Night Must Wait

by Robin Winter

  If she stayed on the train, it would carry her farther and farther into the suburbs, to fewer and fewer people, no place to go, no trains back at this hour. But if she could lose him, then get home first, find the revolver in the bedside table drawer, call the police, get out of town, do something…

  She couldn't bear to wait. Five lines converged at Baker Street, with nine platforms, three levels. Staircases, winding tunnels, construction, made a subterranean maze. She could lose him. Gilman lurched into the aisle of the braking train.

  The opening hiss of automatic doors and Gilman hit the platform, running for the intersection of the tunnels. She allowed herself one look back, catching a glimpse of her pursuer struggling through the group of theatergoers disembarking from his car. No time to stop and con the maps of the station—Gilman ran. Down the first tunnel she came to, spiraling to the right, down flight after flight of steps. Down the passage along the flat.

  The bright posters flashed by, then she felt the slant of the tunnel floor begin to rise. She encountered no one, could hear nothing over the clattering echo of her own shoes. Gilman wanted to look back, just once, to see if he followed. You don't look back. You keep moving.

  In an instant the tunnel was plunged into total blackness, the overhead lights flashing out. Was the station closing? Had her pursuer found the master switch?

  Gilman had to stop to allow her eyes to adjust. There was no adjusting. No light crept down the tunnels of the London underground. She could only hear herself gasping. Her skin prickled at the soundless dark. Her hands shook, but she groped and stumbled along the wall.

  The air lightened into a thick gloom. There were large black letters in the haze, and she strained—St. John's Wood. Christ. This northbound line into the country closed an hour ago. She could make out the wide expanse of the platform and the deep pit where the train tracks lay. Then Gilman strained up for the source of the faint illumination, up the sheer cement walls three stories high to a brighter blackness, the stars peeking from ragged masses of cloud.

  Something slammed into her, tearing a scream out. An arm hooked her neck. She struggled wildly, like any trapped animal, but the vise tightened, choking her into submission. With his free hand the Nigerian worked to loosen the large knot of scarf which protected her jugular.

  At the touch of dry fingers on the skin of her throat, adrenaline dizzied Gilman. Don't pass out. His knife glinted, pressing cold, sharp, like the pain of a paper cut.

  "Do not scream again, Doctor Gilman. I do not wish to hurt you. I shall take you to see your old friend."

  His formal, even polite warning spoken, her attacker loosened his grip to let her breathe. He'd take her to Lindsey like a pig to slaughter. She gulped for air and her head cleared a little, and the arm circling her throat recalled another. How many times had she fought her way clear of Jantor's grip? His deep cool voice came to her now in the damp subway.

  "Adrenaline will give a woman the strength of three grown men. If you have nothing to lose by fighting, use it."

  Her attacker pulled her backwards into the mouth of the tunnel. Gilman turned her chin into the crook of his elbow, shielding her throat from the blade of his knife. She jerked her chin down, slumped heavily against the man when he backed up, jammed her left heel into the tender hollow above his left knee and thrust down with all her weight, feeling the patella give beneath her shoe.

  The man fell, grunting, dragging Gilman down with him, choking her, the uncontrolled knife biting into the collar of her raincoat. She fell on top of him, heard the air gasp from his lungs, twisted herself free. She scrambled up and the man struggled after, slashing with his knife.

  He rose on his good leg and she buried her foot in his stomach, driving him back to the pavement. Kicked him alongside the head. Then she stamped on the hand that held the knife, again and again. The stubborn fingers opened at last. Somewhere Jantor spoke again.

  "Never leave an enemy able to follow you."

  She aimed a final kick at the skull of the writhing man on the floor, then bolted for the now-welcome blackness of the tunnel. Was he alone? He couldn't be alone…There had to be others waiting somewhere. She'd forced him to a premature attack. She had to get out, get back. An image of her stained and homely bedside table and its yellow lamp rose in her mind.

  Twice, running sightless in the tunnel, staircases leapt up at her and she fell. At last the dim lights of the closing city platforms blurred before her, brightening. Leaden-legged and gasping, she ran up the now-silent steps of the endless escalator two at a time. She shoved through the turnstile in the lobby and trotting feet came after her.

  "Madam, your ticket please!"

  Gilman whirled on the official of the London Transport, cursing like a madwoman and fumbling desperately through her pockets. No ticket. She flung a handful of coins, and exploded through the revolving doors of the station, followed by a shrill Cockney screech of the fat man who squatted to pick up the scattered coins.

  "Crazy bloody bitch!

  The cold air and drizzle beat on her hot face. Gilman ran into the street to flag down a black Austin cab. She threw herself into the back seat and gasped out the name of her street. She locked her door and leaned back into the seat, chest heaving, tilting her head to catch her breath and trying to still the pounding of her heart. She wiped at the sweat running down her face, pushed the damp hair back from her temples, fumbled with the buttons of her coat. For the first time she felt the thin sticky trickle of blood that ran from her throat down her shirt.

  Gilman closed the door of her apartment and bolted herself in, flicked the lights on with numb fingers. She surveyed her newly illuminated kitchen and felt herself shake. The stack of medical journals and notebooks on the table, the Swedish ivy hanging in the window, the porcelain dogs on the sill, the teapot by the aging gas range—futile illusions of peace.

  Lindsey had just shattered them. All for the murder of Sandy—poor laughing Sandy, who murderers and madwomen could not hate. Fool to Lindsey's Lear, and Gilman the last ungrateful daughter. How much sharper than a serpent's tooth...

  London was lost to her now. Wherever she went, Nigeria would follow, haunting her, hunting her. Ghosts and assassins. She felt again the stranger's fingers at her throat. She shuddered. Wherever she was, the best-lit kitchen, the warmth of the ward, she was fated to live in the Niger, the black land.

  Gilman picked up a perfectly crafted teacup from the hutch by the door, fingering its delicate hand-painted rosebuds. She had really tried this time. She thought of the years stretching between her and her proper time of death, of the work that she could do in that time, of the lives she could save, of the debts that all those lives could never balance—and suddenly the teacup exploded against the far wall of the flat.

  She ran across the room, tearing the top drawer from her desk, spilling its contents on the table, jamming cartridges into the empty chambers of the old revolver. There was a passport amongst the debris of papers, and blunt gnawed pencils, the golden seal of the United States gleaming on its navy blue cover.

  She riffled through its pages. On the last page she stopped and ice seemed to fill her veins. Stamped on the embossed paper was a visa she had never applied for, a visa she could have sworn hadn't been there the last time she handled her passport. A visa for entry into Nigeria, with no expiration date. Open ended. A gift from Lindsey.

  Chapter 107: Wilton

  December 1971

  Massachusetts, USA

  "Terrible weather to be hitchhiking, and so late," the woman said. Her glasses glinted against the mass of her curly brown hair. She turned to look again at Wilton. Drafts from the cold night fought with the passenger car's wheezy heating. Beyond the windshield, the long ovals of the car's dim headlights moved over the worn road. Blue night overwhelming.

  Wilton resettled herself in the front seat. Now that the numbness faded, she could tell where her legs and arms were. She pulled the down parka around herself. Her torso felt reasonably warm. She t
ried to move her toes inside her shoes and couldn't tell if she succeeded.

  "Thought you were a guy at first with that enormous coat. But I bet it keeps you from freezing."

  "Yes," Wilton said. She pulled back from staring into the empty ultramarine of that outside world and back to this small space with the smell of old coffee breath and moisture. The woman glanced yet again at her, making up her mind. Wilton tucked her hands into her pockets.

  "I am grateful," she said. "I never planned to be out on a night like this."

  She was a guest and owed her driver entertainment. "God moves in mysterious ways," Wilton said. "I was visiting a friend and he had a psychotic episode. He's in the hospital under observation. Malcolm was supposed to drive me back to the city to catch a bus home before Thanksgiving, but under the circumstances…"

  "He lived alone?"

  "Yes," Wilton said. "Known him for a long time. My cousin. I was worried about him."

  "With reason," the woman said. "I'm so sorry, but I'm sure your being there helped."

  "We all have our demons," Wilton said.

  "Isn't that the truth."

  "You don't have much for luggage?" The driver was thinking too much.

  "I came for two days and stayed two weeks."

  "Oh," the driver said. "You have a bit of an accent."

  "I lived overseas awhile."

  As unexpectedly as that, Wilton felt her head fill to bursting. Red and green and yellow like the blazing sun, a wild whirl of faces and jabbering voices. She pushed them away with both hands, hauling a ragged breath back into her lungs as if she fought a stranglehold.

  "Are you all right?"

  The woman had stopped the car, pulled over in this wilderness of blue night and snow. Wilton shook her head, held herself with both hands, needing to know exactly where she was. She couldn't speak.

  "Look, you're scaring me."

  The woman waited. After a few minutes she seemed to come to a decision. She put the car back into gear and began to drive.

  She let Wilton off near the Greyhound station. Every significant town in America had one, and it was the easiest believable destination. Her thanks still warm in her mouth, Wilton walked as if she had a purpose, right to the station, in the door. No one waiting but the clerk behind the counter, his stubbled face brightening to see a customer.

  Chapter 108: Oroko

  December 1971

  Boston, Massachusetts, USA

  Oroko walked the streets around the bus station, wondering if any of the men he saw would dare approach him with the intent he read in their flickering eyes. Quick assessing glances, then down or aside and away, to return again. Some turned aside in open submission, others went back to holding gloved hands over the trickling flames of open trash cans lit for the night against the dreadful cold. Oroko had never known there could be so much cold under the sky.

  He caught a glimpse of a small figure crowded back into the partial shelter of a dumpster. Short and so fat Oroko nearly bypassed it. But that one turned its head aside without giving him a measuring glance, and he felt anticipation surge in him. He jerked his hand to Thomas and Enezelo. The small figure started to run, but the ice fooled her. His men had her as she slipped, lifted her, hauled her to him.

  Oroko looked at Wilton, the small bit of blue-cold face hooded in the puffy green coat. Hidden hands. On his nod his men stripped off her outer layers and tossed them aside, checked her for hidden weapons, finding only a long boning knife in a sheath made of corrugated cardboard. They tugged off her shoes, shaking them out. A number of currency bills flew down to the dirty snow by the icy gutter. She shivered long deep shudders standing there.

  "Let us seat the Professor in our vehicle," he said. Courtesy, manners. He glanced back at the men on the street and saw them as animals, all black against the variant light, waiting for a chance to come down upon the discarded things scattered from Wilton, like pied crows upon a kill.

  He knew Enzelo wanted the currency, it was clear in that little backwards roll of his eyes, but he didn't make the mistake. Oroko went around the car and settled into the welcome warmth of the vehicle. His men put Wilton in on the other side, tossing her shoes in after.

  "You remember me, Professor Wilton."

  She looked at him, passive in the strange lighting of neon, sodium and fluorescents. For an instant he wondered if she could see, or if she might be blind, and felt his stomach twist as if he cared. As though her inability mattered to him. He felt Sandy laid her hand upon him in this soft upholstered car with the driver silent and obedient in the front seat, and he looked for her. She wasn't there.

  "We shall bring you home, Professor Wilton."

  "Against God's will," she said, through chattering teeth.

  "Does anything happen against God's will?"

  He looked at her, hoping she understood he meant no mockery of their shared past by those words. The big eyes dark in her icy face seemed to be fixed upon him.

  "Perhaps you are right."

  She said nothing more all the way to the airport, sitting with an immobility he found it impossible to match even though he knew he had good control. Once there, he waited for the second car to pull up and David to come to her door before he signed they were ready to move. Inside, the woman nurse Lindsey had hired, Ndidi, stood stout and alert in the waiting area before the ticket counters.

  Ndidi stayed with Wilton, taking her to the restroom to change her garb to something more suitable for air travel. But Oroko didn't settle in the first-class lounge until Ndidi brought Wilton back, neatly clad in a simple dress, midlength and black. He hadn't thought about that, but the appropriateness pleased him now.

  He looked at her, assessing her condition. Strong, even after these last hours of flight and chill and poor food.

  "How much money did she have?"

  "I had about three thousand," Wilton said, surprising him.

  "Sit with me, Professor. Are you hungry or thirsty?"

  "I will have tea and a sandwich," she said. "It doesn't matter what kind."

  He thought of that American abomination, bologna and processed cheese with white oily spread, and shuddered.

  "What will you tell me?" he said to Wilton after sending Daniel to care for their food and tea.

  "What have you to ask?"

  He saw her anew. Elegantly ugly, pale against the black, her throat slender, mouth firm, strongly marked brows slightly crooked in a way that gave even more expression to a face that had never been dull. The years had told on her, but she hadn't softened.

  "How did you make all these people protect you?" he asked. "We had to hurt the first woman who picked you up in her automobile to learn where she dropped you, and even then we only told from her reflex, for she spoke another lie. With the other two, the attendant and the bus driver, threats sufficed with little pain, though it wasted time."

  "I manipulated them," she said, no inflection.

  "Why," he said, thinking of the black-blue night and frozen ground outside the terminal, "why would you not want to go back to Nigeria with us? Think of the sun. Think of the people who would welcome you, the gladness…"

  "The gladness of the devils in hell. But if it serves God's will, it will be. Moses cannot live in the promised land."

  Daniel followed a waitress, who served from a large tray with icy aplomb. Probably she disapproved the mix of races represented here. Another day another time Oroko would have made a point of discovering why she looked so critical, but he had no time for that. In an hour they would be called.

  Wilton ate quietly, drank her hot tea, the crooked claw shapes of her fingers precise. She consumed the sliced white meat they called turkey, pallid cheese, a frill of green lettuce that gave a bitter taste against the pickle of the fatty spread on even-grained soft white bread. American bread was one of the better foods. Sweet as cake.

  She didn't look about her like a woman who contemplates escape. Still he wouldn't trust Wilton until they came to their destination and he
gave her into Lindsey's hands. On the flight he would handcuff her to her seat.

  "No one is angry with you. Lindsey needs your help," he said. "I believe it will be heartening for her to see you again. She isn't well—she needs friends."

  Wilton studied him and he was reminded of so many years ago when she had found him examining the colored pictures in the medical textbook.

  He saw strange things in her eyes, no fear or tension, not even resignation. Easier to say what was not there. He could not identify what was. It was like her not to ask about the woman who'd given her a ride.

  He rose, excused himself. He had a telephone call to make.

  "Mr. Richard Scott?"

  "Ah, you remember me," Oroko said, cradling the receiver. He used a warm pleased tone. Of course, his accent would be recognizable.

  "I have surprising news, startling, but I want to assure you that we are searching. We've notified the police."

  "Yes?"

  "Our patient, Ms. Wilton, contrived to jimmy the alarm system and left our premises the day you came with your papers. Unfortunately, you gave me no number to contact you…"

  A mistake for the doctor to say so much. Oroko allowed a sharpness to his voice.

  "Left? The Professor gone? This is grave news, most grievous."

  "We've been trying to track her."

  "Lost in the snow? Or did someone give her a ride in an auto? Could she be kidnapped?"

  "The yard was trampled by our groundskeepers, so we hadn't an easy trail." The doctor spoke too fast. "We believe she made it to the interstate and a driver picked her up as a hitchhiker, most likely headed for the city."

  "Boston, or even New York City?" Oroko asked.

  "Yes. The other way goes to Canada and decreasing options. I am so sorry Doctor, but under these circumstances I shall simply mail you the papers of which we spoke and I shall go after her myself. Worry yourself no more. You have been all generosity, and I thank you."