ROCK RIVER BRIDGE

Rita Blue was standing in the cold outside, at the door to the school bus, it being about 100 yards north of the eerily dark Rock River Bridge. The flood lights which bathed the bridge had yet to be turned on, which meant - as Mark Tuello had put it - it was not yet 'game time'. It was all silent, and the chills were not just because of the night's cold.

Blue was nervous, as a refugee-Martha from Gilead herself, and as a survivor of Angel's Flight, she knew what the women at the south side were going to be going through. Blue had garnered the notice of the American Consulate in Toronto - Rachel Tapping and Mark Tuello thought the world of her. Once they arrived, she'd been asked to accompany 2 dozen Marthas from the bridge to Montreal's refugee Centre.

Rita was kind, committed, and as Tapping had put it - 'Rita is religious, she talks Gilead's language, but she is not Gilead's fool. She'll be great organizing Day-zero for refugees, freshly crossed the river.'

Canadian military, RCMP, CBSA and the Sûreté du Québec were cooperating for this one, as inter-service squabbling always settled when Gilead refugees were in the works. Rita had been the one to convince them that a simple school bus would be nice, maybe blankets and something warm to drink. Nothing overwhelmingly elaborate.

As it was, there'd be too much for them to process, 'freedom' being the most severe.

Rita harped on about it: keep information to a minimum, at least for the drive from the border into Montreal and to the refugee processing centre. As Rita knew, the ladies she was about to receive needed kindness more than anything else. Needed reminders of their inherent dignity. Needed to be spared from being bombarded with Canadian earnestness.

As Blue was checking her watch, Mark Tuello came up to her through the dark. His face was aglow, as he was brandishing his inevitable computer tablet.

He said, "You know, first it was 21, then it was 22. Then it was back down to 21. Now it's 22 again." He shook his head, "these totalitarian dictatorships used to do this better."

"Sir," Rita replied, "it doesn't matter. You don't plan on turning people away, do you? We've got room for 49 on the bus. Let's fill it."

Tuello darkened the tablet's screen. "Regardless of the number, I want to know who each one is. Commander Lawrence said that the Marthas coming were all 'Mayday'. As he said, 'Rebels'. I just want to make sure that they are exactly that, each and every one."

As Rita said that she, herself, could be helpful in i.d.'ing individuals, she added, "there're certain things only a real martha would know."

Just then the flood lights on the bridge deck went up. Tuello said, "it's game time."

As if it had been planned that way, Commander Waterford's prison van arrived at the north side of the bridge. At the southern end, half-a-dozen Guardian vans pulled up, and women got out. Marthas.

Rita could also see a Commander, who she thought must be Commander Lawrence. And then she spotted him, her old friend Nick Blaine. "I wonder what Nick has in store for the Commander? I will pray for his soul."

Just as Tuello lowered his binoculars, he said, "I count 22." He told Rita to count them again as they got onto the bus. One last look through the binocs, Tuello swore that one of Blaine's men kissed a Martha. He made a note to remember which woman that had been. He asked, "Let me know if one seems odd." He then went over to Waterford's van and opened the back.

As the 22 marthas scurried north, Mark Tuello hustled a resisting Fred Waterford south.

REUNION

I found him. Praise God! I found my husband. God is good. Yet I froze at the thought of approaching him. Things were 'in the air' as our boss-Martha had put it. He'd been part of another Commander's Guardian detail, seemed to be that Commander's body-man. He looked good. The same man I had known. He'd filled out.

The first time I had seen him jump from the SUV, I was at the sink in the Putnam kitchen. I had audibly cried out and dropped a plate. Not knowing what it was about, the boss-Martha dismissed me, told me to go to my room. It had taken Mrs. Putnam herself coming into the kitchen for me to unglue my eyes from the parking area outside, and go to my room. I couldn't speak.

I was no good, for the next few days. I was accused of having a stroke, it was suggested that I be 'sent back'. At the very least, the boss-Martha had said that I should be reassigned to where Ofhoward was - I'd garnered the reputation of being able to deal with the 'one-eyed crazy Handmaid', as she was derisively called.

I did everything in my power, though, to remain at the Putnam's, not that marthas had much power. I volunteered to be at the sink at every opportunity.

MUFFINS MEAN YES

This was not good. This was bound to attract attention. This was going to get us all killed.

I was still the third-Martha in the pecking order at the Putnams. Ever since the Rachel and Leah bombing, God bless their souls, Commander Putnam had become very important. Activity around the house increased, and we got the choice tokens for food at Loaves and Fishes. I was in luck, the Putnams needed three of us.

And I was to spy my husband. Numerous times, always outside. I'm positive that he had not seen me. So, I had to make it so that nothing changed, everything needed to remain the same here - lest I lose track of him again.

How does a third-tier martha manage that?

The boss-Martha pierced my daydreaming, had a wicker-basket of muffins, told me to take it to the back fence and hand it to the martha waiting on the other side. Not good. I almost didn't do it.

On taking the muffins, the martha across the fence whispered back to me, "do you think it's going to happen?" Once again my husband's counsel to 'hang back', and never volunteer anything - it paid dividends. She continued. "I keep thinking of my Commander's baby in Canada. If this works, even your Angela will be free." Then she scurried off back to her house.

Free from what?

CALHOUN'S BODY MAN

Commander Matthew Calhoun was who all Commanders of Gilead should have been. It was an honour to be on his detail.

When the Waterfords were illegally captured in Canada - themselves merely retrieving their own child - Calhoun was 'promoted' within the Chancery. Because of Gilead's enemies, all hands needed to be on deck. That was even after Calhoun's life got really complicated.

I had not been assigned until the shooting of his Handmaid at Loaves and Fishes. God save us from unstable Handmaids. Their Ofmatthew had purloined a pistol, right there in Loaves and Fishes, and was endangering the whole place. Lives were in the balance. There was a brief inquiry as to the Guardian's fatal actions, because Commander Calhoun's baby was growing within the Handmaid. Ofmatthew eventually died.

The baby was rescued, so the Guardian in question was exonerated. Ofmatthew's body was condemned to the common mercy of the State. As God and the Chancery had ordained.

Me, it had hit me hard. Because there was literally no one to talk to about it. My own daughter, years' previous, had been taken. As had my wife. Calhoun had almost lost his, too.

Commander Calhoun was doing what I never had opportunity. He rallied around his family. A lot of it was 'pitiful', but not the kind of pitiful which disgusted me.

Commander Calhoun, he spent more time at the hospital with his tiny child than he did at Chancery. I liked that about him. As such his security was augmented and I was promoted to act as his body-man. It must have been obvious - I would take a bullet for him.

ANOTHER SIGHTING

"Sorry to intrude, Commander Putnam. Please forgive me, I've not checked with the head-Martha. But I have to know. Just who was that Guardian in the SUV you just pulled up in?" Nope, that wasn't the way to broach it. I tried to imagine another way to get Commander Putnam's attention about it.

There he was again. Me standing at the kitchen sink below the window, him outside opening the door to an SUV, Commander Putnam getting out and coming inside.

No matter how I had spun it in my head, there was no convincing way I could ask the Commander who that Guardian had been. The best I could make it, was that he was working for Commander Calhoun, the family that had the baby in hospital. After that horrible shooting.

Something was going on, though. The boss-Martha kept whispering about, 'a night next week', that 'we had to be ready to move'. No, no, no, no, 'no we don't', I thought. 'We' need to find out who that Guardian is!

A FUNERAL

Oh my God. I have to focus. There we were in the graveyard, out in the open. A security nightmare. Mrs. Lawrence's funeral, Commander Putnam presiding. Every Commander of the District in attendance, and every Wife decked out in darker teal and veil. All us Guardians, wide-eyed and alert.

But there she was, standing to side of Mrs. Putnam. My love. That had to be her! My everything. She was alive.

Yet the security perimeter there demanded focus. Other, better trained Guardians would notice any one of us shirking. Every Guardian there was wide-eyed, bushy tailed, and as frosty as they could be. Except me.

Had she seen me? Since the last shake-up at Chancery, I'd been at the Putnam's a dozen times. Maybe she wasn't attached to them? It would be easy to find out. But not there. I'd had one supervisor already raise me on the radio, asking, 'Is everything ok over there?'

I'd only met Commander Putnam with me sitting in the SUV's jump-seat, he and Commander Calhoun just feet away in the seats. He always struck me as a thoughtful, quiet man.

But not a leader. Absent the immediate pressures of his home life, Commander Matthew Calhoun should be the one in the big seat.

Movement by our charges was an even bigger security risk than having them stationary. As the gathered were leaving, we were hyper-vigilent, having lost a D.C. Commander as well as the Waterfords. Me, I had lost track of the martha with the Putnams.

So it was that as I held the door open for Calhoun and his Wife, Calhoun turned to thank Commander Putnam beside him with Mrs. Putnam standing demurely behind.

Reflexes were everything. Which did not explain that when feeling the touch on my back, I did not turn to punch whoever it was behind me. Situational awareness was everything, I could not be punching a Commander, his wife, or his child.

Turning, I saw her. My love. My everything. She was alive! My focus was no longer on my charge.

She said quietly, "I'm watching Angela closely this week. I'll be damned if I lose another. You, you watch the Calhoun's." She then mouthed, 'I love you'.

Why would she tell me that?

THE SWANTON DINER

Waiting for our enemies to leave, Commander Calhoun and me, Calhoun's body man, we came out from the back, and settled in to the café booth opposite Commander Lawrence. There we were, at the Swanton diner, on the main road to Canada, in the Disputed Area. Security could not be more iffy than here, with American and Canadian grunts now peeling out of the parking area, to head back north.

Lawrence said to Calhoun, "Look, my poker skills are rusty. I had no idea if Tuello and Osborne had been expecting 21. But I sold them on 22. Twenty-two marthas for a Commander." Lawrence paused, "as an economist, I'm intensely interested on the going rate for a Commander."

Calhoun answered, "My man here," meaning me, "he'll be with Blaine's detail. It's part of the deal."

Commander Lawrence studied me. "So," he said. "You're the one causing all this trouble."