BEING SHH'ED BY RITA

I'd been barely aware I was standing there, one nose's length from Commander Waterford's door. Looking down at the doorknob, like an idiot. It was half-past midnight, and I had a full day of driving tomorrow. Should have been sleeping.

Then I realized my service weapon was drawn. In my right hand down by my side. All I needed to do was open the door and put an end to this.

Then I heard a buzzing noise to my left, down the hall. In the half-dark, there was Rita in her night-dress. Making shh'ing sounds and trying to wave me over to her. What was Rita doing up this time of night?

I holstered my weapon. Just in time. The door opened, The Commander stood there with no tie. Behind him well into the room, June. Seated at the fire. Scotch in hand.

Rita leaned silently into a shadow. I said, "Commander, I wanted to make sure you were secure. We're away at 6:30, if you remember." He asked if I was all right? And, yes, he knew the schedule.

MAYDAY HERE WAS A CLOWN SHOW

Ofglen from the Deeds house - she'd been Mayday. She knew I knew Al too, but she also suspected that I had recently been recruited by the Eyes of God. The frustrating thing, was that there was literally no one to talk with about Ofglen, aka. Dr. Emily Malek. Maybe Rita? No, that would put Rita in harm's way.

Then she went nuts. Ofglen, I mean. And why not, she'd been caught in a tryst with a martha. That martha had been hanged (I missed that detail because I'd not been at the Waterfords when they'd called). Then the Red Centre got a hold of Malek. There was a mutilating, too gruesome for me to describe, even here, even with you reading the other stuff I've written. That had been the first time I had got genuinely angry - bizarre, given all that I'd seen at the women's holding centre.

It had been that mutilation, where I decided I was going to put my multiple, contradictory contacts to use.

Because I was going to get June Osborne out.

Enter Lillie Fuller. Who? Ofglen #2, that's who.

The very day June was to be spirited out, the one-eyed handmaid, Ofwarren, was set to be particicuted - stoned on a snowy day. One of Aunt Lydia's parties. But beginning with Ofglen, Lillie Fuller, they refused. To repeat, they'd refused Aunt Lydia. For that, Ofglen lost her tongue.

But the rest of the handmaids, all of them from Ofwarren's cadre, they were sent to Fenway Park. For what turned out to be a mock hanging. Strangely that had not made me angry. That was 'so Gilead'. But there was to be no escape, not for June. I'd watched the truck take June from the Waterfords…. but the licence tag. It was a real Guardians licence tag.

But me, I was committed. To getting June out. I just wanted to avoid losing my bowels over it.

Rita had never said as much, but she was probably a friend of Al's too, she'd had a part in getting baby Nichole out. Not that anyone knew.

But I am getting ahead. Geez, I can't keep the narrative straight.

The story that Al told did open doors for me in Boston. I'm ashamed to say that I had acted as an Eye of God on many occasions - not just with Commander Guthrie. Yes, ashamed. It was a trickier judgement than even at the front. I can't pass it all up the line, but neither can I withhold. I had to choose which innocent I would betray. Ordering a strike on one's own position seemed easy in comparison.

I got to know Beth at the Jezebels kitchen. Had lots of opportunity because of Commander Waterford's trips. Many with Offred #1, as well as at least two with June, Offred #2. Beth was the one who'd reported that Al had been caught and killed. He'd been tortured and had not given anyone up. Beth said, "Remind me to do the same, if I'm ever in Al's shoes. He'll be who I am thinking of, as they waterboard me or hold a gun to my head."

She said equally nonchalantly, "By the way, that truck to get June out? We used it for another flight."

O CANADA

It's amazing that they never put it together.

I mean, there was only the three of us. Which of us three would have passed those 'postcards from the edge' to the American exiles? Fred? Serena Joy? That left just me, officially the Commander's body man for his Canadian junket.

Before we left, June was losing it. Losing it badly. Was burning the postcards. I'd seen PTSD before. Fuck, I had PTSD. The dumb things I did. Like falling for June fucking Osborne. In Gilead.

Which is why the Canadian junket hits home. Yes, I had given them to Luke Bankole. No, I hadn't told him about all the love-making I was doing with his wife.

It had been the American, Tuello. It had been his idea. He'd told me where I could find Bankole. I mean, I'd offered the postcards to him - it was the least I could do for resisters back home. He wouldn't take them. Said, "I have a better idea." I think that bastard knows something. There's still a side of me that believes that he was the kind of American who'd needed overthrowing.

He said he had just come from having a drink with Serena Joy Waterford. Had offered her, "treason and coconuts", which was supposed to mean something. He'd offered me a stipend and an apartment, out west in Canada somewhere I'd never heard of. As a Guardian, I'd never have been allowed access to Little America in Toronto, he said.

After shaking his hand, I counted my fingers just in case. Me, I did not get his calculus - why not arrest me right there? Why send me with the postcards to ambush Bankole? I wished that Tuello had been on our side, rather than the clowns we have.

Not much to say about how it had gone with June's husband. How do you think it went?

He got the postcards, the next day the Waterford junket blew up in Canadian social- and regular media. The three of us barely made it to the airport alive.

Why was I never suspected? I haven't a clue. Except to say that by that time Pryce was gone, and we had no one like Tuello on our side. There. I said it.

JUNE OSBORNE THROWS HER FREEDOM BACK IN MY FACE

Twice.

I do not know when it was I fell in love with her. When Serena had ordered me to sleep with June, I'd not admitted it to myself, not then. I mean, hell, what I did was a war crime. June was a slave. And my motives? It was that night, with Serena Joy seated at the other end of the room, that I first thought I'd better get back to Chicago. Get back to the front. It was safer. I was hurting fewer people.

And please note, I write very little about Eden. How does one write about a fifteen year old, true believer?

Beth had set it up - how, I do not know. This is the first escape, way back when. They'd had another truck, which backed itself up to the loading dock at the medical centre. What Beth couldn't do, was get June from the examination room to that loading dock three floors below. Once in the truck, though, June was well on her way on the femaleroad.

That one, June had been caught.

The next one was the most angering. Beth had arranged yet another truck, this time for baby Nichole. Our baby, June and mine. My part of it was to start the fire across the street, then get back to the Waterfords to prevent Fred from calling anyone. Got Rita to muster June and Nichole. Why Rita? Because I was busy with Commander Waterford.

Surprise, surprise - Dr. Malek had been on the truck. No less than Joseph Lawrence had taken her. That was as I was preparing to get out of Dodge.

THE RACHEL AND LEAH BOMBING

I really am losing the plot. Did I really forget this part? With Pryce's death, all bets were off. My bearings got scrambled.

Me, I'd begged the High Commander to send me somewhere else.

I thought it would be something that Ofglen #1 would have done. But by then she was in the Colonies. Ofglen #2, she'd been a street kid before the second revolution. June had said that Lillie Fuller actually liked being a handmaid - at least she was not giving blow jobs behind a rainy dumpster somewhere for a Happy Meal out of the rain inside.

Then they'd cut out her tongue. Lillie's. Then someone strapped a bomb-vest to her. Running into the Rachel and Leah hall holding that detonator high, she looked like she was carrying the Olympic torch.

Or so I'm told. Me, so much for being freed from that house. Me, I'd never done anything as damaging to the New Gilead District as when I'd helped Serena Joy forge Commander Cushing's arrest papers. It was never dull in that house.

THEN THE FIRE

The famous Serena Joy had created Gilead, then she burnt it down.

That was my final act with the Waterfords. No access to June. She was sent to Joseph Lawrence's. Me, I reapplied for Chicago. I was accepted. With a commission. The 'saviour of Chicago' was to make a triumphant return.

You think I'm a hero? I was on the run. Back to the Chicago chaos. This time with no Al to walk between the raindrops.