Free Night Must Wait by Robin Winter Page A

Those were the ones who made it home. Saying pogrom and holocaust isn't inflammatory nonsense. You should've seen."
    "So you're now a Colonel Ojukwu fan. Or how do we address him now? Your Highness?"
    "Lindsey, you asshole. He told the Easterners to come back home because the Federal government couldn't protect them outside of the homelands. Ojukwu's making a point."
    "It's a mess, we can agree on that," Lindsey said, a flush on her cheeks. "But we shouldn't talk politics. It's asking for a fight and we're too good at that."
    Sandy watched Gilman's face go still, holding back. Wilton looked down, and it felt to Sandy as if every one of them drew a breath, taking a moment. Surely something could be done. American and British influence could stop this disaster in its tracks.
    "As I was saying, Gilman, you ought to get Wilton to take you to that bush station where she works on her birds—the place that impressed Sandy so much," Lindsey said.
    The change in subject felt like an affront. Sandy took another slug of her dregs. Wilton rose and left the room, probably headed again to the radio and more bad news.
    "It was beautiful," Sandy said. "Wilton's bush station, way out back of beyond."
    Sandy tried to go back in her mind, really think about what Lindsey had said about Wilton and her place out in the bush. No. Not impressed . Sandy hadn't felt anything so simple as that.
    Disturbed, was the reality of it. A place out of time, the retreat of a sage or a prophet. The sort of place you see in cartoons with the tired businessman pulling himself up the last ledge to find the philosopher in meditation gazing over the world. Hairpin roads to reach Wilton's two-room refuge built of red clay and thatch in the green Eastern borderland. Right on the edge of the Cameroon mountains. Great geology. Sugarloaf hills of emerald green melting into craggy quartz-rich stone outcroppings rearing up to the foggy sky. Frost in the morning silvering the grass, a taste of wood smoke on the air. A different land, so far from the noise and heat of the rest of Nigeria.
    "Wilton overlooks the world," Sandy said. Lindsey didn't seem to hear her. Gilman seemed focused on Lindsey. Sandy wasn't going to repeat herself. But she remembered smelling the odor of paper burning the second night she'd slept at Wilton's bush station, how she'd gone to the screened window and watched Wilton's solitary figure on the open grassy knoll feed scraps of paper to a fire in a great barrel, watching the flames as if she made some ancient sacrifice. The pieces flared and jumped, whirling black rags of ash, and cast Wilton's shadow across the rippling grass.
    Discarded sketches of birds? Sandy didn't think so. She let herself retreat into her own memories. Prophecy. Shaman. Yes, that was Wilton's gig.
    Sandy jumped when Lindsey said, "Earth to Sandy."
    "Remember." Sandy looked back at their puzzled faces. "Hell, remember why we came to Nigeria and look at what we've got. People said we were crazy. My family threatened to put me in an insane asylum. No African county's safe for young white women, they said. You can't do any good. What the devil's wrong with you—do you wanna be a missionary? Except of course they didn't use that language."
    Sandy paused a moment and then continued. "Now look at where we are and what we're doing. Gilman making the blind see, the cripples walk. Lindsey getting the best people jobs in her office and beyond. Lindsey setting policy one comma at a time. Building Nigeria. Me, I get to travel and treasure hunt. Like a bitchin' dream come true. You should see the mines up north, smell the oil on the air in the mangrove swamp down south, prime grade. Even your food tastes of it when you're there."
    She saw the irritation melt out of Gilman's face, her mouth soften and smile. There, that was better.
    "We'll all be okay," Sandy said, "so long as we stay friends."
    Hell, now it was her saying it, like a carbon copy of Wilton. And speak of the devil, in came