Standing over me was one of the crewmen, with his visor up. He had a thin mustache. He asked me something in a language I didn’t recognize and I shook my head. ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’
He smiled. ‘UN ?’
‘Yes.’
‘Engländer? American?’
‘No, Canadian,’ I said.
He grunted, smiled again, moved his head closer.
‘Canadian!’ I yelled over the roar of the engine.
‘Ah,’ he said, now comprehending. ‘Canada! Canada good!’ and he gave me a thumbs-up with a gloved hand.
I closed my eyes, breathed out, breathed in. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Canada good.’
And we flew on, rising ever higher.
We flew into a town outside the state capital, Albany, and the helicopter crew must have radioed ahead because when I got to the hospital the medics were quick and efficient. By the time we landed I had found out that the crew was from the Czech Republic, one of the NATO contingents of UNFORUS, and I shook everybody’s hand as I got out. I had walked maybe two or three meters across the parking lot of the hospital when a running crew of medical personnel grabbed me and, against my protests, bundled me onto a gurney and brought me into the hospital’s emergency room.
The next hour was a blur. I was stripped, examined, checked out and asked a couple of dozen questions—all medically related—and had my feet and teeth checked. A couple of scrapes and cuts on my face and hands were treated. Then I had an embarrassingly erotic sponge bath from two young French nurses—who murmured and giggled among themselves as they dried me off — and raced through eating an apple, a banana and a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich—which tasted so good that my mouth was full of saliva just from thinking about it, even minutes after I had finished it. Then some clerk came by and issued me with new dosimetry—my old TLD Was decaying in a ditch somewhere -- and it was like I had gotten back my identity badge for my secret little club.
And an hour later, I was lying in a bed in a curtained-off area in the emergency room, being debriefed by a smiling older woman with black-rimmed glasses and a knitted pink sweater who said she was with the governing board of UNFORUS for the surrounding four counties. Right from the start, she reminded me of my grandmother on my father’s side, which was to the UNFORUS woman’s disadvantage, because I never could stand Grandmother Simpson, My father’s mother had none of his good qualities — what few there were—and many of his poorest qualities, including a hot-blood temper. She also had an urge to pinch my cheeks whenever I got within a meter of her, and a need to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and drink a highball before dinner.
‘I’m Cecile O’Ryan,’ said the woman in a soft Irish accent. ‘You’ve had quite the few days, Mister Simpson, haven’t you?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘The rest of my section, how are they?’
She looked down at her clipboard. ‘I’m sorry—I have bad news about one of your comrades.’
‘Sanjay Prith,’ I said. ‘Yes, I know. The others?’
‘Oh,’ she said brightly. ‘The others? The latest I heard they were all fine, though not out in the field. The armistice having failed… well, our field activities have certainly been restricted.’
‘Hold on,’ I said, feeling a lightness in my heart that I could barely stand. Miriam. Safe. Since that wonderful night in the tent, sharing our quarters and each other, and the bloody morning that followed I had tried not to think of her, tried not to wonder if something horrible had happened to her. But it hadn’t. She was safe. She was alive. She wasn’t stuck in some school-bus prison somewhere deep in the woods, trembling, waiting to be shot or raped when some armed man’s mood struck him. Safe. I took a good, long breath.
Now to the business at hand. For example, one Peter Brown, that bastard Brit. I wanted to tell Ms O’Ryan about Peter, about his meeting with the militia units. But I wanted to get one even more important piece of business taken care of before anything else.
O’Ryan said, ‘Well, I’m sure your colleagues will be glad to hear you’re back. Now, though, we have a number of questions that we’d like answered.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But first things first.’
‘Oh?’ she asked, putting about a ton of irritation into that one-syllable word.
‘Yes, “oh”,’ I said. ‘There were a man and a young boy. Grandfather and grandson. They fed me and protected me. I want them to be picked up and brought somewhere safe. Here, if that makes sense.’
‘Their names?’ O’Ryan asked, irritation still showing in her tone.
‘Stewart Carr. And his grandson Jerry. Plus a dog called Tucker.’
‘Ah, a dog. Well, perhaps after we’re done here, we can file a report and—’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a request.’
‘What is it, then? An order?’
I shifted my bare legs under the blankets. ‘Call it what you will. All I’m saying is that I will gladly be debriefed, tell you what I know about things, tell you the best guess I have for the location of one of the main militia camps. But I’m not saying a word until I see Mister Carr and his grandson. And their dog. In front of me.’
‘Do you know how many refugees and terrorized people we’re trying to secure, trying to process out there?’
‘I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care,’ I said. ‘I only care right now about that guy, his grandson and their dog. Tucker.’
O’Ryan’s eyes got icy, just like Grandmother Simpson’s. ‘You’re in no position to demand anything, young man.’
‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘But what kind of position I am in is to contact my old friends back at my old employer, the Toronto Star, and tell them what kind of cluster-fuck -excuse my language—is going on here in the States. How my unit in particular spent most of its time driving in circles, trying to uncover war-crimes evidence, including the famous Site A, and how we found shit.’
‘You’ve signed a confidentiality agreement,’ O’Ryan snapped.
‘Right. And let’s see who’ll try to enforce that if I resign from the UN’s service. All right?’
She continued glaring at me, and then tried another tack. ‘We have a report that you were using a firearm just before being picked up.’
‘So?’
‘That’s in violation of a number of agreements between UNFORUS and the local authorities. A non-combatant such as yourself is strictly forbidden to bear arms,’ O’Ryan said. ‘You could find yourself in a county jail for a very long time, Mister Simpson, if we decided not to defend you against any local prosecution.’
I wiggled my toes. ‘Prosecute away,’ I said. ‘I can hardly wait to see the coverage that would generate: a young man -myself, in this instance—defending himself against a half-dozen or so paramilitaries with a .22 rifle, a weapon designed for hunting squirrels rather than shooting human thugs. Being a former newspaperman myself, I can see how that would make a hell of a story. Wouldn’t it?’
Now O’Ryan was in thoroughly pissed-off mode, another familiar attitude of the not-so-dear, departed Grandmother Simpson. She got up suddenly and stalked out of my little curtained-off cubicle, without even bothering to draw the curtain behind her. I guessed that Peter would have to wait. I looked out into the bustling emergency room, saw a man in a uniform of some sort, groaning and moaning as an ER crew worked on him. Bloody bandages were on the dirty tiled floor. I couldn’t tell if he was paramilitary or UNFORUS, the poor guy, so I turned my attention to a plastic cup of ice water, which I sipped through a straw. It tasted wonderful.