Dead of Night

by Brendan DuBois

  Before I gave myself the luxury of a thorough cleansing I took a small chair from in front of the writing table and shoved it under the main doorknob. Then I made sure that both locks were secured. Only then did I go into the bathroom. I looked at the mirror and saw red-rimmed eyes, a scabbed-over face that had been swabbed with some sort of disinfectant, and nearly a week’s worth of beard that still looked like I had been growing it for all of three days. But behind me was a shower. I turned on the faucet and hot water came out, lots and lots of hot water. Believe it or not, I spent a whole hour in that hot and steamy little room, finally getting myself properly cleaned up.

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When I was done with my shower I took an elevator to the basement of the building where a cafeteria had been set up. I didn’t expect room-service standards but I was pleased by a little cardboard sign on the room phone — in English, French and German—that advised me that hot meals were served three times a day in the cafeteria and cold meals were available at any time. Checking the little clock by the bed stand, I saw that I had a half-hour before the last hot meal was served.

  In the cafeteria there were what looked to be nearly a hundred people, plus a virtual Babel of voices and accents. There were civilians, doctors and nurses, and even some patients, either in wheelchairs or propelling themselves around by metal walkers or canes. Scattered throughout the crowd were the military uniforms of maybe a half-dozen different countries, and their only similarity was the UNFORUS arm patch and brassard on the left arm and the TLDs hanging off lapels. I stood in line and grabbed a plastic tray, still damp and warm from having just been washed. My stomach growled cheerfully at the prospect of hot food coming by for a visit.

  I looked around the room. When I got back to looking at the line of people I was in it had moved forward and somebody up ahead was leaning back, looking at me.

  Peter Brown.

  I dropped my tray, ran forward, and tried my best to kill him.

  ~ * ~

  Tried my best.

  Another way to put that would be ‘utterly and abjectly failed’, but I sure did a little damage. I made some noise, and there were a ruckus and some shouts and then we were grappling on the floor. Peter managed to roll me over after I had hammered him with some weak punches, and eventually he had me pinned, screaming up at him. Then a couple of bruisers—fellow Brits, it sounded like—helped Peter pick me up and drag me out of the cafeteria where we went into a little office with a small desk and two chairs. After he’d slammed the door shut, Peter said, ‘Samuel, look, just shut your trap for a moment. All right? Talk some sense. I’ll give you five minutes to say anything you want, and after those five minutes you listen to me. Then you can take your best shot. Fair enough?’

  ‘You fucking bastard,’ I said, breathing hard.

  Peter smiled, leaned back in a swivel chair. ‘Not very original, mate. Sorry. You’re going to have to do better than that.’

  ‘Where do you want me to begin, you traitorous shit? Sanjay’s dead because of you. And it’s your fucking fault that I nearly got killed too.’

  That got his attention. He let the swivel chair snap back to its upright position and his ruddy face got even redder. I felt emboldened and went on. ‘Is that better, more original? Got your attention this time?’

  Up on the wall behind Peter was a nutrition chart, with dancing slices of bread, grains and vegetables in some kind of food pyramid. It looked ridiculous but my attention was focused entirely on Peter who said, ‘Have you told anybody this yet?’

  I wanted him to be scared of me for a change so I said, ‘Yeah, I have. And there are others to follow.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Jean-Paul, to begin with, when I catch up with him. And then my friends back at the Toronto Star. Oh, that’ll be a good front-page story, once I resign my position with the UN and get my old job back. I’ll even send them a few nice photos of you working in the field. Working for the militias, though—right?’

  ‘Where’s your proof?’ Peter asked, his voice flat.

  Again, I felt emboldened. I was expecting denials and put-downs and the usual abrasive response from Peter, who had picked on me from the very first day I had come to New York state. I was enjoying the discomfort I was putting him through.

  ‘Sure, all in good time,’ I said dismissively. ‘But let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? From the very start when we went out in the field we were going in circles, weren’t we? We had bad intelligence, our communications gear was being jammed, and we found evidence of war crimes only by literally stumbling over it. Am I right?’

  Peter just nodded. I went on, speaking quickly. ‘Then we hooked up with the Aussie television crew. Remember one of their questions? All about saboteurs, working within the UN field groups to block their progress—anyone’s progress—in finding Site A. We all thought they were making it up.’

  ‘Proof, Samuel,’ he said. I felt a tiny thrill of victory at finally having this man call me by my right name. ‘You said you had proof.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s try this. Four days ago, we went looking for that Aussie TV crew. You tried to give us bogus directions, tried to keep us away from them. Hiding evidence of your mates’ activities, were you, Peter? Then, a day after that, I was out in the woods, looking for you. You were out pissing against a tree—or so you said. But I saw something different, Peter. I saw you either losing your mind or talking to someone by radio, because I saw you talking into your wrist. Mentioning grace ... oh, yeah, somebody’s name. Grace. Who was she? Your Stateside contact? And since you seem stable enough—even though you’re an arrogant traitor—I think you were relaying information to someone. Your paymaster, no doubt.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Peter asked in the same flat tone.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘One last piece of evidence and then you can give me whatever bullshit you like. Two days after the ambush—and don’t you feel guilty about what happened to Sanjay?—I was captured by a militia unit, kept captive in a hidden camp a fair number of klicks away from here. I was being held inside a school bus, and just before I managed to escape I saw the militia leader get a visitor. You. All by your lonesome, all inside that camp, getting smiles and slaps on the back. Like you belonged. Like you were their friend. And I saw you just before I got out. So there you go. Time for your reply, you shit.’

  Peter actually smiled at me. A very happy and cheerful grin. I said, ‘Thinking of killing me and then walking out of here? Sure. Try that, with a hundred or so witnesses outside that door. You go right ahead.’

  Peter kept smiling. ‘Tell you what, I told you that I’d give you a good answer, once you were done. But I’d like to go one better, if that’s all right. Permit me to make a phone call?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, now feeling not so confident.

  ‘Fine.’ He turned the chair and looked over the small desk, picked up the phone and dialed a four-digit number. ‘Hello, love. Peter here. I need to speak with Lawrence. Right away. Well, of course it’s urgent, or else I wouldn’t say “right away”. Correct?’ He looked over at me and made a big thing of shrugging. ‘Secretaries. God help us if they ever— Oh, hello, Lawrence. Sorry to disturb you but I have a bit of a situation. I was wondering if I could borrow you for just a few minutes.’ There was a pause, and Peter said, ‘Well, I know it’s short notice. But trust me, it was important enough for me to make this call, now, wasn’t it? Yes, I understand ... Very well, I seem to be in the manager’s office of this dreadful cafeteria in the basement. Thank you, thank you very much.’

  Peter hung up the phone and turned around again to face me. ‘There you go. All will be revealed very soon—if you can be patient, Samuel.’

  I said nothing, just kept on staring at his confident face. We didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. Through the door I could hear the sounds of feet moving on the tile floor, plates being set down on tables, and the rattle of silverware being used. Surprisingly enough, I did
n’t feel hungry at all.

  ‘Still angry?’ Peter asked, his hands folded across his belly.

  I said, ‘I don’t think it matters much who’s coming down or what he’s saying. All I know is what I saw. Including Sanjay, dead because of you.’

  Peter ignored that little shot and said, ‘I saw Miriam an hour or so ago. She was very pleased to hear that you’d been rescued. I imagine your reunion will be wonderful indeed.’

  Before I could say something sharp in reply, there was a knock on the door, and a man dressed in military fatigues entered. He was tall, well built, and his white hair was cut short. He had the usual UNFORUS brassard and the blue beret through a shoulder loop, and his name tag said hale. But I also noticed his insignia of rank. The room suddenly seemed a lot colder, because I suddenly realized I had seen this older man somewhere before.

  Peter stood up, shook the man’s hand, and turned to me. ‘Samuel? I’d like to introduce you to General Sir Lawrence Hale. He’s head of the British contingent for UNFORUS - but of course, since you claim to be a newspaperman, I’m sure you already know that. General, may I present Samuel Simpson, formerly of the Toronto Star, currently assigned to the field investigative unit that I’ve been working with.’

  I stood up too, feeling now like I was living through that dream in which you’re in class and called upon by the teacher to stand up and speak and you know right away that you have no clothes on.

  ‘General,’ I said.

  ‘Simpson,’ he replied, grasping my hand for a moment and then ignoring me. He turned to Peter and said, ‘Captain? How can I help you? And can we make this quick?’

  Captain ... The man I’d thought was a former London cop had this gracious look on his face and said, ‘General, I just need you to verify something for my friend Samuel here.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Hale said with a touch of irritation.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s necessary. Samuel needs to know my background and what I’ve been doing here. It’s vital for the success of my mission.’

  Now the general looked at me, his pale blue eyes frosty. ‘I’m concerned about security.’

  ‘You have my assurance that everything will be kept confidential,’ Peter said.

  ‘Very well,’ Hale said. ‘Simpson, Captain Peter Brown is here working in this country for our foreign intelligence service, MI6. He has been detached from his own regiment, the SAS.’

  ‘Special Air Service,’ I said, no doubt unnecessarily.

  ‘Indeed,’ Hale said. ‘Anything else?’

  I couldn’t think of a thing to ask him. Peter smiled. ‘No, sir. Thank you very much.’

  Hale just grunted and left the office. Peter closed the door. We both sat back down and I said, ‘What’s your mission been? Or is that part of the secret?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a secret, all right, but I’ve decided—entirely on my own—that you deserve to know.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  Peter said, ‘That’s a rather stupid question, don’t you think?’

  ‘Indulge me,’ I said.

  ‘Back at the campground Charlie told us later what had happened. You went out to make some hot water for morning tea and coffee. The rest of us were getting up when the gunfire started. Sanjay and Miriam, they wanted to go down the trail to see if they could find you. Jean-Paul and Charlie and myself—well, sorry, we thought it was too late. We managed to get the hell out of there but Sanjay thought he saw you, coming through the woods. He got out of one of the Land Cruisers and that was when he got hit. There was a lot more gunfire but we managed to get out of there, just barely. So you saved our lives, Samuel.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘A day later, Charlie and a couple of his Marine buddies came back to retrieve Sanjay. Charlie went down the trail, saw the stove, saw where a metal pan had been dumped, maybe halfway down the trail. Charlie figured that you surprised the militia column, maybe splashed the boiling water on a guy or two. True?’

  ‘True,’ I said.

  ‘Then they started shooting earlier than they wanted,’ Peter said. ‘Which gave us the time to bail out. So there you go.’

  ‘Sanjay,’ I said, feeling my hands get tingly in shame.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said he left to find me?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Peter said. ‘He wanted to make sure we didn’t leave you behind.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s just that, well, I didn’t know him that well and, um ...’

  Peter said, ‘I can’t say that I knew him that well, either. And he was cheating on his wife, and he was a shitty driver, and he complained about my cooking, but in the end he was a brave one. Maybe the bravest of us all, except for you. I mean, going after a militia column with just a pan of hot water...’

  ‘I wasn’t brave,’ I said. ‘I was scared out of my gourd.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But that’s why you deserve to know. Ask away, but ask away quickly. Your free access to my secrets is only good in this little room.’

  I thought of a few things, and blurted out, ‘So, acting like an asshole. Was that you or part of the mission?’

  ‘A mixture of both, I suppose,’ Peter said, smiling. ‘I had a role as a cranky Metropolitan police officer to play. I didn’t want to get too friendly with the team. It wouldn’t have matched my cover.’

  ‘And what was your job?’

  ‘A number of different things.’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  A shrug. ‘First of all, to let my government know what was really going on in the field. The UN bureaucracy can be thick and slow, and my people wanted to know what was going on in real time, without having to wait for information to muddle its way to Geneva and then to London. That was job number one. Job number two was to gather intelligence about the militias on the ground, to find out if they are as loosely organized as they claim to be or if they are linked to certain factions in Washington. You see, it’s in our interest back home to have this country get back to its senses, the quicker the better. And knowing what influence the militias and their supporters might have in DC will make our job that much easier. And job number three ... well, no offense to Charlie, but job number three was to keep me and everyone else alive. Too bad you seemed to have other ideas.’

  ‘The Australian television crew,’ I said.

  ‘How true. I knew that there was a militia unit working in the area, and that if we had just kept still after that news-hound got himself killed a UN convoy was going to make its way down the highway. But the stupid git managed to say something that both of us heard, about where his pals were located, and I didn’t want us to have to poke around and look for them. I mean, really, Charlie is a wonderful guy and a Marine and all that, but he could barely keep us together long enough to get the hell out when the shooting did finally start.’

  ‘But we found the bodies of the cameraman and producer,’ I said.

  Peter shook his head. ‘So bloody what? Excuse me for being so blunt, but two more bodies in this place? I mean, really. Here we are, running around, trying to find Site A and keep those militia generals in custody at The Hague, and we’re going to waste our time on dead reporters who should have stayed home in the first place? Samuel, please, at least you can see the logic there.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t want to look that hard,’ I said. ‘So how did you end up at the militia camp?’

  Peter actually laughed, ‘I was there to get you out, Samuel.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How? By the tried and tested nature of paying a bribe,’ he said. ‘Look, we—and I don’t mean the UN—had received word of your capture. We were also told about a ransom to be paid, which included ammunition and drugs. So I was there to check on you, to make sure that you were alive and healthy, and to pay up and get out. And let me tell you, that so-called colonel—Saunders, I think his name was, what a perfect idiot—went apoplectic when he realized you had scarpered. I thought he was going to shoot the men who had been guarding
you, and then me, for good measure. About the only way I got out of there fair and clear was to pay them off with about half the bribe.’

  ‘Ammo?’ I asked. ‘You gave those bastards ammo?’

  ‘I most certainly did,’ Peter said. ‘Four cases of standard NATO-issue 7.62-millimeter rounds. I even tossed in some medical supplies for good measure.’

  ‘You did, did you?’ I said. ‘Christ, that ammo is going to come back and—’

  ‘I don’t quite think so,’ he said. ‘You see, concealed in the frame of those crates was a tracking device. When I was sure that you weren’t in the camp and when I was safely out of the militia’s area of control I activated the tracking device. Some time later that camp was obliterated. Not a particularly good way of building repeat business with the local militias, but since it was their choice to break the armistice I didn’t lose any sleep over it.’