Jean-Paul looked again at me and Miriam, and said, ‘Then there must have been some sort of technical error, something that—’
‘It’s finished, Jean-Paul,’ Peter said, taking a step towards him. ‘The Inspector-General’s been looking into your history all afternoon. You might have forgotten this, old friend, but radio traffic is carefully logged, and they’re going to match their log with my personal diary, and Charlie’s, to establish when you claimed you were talking to sector headquarters and getting instructions about what to do next. Your bank accounts are going to be searched, too, and if you think the UN can’t find any hidden accounts in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands then you’re sadly mistaken. So. Again: answer Samuel’s question. How much?’
Jean-Paul put the glasses and the cognac bottle down on a little night stand by the door. ‘Look, mes amis, I’m sure there is something we can work out here—’
Then Miriam walked right up to him and slapped him. Jean-Paul was temporarily stunned but his expression grew dark and angry, and he raised his arm to strike back. I was getting ready to jump in on the fray when Peter—still moving as quick as the wind — got Jean-Paul in some sort of complicated head- and arm-lock, opened the door and tossed him out into the hallway. Jean-Paul fell against the nearest wall, banging his head, bounced back, and then started running. I made to go after him but Peter held me back with a strong arm. ‘Let him go, Samuel. Let him go.’
Miriam was white-lipped. ‘After all that? After all that, you’re going to let him go?’
Peter closed the door. ‘Where is he going? Out there, beyond the compound, where the local militia will gun him down before he can confess that he’s one of them? No, don’t you worry. The IG has officers waiting at the stairwells and the elevator banks. In a few minutes he’ll be scooped up and put on the first plane back to Geneva.’
‘To face trial?’ Miriam asked.
Peter laughed. ‘Dear girl, you’ve been around this business long enough. You know what’s going to happen. The UN will complain to the French, and the French will complain that they’re being misunderstood, as always. Jean-Paul will be fined, maybe he’ll spend a few weekends in jail back in France, and then he’ll get a nice little job as a magistrate in some sleepy French village. The UN is a noble, peaceful organization. You know that. Which is why you hardly ever read any stories about UN peacekeepers running smuggling rings, skimming off oil-for-food contracts, patronizing teenage prostitutes, or—in this case -selling out their comrades for cash. Oldest story in the book, am I right?’
Miriam looked like she was preparing some sort of retort, and I said, ‘Yeah, Peter. Oldest story in the book.’
He picked up the bottle of cognac, tossed it over to me, and I caught it with one hand. Remarkable. Peter said, ‘It’s late at night, there’s a bottle of cognac and two glasses there. I’m going to leave and let the two of you get reunited. Or would you prefer me to join you with a glass from the washroom?’
Miriam smiled and came over to me. I said, ‘See you later, Peter.’
‘Of course you will,’ he said.
Later, lights off and blinds open, we lay in bed, the cognac bottle uncapped, the small glasses at our side. The blankets and sheets were crumpled at the bottom of the bed, and I felt tired and drained and sore and utterly alive. Miriam was cuddled up on my left, her chin pressing into my chest, an occasional finger tracing my lips. She said, ‘What next for you, Samuel?’
‘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?’