"Thinks what? C'mon, Sister Catherine."

The nun's sturdy march did not falter, her steps angry.

"I don't need this," Gilman said.

Chapter 62: Gilman.

February 1969 Uli, Biafra Sweat trickled down her back, made Gilman twitch. The operating room was a steaming oven. Underground for safety meant no fresh air. She fought an insane desire to tear off her surgical mask and gloves. Ten hours began to tell on her, but her hands still held steady.

This final case was one of the worst. They'd been picking pieces of federation fragmentation grenade out of this young boy's abdomen for at least two hours. Gilman hoped the bit of shrapnel she fished for might be the last. Her hands cramped, complaining at the close slippery work. She squinted in the glare from the high-intensity lamp close overhead.

"I think, people, this is it. Just a scrap and we'll call it a day."

A flood of venous blood suddenly obscured the field. Gilman swore and changed her grip on the retractor. She freed her right hand to receive the clamp that should have been magically forthcoming. It wasn't.

"Sister?" Concentration broken, Gilman looked up from her work. Above Sister Catherine's mask she saw the closed eyes and pale sweat-beaded face of a person seconds away from a dead faint.

"Fortunatus." Gilman's call came late. The male nurse got there barely in time to ease Sister Catherine to the floor.

"Isn't she a little experienced for this kind of thing?" Allingham asked from the next table.

"Stuff it, Allingham."

He did and went back to his amputation.

Gilman looked at her priest-anesthetist, who shrugged his shoulders and passed her a clamp. She set about tying off the troublesome vein, suctioning the field.

"What in hell's going on down there?" she said.

The bleeding stopped, Gilman struggled to get a firm grip on the shrapnel with a Kelly clamp.

"Is it the heat?"

"I don't think so," Fortunatus said. "Cool skin. Pulse rapid and shallow. Respiratory rate up. Sister is waking."

Gilman heard Sister Catherine move.

"No standing," Fortunatus said. That was an order if Gilman ever heard one. She had to smile.

Gilman laid the bloody bit of metal on the tray next to fifteen others.

"How about some gut and a needle, someone? Who's scrubbed in?"

One of the Biafran operating nurses stepped up, handing the ready tray. Gilman began mending the nicked intestine. She heard Fortunatus head off to the sink and wash up again, readying himself to assist.

Sister Catherine sat up and cradled her head on her knees.

"Sorry, Gilman."

"Too much blood for ya?" Allingham asked.

Sister Catherine's laugh sounded breathless. "Something like that."

"Okay." Gilman finished with the intestine and looked down at Sister Catherine. "Fortunatus, do you feel up to closing for me?"

"Certainly, Doctor."

Sister Catherine staggered to her feet, opened her mouth to protest Gilman's leaving the table, but she stopped at the look of pleasure on Fortunatus's face. The operating nurse slipped fresh gloves over his hands. Fortunatus had excellent surgical skills and ought to have been a surgeon. He thrived on chance opportunities to solo.

Pausing only in the locker room to remove the masks, caps and gloves, Gilman walked Sister Catherine to one of the post-op rooms and pointed to the empty cot.

"Lie down."

Sister Catherine obeyed. Gilman scrounged a laundry bag and stuffed it under her friend's feet. She then came to stand over Sister Catherine with a thermometer in one hand.

"Explain to me what's going on?"

"Don't fuss. I gave some blood this morning, that's all."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"Then how come you're breathing like you just ran the Boston marathon? Don't bullshit me, Sister."

"Well, so I did give a little extra."

"How much?"

"Two pints."

"Two pints?" Gilman's voice rose. "And who took two pints from you?"

"Don't get so excited. Fortunatus took one, and Father Joe took the other. They didn't know."

"Imbecile. Serve you right if I put one of those pints back where it belongs right now."

"You can't, Doctor." Sister Catherine giggled then. "You used both on that chest wound this afternoon."

Gilman glared at her for a moment.

"Touche. But that was damned stupid. You've got to protect your health. You're essential, for Chrissake. And I draw the line at people passing out in OR."

"I'm sorry. Thought I could manage. I nearly did, too. If it weren't so infernally hot."

"In case you've forgotten, we're in Africa, Sister. No excuse. Save your breath and pay attention. You will stay right where you are for at least twenty-four hours. You will eat and drink everything set before you. And if this ever happens again, Sister Catherine, so help me..." Gilman couldn't think of a threat strong enough and broke off.

"So help you what?" Sister Catherine looked at her, bemused.

"I'll..." Gilman started to laugh. "I'll see you're fired."

"Promise?" Sister Catherine too, laughed, hiccupping.

Fortunatus came through the door.

"How's the patient?" Gilman said. "Any trouble closing?"

"Fine. No trouble at all."

"Good. Could you do me a favor and take this half-wit's vital signs while I grab her something to drink?"

Chapter 63: Wilton.

February 1969 Umuahia, Biafra The bank's main room still held some of the cool of the night, its floor swept of Harmattan dust, the counters of worn formica polished. It looked like it had been built for a grocery years ago, cracked window glass replaced by boards.

Wilton folded the Biafran notes and placed them in two bundles in her pockets. Cash in hand was hard to obtain, no matter what a bank statement might say. She thanked the Biafran bank official, delighted by his formality even in this makeshift building, and by the fact he'd preserved his old threadbare uniform, which must have been pressed daily to maintain its creases. Or maybe he slept with it folded under his pillow. He smiled, all grace, before he nodded to the next customer, a man in suit and tie.

Outside, Wilton narrowed her eyes against the sunlight, looking toward the cloth section of the marketplace, where she expected to find Christopher. She'd scarcely walked a block when she heard the engines. Coming in fast. Ilyushins. Two bombers. No time for the ditch.

Like some rabbit she stared up at the incredibly fast approach. When the sunlight shivered, she covered her face and plunged to her knees. Through her fingers she saw the palms bend, ragged fronds tearing in the first blast. The sky shuddered with unnatural brilliance, smashing her against the hard ground. She could hear nothing-then the tremendous air slammed into her. Fire splashed the sky, smoke swelled. A wall of red dust rushed at her.

She was released by sound. Wilton rose, turned, ran into the hot dust for cover. Another bomber on its return flashed down and she felt the earth shift under her. She clawed back to her feet, staggered, forcing herself past the people fleeing toward her. Was she going the wrong way? Were they? Strafing fire.

"Two months." She felt her lips begging Lindsey. "You promised me two months." But she couldn't hear her own voice or explosions or other human voices. "Two months before you bomb more civilian targets in Umuahia. I need the time."

The hits clustered in the marketplace. No excuse for bombing a marketplace in full day at the height of business. None except that she'd argued for it. Not now though, she'd said later, later, Lindsey, weeks from now. Lindsey had agreed.

Hundreds would be injured, killed, maimed. She stumbled to a halt. She saw Christopher.

He ran across the marketplace, ducked between the racked stick and grass shelters. The whites of his eyes flashed. She waved her arms to signal him she was here. The ground and air shook again and Christopher vanished in a rolling cloud. She ducked and in the act felt one sob tear from her constricted throat.

Something moved in the smoky billows. Christopher emerged, red with dust. Hot blood jetted from his torn thigh. It wasn't the blood that stopped her half-motion to meet him, but sight of the shaft of wood that spitted his belly and the bulge where it hadn't broken through on the other side. His eyes didn't know that he was a dead man. The next explosion swept her against the side of a ditch yards away. For a moment she clung blind to the packed earth, on her belly in the offal and feces. She saw the lid from a Fanta bottle, the neat little crimped edges looking surprisingly clean in the swirling orange dust. Like a doll's pie pan.

She crawled back and away from the filth-clogged ditch, pulled her feet under her and stood. She reclaimed her balance, cringed forward then stumbled a few steps later over a man. She looked down and the body was his, Christopher's. Christopher's eyes happy, relieved of fear, focused upon her face in all the swirling ash and smoke.

Not him, Lord. Lindsey or Gilman or even Sandy. Anyone else, but not him, not like this, all my promises broken.

"Professor," he said, as though he could not taste the blood in his mouth.

She drew her gun from her belt, knelt and released the safety.

Chapter 64: Wilton.

February 1969 Umuahia, Biafra Had hours passed? A day or more? Wilton couldn't think back, or trace the passage of time. She made her way down a side street on the east side of the bombed marketplace, then followed her imperfect memory to the old Pentecostal Church. It too stood bombed, the shell broken, but Pastor Josiah, an American hanging on in town, had moved his congregation and his brass cross to a deserted store on the other side of the street. His sign hung over the doorway, its two pieces spliced together where it had splintered through the C.

Wilton leaned on the sagging counter in the little shop Pastor Josiah had acquired and swallowed again. She began to know where she was and with whom, though she couldn't remember what she'd already said to this man. He knelt on the other side of the room, pulling out the box she'd left with him from its hiding place under the storage cupboard. His bald head seemed to shine in the dusty room as though he'd not only lost the hair but polished the resulting surface. For now the familiarity of his face was all she wanted, even his tamed mind with all its predictable opinions. A foreigner like herself. Someone who knew another world, who translated life here through a different lens.

"He died," she said. "Christopher's dead."

"Yes, yes, you told me that already. It preys upon your mind. I know. I have your things here," Pastor Josiah said, but what she noticed when he handed it to her was how firm his grip seemed and how he looked healthy, full in his flesh. His shirt clean except for a little rubbing of pinkish earth. Pastor Josiah had been a favorite of Christopher's or she'd never have trusted him. The Pastor did too well. He ate more than his share before God.

"So many people die every day. It's dreadfully sad. Every day there's someone. I'll pray for Christopher. A blessing you were there to comfort him in his passing. He was a good convert and a good church member. God will give His peace in His time," Pastor Josiah said. Wilton wanted to hit him. God's mercenary-she'd had that thought before about missionaries.

God meant her to sacrifice everything, the message was clear. All the human attachments, the ambitions, the plans. He'd made Christopher's death easy on her, most gracious Lord. If she said that, she would believe it.

"I'll pray on the loss of your faithful servant. Be comforted, daughter."

Her gorge rose as she accepted the box. She bent to ease it into her unzippered pack. No, no daughter of his. Missionaries coming maggot pale from America with their no-native policies and their pressed mouths like shopkeepers of salvation. She once visited Protestant missionaries in Jos who didn't allow natives to sleep on the premises. Nationals was their term. No nationals after dusk on the premises. Her servant Christopher would have to pay for a hotel, they told her. Wilton and Christopher drove through that night.

Pastor Josiah was one of those, a missionary who earned cheap salvation measured in days ticked off a calendar as if the tours served like prison sentences were requirements to gain the Kingdom of Heaven. Christopher was to him another black face. Another servant. Another national. Lots more where that one came from. Every day there was someone, he said. He saved Africans? Sucking up their respect. Eating their food. Converting them to faithful servants. Creating white-only islands within the great theater of Africa with its booming skies and flashing days. But never breaking bread with them or allowing them to sleep in the dust on a missionary's floor.

She wanted to rage in pity for the dispossessed, the unwanted. Blacks turning into aliens in their own land. All tribes, every tribe. Everything that had value was imported, rules and language, formula instead of breast milk, skin lighteners for beauty. It all mixed in her head including her, and Lindsey and Gilman-the tribe she'd brought. Wilton turned away, afraid of calling down the curses of the older displaced gods. But she couldn't stay silent.

"What have you to do with Christ and the beggar at the door?" she heard herself ask.

If there was a warning, the drone of a plane, neither she nor Pastor Josiah could hear well enough to tell after the earlier explosions. The sun seemed to come bursting in between them, brilliant beyond color, breaking the air so there was nothing to breathe. She felt herself weightless, tumbling over in the dirt clouds. Then a crushing fall and pressure so great it felt more terrifying than pain.

A minute or less later-she had no way to tell except that the sun returned to the sky and shone through swirling motes, diffusing yellow brilliance. Something pushed down on her and her face hurt. Wilton drew herself up on her elbows and looked along the length of her body, saw the braces of the old door cast crooked across her, and dust smoldering up from the wrecked building where she'd been talking with Pastor Josiah. She was deaf. She guessed the explosion threw her through the doorway, and some of the sill wood and framing lay across her. But she felt no real pain besides her bleeding lip and cheek, and a jab in her side that was only bad when she tried to take a deep breath. She pulled herself out from under the weight of the broken door.

Wilton crawled over to the mounds of rubble, choking, and pried at the pieces of wood. Find Pastor Josiah. She kept seeing his peaceful face, the wire rimmed spectacles perched on his narrow beaky nose, the thin lips curled up.

Maybe she could get him out. But the thought hurt, overbalanced, twisted in her mind like a snake carrying its own poison. God's mercenary.

They should all die. All the outsiders who come to feed on the soft stomach of Africa.

She lay down to peer under a shaft of wood. The air cleared and she glimpsed Pastor Josiah. Only his head and the point of his left shoulder. Concrete chunks and dirt covered him, his face chalk with plaster dust like a geisha ready for her stage. A trickle of blood, light pink, bubbled from his mouth. She saw his eyelids flutter.

Wilton saw more than that. She saw herself calling the villagers and all the tense hours of desperately careful work to extricate this one white man, each wrong move bringing down more broken concrete and timbers, each loyal man, woman, child panting with the suspense of salvation, grain by grain, any error condemning the one who slipped. Faithful servants. Unbearable.

He shouldn't be here. Pastor Josiah was all wrong. The evil came with him and everyone like him. She'd brought it too, transplanted her maggots, and look what they'd done. Lindsey and her broken promises. Africa helpless while parasites multiplied under her skin.