Night Must Wait

by Robin Winter

  She left without a word more from the woman, who remained at the opening of her shelter. Post-shock delusions, Wilton told herself. Tragic loss of her infant in the confusion of flight. Probably happened all the time. The woman needed medical aid. If there were any comfort in exorcism, Wilton had done all she could.

  She'd head for Biafra, back to see Gilman. Back to the road. She felt the woman behind her like a bruise in her mind. The memory sped Wilton on her way.

  Chapter 32: Gilman

  February 1968

  Uli Area, Biafra

  At least living in Biafra in the middle of a war didn't keep her from getting a shower. Gilman toweled her mass of dripping hair with a torn piece of towel, giving a sigh of sheer pleasure. With the sweat and red silt gone she felt surprisingly renewed. She pulled on her clothes, well worn, overwashed, showing the threat of holes at the shoulders of the shirt and sagging about the knees of the pants. So long as the fabric wasn't too thin in the butt, she could still wear them.

  Like nomads she and the remaining nursing staff moved from town to town. They'd joined a Red Cross unit several weeks ago, not in any official capacity, but working as associates. Side by side, even if there were some, like that Dr. Allingham, she could scarcely bear.

  No more doubts about the reality of this war. After the Mid-West Region invasion, Federal bombing of Biafra intensified. The Nigerian Federal Government said it only targeted military units, but everyone said so long as it killed Biafrans, any bomb was a good one to the Feds. Now settled at the hospital in a village called Uli, Gilman patched casualties from the front and bombing victims, and tried to feed and tend the unending flow of refugees. Kwashiorkor every day. God, just think what a crate of peanut butter would be worth.

  Gilman often wondered if Wilton knew where they'd gone. She'd suggested Umuahia and that was a few miles down the road. But she had faith in Wilton's contacts, and the incredible efficacy of the passed word. She'd tried to write, but didn't know if mail got through.

  Sister Catherine pulled back the canvas drop from the door and entered.

  "Flights coming in tonight. Rumor says two."

  Gilman turned, her hair still hanging in front of her eyes. Uli had a stretch of asphalted road that the Biafrans converted into a landing strip. The Red Cross, Caritas and other charitable organizations landed supplies there whenever possible, and always at night because the Federal pilots circled the area like jackals, waiting to take down any planes inbound to Biafra, even if all the flight carried was tons of dried fish and milk powder. Some day the Feds would figure out exactly where Uli was located and bomb it into a crater. But not yet.

  "What's coming in? Anyone say?" Sister Catherine seemed to think Gilman might know more than she did.

  "Top secret. That means no food, just ammunition and weapons, damn them," Gilman said and brushed her hair. "Bloody bastards can't get it through their heads there's more to this war than killing."

  She'd said this a great number of times already over the past weeks. Sister Catherine didn't trouble to answer, picked up the tin she wanted and went back out into the overcast day.

  Gilman pulled her hair back from her face. She wondered who might be coming in from the bush to collect the army's share of tonight's shipments. Ojukwu's new "golden boys," mercenaries, veterans of the Congo and God knew what other sordid wars. Her turn to take graveyard duty, and hope the Uli airstrip would claim no lives tonight.

  Gilman stepped into the ward, into the stench of the afternoon. Hot and humid days thickened the reek of humans with their rotting sores in these rooms. Well-fed flies hummed while she surveyed the rag-piled cots and beds made of boxes in the shadow and gold of the late sun. The light fell in great rectangles from the unscreened windows, emphasizing fragile arms and legs. A picture from Belsen, touched up with tropical color. It was much better in color, wasn't it? Gilman started down one row of the makeshift beds, touching hands like crumpled leaves, lifting an eyelid, or simply forcing a smile of reassurance when she met brown eyes staring at her out of a skull-like head.

  She knew enough not to care about the children. They presented a set of problems, laboratory exercises. Something she would spend her time and all her wit upon, but no feelings. The children died whether in coming to the hospital, while in it, or after they left. She gave them what gestures of kindness she could spare, but it had little to do with her heart.

  She wondered if they thought anymore. They seemed to give up so easily, almost eagerly sometimes. How much did they feel? Did they even care for the comforts she offered, or was the brain damage from starvation too great? Or could it be that some kinds of emotional punishment took away the core that moved them onwards through the days that came?

  So many kwashiorkor victims, patients she could have saved with no more than an alteration of diet. But lacking protein, the children's upper bodies skeletonized, their bellies bloated to an obscene degree, the black fuzz of their hair yellowed and rusted, while the skin of the swelling legs split. Once upon a time, in the years before the war, Gilman traveled to remote villages to find and cure such children, bumping madly along in her jeep like a crusader armed with protein powders, yeast and dried milk. Now the starving people came to her, drifting ghosts along the roads, orphaned or parents missing, most of the children past cure.

  Stopping at one crate, she touched the shrunken arm of the body on it. Dead, no need to check the pulse in that shriveled throat. She tried to close the eyes, then pulled a corner of cloth over the face and picked up the body. Perhaps three years old, though one could be deceived. So light to carry. Another open bed.

  Chapter 33: Gilman

  February 1968

  Uli Area, Biafra

  Late afternoon, Gilman knelt in the doorway of the children's ward securing a bandage on a Biafran girl's spindly arm. She felt someone watching her. Gilman looked around from her halting conversation. The naked little girl gave one appalled glance and ran back into the shady ward. Gilman stared in disbelief at the man who had scared the girl away. A strange white man.

  An oh-my-God-handsome white guy. He fixed on her as if he assessed a possible enemy. The face was deeply browned by sun, craggy featured. So inappropriate to notice the good jaw, the impression of assertive male. Gilman's startled gaze took in broad shoulders crossed with a belt of ammunition, the submachine gun tucked comfortably in one arm, narrow hips and the holster strapped on one leg. The man's garb reminded her of a paratrooper's, but there were some original touches and he carried a bush hat in one hand.

  "Doctor Gilman, I presume."

  Unmistakably American, Gilman decided. She found herself smiling back.

  "Yes. Welcome to Uli." She'd picked up the habit of unnecessary and sometimes silly courtesies from the Biafrans. "How'd you know my name?"

  "Asked."

  Damned good to hear another American voice. What else but a mercenary…the most attractive man she'd seen in years and he had to be a goddamned merc. All the other white men around were priests or missionaries or the dregs. Just her luck. Think of greasy-haired Allingham, for example.

  "Where's the graveyard? The Uli airstrip burial ground?" he said.

  "Down the road. I can show you." She struggled between the impulse to make him welcome as a fellow American, and the dismaying understanding that he was scum, and don't forget it. But maybe having good diplomatic relations with a hired killer would prove useful.

  He nodded his thanks. No critical work waiting for her now and she was off duty anyway….

  They walked along for ten minutes in the red dust, Gilman trying to think of something appropriate to say and failing. They reached the burial ground in silence, both pausing at the wooden gateway of crisscrossed poles and whitewashed crosses.

  He strode over to one of the graves and bowed his head. Gilman watched, piqued. A sentimental religious merc, what an oxymoron. Loyalty for hire, what a shame. She let herself examine him with appreciation, safe while he was preoccupied with the dead. The slanting
sunlight touched his brown hair with red, and his shadow stretched black across the leveled field striped with shadows and broken by the clean white of crosses. He walked back toward her.

  "Who was it?" she said and they started away.

  "God only knows."

  She glanced at him.

  "What?"

  "Going to pray in a graveyard's good business," he said, laughing at her. She noticed how remote the gray eyes could be. "Like kissing babies. I always pick a 'Known but to God,' since I figure they get fewer prayers."

  She didn't answer, anger kindling. Gilman knew some of the pilots and crew who lay buried here. She glanced away from him toward the horizon where the convoluted trees stood in sharp silhouette.

  "A bit of a hypocrite, I see," she said.

  He gave a small surprised sound, then laughed.

  "I'll see you around," he said.

  Gilman headed toward the mess hall. She'd heard that Ojukwu gave these mercs anything they wanted, from cigarettes to women. A harem apiece. Suppose it was true, she'd probably end up treating dozens of new cases of clap.

  Chapter 34: Sandy

  March 1968

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Sandy stepped back barely in time when the door of Lindsey's office banged open. A large heavy-set man stumbled out, his hand half cupped over the lower part of his face. She saw the wet of tears on a black cheek, heard a sob. Her gut wrenched with immediate pity. No grown man should weep like that, like a child bereft. His pin-striped suit made the spectacle worse in some way she didn't understand. She put out her hand. His brown eyes met hers, the whites bloodshot, a wounded look of terror.

  "Don't." Lindsey's voice bit, startled Sandy into dropping her hand and taking another step back.

  The man stumbled to the door of the waiting room and out.

  Sandy looked from Lindsey to Oroko and then the receptionist.

  "What have you done?" She surprised herself, not knowing what she was going to say.

  Lindsey stood taller than usual, her eyes bright and wide, aroused, with the pupils tiny. Lips parted as though she'd been running. A stranger, unsettling to Sandy, as if some other person had shrugged into Lindsey's skin. Sandy stepped back again.

  "He was crying."

  "Yes. He was, wasn't he. Don't worry about it," Lindsey said. "It's quite all right. Take my word for it. In the long run it won't matter."

  The remembered hurt in the man's face and the memory of his sob tightened Sandy's stomach.

  "Was that necessary?" Sandy asked.

  "Yes." Lindsey glanced down. "He broke his word. Broke his promise to me."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Sandy, come in," Lindsey said. "Oroko, you need not join us."

  With the heavy door closed Lindsey faced Sandy.

  "I only want to say this once, Sandy," she said. "Don't ever question me again."

  Sandy didn't answer. To do so would be to either fight or give agreement and she could do neither. She studied Lindsey, holding the dismay and shocking distrust she felt inside, then turned and opened the door.

  She nearly ran into Oroko, as if he stood too close to the door not to eavesdrop—as if he felt it wrong that he'd not been in that room with her. She glanced up into his large black eyes and she could imagine worry. She didn't pause.

  Fresh air. She needed fresh air. She'd go on that delayed field expedition she'd planned for next month. The weather wasn't great, but tough shit. She'd be out of Lagos day after tomorrow, up among the boulders on the plateau in two days after that, out in the wind and sun and scrub breathing free among colors bleached with sun, and the wilderness would erase that man's ruined face in its childlike sorrow.

  Chapter 35: Wilton

  March 1968

  Owerri Area, Biafra

  This slope hadn't enough cover for a dog, much less a human adult however undersized. Down in the rank weeds that tangled over the red clay slope, Wilton moved inches at a time, taking long pauses. Her spotted and drabbled clothing and pack gave a degree of camouflage. She headed diagonally across the slope, toward a rise in grass and tangled vines that indicated the slumped red mud of a house destroyed. Potential cover.

  She stilled, feeling a wrongness before she caught the glint of binoculars. A hand among the thick green tree leaves. The hand was tanned, with a strip of near white at the wrist. Someone, a white man, watched her from a perch in a cashew tree by the ruined house. Used to be someone's front yard at a guess.

  Good choice of tree, big pendant leaves heavy as leather, strong wide branches covered with smooth bark. She hadn't seen him until a half a minute ago, wondered now why he hadn't fired. The skin chilled between her shoulder blades. Predator, a white predator. Maybe it made him cocky. Maybe he liked to spin things out. Maybe he could tell already she wasn't Nigerian or Biafran and was curious. Too many maybes. She only knew for certain that she should keep on. God willing, it was her best chance.

  She moved erratically, never in a straight line, and always when the wind shifted the vegetation. Would she have done better to make a dash? Maybe, if he hadn't been watching. He could pick her off any time, or she would have rushed it.

  But he was taking his time, she guessed. So long as he took his time she'd take hers.

  Wilton should have known better than to attempt this slope, but she knew the lower road was closed. She'd ducked fire when she cut to the South. This was the only way for her to reach Gilman behind Biafran lines, and Gilman was right now the only refuge she could think of in all of this shattered shaking world. The shelling had made her slightly deaf in her left ear. It bothered her now more even than the man in the tree, who hadn't killed her yet.

  Like a wounded animal she let herself sink into the partial cover of the shattered cassava leaves. No crop this year. Suddenly so tired—time to end this game. Wilton lifted her head.

  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 dri
ve."

  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."