Night Must Wait

by Robin Winter

  The doctors came and went, dulling the edge with morphine, holding Sandy alive with intravenous fluids. The swelling progressed, the doctors shifting the tourniquet, incising the leg repeatedly in an effort to extract poison from the engorged tissues. They put on restraints, buckled bands of canvas, explaining that she might convulse.

  At last Lindsey could bear no more. She realized the doctors kept trying in order to impress her, not in hope for the patient. She could not imagine this intolerably swollen thing ever becoming Sandy again. Lindsey kicked out the professionals and watched in silence while violent muscle cramps wracked her delirious friend.

  Chapter 80: Oroko

  March 1969

  Ibadan hospital, Western Region, Nigeria

  Oroko pushed the hospital door open. The room stank. Lindsey sat a few paces from the bed, leaning against the chair back as he had never seen her lean before.

  "Leave," Oroko said to Lindsey. "I can watch for you."

  She shook her head. He walked over to look down at Sandy's panting shape. Seeing her like this, smelling the decay, turned the easy comfort of his own body into a sin. Her face bruised and puffed to moonlike roundness, her eyelids blackened with burst blood vessels. Her arms and legs stuck stiffly out like a doll's, and when he lifted the sheet with a delicate touch he saw how the leg had swollen until it burst the skin, gangrenous patches sloughing, seeping. The tubes hooking deep into her mouth and running from her arms, dripped and gurgled.

  Oroko glanced again at Lindsey, but she had closed her eyes though she sat upright. He brought his right arm out from the side of his body, syringe ready. He bent over Sandy and kissed her once upon her hot freckled forehead. Oroko slipped the needle into her throat, his body shielding what he did from Lindsey.

  "Rest well, my friend." He looked away when he felt her go limp under his hands. There came a sour taste in his mouth. He did not want to remember her like this. He left the room without glancing back.

  "Madam," Oroko said, making his voice low, "you must not sit in front of the window."

  "What? Oh, Oroko." Lindsey got up. The brown eyes in her face looked bewildered, but she was as ever impeccably dressed and controlled. In white, like a nun.

  "I am sorry," he said.

  She nodded. She came across the bedroom to her desk and sat down in the straight-backed chair.

  "I have news," he said. "We have the man. They found him back in Lagos trying to buy a ticket for Madrid."

  She lifted her head at that, her features seeming to sharpen in the half-light, the pure lines of a saint's profile, cut in marble.

  "I could not adequately explain to myself how a large spitting cobra would have entered your home," Oroko said. "The screens and windows were closed and locked when I came on the scene, with the sole exception of your hallway, where I found the window open. There was a pillow case by the window on the inside."

  "Bring him in, at once," Lindsey said, and her face was terrible.

  "He is dead."

  She gestured as if to say that did not matter, so Oroko went to the door and gave orders.

  A guard stood in the doorway, all spit and polish, exuding a catlike pride.

  "I killed him personally, Madam."

  "I wish you had not," she said, and Oroko found something appalling in her look.

  The guard ducked to one side. Two men came in, hauling a bloody sagging body between them. They dumped it on the carpet, face up.

  Lindsey stepped forward to look.

  "Oroko," she said on an indrawn breath. "You have seen this man before?"

  He stared. One idea slid after another and locked in place. Sandy would have been so unbelieving.

  "Yes," he said. No ifs or maybes—he had an excellent memory for faces, even after the transformations of torture and death.

  "Where?"

  "He came with Doctor Gilman when she first arrived at your office a week ago. Later, when the doctor departed, he awaited her outside. They conversed, then separated. She gave him money. His name is Paul."

  "You have had him searched?"

  "Yes." Oroko stepped to the once-proud guard and took the things from him.

  "Traveling papers, an airline ticket to São Tomé via Madrid, open booking, and foreign currency."

  He held out a packet of American bills.

  "How much?" Lindsey asked.

  "Five hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. Taped."

  She did not seem to notice when he had the body removed. Oroko stood by the door and watched her.

  Chapter 81: Lindsey

  March 1969

  Ibadan, Western Region, Nigeria

  Every time Lindsey closed her eyes, she saw Sandy. She remembered how Sandy tried to get her to go out to a bar the weekend before Wilton arrived. Lindsey said no. It wasn't safe. Oroko would have scolded them for carelessness.

  A bar. The smell of beer and nuts, the pepper sauce and deep-fried chickpeas closed around her for a second—throbbing music and voices raised over it. She could see the laughing faces, hear the offers of free beer from people she didn't even know. That's what it was like the last time she went with Sandy. How long ago? God, it must've been years. Why hadn't Sandy given up asking?

  She should have had Gilman handcuffed the minute she stepped on Federal Nigerian territory. Cuffed and shuffled off to some jet aimed for New York. Sent home like a bad dog. Could have saved her from herself. Could have saved Sandy.

  Or would the murder plans still have gone forward? Gilman might have sent Paul on his own, primed to kill. The soiled pillowcase in the hallway near the open window told its part.

  Lindsey laced her fingers together, as if the deliberate nature of the gesture would focus her thought. She'd trusted Gilman for all these years. Disliked her, found her abrasive, foolish, but still trusted her. Now a horde of questions arose.

  If she'd trusted Gilman, she knew full well that Gilman hadn't trusted her. Not even in the old days, not even in little matters of truth and fiction and jest. Small things, but he who is faithful in small things will be faithful in great.

  Gilman wouldn't have known that Lindsey would give her bedroom to Wilton, so this assassination was aimed at Lindsey.

  How stupid. Did Gilman imagine Lindsey so powerful? All by herself? Or was it personal between them, about control and jealousy? But what poison was poured in Gilman's ears by this mercenary lover? Who knew what the slow torture of days and nights in Biafra had done to a mind that Lindsey had always found erratic and temperamental?

  If she traveled back to the beginning, maybe she could see Gilman as she really was. Not the Gilman Wilton edited and pruned and presented to Lindsey, nor even the Gilman Lindsey once thought she knew. Not the bright young woman with curling gold hair and an anxious look who had run across the fields late for class at Wellesley while Lindsey laughed at her. Abruptly she recalled how Gilman had said one day, "Oh, of course we doctors know the world revolves around us. We have to be egomaniacs to survive our crimes."

  Possibly Gilman hadn't picked a snake as the murder weapon. Maybe she'd simply paid her man and turned her back. Indeed if Lindsey had been the one bitten, antivenin might have saved her, though the statistics had never been great. But if Gilman paid Paul for Lindsey's death with Sandy's money, it scarcely mattered what means she'd told him to use. She had responsibility.

  Gilman killed Sandy. By torture. Now there was no one there when Lindsey turned, no one ready with jokes or a comment filled with understanding and memory. How could she face this? She couldn't see past what was missing.

  "Oroko."

  "Yes, madam."

  "I need orders sent East. There's a mercenary white soldier operating in the Uli area with the Fourth Commando Brigade. His name is Major Thomas Jantor. An American. Best, have him captured. Tortured. I want to know if he made Gilman try to kill me. If capture proves impossible, have him shot. I want proof of his extermination. If there are complaints or obstructions, tell the Federals that I hold proof of their traffick
ing with the enemy, which I will lay without hesitation before Gowon himself. I know about the cross-lines traffic and have countenanced it for my own reasons, but I can shut them down. "

  Oroko nodded and was gone.

  Lindsey sat on the edge of her bed in her room. Tonight, like the past two nights, she couldn't rest. Her covers sprawled tossed and twisted on the bed, the pillow damp. Lindsey felt her arms and legs throb with exhaustion, but she dismissed the thought of sleep with terror. She wrenched herself together.

  She went to Wilton's room, finding the light on and the sleepy hired nurse watching her friend. Lindsey gestured to dismiss the nurse, and took the woman's place by the bedside. She looked at the knapsack lying at Wilton's side on the bed. Wilton never seemed to let go of that knapsack, bulging with a cardboard box. Lindsey wondered what it might contain.

  "Wilton."

  But Wilton traveled now beyond her reach, drugged. Half-lidded eyes, sagging cheeks, slack lips. A shine of saliva wet a thin trail down Wilton's chin. God, Wilton shouldn't remain in Nigeria any longer. An object of pity, derision, and jeopardy if she ever recovered enough to talk.

  Wilton held secrets. Lindsey folded her hands together in her lap and considered. In any top-flight American institution, the doctors would start fishing, finding things in Wilton's memory. Too many stories. Names, deaths. No one knew, not even Oroko, what the extent of Wilton's knowledge might be.

  Lindsey rose to her feet with care not to startle. Where could she safely send Wilton? She took another assessment of the drooling stupid face and shuddered.

  Wilton would be better off dead. Immediately she felt shame. According to Gilman, Wilton might recover. But the night Sandy died left Wilton maimed in some deep way. Even in the long term, how could she become whole? Gilman was a sentimentalist, anyway.

  There were state institutions for the hopelessly insane, where all Wilton's physical needs would be tended. In time maybe some natural healing might happen. If that transpired, Lindsey could reconsider then. Reevaluate. There would be a time for that, if it happened.

  Lindsey walked to the door. By the end of the week, she'd have Wilton home-bound on a jet to the USA and safety.

  She could go too. Release all that she controlled and go back to the States. Leave Sandy's death behind. Lindsey felt her stomach clench at the idea. To limp home beaten, to give her old enemy Gilman such a triumph. No. Never. Running would make it worse. She didn't want to see America again. A place of powerlessness. Of loss.

  Chapter 82: Oroko

  March 1969

  Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

  Lindsey surprised Oroko when she spoke.

  "I can't take Wilton to America myself."

  She hadn't moved in over an hour, while Oroko stood by the shuttered window wishing he'd taken up smoking.

  But habits betrayed. They became tipping points, something that erased the mind. If habits gave positive feelings, as he'd heard smoking did, so much the worse, so much deeper the fracture down where the roots of distraction could anchor.

  His feeling of loss would pass. He'd wait until he could ignore it. This was no time for remembering. He wondered if there might be a way to say that to Lindsey, but he felt an anger that included her which kept the words blocked. He pushed back the idea that she was the one who should be dead. Fantasy, that. What was true, and what his duty to that truth required, was all that mattered.

  He would observe everything as he always did, and he'd become normal again following the patterns that always brought him strength.

  He noted the pallor of Lindsey's face and the odd delay between some of her words. When she changed what she stared at, her eyes didn't react as quickly as usual. She faced the papers on the desk, the map on the wall, the heavy louvers of the metal shutters, but did not see at all.

  "She wouldn't expect me to take her back. Wilton would understand I'm no good to her now."

  She pushed the pencil on her desk.

  "We let Gilman alone for now," she said. "If we can take her lover down, good, but she's in hell now and she can stay there. When Biafra falls, if she survives we shall let her think she got away. But she'll look for Wilton, so we'll know where she is and what she does, and the longer and lonelier the better. When I'm tired of that, we'll meet again. Yes, indeed, for the cold revenge."

  Oroko felt no need to respond. Lindsey would do as she chose. She wasn't talking to him. She talked to the wall and the louvers and the papers on the desk.

  "Oroko, find me a professional nurse, female. Someone who speaks English and has experience with psychological cases. Credentials in psychiatric nursing."

  Interesting that she conflated the two. Psychology and psychiatry. Oroko almost requested clarification, but he stopped. Lindsey didn't care. She made the motions she thought looked right, but she didn't do what Sandy would do. She didn't feel as Sandy felt.

  He experienced a shift inside, as though Lindsey altered part of his mind by making the decision to send Wilton away with strangers. Like a shutter, closing off a feeling before he questioned her heart. Maybe Sandy had been her heart and now the fracture ran right through her.

  "Yes," he said because the pause went too long.

  Oroko moved and missed his step. He caught himself on the table, felt his hands slip on the polished wood. Startled, appalled, he felt as if Sandy had reached out. He felt the shock of her rage, as if Sandy somehow got into him and knocked him off stride. He balanced, moved away from that unreal moment. Lindsey didn't seem to notice.

  Chapter 83: Gilman

  April 1969

  Uli, Biafra

  An elegant restaurant. Gilman admired the ceiling chandeliers. Beneath each glittering cluster of crystal drops, white rounds of tables sparkled with cut glass, sterling and china. The clientele were equally select. Tuxedoed young doctors from the best of New York's private hospitals, Lagos's military elite in be-medalled dress uniforms, exquisite women in gowns of rose satin and silver lamé. She looked at Jantor, who sat across from her in his smoke-and-sweat-stained flak jacket. She was hardly better in her surgeon's greens, blood speckled. There had to be a dress code in a place like this. She prayed that the maitre d' would not spot them.

  A hand filled her glass with a full-bodied red wine. The ruby color caught the light from one of the chandeliers and refracted it over the table in quivering circlets of red. She felt hungry, not thirsty, and aware of waiting an unconscionably long time for her dinner. She turned to complain to the waiter, but he'd vanished. However, just as her hunger grew unbearable, a large filet mignon materialized on her plate, garnished by burnished braised carrots and tawny roasted potatoes. The steak was done to perfection, crusty brown on the outside, dripping red within, giving way like butter to her knife. She stabbed a slice with her fork and raised it to her lips. Someone called her name.

  "Gilman."

  The voice sounded urgent, familiar.

  "Gilman."

  She located the voice, turned toward it and froze. The maitre d' pointed at her. He stood near the fire exit, an old black man in tails, with a face like a skull and a gaping hole torn in his throat. Perhaps that was how he spoke without moving his lips, and why his voice seemed so inappropriate to his body. He floated toward her and she struggled with her inability to scream or run. He grabbed her shoulder, she flinched in terror and then, with a sudden rush of relief, woke to the fact that both voice and touch belonged to Sister Catherine. Gilman opened her eyes in the darkened hospital tent and remembered she'd thrown herself down on an empty cot, too exhausted to return to her own tent and undress.

  "Sorry I startled you. Are you awake? Really?"

  "Yes," Gilman said. The meager pillow felt impossibly comfortable. "What time is it, anyway?"

  "Three. If you'll sit up, I've got coffee, or what passes."

  Gilman forced herself to a sitting position. It was unusually chilly in the tent and she gratefully gripped the hot mug. She hoped she wasn't about to have another bout of malaria.

/>   "Why'd you wake me?"

  "Two things. The falciparum who came in this afternoon's been convulsing."

  "Stopped now?"

  "For the time being."

  "Temp?" Gilman got to her feet, shaking, and swallowed a great gulp of coffee.

  "It's 109."

  "Shit." Fried brains. Gilman took another scalding mouthful and winced. She looked at Sister Catherine. "I'll get right on it. You'd better take over here."

  Gilman pointed to the cot and cut off the nun's unformed protest with a practiced stare.

  "The other thing..." knowing better than to argue, Sister Catherine sat down on the bed and handed Gilman the letter she carried.

  "What the..." Gilman wondering, turned the object over. Heavy expensive paper. An invitation, she thought for one loopy moment. She tore it open and pulled out the sheet of parchment, reading aloud.

  "To Gilman:

  Incompetent even in murder.

  I survive. Your agent Paul killed Sandy in my place.

  Be sure of me, for you cannot be sure of anything else. Watch for me always. Everywhere. Until we meet again."

  She stared over the rim of the paper at Sister Catherine.

  "What the hell? I saw Sandy a week ago. Nothing was wrong with her."

  Even as she spoke the words, she looked down again at the paper.

  "It can't be Lindsey's handwriting…Sandy? Dead? No."

  She saw only an answering puzzlement in Sister Catherine's eyes.

  "Sandy's one of your American friends?"

  "Yeah. Where'd this come from?"

  "A boy gave it to me. Half an hour ago, I guess."

  "It can't be. This is sick," Gilman said. But she didn't know. She turned from Sister Catherine, seeing Sandy's face.

  "It can't be," she said again. She swallowed hard. She turned as if she could turn from the idea and went from the tent out into the darkness. "No, impossible," she said again into the night. She tried to feel if Sandy was dead—would she, could she know, wouldn't she sense a loss so basic to her world? But Sandy was healthy, strong as ever, ready to keep the faith. Rumor could be pitiless, and mistaken. Malice, well that was far more likely, though she couldn't imagine who hated her so much. She walked away from it, but the idea followed her, a shadow, a puzzle rooted in dread.