* * *
James was overlooking a large map of the area west of the Niger, stretched out against a wall of his shadowy office. Small pins marked places of interest, unit positions and enemy contacts. His hand traced a road to the east and then he placed another, different sort of marker pin there before smiling thinly to himself. He paced around the office with hands behind his back and stopped for a while to take a look outside; he opened the window blinds and gleaming white sunlight filled the room.
There was nothing unusual about the small garden plaza: officers were milling about, doing mostly nothing of real value, making up plans that rarely went ahead or were executed the way they had been conceived. James turned and looked at the ceiling fan; it was going at full speed, casting shadows that seemed to playfully dance around the room, but it did little to make the heat more bearable.
James heard a knock on the door. He loudly but curtly said “Enter!”
The door opened and a young white man bearing the insignia of a Captain was holding a couple of manila folders in one hand. He saluted briskly with the other and said in an almost casual way, “Major, sir. I have your daily briefing.”
James simply nodded and motioned the captain to sit down, which he promptly did. James was having ice cold tea, a small though invaluable luxury; a large glass jug filled with tea was sitting on a corner of his desk. Slices of lemons and ice cubes were floating inside. James asked the Captain:
“Tea, Captain?”
“No, thank you very much sir,” replied the Captain smiling politely.
“This heat, it’s a real scorcher isn’t it?” asked James casually. The captain nodded his affirmation.
“It’s supposed to be the rainy season too,” he replied and shrugged slightly.
“But like the English say, when it rains, it pours. Doesn’t it?” asked James, looking at the Captain in a strange, penetrating way. The Captain seemed to ignore the look and presented the folders to James. They were clear and unmarked, except for a red rubber-stamped `Confidential’ across the front.
James took the proffered folders and tossed them on his desk. He sat down as well, the Captain fidgeting on the chair, trying to feel the waft of the ceiling fan; the intolerable heat had sweat piling up on his brow. James put on a pair of glasses and opened the first folder. He started browsing it, sipping on some ice cold tea along the way. In a couple of minutes, he’d skimmed through most of the folder and he had picked up the second one.
The Captain realised that and was awaken from his heat-induced stupor to ask;
“Excuse me, Major sir, but you’ve finished already?”
“I have. Is there a problem?”
“No sir, it’s just that I’m required to ensure that the intelligence briefing is read and then returned. No copies can be made.”
“I’ve done this before, Captain. Now if you will, can I finish the second one? This will only take a couple of minutes,” said James, smiled thinly and went back to reading the folder.
Heed no prayer
Ludwig was sweating profoundly, slowly packing small boxes of essential medicine onto one of the Rovers. The sun had begun its descent beyond the surrounding hills, but the heat and moisture was intolerably unabated. Ethan was helping Nicole load the wounded Red Cross people into two of the Rovers.
The patients from the infirmary would ride in the open-top Rovers the bandits had left behind. Two of them needed a stretcher; bad cases of malaria. The rest were mostly kids, left to fend on their own.
Though bullet-ridden and shoddy-looking the Rovers worked fine; they would have to do. Ethan needed to keep just one of the Red Cross Rovers. Ludwig had indulged him without pausing to think about it; for all it mattered, he had saved their lives.
The sisters, fourteen souls left in all, would ride along with the caravan carrying their meager belongings. They were leaving little of real value behind them. As they climbed inside the back of the Rovers, Ethan took a moment to watch them intently. Nicole had just stopped for a smoke. He turned and told her then with a flat, calculating expression:
“Look at them. Three of them dead. Vacant stares, hollow gazes. Still, they keep their rosaries in hand, muttering prayers. Will that make them feel better about it?”
She let a small cloud of smoke hazily drift away from her as she sat with her back against the Rover’s door, legs crossed at her ankles, one hand in her apron’s pocket. She smiled thinly before she replied:
“Maybe they’re thankful for being alive. Maybe they’re mourning. Leave the poor women be. Does everything have to make sense to you?”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest and cast a thoughtful gaze towards the small graveyard where only a couple of hours ago they had buried the three sisters, alongside the bandits. The surviving nuns had insisted on it. He shook his head absentmindedly then and said:
“It never really does. I’m only saying, how can they go on after what’s happened?”
She laughed with a bitter crease around her lips and replied:
“It’s people just like them that do go on. Faith, remember? I’ve talked to their new superior. She’s decided to dissolve the order. I’m not sure she can really do that on her own, but she seemed quite resolved. Each will have to go her own way. She probably thinks it’ll help them heal over time.”
Ethan was looking at the nuns’ faces; they were too pale for the likes of the Nigerian sun anyway, he thought to himself.
“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But just going on pretending they’re stronger than they really are…”
He let his voice trail off, shaking his head in disbelief. Nicole was about to say something when they both saw Ludwig approaching them, wiping his forehead and arms from the sweat in vain; in a minute he’d be sweating once more. He nodded to Nicole and smiled, but turned to talk to Ethan, slightly out of breath:
“We’re ready. We should be at Lagos by morning. Once we do get back on the tarmac, we’ll notify the Lagos office about what happened, head straight for the hospital.”
“How’s everyone?”
“The wounded are stable. Everyone’s shaken, closed to themselves mostly. Some are still scared. Even needed sedation,” said the doctor and shrugged somehow apologetically. Ethan simply nodded. The doctor continued:
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done really. We could actually hear the gunfight, but we kept running, just like you said. The sisters said you had some help.”
He looked at Nicole sideways then but he was smiling gently, his eyes gleaming softly. Nicole shuffled as if feeling uncomfortable and said to the doctor without looking back:
“Not that much there, really.”
Ethan placed a kind hand on the doctor’s shoulder but before he could speak, Ludwig let out a snort of a laugh and said:
“I get it Ethan. When we get back, I’ll need to file a report; an inquiry will ensue. Perhaps I’ll be charged. Then I expect there’ll be some uproar from the embassies, the press. People will hear about this, certainly.”
Ethan’s gaze for a moment turned sour while Nicole shot a worried glance at Ludwig but he went on, this time with a somber look on his face:
“I know what you’re thinking. The minefield, the bandits. The sisters getting killed. People’s memories do become jarred from experiences like these. Frankly, some genuinely don’t recall if there even was a journalist along. And the sisters, well… Poor souls have a lot on their minds now. Not to mention there’s a war going on.”
Ethan nodded, grinning shamelessly. Though the cloak and dagger routine had largely lost its meaning now that the caravan was turning back, the doctor had turned out to be a welcome though strange and unlikely ally. He extended a hand, which the doctor promptly gripped. Ethan then said:
“I take it you’ll cover for me,” he said and turning to look at Nicole he added: “For us, anyway. Thanks, Ludwig.”
Nicole nodded halfheartedly, while the doctor replied:
“The way things turned out I should be thanking you, Ethan. I’m convinced that without you, we’d be dead or maybe worse.”
The doctor shook Ethan’s hand and looked him in the eye with a sobering, stone-hard gaze. The lifeless mangled bodies of the three dead nuns came unbidden to his mind then and he was unable to meet Ludwig’s stare. He nodded limply and the doctor caught him by the arm, telling him reassuringly:
“Look, you saved lives. That’s what matters in my line of business. Save as many as you can.”
“I know Ludwig. It’s just that…”
Ethan hesitated; he felt unable to find the right words. Nicole jumped in, a dull expression on her face, her voice a gritty affair:
“You feel sorry for them?”
He turned to look at her with bewildered puzzlement. He asked her with evident confusion:
“You mean the sisters? Of course, I mean -”
“Saving the world now?” she said with a vicious stare that marred her features. She almost spat out the words.
Ethan blinked furiously while Ludwig simply stood there. They felt something they had said had ticked off Nicole.
“Listen, Nicole, I understand you -” he managed to blurt before she cut him mid-sentence and said, “I don’t need your understanding!” before leaving them flabbergasted to watch her pace briskly towards her guestroom. Ethan made a motion to follow her but Ludwig reached out and blocked his path:
“It won’t help. She’s grieving. Try not to make it harder,” said Ludwig, rearranging his glasses slowly. Ethan turned to say something as if in protest, but he simply stood there, facing her way. He said to the doctor then:
“That’s not at all like her. I mean, I barely know her, but I wouldn’t think she’d take all this that hard.”
Ludwig shook his head and looked Ethan straight in the eye; despite their height difference he managed to sound like a teacher scolding a schoolboy:
“People died here today! Did you expect everyone to move along as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened? Business as usual?”
The doctor was almost glaring at Ethan, who coolly replied in a low, calm voice:
“There is a war going on. I wouldn’t expect that from everyone, but she’s seen war. She knows what it’s like and I believe that. It’s just… odd. I mean, she’s acting odd. She killed maybe half or more of the bandits.”
Ludwig frowned and his forehead wrinkled, beads of sweat trailing his temples. He opened his mouth to speak, and almost stuttered the words:
“She killed?”
Ethan simply nodded and fixed his gaze at Nicole’s guestroom, his face a pensive, blank wall. The doctor spoke again:
“How?”
“Does it matter to you?”
“No, not really.”
“I thought so as well. Though it might matter to me, wherever we’re going.”
“You’re planning to take her with you?”
Ethan nodded, hands on his waist. Ludwig asked with some reluctance:
“Then you two are…” he said, letting his voice trail off rather uncomfortably. Ethan blinked and smiled somewhat lamely with a frown upon his face before shaking his head furiously. He told the doctor then:
“Good God, no. That kind of woman would be the death of me. Besides…”
“Not the time?”
Ethan shrugged and said:
“She’s taken.”
“Ah. I wouldn’t think you’d draw such a line.”
Ethan grinned despite himself and asked with a mocking tone:
“I’d say! A gentleman like myself, getting frisky with a lady in wedlock! Absurd!”
Ludwig shook his head with no hint of good humor other than a slight curl of his lip. He then wiped the sweat on his forehead with one sleeve, while he said to Ethan rather flatly:
“How can you joke about anything after all this?”
Ethan thought about it for a moment and then said rather mirthlessly:
“Won’t kill us now, will it?”
Ludwig looked at him with a pondering expression. Before he could reply, one of his staff shouted out for his attention. He gave a thumbs up; the engines of the Rovers roared into life one after the other. They were heading back. He then simply said to Ethan with a shrug:
“Well, thanks again. And good luck. Maybe we’ll meet again in a better place and time.”
“There’s always Heaven, doctor,” said Ethan with a shallow grin. Ludwig shook his head, backtracked a few steps and then started jogging towards the open door of a waiting Rover. When he climbed aboard, he had one last glimpse of Ethan lighting a cigarette and waving them goodbye.