Night Must Wait

by Robin Winter

  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 i
t 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.

  "Don't ever think you can take me down." He kicked at something in the red dust, a glint of metal. A knife.

  He glared, focusing on the black faces of the soldiers in the circle.

  "This never happened. No one here saw anything."

  Jantor turned toward the doctors and Sister Catherine, his face changing from that strange greed to stern and focused. Gilman saw his eyes were hazel gray, long lashed.

  "You remember this and speak of it, then it's court martial for the man."

  "Why?" Allingham said, challenge in his tone.

  "Striking a superior officer and all that." Jantor walked away.

  Sister Catherine was at Gilman's side when she knelt. Gilman gave orders, pulled one of the bystander soldiers to brace the patient.

  "God, I love this when it works," Allingham said.

  She set her teeth before she hauled back hard, hoping he hadn't jinxed their luck. Another shriek and it was done, the fainting soldier patted and comforted by the soft touches of his fellows, his humerus back in its socket. Was he a man with a bad temper? Didn't accept the hazing privates got from officers? Was that it, with the knife added in for good measure? Or had this merc given the man's wife gonorrhea?

  "Take it easy a few days," she told him. "No heavy lifting, you hear?"

  When they went back to their table, someone had stolen their beers, worst of all, the glass bottles, which sold at premium prices in the market. The bartender was going to be pissed and do some carping at the foolish white people. Onocha, he would say like a curse and they'd pay him. Oh yes, they'd pay.

  "God fucking damn," Allingham said.

  Chapter 37: Gilman

  April 1968

  Airstrip Annabelle, Uli, Biafra

  Supplies, goddamn it. Gilman needed this next air shipment even more than sleep and the only way to make sure it didn't go astray was to be here at the airstrip when it arrived. The loud radio in the adjoining room sputtered. Someone lit a match and held it near the radio to adjust a dial. Amazing the Fed gunners couldn't hear it crackle static at that volume.

  "Why you done turn off this light so soon? You make me a blind man, eh?"

  "I do fear too much Federal plane go see this light. He know we be here, he go drop bomb and pffft. You want we go die tonight, eh?"

  The sound of their bickering continued in the thick air, but Gilman paid no attention. She felt the arrival of more silent people. Then she heard the Airport Priest's voice and the answering murmur of others, as though his presence conferred safety on everyone so they could speak.

  "Listen." She interrupted them. "Here it comes."

  The drone of engines grew distinct. Out in the darkness a gunrunner's plane sought their makeshift runway. On its tail followed a Federal fighter. Now everything depended on timing—that the plane outrun pursuit and that the Uli team light the runway for the necessary window of time to allow the plane's safe landing without giving away their location to the Federal pilot. She could see the slashing white flashes of fire in the black sky beyond the window.

  "Doctor," a deep voice said, close.

  Gilman jumped, automatically aiming a vicious elbow at the voice. Male hands caught the blow, blocked it and seized her arm.

  "It's 90mm," the American merc said, "and calm down, Doctor. I'm not here to murder you. Wouldn't be in my own best interests. Might even need your doctoring one of these days."

  "Damn you," she said, trying to wrench loose. "What possessed you to creep up and scare the crap…"

  "Didn't mean to scare you."

  They waited in the darkness, Gilman's fingernails hard against her palms.

  "Your friend Wilton has some strange habits," he said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I found her handling a snake the other evening. Nothing poisonous, she said, but it's unusual."

  "I bet she was releasing it in some safe place. Zoologist. She's got a doctorate in ornithology. Likes all kinds of live things. Frogs and millipedes."

  Here came the plane, hard to tell if pursuit was still on its tail. Shit, yes, two engines.

  "She's a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Can't stand snakes." he said. "I think we need a proper introduction—keep you from being so jumpy the next time. Major Tom Jantor, at your service, Doctor Katherine Gilman."

  Though he spoke into her ear she could barely make out the words.

  "Oh," Gilman said, raising her voice. "Yeah. Pleased to meet you. I'm sure."

  The engine noise mounted to a roar. Gilman steeled herself not to cower at the shattering crescendo of engines and anti-aircraft fire.

  The lights flashed on. Torches flared outside. Trucks lined up to illuminate the runway turned on their headlights. Blinded, the crowd at the shack door shielded their faces. The airplane's roar hurt her ears. Three shattering explosions, but when the sound faded, the airway and the station still stood, the sound of the plane's engine grumbling down the roadway. Headlights off, torches quenched in a hiss, plunging all back into what felt like total darkness. An instant and Gilman's eyes started to adjust, to pick out the dim lines of trucks and trees, black on black and the tiny prickle of stars.

  "All safe!" a jubilant man called from outside. Then one last explosion and screaming ran over that voice and erased it. No, not safe, not hardly. Screaming high as a girl's, and men came hauling in some guy, blood pumping out of his leg and belly red in the erratic flashlights.

  Gilman trembled, but she knew her job. Maybe it was adrenaline shakes rather than fear, she told herself. A jolt more violent and warming than coffee. There was a med bag for times like this in the shack and the soldiers had the guy down and pinned in no time. Peter and Ivor had relit torches, then someone brought a big flashlight.

  Jantor had the flashlight. Gilman's hands flew
. No time for gloves with arterial blood spraying.

  "Major, get the fucking shadow off my hands. Pay attention," she said, hard, then she felt rather than saw the other men's eyes flash as if they couldn't believe Gilman was ordering their commander around like that. But she heard him give a short bark of amusement.

  Cheating death. This was her bread and meat, the thing that got her up. Not a saint nor a nun, but a person with something she could do that made her go. Made her run. He had to understand that about her and besides, he held the flashlight absolutely right.

  Chapter 38: Gilman

  April 1968

  Uli, Biafra

  Gilman let her aching body relax in the sun that poured through the clinic window. She was engrossed in feeding an infant. Rickety chair, baby on her lap. Not her job, really, but there was something hypnotic in the occupation—mechanically filling the spoon and slipping into the small mouth, scraping away the excess porridge, all the while watching the dull brown eyes that followed her hand. She fell into a kind of dream.

  A loud click broke it, and Gilman found herself confronting a grim-visaged man in the uniform of a Foreign Legion paratrooper, a Biafran sun stitched over his breast pocket. He'd just slipped the safety of his Schmeisser submachine gun. The metal glinted in the warm light. Not a dream. She raised her gaze to meet his.

  "Can I help you?" she said as politely as possible, hoping to convince herself and the blue-eyed man that this was a perfectly normal transaction.

  Her words met a laugh. Her attention startled away from the man with the Schmeisser, she recognized the man behind him as Major Jantor. Another mercenary stood at his side, eyes and gun trained on the door to the clinic's interior, and the radio beside it. The three men had insinuated themselves into the room like magic.

  "Chrissake, Colonel," the third man said. "She's not gonna shoot you with a spoon."

  Gilman felt more ridiculous and helpless than ever, set the spoon back in the bowl, and scowled at the speaker. It seemed to her that he should be an ally, not a tormentor.