"The eight o'clock flight, Madam."

Oroko stood as was his habit, by the shuttered window, watching Lindsey move a few papers on her desk. She sat and pulled open the drawer, drew out a bone paper cutter fashioned into a crocodile. He could see the rounds of its surprised eyes. She turned it over in her hands, her profile like that of a carving. He waited.

"I can't remember," Lindsey said. "I miss Sandy. Or I think I do. I remember her red hair and how she liked beer and poker, but she's become like a photograph. She mattered more than I knew to me. I should've left when she died."

"No," Oroko said. "You aren't well, madam, to talk like that. Have you a fever?"

"I should have chased Gilman down while I still felt what she'd done."

"The doctor suffered more this way."

"You think so?" she put the crocodile down. "I thought I served progress, order-that gave me focus. I dreamed I would serve Wilton's cause, and justify her sacrifice."

"You were her sacrifice." He stepped closer to the desk. "You, yourself."

"I don't know now what she wanted."

"Was Sandy herself willing to come to Nigeria? Did she come for you?"

"She was happy here. I never understood why she was so happy but God knows, so long as she could go off on her expeditions into mining country and prospecting...but the war took that away."

Oroko remembered too well.

"No," she said, correcting herself. "I took her freedom. She became a risk I wasn't willing to take. I chained her to Lagos."

Oroko watched her.

"A person who gives herself to another tribe is a special kind of fool. She can approximate what's right, fight for it, idealize, but shaped by her own past she'll never become a part of her adopted land. So she's stuck in the role of mother, one who can't afford for the child to grow up away from her influence, or she becomes an embittered prophet. Both sick, both damned by the same self-sacrifice. Do you see it, Oroko? How can you-"

"I don't belong here either," he said, and waited.

"Do you honestly think I did anything? Can you believe that I changed the war? I wanted to stop the deaths, come to an end as fast as possible. To save lives.

"It didn't work. I don't believe I shortened that war by one day. It had its half-life like one of Sandy's radioactive ore samples and nothing Wilton or I did was going to make it slow down or speed up for all the wishful thinking and interfering in the world.

"We spent twenty years believing in ourselves because Wilton said we could do anything. But what's come of all that?"

Oroko's old anger with Lindsey faded. He listened.

"Gilman saved lives. Maybe she justified Wilton's dreams. How many of those lives she saved then got lost in the war? There are nights I see Wilton when I close my eyes and she has the face of Satan. I was on the tower with her and I chose the kingdom. Lucifer son of morning, glorious as the new day. Ironic that Biafra represented itself by a half sun-a setting sun not a rising one, Sandy used to joke."

"Beautiful enough to lead us all on," Oroko said.

"And why? Wilton offered us what?"

"Wilton made you feel powerful," Oroko said.

"And now I shall kill the only one of us who might possibly have done something good. But I close my eyes and I see Sandy in that hospital bed. Death by torture, explosion of living cell after cell. Morphine hardly touched it. She never harmed anyone."

"Except by dying."

She stared down at the desk.

"I would like to be alone, Oroko."

"Yes. But madam...there is tomorrow after tomorrow, and you have more ahead, powerful because you count no cost."

"Go, Oroko."

Chapter 104, Oroko.

November 1971 Massachusetts, USA Oroko sat down at the doctor's invitation, easing the elegant wool of his brown suit pant over his knee. The cloth had the subtlest line of blue in it, less than a stripe, the softest suggestion of color. Beyond the deep-set window of the study early snow fell, blurring the shapes of bare trees, and the curves of hill and meadow that led in a long smoothness down to a fuzzy blur of woodland. White like paper, this land. Colorless and comfortless.

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" the doctor said. "You already know who I am, but I am at a loss beyond the simple fact that you're Richard Scott from..."

Oroko gave a smile he'd chosen for the occasion, a friendly amused one, like the smile of a man who holds a hostage and admires his host's pretense of normality.

"From Lindsey Kinner," he said. "She hasn't the leisure to come herself. Business presses. However she delegated me to come for her friend, Katherine Wilton, sometimes known as L. K. Wilson, who is in your care."

He reached into his jacket, drawing forth two envelopes, offering them to Doctor Lowenstein, and noted how the man hesitated a fraction before accepting them. As though the paper were tainted.

It wasn't a matter of race. This man sensed what kind of human Oroko was. Lowenstein saw through the brown wool suit, the linen-and-cotton blend of his pure white shirt with the cuffs showing the perfect quarter inch beyond the jacket sleeves. Saw something maybe in the eyes? Or mouth? Or had Gilman warned him to look for one like Oroko? Now Lowenstein would pretend to find fault with the documents, stall for time.

"For your patient, I dare say it is a wonderful day," Oroko said. "Miss Wilton will be overjoyed to return to her own country."

"Excuse me?" Dr. Lowenstein said, frowning at the letter he'd unfolded.

"Her country," Oroko said. "You must be aware that she does not belong here. My principal only agreed that she should come to America for medical treatment because you have the best doctors."

Lowenstein glanced at him then away. Was he thinking of the institution in which he'd found Wilton? Oroko knew what custodial care meant. He hadn't questioned Lindsey's judgment then. What he doubted was the wisdom of letting this man tamper with Wilton's mind as if it were an expensive watch to rebalance.

Chapter 105: Wilton.

December 1971 Massachusetts, USA "There is a man with papers. He's freeing you."

The snowflakes clung to the black groundskeeper's jacket, only a few drifting, now that the sky lightened. Wilton looked down from her cold seat on the edge of the swept porch, her eyes meeting his for one instant before she turned her head away.

"He's in the front office. I heard him talking when I went to ask about the snow blower at lunchtime. I thought you might be glad to know. He's a black man. Nigerian, but I cannot tell his tribe. He has papers. He carries himself like a lord."

She nodded. Wilton rose slowly, her body clenching, the inside of her nose crinkling with the frozen air, and went back into the house. Her attendant locked the porch door behind her and walked away on the icy outside path. Wilton moved through her rooms, taking items out and placing them in order on the bed. She took off her clothes and pulled on the long winter underwear she'd used when she first came to Lowenstein's hospital. She had better weight on her now, more stamina. Wool slacks. Double socks, the ones with a pattern of color about the tops. Shirt, then sweater. She pulled on the stout shoes with good side support, ones she'd used when her legs and ankles were so uncontrolled in the early days of living here.

The snow ended, clouds breaking when the sun set in the early afternoon. Wilton watched it from her room, looking out over the porch with its white painted columns and the drift of snow that lay unevenly across the top of the stone wall at the end of the garden. A motor started, then she glimpsed the nose of an elegant gray car as it turned and moved down the driveway. Sedate and respectable.

The gardener came out and walked all over the thin snow of the side yard, poking into the bushes at the verge of the open area, then traveling in a random pattern that went some distance into the trees of the woods before circling back. He walked as if his feet hurt, as if the shoes did not fit him. Late for him to work, with everything outside gone blue.

She waited, turned on her table lamp as the darkness intensified. The automatic lights came up and cast yellow ovals on the trodden snow. In a little while a knock came at her door, then the buzz of the lock disengaging. She heard the door open and close, waited for the buzz to stop, but it didn't. She turned then.

Doctor Lowenstein stood by the door, his hand resting on the door frame, his blue eyes wide as if he'd seen something frightening. She felt the tension in him, the tightness.

"Wilton, Gilman warned me. She was right. A man came for you today, asking that I release you to him. He's Nigerian. He has a name, but I don't believe the one he uses is real. I said he needed other papers than the ones he had. He'll return with what I requested. There's nothing wrong with his procedurals, so I'll have to let you go with him if you're here in the morning."

He stopped, swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing under the skin. She wondered how it would look to cut the skin there, then slant the blade up to deepen the cut at the jugular.

Gouts of blood all over the floor, her hands and the pillows with their neat print of flowers and ferns. Layers of pinkish tissue in the throat after the blood had spurted and ebbed. The tissue of the voice box would look whitish, cartilaginous.

"I have four thousand dollars in cash divided between a wallet and an envelope that Gilman left for you. Put them in different places, some bills in your shoes so if you're robbed, you'll still have resources. I am putting these on the table. I hung my minus-twenty down jacket on the holly bush against the west side of your wing. You have good shoes, I see. Here's a small knapsack. Take your warm things. I have a water bottle in the knapsack and some candy bars in the pockets for energy.

"I'm sure they're watching. The man left too easily. So if you choose to go, you must go alone and on your own. On Route 101 you have a good chance of getting a ride hitchhiking, especially on a night like this. I'll deactivate your door sensor so it looks like it got a bug. Awfully coincidental, but there's no help for it."

He pulled a screwdriver from his pocket and set to work on the door. Wilton saw his hands tremble. She took the knapsack and packed it fast, but with each part folded and tucked in, no loose ends.

"I'll try to contact Gilman, but her landlady isn't reliable. I'll try the London hospital too, but there aren't any guarantees I'll get through."

She nodded to Lowenstein as the buzzer stopped. He saw she did not want to pass close to him, so he stepped back away from the door. Out of the door and down the corridor with sure feet, hardly a sound.

Hours later, each step cost. Wilton couldn't feel her feet except as a jolt when one struck ground. She imagined them as stumps now they were beyond pain, long past the pins and needles, long steeped in the bitter cold, a sensation like wetness in the socks. She couldn't tell whether or not the damp was real, but other than a distraction, an amusement for her brain, it didn't matter.

But she wouldn't fall. She must not. Wilton tried to stay on the plowed surface, less effort than plunging through the snow, but the way was packed with slippery ice. She'd fallen once. It seemed like hours ago. No clock, no time, no change in this fierce night cold.

Lights, and her heart pounded. Headlights. She moved back a step from the road and put up her hand, waving her numb arm. If only this was someone she did not know.

Chapter 106: Gilman.

December 1971 London, England The ward lay quiet tonight. Time to head back to dinner and sleep. Gilman shrugged on her raincoat, put up the collar and tucked her scarf ends in. The ward light reflected in drops of rainwater on the darkened windows. She crossed the ward and hurried down three flights of stairs to the ground floor, out into the wet wind of a cold London night.

She strode along the evening streets toward the Euston Square underground station, past the lowering and sooty facades of the now-deserted university buildings. Traffic was sparse. The splash of her footsteps rang on the wet pavement. She passed the hospital administrative offices, drew up, and listened. An electric rush of adrenaline shot through her veins and she strained to hear.

For five weeks now, Gilman had felt she had a shadow. From the hospital one night, to her door the next. When she stopped to listen, the sound vanished. She never saw anyone in the drifting evening mists around the hospital or the winding alleys near her flat.

Hastening toward the lights of Euston Square, her foot slipped on a soggy bit of newspaper. She flinched. Paranoia. There's no one there. There's no crime in London. A woman can walk anywhere alone at night in perfect safety. Even Jantor would agree. Believe it. Battle fatigue, that was it. You've been in the jungle too long. You're jumpy from lack of sleep.

Gilman reached the lobby of the station, where she pumped two shillings into the ticket machine. She snatched the yellow card from its slot and hurried to a descending escalator.

She hated the steep moving wooden stairs whose creaking descent into the city's underground tunnels took several minutes. If only she could walk instead of balancing trapped on the escalator, but the subterranean passages where the trains came and went burrowed so deep that the station's long and treacherous staircases were barricaded, for emergency use only.

Gilman rode down to the train platforms. She thought for the hundredth time of the London blitz, when thousands of citizens abandoned their homes to the mercy of the Luftwaffe and swarmed into these tunnels to escape the bombing. She stared at the posters that adorned the subways displaying rows of huddled forms sleeping on the train tracks. People burying themselves alive to elude death.

In a way the blitz was the best of times, the old Londoners told her. Camaraderie shared by strangers in the streets. Maybe, but she wondered about the old people's stories. The legend of the blitz, of transcendence and comradeship had led her to Nigeria, in search of the best in herself and her friends. A time of war, of heroism-she blinked against the harsh lights of the escalator passage. Now she wondered if rats on a sinking ship ever pulled together, whether London overcame the bombing or merely survived it.

Gilman found the tunnel to the Westbound's stop where a busker was packing his violin. Quiet save for a cluster of young people who seemed to all know each other. Gaily dressed people returning from the theater. A drift of perfume in the dank air. She shifted her stance, stifled a yawn. The later it grew, the further apart the trains ran. Gilman welcomed the approaching rumble of the westbound Baker Street line.

She stepped aboard the train and selected a seat by the back window. Then a flash of odd movement in the rear car caught her eye, the gesture of an arm, like a phrase spoken in another tongue. Gilman glanced through the small windows between the cars. She recognized the stance of the short muscular man boarding the train, and distinctive facial scars. Yoruba tribe. She jerked upright. His woolen muffler had slipped. Now he rearranged it over his mouth and chin. The doors hissed shut, and the train surged into motion.

Gilman told herself thousands of Africans lived in London. Africans with tribal scars. It didn't work. She knew someone followed her, knew she hadn't seen the man on the broad expanse of platform. He'd concealed himself until the last possible moment. The train rushed and swayed through the black tunnel.

Warren Street, Great Portland Street. She felt in her pocket for the revolver she no longer carried.

The train slowed for Baker Street. Christ. If she got off...Had the man followed her for days? Weeks? Did he know where she lived? If he knew that she'd finally seen him, he'd have to make his move.

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."