Night Must Wait

by Robin Winter

  "She looks like she needs twenty-four-hour care," Lindsey said.

  "Well, maybe in the beginning, yeah," Gilman said. "You'll find nurses here in Lagos or Ibadan, I'm sure. All those hospitals—there must be some good staff."

  Lindsey didn't speak. Her expression gave nothing away. But she wasn't offering Wilton the friend's welcome Gilman had expected, the gentle embrace and soft voice. She hadn't touched Wilton after that pat on the shoulder. Hadn't tried. Was there something wrong Gilman hadn't seen—or was she accustomed to Wilton in this zombie state so that she no longer felt whatever Lindsey did when she looked at the sleeping, drugged woman? Woman? Wilton looked like a child.

  "Tell me what I need to know," Lindsey said.

  "I wrote out a lot of it." Gilman fished in her jacket for the long envelope. The letter from the ICRC committee with its unmistakable Red Cross logo fell out onto the carpet.

  "I might as well see that too, don't you suppose?" Lindsey asked, extending a hand. Beautiful fingers, natural pink polished nails.

  "Yes, you'd better." Gilman handed all the papers over, her neck stinging with a fresh prickle of sweat, fighting the urge to stuff both of her hands back into her pockets to hide the cracked stubby look of them. God, if she had this office she'd turn the air conditioning up to nine, if only to control the humidity.

  Gilman remembered saying she wanted to sit down, but now she stood on aching legs, knowing she didn't want to make herself so vulnerable. She'd not sit unless Lindsey did first. Lindsey scanned the ICRC letter.

  "What happened, Gilman, wouldn't they let you bring Wilton out unless you promised to represent this ridiculous proposal?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Come on—this is old ground. We've offered relief corridors for the transport of humanitarian supplies and your Supreme Commander Ojukwu refused on the excuse that we'd poison the baby food. We've offered compromise after…"

  "So now it's we? What happened to that American neutrality? You're not neutral any more because you know best, is that it, Lindsey?"

  Chapter 71: Gilman

  March 1969

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Gilman felt a haze of unreality. She couldn't shut her own mouth. She'd been here in Lagos less than three hours, brought into Lindsey's office like royalty with her patient and now she spoiled it all. Spilled it all.

  "Compromises?" she heard herself say. "Shooting Red Cross personnel? Targeting marketplaces full of noncombatants at high noon, for God's sake? That's compromise? You're saying "we" about a jumped-up military dictatorship that in spite of all the odds in its favor, the arms, the population, the resources, can't stop a little band of ragged citizens whose crime is wanting to live?"

  "Ojukwu telling them their Nigerian Federal Government wants to massacre them has your poor Biafrans terrified," Lindsey said, measuring the words out as if none of Gilman's passion could touch her. "Ojukwu feeds them lies and you, an American citizen, help maintain his illegitimate regime with every day you stay in Biafra. Do you ever open your mouth to contradict the official Biafran line? I doubt it. You know they'd deport you and then what would happen to your delusions of godhood? If you cared—"

  "You bomb them. Children, civilians. In the marketplace. Lindsey, remember the Geneva Convention? Because I do. And I hope when this war's over, there'll be a Nuremberg to take care of all the damned Federals who forgot it."

  The faintest flush colored Lindsey's cheeks.

  "What the hell do you want, Gilman?" Lindsey said. "The civil war's an internal affair. Nigeria's a sovereign nation. America can't interfere."

  "Yeah, you advise, supply and instruct, while the Federal juggernaut grinds up children and mothers…Crocodile tears, Lindsey."

  "You claim Nigeria's Federal government is the aggressor because they have more territory and more people. Well, did you ever hear of a democracy? Because that's what this is, a Federal government run by and for the people, and the people have decided they don't want the country split up."

  "Hell, it's no democracy. It's Gowon's fucking military dictatorship."

  "A temporary arrangement under war conditions after the destabilizing coups."

  Lindsey put her pen down on the blotter as though the gesture could restore her self-possession. Getting under her skin—Gilman smiled in triumph.

  "Look," Lindsey said. "Have you ever heard of any country in a civil war letting succor reach rebels? Giving passage to the International Red Cross? That kind of humanitarian nonsense simply prolongs the war, raises the final death toll. And you want more?"

  "Total shit. You shoot down our relief flights so they have to fly at night and you shoot them then too. I've stuck enough barbequed pilots into their graves to testify to any international tribunal on war crimes—"

  "Gilman, those aren't relief flights. You must've left your brains back at Wellesley. Tell me what's in the crates that no one lets you open. Not stockfish, milk powder or medical supplies. Crates of goddamned gunpowder and machine guns and blasting gelatin. That's what's coming in under the name of "relief flights." You're blinded by your need to prove the Biafrans right, to prove the Feds wrong. To prove me wrong."

  "And of course you're right because you're always right."

  Lindsey crumpled a sheet of paper between her hands.

  "Gilman you came waltzing in here like some girlish pact we'd made of best friends forever would keep you out of jail. Maybe I should get you deported for your own sake. Have you forgotten that in the jungle out there you're still an American? Gone all Heart of Darkness on me? I can't recommend policy that goes against State Department interests, American interests."

  "I'm human." Gilman shoved her fists into her pockets. "But I don't know about you. Those bombs that kill Biafrans say "made in England." The pilots are Russians and Egyptian mercenaries hired to bomb our starving children. Everyone knows it. This is assisted genocide. Fucking MIGs versus a thirteen- year-old kid with a Dane rifle."

  "Watch the rhetoric," Lindsey said. "You're losing it."

  "Why? Are you hearing me? You get the figures on your desk—I don't need to tell you a goddamned thing…Nigeria's supposed to wash its own dirty laundry without foreign intervention. Mercenaries? Don't you know that your side's got so many mercenaries—"

  "Gilman, don't you think you might be a touch biased?"

  "What in hell do you mean?"

  "Mercenary help? I understand that you have up-close-and-personal experience with a hired gun."

  "You fucking spying on people?" Gilman choked. She had more to say—she couldn't make the words come.

  "Guilty conscience?"

  "Guilty conscience—my God, what a hypocrite. You've seen the photos—and there's stuff way too bad to photograph, babies with their guts dragging in the dirt whimpering like their mother's kiss is gonna help."

  "Hold the drama. Watch your illegal connections, Gilman. This mercenary—"

  "You threatening me, Lindsey?"

  "Do I need to? Your lover's on the front lines. It's pretty sick if you ask me. I can't imagine—"

  "You're threatening me. Two can play at that game. I can't believe I ever admired you. Always having to control everything, other people. Control makes you immune. You get a real thrill out of proving you're more powerful than Wilton ever dreamed. But you're not willing to come back again to Biafra and witness what you've done."

  Lindsey's silence fed her.

  "At least I've saved a life or two. You love seeing how many frightened men can lick your feet. Drooling over you like some ice cream cone, cold, impenetrable—that's what this is really about isn't it? Your frigidity masquerading as virtue. Your fear of real life, of real sex, fuelling your passion for power. Sick? You want sick, Lindsey, let me get started."

  "Seems to me you've already said too much," Lindsey said.

  "You're jealous because you've missed out on the real things. Well don't you dare touch me or mine. You're not the only person who knows how to make things happen. Wilton told me you'
d promised her no bombings in the Umuahia area for another twenty days. Whatever happened there broke her. Were you aiming? Did Wilton do something to cross you? Were you warning her off, or hoping for a lucky hit to take her out? Just be god-awful careful, Lindsey, from now on. I know about you now. I'll be waiting..."

  The door slammed shut and both started, whirling toward it.

  "What the motherfucking hell have you two been playing at with Wilton?"

  The raw rage in Sandy's voice exploded between them, shocking Gilman into glancing first at her, then at the corner where Wilton curled, her hands clenched on the bag she protected.

  "Oh, Jesus." Gilman said.

  "Just shut the shit up." Sandy's bitterness stilled her. "A pair of frigging politicians kicking her like a football between you. Stupid goddamn assholes. Grow up."

  Gilman started toward Wilton. She'd never seen Sandy look at Lindsey like this before—Gilman hated her flush of pleasure. This time Sandy knew Lindsey was in the wrong. Gilman could see it in her face. But Gilman was in the wrong too. She bent over Wilton, trying to soothe.

  Sandy turned and left the room. Gilman glanced after her and saw how she caught the door before it could slam. Closed it soft as a whisper. Sandy was the best of them, because even in anger she didn't forget that Wilton's needs came first.

  Chapter 72: Lindsey

  March 1969

  Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

  Lindsey sat at her desk, turning over papers. She jumped when the door opened, but it was only Sandy returning.

  "Did you and Gilman kiss and make up?" Sandy's voice held a warning not to offer any excuse for the earlier scene.

  "Mmm," Lindsey said, "more or less. Maybe less."

  "Where's Wilton now?"

  "Asleep in the next room."

  "I'm opening the safe."

  Lindsey lifted her head, and found Sandy looking at her with those steady greenish-gray eyes.

  "I'm taking out some cash for Gilman," Sandy said. "Seems to me she could use a few bucks to buy stuff before she leaves tonight. You know, a couple cans of Spam, or something."

  "How many cans of Spam do you think Gilman can carry through Customs?"

  "Many as she wants, so long's she bribes the officials. I'm taking five hundred American."

  Sandy spun the combination lock on the wall safe, fished under documents and drew out a packet of five hundred American dollars in twenties which she stuffed into her pants pockets. She flicked her red braid over her shoulder then went back out the door.

  Chapter 73: Gilman

  March 1969

  Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

  Gilman walked down the hall of the government building, hands jammed into her pockets. She wanted to sort out her tumbling sensations before she got back to the car and Paul's irritating presence. She couldn't believe she'd lost control with Lindsey, couldn't see any point in staying as long as her original plan of forty-eight hours in Lagos. The relief flights deserved calculated diplomacy, not that explosion of bile. She'd failed.

  Yet Lindsey asked for it, more than asked for it, with her remarks about Jantor. Lindsey had no right to intrude on intimate things or judge them. Her insufferable arrogance grew stronger with the years. The thought of surveillance panicked Gilman. She wished she knew where Jantor was, that she could be back instead of here on the far side of enemy lines...but she couldn't afford to dwell on that. She needed to plan. The sooner she got out of Lagos the better.

  How had she come to this? God, in some other life she and Lindsey could have been sitting quarreling over who had betrayed whom by a bad bid in a hand of bridge. In a pretty house somewhere in America, that someone else cleaned, where there was so much food they'd both be on diets.

  "Hey, Gilman." Sandy's voice echoed down the hall. "Wait up."

  Gilman stopped. She looked back and there came her friend, red hair dark in the dim corridor. Sandy must have been giving orders to that bodyguard. She saw him farther down the hall, moving away. Gilman braced herself. She didn't want to talk with Sandy, hear explanations or reasons. Breathless, Sandy caught up to Gilman.

  "Here," she said, thrusting taped stacks of twenty-dollar bills into Gilman's hands. "I know you're pissed and hell bent on getting outa here, but Lindsey wants you to take this and buy something for those little beggars to eat. Okay? And I'll get Wilton away to Ibadan as soon as I can."

  She turned on her heel and started off.

  "Wait a minute." Gilman grabbed Sandy's sleeve to stop her. "Lindsey wants me to have this? Well, that's very kind. You tell her that this'll buy a lot of fish in São Tomé. Tell Lindsey it might even save some lives."

  "Get your hands off." Sandy tugged loose. "I don't like to be touched."

  Gilman laughed, her heart a little lighter, and Sandy retreated up the hall.

  "Thank you, Sandy."

  She hurried on, pushing her way past the uniformed security men outside the door. They paid little attention—she was white, she belonged in buildings like this one.

  Three streets away, leaning against a whitewashed building to avoid jostling by the passersby, Paul waited for Gilman.

  "How did the negotiations go? Your friend, Madam Lindsey, will she advocate the establishment of regular relief flights?"

  "No, Paul," Gilman said.

  "She is another foreigner plotting with the Northerners to murder my people, using us as pawns in a game of power."

  Textbook again, every comma as clear as if he'd written it, as annoying as a mosquito even if Gilman agreed with him.

  "Begging your pardon. I hear she has a house in Ibadan as well as here in Lagos. Rich. Millionaire."

  "Yeah." Gilman didn't want to encourage any more of this sort of rhetoric until they had safely left Federal territory. She stepped out of the way of a man bearing an enormous wooden box on his head. Tins of sardines, by the label. Her mouth watered.

  "Where's the damned driver?"

  "He had trouble finding a place for the car. Now he purchases petrol for the drive to the airport." Paul's eyes evaluated the utilitarian business tower opposite him as if he needed to make some decision about it. "You were very eloquent and still Madam Lindsey would not listen?"

  "I was all too eloquent," Gilman said, looking along the prosperous chaos of the street and smelling food. "Let's change the subject."

  Paul's lip curled, but he added no comment. Gilman experienced the uneasy feeling that he studied her without looking at her, and Sandy's wad of money seemed to swell in her pocket. She curled her hand about it. A young boy in a crisp white shirt and shorts dashed by, barely avoiding collision with her. This was no sidewalk for standing still.

  "Doctor."

  "Yes?" Gilman said.

  "I have a favor to ask of you."

  She noted the slight gleam of sweat on Paul's upper lip. God knows it was impossibly wretched here in Lagos, where the humidity never seemed to relent. He sidestepped a bustling matron with loaded raffia baskets balanced on her head.

  "Our plane does not leave for some time. I should like to purchase some things and meet you at the airport. I have discovered from Igbo friends where it will be safe for me to shop even though in the city of the enemy."

  For a fleeting moment Gilman thought of Mordor and two hobbits disguised as orcs. These crowded streets. Full of orcs. She saw a beggar in torn garments moving in her direction, likely seeing a white woman as easy prey. Guess again, Fed. I'd love to lick the scraps off your begging dish.

  "Fine," she said. Indeed she'd be glad to be rid of Paul's brooding presence.

  "But there is more that I must ask."

  "Yes," Gilman said, "what is it?" Hurry up, she wanted to say. Your perfect English takes forever.

  "I must borrow money. Such an opportunity to purchase medicines for the ICRC. and some food for the orphanage..."

  Gilman already tightened her fingers in her pocket. She couldn't fix her mind on the daily needs of those she represented, but she knew that any money spent as h
e suggested would be welcome where they went. She slipped him the wad, fast. The pickpockets of Lagos had a reputation.

  Her money belt held another two thousand dollars from Jantor. The driver would take her on a round of the pharmacies before going to the airport where she would spend what she had on supplies for her surgery. Much better not to have Paul watching what she did.

  "How much is this?"

  She shook her head—she hadn't counted it. Paul turned to the side, leaning against the wall, shielding his act from anyone passing and counted the bills twice before stuffing it into his front pants pocket.

  He took a minuscule note pad from his jacket and wrote down the amount, signing his name, apparently impervious to the irritated comments of passersby who bumped him. He handed the slip over to her.

  "What?"

  "You have my note of hand and my word of honor," he said, with a gaze so level and a tone so forbidding that she could not object.

  "You will not regret this," Paul said without any word of thanks.

  Hours later Gilman shifted in her seat, looking over the shining airplane wing. Long trip, from Lagos in Nigeria to the innocent destination of Madrid, then south again backtracking to the tiny Portuguese protectorate island of São Tomé off the Biafran-Nigerian coast. They should land in São Tomé by afternoon and if she had great luck she might manage to get a flight back in to Uli that night. She couldn't help worrying that something terrible had happened in her absence, that Jantor or Sister Catherine or even Allingham might be injured. But she who lived always with death dared not even imagine its name, as if the name itself would bring bad luck. She glanced with an ill-tempered sigh at her bulging hand luggage.

  What the devil had happened to Paul, anyway? The irresponsible fanatic probably got himself arrested, with that money and all his plans gone to waste. Maybe he'd manage to bribe his way out, but he was going to have to negotiate his own route back to Biafra. She couldn't wait. For all she knew he might incite the officials to look for her next. Besides, she'd wasted any credibility she might have hoped for by losing control in Lindsey's office.