Night Must Wait

by Robin Winter

  Oroko imagined the expression on the doctor's face, the realization. Oroko should have threatened, not gone away defeated. The doctor knew Oroko was no man to accept losing, so somehow, offstage, Oroko had already won. Oroko smiled. He wanted Dr. Lowenstein to know.

  "My best wishes for your new year," Oroko said, "to your wife also."

  He hung up, rubbing his fingers. The receiver felt cold, reminded him of what it was like outside. What a terrible country, but it explained many things about Lindsey Kinner, who still after so many years away held herself all tight inside as if she always felt that frigid wind pressing against her body.

  Chapter 109: Lindsey

  December 1971

  Lagos, Nigeria

  "Madam Kinner."

  Lindsey looked at the young Tiv steward in his white uniform. She didn't recognize him, but she knew he relayed a message from Oroko, due back tonight. Regulus shadowed her this evening in Oroko's stead.

  "Public Works Department man say he come tomorrow morning at ten with assistant."

  She nodded, turned away and went to the bar.

  "Scotch, on the rocks," she said, and her heart shook her. Oroko had Wilton. Gilman was on her way. Night of jubilee. Night of blood.

  Dinner would be served within the half hour. Guests surged in, impeccably dressed men and women swelling the flood. Glancing over her shoulder, Lindsey smiled when she saw Richard Somers, the host. He stood with Amaro, who wore traditional robes in pale green embroidered with gold. Most Nigerian men these days chose to sweat in European three-piece suits. Both men gestured in a silent toast to her. She bowed her head in acknowledgment and turned to accept her drink.

  She'd see that the young Tiv messenger had a reward for his pains. Lindsey nodded in greeting to the many who hailed her when she passed. Some eager to be seen her friend, others afraid to cut her.

  Suddenly Amaro stood before her. She looked up at his grave face and it creased into friendliness.

  "Congratulations, Madam Kinner, on your new promotion," he said. "And on the news that brings forth your smile."

  He drew back out of her way. She smiled too. For a man who probably wanted to kill her, he had excellent manners. Soon all her waiting would be over. Amaro could kill her some other time, not tonight. Tonight she was immortal.

  Chapter 110: Wilton

  December 1971

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Night. Wilton felt her chest would burst. She knew her hands shook like a drug addict reaching for the last fix. She stopped at the top of the steps leading down from the jet door to Nigerian earth. Sweat on her forehead and scarred palms, she closed her fingers imperfectly about the rails as she took her careful way down to that warm soil, the night singing and rocking about her. Suddenly Oroko's arm steadied her, half lifting her the last two steps.

  She staggered, the hot air wrapping her like a blanket. Impatient hurrying bodies, jostling. The lurid lights of the terminal steered her, Oroko's touch lightening on her until he only touched her elbow.

  Familiar halls enfolding her. Wilton walked toward Lindsey's offices, eyes front, smelling the coconut polish and wax of the floors, the drift of disinfectant from the lavatory. This was real.

  Oroko and Daniel ushered her into the reception room, the young man at the desk rising as if she were royalty to him. She didn't know him and turned instead to watch Oroko knock, then open Lindsey's inner door.

  Red rich carpet and white walls lined with bookcases, more than used to be here, the glass fronts gleaming, the gilt and leather of the volumes inside speaking of ages of thought and discovery. A woman coming toward them as they entered, pale-blue shirtwaist and a gleam of gold at her throat, her eyes wide in her face, hands half raised in greeting.

  Wilton hadn't known what to expect, but God knows she loved this woman. To see Lindsey Kinner move without her former fluid grace, the eyes flattened copper, told her what God wanted her to know.

  Here walked the dead. Arms about her that she must endure, the pale cheek against hers, a formal reception.

  "Wilton," Lindsey said soft. "I heard of your recovery. I've been holding my breath to see you."

  Hardly…she'd be a corpse by now if that were so. Wilton noted the metal shutter over the window that opened high over a busy street, the slow turning fan blades over her head. Dry season dust in the air. Wilton walked over to an empty chair in the corner, shielded from the rest of the room by a wing of bookcase at right angles to the rest. She sat in the hidden corner, feeling a little protected.

  "Wilton?"

  "She speaks little," Oroko said.

  "Surely you have something to say to me?"

  Wilton had never heard Lindsey plead before.

  "You should not have brought me here," Wilton said.

  Someone rapped on the door to the reception room and Oroko cracked the door an inch.

  "She's on her way," he said to Lindsey.

  Chapter 111: Gilman

  December 1971

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Gilman's jet descended over Nigeria. When the black broke into twinkling lights—first a scattering, then crowding in knots, arranged in thicker and thicker designs like a carpet below the blotting shape of the wing, her hands tightened on the armrests.

  Would she find a delegation of Lindsey's thugs when she landed? Or would Lindsey leave her to find her own way to their meeting? The air in the cabin felt warmer now. They curved in for the landing. She stared down at the sleeping land sprinkled with jewels of light and heard again Tom's voice.

  "Yeah, Steiner and Masters and I should get the hell out, Doctor. You don't understand yet, but that's only because you haven't tried to leave. You come to this bloody country to do a job, and the place gets its hooks in you. There's no way home from here. You'll see. We've all got no choice."

  Somewhere in her she felt the stir of rising delight at sight of the sullen massive country below. So huge, so full of unseen life. A throb of visceral welcome in her. She felt her nostrils widen with memory of the musky odors of the night, and the pungent smoke and garri scents wafting from the cook fires. As if the echo of Tom's voice had roused it, anticipation possessed her, banishing fear. Like a rush of alcohol in her body, shaking her with its arousal. The jet dipped lower, turning in the hot thick air. She saw Lagos's ragged winking brightness slowly swing past her window.

  In the minutes before touchdown, the cabin lights went off "for your safety," the accented announcement claimed. What in hell did that mean? Gilman's hands went sweaty. Surely now that Biafra was dead, no one would dare take potshots at descending aircraft. She heard a man behind her begin to pray for a safe landing. Oh God indeed, a safe landing. Ain't no such thing.

  She saw the field lights flash by, the jet quivering with strain. The engine noise increased to a frantic roar. She sat rigid in her place waiting for the jet to roll to a halt.

  At the exit she hesitated for less than a second before stepping onto the metal grid work of the stairs. The black humid air closed around her in a familiar grip and she glanced up at the enormous white stars. Around her rose again the incredible loud shrilling of insects in the Nigerian night.

  A haze of Harmattan dust obscured the stars, and beyond the dim glow of a street lamp, Gilman stood in the shadows on the narrow sidewalk of a Lagos street. She didn't wear a watch, but she'd looked at the clock in the hotel lobby and she knew it must be close to three. She stood gazing up at the light rimming a blackout shade on a sixth story window of an otherwise unlit office building across the street, and swore softly to herself. Too easy to get through Customs. No baggage check. She didn't believe in coincidences.

  Lindsey's office. Gilman knew that Lindsey would be up, working. Waiting, too. When hadn't she found Lindsey that way? Spider centered in a web. She counted the windows again, carefully, to be sure it was the right one. She'd been half afraid of finding that light, half impatient to see it.

  Now that she'd verified where to find Lindsey, she'd go back to the hotel room, plan
things carefully, come back tomorrow. No—Gilman had to laugh at the acid energy surging through her. This was it. The golden opportunity. To pass it up now would be the act of a fool or a coward. The longer she remained in Lagos, the greater chance that she'd sacrifice everything without accomplishing her mission. A chance like this wouldn't come again. Besides, she knew that if she left now, she might never come back.

  She forced herself to cross the broad empty street. How to get in without alerting the security guards…Where were they? Hadn't she remembered a patrol of them on her last visit guarding the building periphery?

  The windows…She wondered helplessly if the windows had alarms. Christ, she wasn't a professional cat burglar. A lot of things, but not a burglar yet. Or a murderer, she reminded herself. But things change.

  She suddenly felt abandoned. If only there were someone else to talk to. God, what she'd give for Sister Catherine's face, that brown triangle of eyes, nose and mouth framed in white. But Sister Catherine gave the past to God and went to a new life in Ireland. Gilman assumed she was happy—she'd heard nothing from the nun for months.

  Now a wave of loneliness intruded and Gilman realized that the nun would never have understood the necessity for this night. Sister Catherine would have stopped her, and not for knee-jerk religious reasons either. Her logical mind would have tried to talk Gilman out of it—she'd never understood how it was between Lindsey and Gilman.

  Perhaps Gilman didn't either. Well, maybe Sister Catherine would read about it in the back pages of the London Times.

  She shoved at the nearest window and to her surprise it gave way, popping open as if it hadn't caught when closed. Heart pounding, Gilman climbed from the sidewalk to drop into the ground-floor room and eased the window shut behind her. A vague light fell through the frosted glass window in the inner door that opened onto the hallway. Fuck it, the lights were on in the halls. Maybe there were other people working this late.

  She felt in her pocket for her gun. A gun in a pocket—she could hear Jantor laughing at her amateurish solution, but his holster was long gone. The metal was chilling to the touch. Cold comfort, when you knew there were no accidents.

  "Never show an enemy your weapon until you're using it on him." Jantor's words. She was sure Lindsey knew that rule. How many wrongs Gilman carried with her tonight, not least the exile to which Lindsey had sent Wilton. Had Wilton crossed Lindsey somehow? It was treason to cross Lindsey. Treason, for Christ's sake. Gilman took her fingers from the revolver and circumnavigated her way around the furniture in the room to the hallway door.

  The corridors of the building arched wide, brightly lit. No concealing shadows, and the halls stood empty. Gilman walked toward the flights of stairs that would lead her up to Lindsey's office. The crepe soles of her shoes made no sound on the linoleum. This was all very easy. Too easy. Lindsey had too many enemies to be alone at night in an unprotected building. Gilman wondered if maybe Lindsey expected her, but would Lindsey believe Gilman had the guts? What about that visa?

  She emerged from the third floor stairwell into Lindsey's territory. The quarters dedicated to Lindsey's use occupied a floor of the building. Quiet polished hallways with glass-windowed doors opening with the authority of mahogany on brass hinges. Doors labeled with Nigerian name after Nigerian name in discreet gold letters on the frosted glass. Hallways that by day must know the earnestness of hushed voices and the swiftness of urgent feet. She could imagine that.

  Down at the end of the longest hall, a most particular door. A door of polished wood, burnished with faithful polishing. A suggestion of extra massiveness that overrode the significance of all the other doors, with no name on it at all. But a light lived within.

  Gilman stood staring at the door, striving to see into the office beyond and into the brief future. Look long and hard, and look well, she told herself. She swallowed then, and straightened herself, drew her revolver. Cocked it.

  She could bear to live haunted, and she could stitch out the past with the threads of her sanity, but she couldn't bear for Lindsey to hunt her across three continents. To be cornered at every turn, released and recaptured, everlastingly trumped by Lindsey's superior smile, that she could not endure. A cat's paw game. Knowing that the dead and the mad still somehow belonged to Lindsey, while Gilman crept in shadows. And what cut most, though Gilman hated to admit it, was the fact that she'd never won either Lindsey's trust or respect, and that Lindsey believed her capable of the most cold-blooded betrayal.

  The cool brass knob of the door slipped beneath her fingers.

  Lindsey sat at the far end of the spacious room, behind the mahogany expanse of her desk. Her hands lay loosely folded before her on the blotter, her attention fixed on Gilman. For a moment, Gilman saw the alterations wrought in that eerily familiar face. She paused. A man stood by the window, he seemed unarmed and made no move, so she held the cocked revolver on Lindsey and refused to make the error of focusing on him.

  Refined, Lindsey's angles had been purified, the fine brows drawn across the white forehead. Ill? The doctor in Gilman asked that question but she pushed it back. Gilman thrust the door closed behind her. She walked up to the desk and leaned toward Lindsey. A blur of sequences flashed before her eyes. Shattered jaw and death by choking on the spouting blood, blown-out eye or a neat hole through the front plate—the blasted back of the skull. Lots of choices.

  "I'm here," she said.

  Chapter 112: Oroko

  December 1971

  Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

  You never leave your principal alone with anyone you didn't hire.

  Far from the quarrelling songs and drunken laughter of the Lagos night below, Oroko stood by the metal shuttered window, letting his eyelids droop as if he could now, finally, relax. They had Gilman. Here she stood, entrapped in this office, full of her delusions and master of none. Not seeing the other observer, Wilton, seated in the far chair by the great wall map, hidden from Gilman by the bookcase that stood at right angles into the central part of the room.

  Dr. Gilman moved forward a few paces, then stopped still. A figure from the past. Her khakis always wrinkled, her posture rigid, her blue eyes so tired she wouldn't have been able to aim accurately even at this short range. She stood as if she'd practiced the stance, her revolver cocked, its muzzle less than five feet from Lindsey's forehead.

  He had Gilman. He knew how to keep a distance that didn't matter, but looked as if it did. He knew exactly how he would move if the tension changed. The slender knife half-hidden in his sleeve made a pleasant weight in his palm. He would have the doctor dead before she could aim and pull the trigger. All was well. Gilman wouldn't know that a man in range can stab faster than an amateur's trigger can pull. He could feel certainty in his palm, in the weight of the smooth wooden handle, and the ease that ran all through his body down the ligaments and muscles under the quiet skin from his spine to the springs of his shoulder, elbow and wrist.

  Her hand already had a little quiver—she held the weapon aimed too long, gripped too tight, and now he saw how she felt the strain and finally shifted her fingers and lowered her arm. As if she tried to tell both him and his principal that she was no less dangerous than she had been, she now held the weapon in both hands, the muzzle pointed at the floor.

  "Leave us," Gilman ordered him, as if she had the right. Her blue eyes flicked to him and back to Lindsey. As if her Americanness, her whiteness, her coming in like an angel of healing gave her power.

  He didn't trouble himself to answer and let himself look more relaxed, angling his elbows against the wall as if he put his weight upon them. She shrugged then as if she had known better and he felt the first positive emotion she'd ever stirred in him.

  Now he could pay attention to the words that she spoke. Not enough to distract him from his business—to protect his principal. He watched Wilton too. Every instinct told him to, though he knew she had no weapon.

  "You still have the delusion that I killed Sandy? I can thin
k of no other excuse for your hounding me with those goons," Gilman said.

  Lindsey stood up on the far side of the desk, precise. White, apparently passionless, her mouth firm and certain. The same age as Gilman, but dominant, immortal even, like a creature of marble and steel. He'd stopped calling her by any honorific years ago, when Oroko started to understand that she would never allow anyone closer than friendship. Her sex didn't matter, only that he protect her. As time passed and Lindsey persisted in treating him not as her weapon nor shield, but an associate, he'd found himself troubled and affected by her very loneliness.

  So different from her dead friend who'd hired him. So far from that one's easy grin and joking manner and shabby clothes. Sandy, whom he had loved. They spoke of her now. Oroko waited. Everything could wait now. They had Gilman. Sandy's murderer. The fan whirred above in the flickering fluorescent glow.

  He could hear the dogs howl in some distant neighborhood, the jangle of radios seething below from the bars on Independence Street. Lagos, humming and belching in the night. His men had cleared the streets for Gilman to come to them, now the streets came back to life.

  "What more evidence do I need than your paid assassin's own words," Lindsey said, contained. "You gave Paul the very same five hundred of American money that Sandy gave you for feeding your starving children. Starving children." Lindsey let the words settle between them before she went on. "American dollars to kill me, and he failed. He picked the wrong bedroom."

  This was Lindsey's kill—he had to stay back unless Gilman initiated action. He would not let anger in because he knew all about passion and the mistakes it made. Wilton remained still in her chair, listening, rigid.

  "Am I supposed to pardon you because you fucked up?" Lindsey smiled. "Killed the wrong person?"

  "You say that," Gilman said. "But I heard Sandy died of snake bite, an accident. How can it be murder?"