Brendan DuBois - Dead of Night

‘Short-term, I plan to get some sleep. I hope you can join me.’

I sensed her smile in the near-darkness. ‘I think you can depend on that. And long-term?’

‘Long-term? Well, I think you and I are going to need a new boss… and if that doesn’t work out, a UN lady told me yesterday that I could go home, if I’d like.’

‘And would you?’

‘Go home? Well, it’s a thought. But only if you come with me.’

Miriam shook her head gently. ‘I don’t have the leave time coming to me.’

‘Then I won’t go.’

She pressed herself against me, the feel of her flesh on mine exhilarating. The first time, back in the tent, had been magical and wonderful in the rawest sense: coupling with urgency, in a tent in the dark, with the chance of death or injury at any moment. But here we’d had time to take it slow, to take it wonderfully from one level to the next, to explore tastes and sensations, to see and touch and whisper, and I had tried to stretch it out as long as I could, before I just gave in and collapsed in Miriam’s arms, drained of energy and effort.

‘I am glad,’ she said. ‘I am glad you’re not going, for I want to be with you, Samuel. As long as is possible.’

I squeezed her shoulders. ‘I hope that is a very long time.’

‘Me, too,’ Miriam said, her voice somber. ‘But times will change. People will change. One of these days the armistice will be reestablished and the work will continue. But I have a confession to make to you, about our work.’

‘Go on,’ I said.

Miriam sighed. ‘I am getting tired of it, Samuel. Of trying to document what bad things have happened, what kind of death has been dealt out to innocents. I am tired of the dirt and the mud and the stench of death, of seeing bodies broken and swollen and burned.’

‘You’ve been at it a long time,’ I said.

‘Ah, too long,’ she said. ‘And soon, very soon, perhaps, I am going to give it up.’

‘Go back to Amsterdam?’

She sighed again, her warm breath feeling good against my chest. ‘Perhaps, for a bit. But not for long. No, I think it’s time for me to do something else.’

‘What’s that?’

‘ Médecins Sans Frontières,’ she said, the French words rolling softly past her lips.

‘Doctors Without Borders,’ I said. ‘A good group. Let me guess. Tired of working on the dead?’

Miriam nodded, her chin digging painfully into me now. I ignored the discomfort. ‘Tired of working for the dead, Samuel. You see, that’s always been a little wordplay for me, in what I do. I speak for the dead. For the dead woman, butchered as she protected her children. For the teenage girls, brutally raped before they were murdered. For the old men and women in the last years of their lives, cut down because of their last name or skin color or because they were hungry and they escaped from a city that was dying. All of these dead people, on almost every continent, Samuel, I have spoken for. And my voice… my voice is getting tired. I can no longer speak for them. I can only speak for myself. And no one else.’

‘And Doctors Without Borders… you’ll be working for the living.’

‘In a way,’ she said, reaching up to tickle my ear. ‘I’ll be working for the wounded, for the survivors. I will no longer have to speak for them. All I will do is heal them. That is all.’

I swallowed, my mouth still stinging a bit from the bite of the cognac. ‘When do you hope to start?’

‘I’m not sure. A month, perhaps two.’

I moved an arm across her smooth back. ‘I’m sure they’re eager to take you on.’

‘Yes… but my eagerness, well…’

‘Go ahead.’

Miriam raised herself and kissed me gently. ‘If I may be so forward, do you intend to be with UNFORUS for ever?’

I kissed her in return, tasting the lipstick and cognac and her own special flavour. ‘As a matter of fact, Miriam, I’ve been thinking of a change as well. These doctors… do you think they could use someone to take photos, to write the occasional press release?’

In the dim light I could make out her smile. ‘It would mean a severe pay cut, you understand.’

‘So?’

She laughed and rolled over on top of me, and I hugged her close. ‘Yes, dear one,’ she said, kissing me again and again. ‘I am sure they can use you.’

‘Wonderful,’ I said, holding her tight, not wanting to let her move, not an inch. ‘Wonderful.’

The sounds of the shower and Miriam singing in her native Dutch woke me up. I was considering getting up to join her when she finished, coming out wrapped in two towels, one around her head, the other around her slick torso. She leaned over and kissed me. ‘Did I keep you awake last night?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Why would you?’

She laughed. ‘My younger sisters, they always said I snored so loud that they were afraid the local dike would be breached. The washroom is free, if you wish.’

I got up and headed to the bathroom, and then looked back at her. She was toweling her hair and said, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, everything is right. It’s just that…’

‘What?’

‘Well, you have both towels.’

‘Oh, you,’ Miriam said, tossing me the towel that she had been using to dry her hair.

I caught the damp fabric and said, ‘I might get awfully wet, you know, and I might need that second one…’

She came over to me, making shooing motions with her hands. ‘You get in there, and right now. I don’t want to miss breakfast.’

I kissed her. ‘A deal.’

Out in the corridor Miriam pointed to a scuff mark on the far wall. ‘Look. Isn’t that where Jean-Paul struck his head?’

‘We can only hope,’ I said.

She linked an arm through mine. ‘It was so strange yesterday, seeing Peter asking all those questions.’

‘Why?’

She tugged at my arm. ‘Because, that’s why. He seemed very knowledgeable, very inquisitive. Like he knew the answers to his questions before he asked them.’

Secrets, I thought. And a promise. I said, ‘You know Peter. Not very friendly, and an ex-cop to boot. Always suspicious of somebody or something. Or he wouldn’t have been a cop.’

‘Still…’ We got to the bank of elevators and I punched the down button. Miriam said, ‘How did this all come about? Why was Peter in your room?’

‘We talked some yesterday,’ I said. ‘Peter came to me with some suspicions of who might have been betraying our unit. He asked me if anything odd had occurred concerning Jean-Paul. And the only thing I had were the missing photo receipts. If Jean-Paul had really sent those in, like he said he did, then they would have appeared on my machine.’

‘All that, just to protect the identities of some local militiamen?’

I looked at her. She was wearing slightly wrinkled clothing from yesterday, and was still so very desirable. ‘More than just that,’ I said. ‘Peter thought—and I found it hard to disagree with him—that there was a timely reason for Jean-Paul not to have sent along those photos.’

‘Why would it have been timely?’

The elevator door finally dinged. ‘Because if we were all killed that day or the next, then Geneva would have had a pretty fair idea of who might have done it, based on those photos. No photos, no direct leads. And Jean-Paul would have been the sole survivor, with a bloody tale of how he alone had managed to stay alive.’

Miriam started saying something in Dutch which I guessed was probably obscene when the elevator door slid open. In front of us were three soldiers in fatigues who immediately stopped talking when they saw us there. They were about my age, muscled and hard-edged, and as well as the UNFORUS brassard that they all wore tiny Union Jacks were sewn on their sleeves. The British, back in their old colonial stomping grounds, almost two and a half centuries later.