Karen gave a quick laugh but nobody else joined her. Eventually the tracer fire died away and it went quiet again, except for the low roar of a jet going overhead, its running lights doused, part of the NATO force supporting UNFORUS, I supposed. Charlie joined Jean-Paul back at the couch and then it seemed like the fire lost its warming touch, for everything had changed in those brief moments when we saw the tracers out there in the distance. Another little reminder—as if we needed one!—of why we were here and what we were getting into. Nobody was talking to each other, save for Jean-Paul and Charlie, and then Jean-Paul doused his flashlight and said, ‘Time to retire, my friends. You have fifteen minutes of hot water and lights, and then we switch off the generator, fuel supplies being what they are. All right?’
One by one we got up from the salvaged furniture and went over to the motel units. As I’d told Karen, I’d found a unit with an unbroken door and windows and had claimed it as my own. Nobody called out a good night to me but I didn’t feel bad, because I didn’t offer a good-night salutation to anybody else either.
Conscious of Jean-Paul’s warning, I took a quick shower and lit a small candle in a glass globe, which I placed on the shelf beside the bed. There were three locks to the door and I used them all, and then I placed one of the two chairs in the room underneath the door handle. The unit had twin beds, a bathroom and a low cabinet that had drawers in it. On top of the cabinet was a television set. I wondered what kind of people had come and stayed here in this room over the years, before the bombings, before the evacuations, before the fighting had broken out. At least it was clean, and at least there were walls and a roof. As I dried myself I switched on the television and got static. Most stations were still off the air after last spring’s attack, but I was hopeful—one of my many bad traits, as Father would so often point out. At the rear of the television was a set of tiny rabbit ears, and after playing around with these and the channel selector, I was able to get a faint picture, flickering through the screen-snow.
I sat on the edge of the bed, watched the program. It was a UN news report, probably broadcast from across the northern border. A woman in a business-type suit was reading from something in her hands. Behind her on the set was the familiar UN crest. There was a slide barely discernible over her left shoulder, something about The Hague, but I couldn’t make it out. I turned up the volume and just heard the harshness of the static. I wondered if it was due to the poor reception, or if some of the better-armed and better-equipped militia groups out there were jamming the signal. Militia. Such a soft term, I thought. ‘Death squads’ was more harsh, more appropriate, but it was rarely used in polite conversation among the UN groups. Death squads worked in El Salvador and Serbia. They weren’t supposed to be at work here. Not here.
I tried all the other channels. More static, except on one channel, where I could just about make out an old Michael J. Fox movie. Back to the Future, dubbed in French. I watched that for another minute or so, and then, as Jean-Paul had promised, the power went out and the room got very dark. Back to the future, indeed.
By the faint light of the candle I made sure that the sole window, overlooking the parking lot, was also locked. I drew the draperies closed and fastened them tightly with clothespins that I carried in my rucksack, and made sure that the bathroom door was wide open. In one of his few letters to me, Father had warned me that if gunfire ever broke out in the area I should roll out of bed onto the floor, crawl on my belly and get into the bathtub. Better chance of surviving in a tub if shrapnel was flying around. It was a good piece of advice, probably the best one that the old man had ever given me.
I put on a pair of shorts and laid out my sleeping roll on top of the nearest bed. Earlier, Charlie had swept the area for booby traps, land mines and other nasty surprises from the militias doing their dirty work, but I was still cautious. In one of the staging areas where I’d spent time before flying up to join Jean-Paul’s group I had heard a story about another UN inspection team like this one, bedding down in an abandoned hotel, and how the sheets and blankets had been salted with ground glass.
From my rucksack I pulled out a foam pillow, one of the few luxuries I’d brought along. The shape and smell of the pillow helped relax me in the dark, especially after a long day like this one had been. Next out of the rucksack was one of the two paperback books I had brought along. The orders from the UN High Commissioner’s overseer of the field teams had been explicit: I could bring only a bedroll plus one rucksack for my personal stuff and another for my professional gear. After the pillow, clothes, toiletries, assorted candies and spices, I could barely make room for two books. One was a thin paperback of old science fiction stories from the 1940s and 1950s, The Green Hills of Earth, by Robert A. Heinlein. I read that whenever I was in the mood to read the cheerful—and failed—predictions of humans blazing out into the solar system, going first to the moon, then to Venus, Mars and even to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The other book was a collection of George Orwell’s essays, and I read that whenever I was in a mood to read about humans’ failings and foibles. Lately, this book was all I ever read, and I read slowly, restarting it right away when I’d finished it. I found tonight, though, that I was more tired than usual, and I blew out the candle after only a few pages of George Orwell rather skillfully dissecting the saintliness of Gandhi.
It would have been fun to have my Nokia cellphone at my side, to call up some buds from my newspaper job at the Star, to hint at what was going on with the world’s biggest story, but the UN had banned those and other hand-held electronic devices for the teams. It was like being stuck on the longest goddamned airline flight ever, for the UN were spooked that these signals could be monitored and traced by the militias and their government sympathizers. So no Nintendo game, no cellphone, no iPod for listening to tunes, though in any case the cost of workable hand-held electronics had skyrocketed since last spring.
So I curled up in my bedroll, thinking about Charlie out there in the darkness. I’m not sure when and how he slept, but he was always out there, on guard, and that gave me the tiniest bit of confidence to fall asleep. Two nights ago I’d had a full bladder and had made my way out of a tent in an overgrown hayfield, and there had been Charlie, sitting on the bumper of one of the Toyotas, sipping a mug of coffee, just nodding in my direction as I went out to find a tree to water.
There was another low rumbling and then another as two flights of jet aircraft passed overhead. Then all was quiet and I drifted off, in an abandoned motel in a small village in the state of New York in the troubled land that was known as the United States.
CHAPTER TWO
I woke up in the dark room with a start, wondering what had disturbed me, and then came the sound of more aircraft, now off to the far horizon. I had that half-queasy moment between sleep and awareness, where you wonder where you are and how you got there. And then the sleeping bag and the smell of the room and the sound of the aircraft brought it all together. I rubbed at my eyes, looked around. For some reason, an odd trick of light made the television screen look like it was glowing gray, as if it was about to come on by itself.
I stared at the screen.
Good old television. Able instantly to bring you news and information, no matter how dark and depressing, in a manner of seconds.
Good old television.
I stared at the screen some more.