more shocked, me or the other two.
“Say what?” Charlie said.
Peter said angrily, “The kid’s right. We’re sitting around here on our arses while John’s getting colder and colder, and we don’t know where the rest of his crew are. We should go look for them. John mentioned where they might be, just before he died.”
Charlie said, “Jean-Paul, there are hostiles out there. I don’t really think it’s—”
Jean-Paul put the receiver back on his satellite phone. “I must be getting old, or getting less bold. Peter and Samuel are right. We cannot forget those two. No matter what. Helmets and flak jackets on. Let’s get going.”
Twilight Page 13
