“Not to mention the DO,” she shot back.
“I hear they're recruiting in the JDC's these days.”
Agnelli hadn't enjoyed her little joke.
She supposed there was a picture, for anyone who cared to paint it, of Eric as a trained survivor a man who from birth had learned to trust no one. Eric was too intelligent, of course, for the casual brutality of the foster home; he was charming, he drew people to him even as a boy people like Clarence Jackson, who saw something in the scrappy white kid with the obnoxious parents and had been beaten to death for his trouble. Eric could win hearts, he could manipulate and exploit. It was a different kind of violence.
It was possible to see that particular Eric, the one who lived only in his statistics and files, hovering over Pariser Platz in a stolen helicopter. That Eric had absorbed the viciousness of his childhood. That Eric was fascinated by the people he had been trained to destroy. It was something no analyst worth her paycheck would fail to consider; Dare Atwood certainly had. Caroline had no choice but to consider it herself. The Eric she had loved must be a mirage. Why shouldn't Agnelli's be real?
She asked for another lime and received a second tiny bottle of gin to go with it. The butterflies in her stomach were settling down to sleep, the tension that had knit her joints relaxing inexorably. Takeoff, at this rate, might be nothing more than falling off a log.
There was her boarding call, at last. She rose and felt the blood pound suddenly into her temples. She would regret the gin in what passed for morning.
She gathered up her magazines and paperbacks, her laptop computer and her briefcase. She gave one last glance at the television screen. Chancellor Voekl filled it, his arm around the shoulders of the Czech prime minister. An announcement of German technical assistance and antiterrorism aid, the CNN newscaster said, following the explosion of three pipe bombs in historic areas of Prague.
Bombs in Prague. Where 30 April certainly had been only hours ago. She walked slowly toward the screen, straining for the sound of Voekl's voice above the babble of departure.
He was speaking in German, his words sonorous and deliberate before the translator's text took over. The transfer of Volksturm militia to the Czech Republic underlined the common cultural past and mutual security concerns of the two Central European countries; it heralded a joint commitment to combating the destabilizing influence of outside forces in their societies, and gave notice to those who would threaten peace...
Caroline fought down her frustration. What time had the bombs exploded? And where exactly had they been? Did the Prague police have any idea who was responsible?
The image shifted suddenly from Fritz Voekl's face to that of a suffering child.
Enormous eyes, dark with pain. A hectic flush in the cheeks. With her wispy red hair and her tattered party dress, she was nonetheless an angel. The child thrust her thumb in her mouth and turned her face weakly toward her mothers shoulder. Caroline's heart surged upward in her chest, a prick of unexpected tears under her lids. To hold a child like that the soft floss of her hair, the warm weight “Sixty-three more children died of mumps today in the ethnic Albanian squatters' village on the outskirts of Pristina, in Kosovo,” the newscaster said implacably.
“Thousands of former refugees, who returned to find their villages and housing destroyed by Serb forces during the 1998 Kosovo war, have taken up residence in the makeshift housing constructed from the remnants of bombed buildings. But World Health Organization officials say the strain of mumps virus that struck last week is unlike any on record. Producing severe glandular swelling and excessively high fever, the disease has already claimed the lives of two hundred and thirteen children, a mortality rate that is both unusual and alarming. More ethnic Albanians are sickening daily. Thus far, the deadly mumps virus appears to be confined to the squatter area, but local leaders warn the infection could spread despite stringent efforts at quarantine.”
Caroline turned away from the screen. One more voiceless tragedy in a part of the world that had already given up hope, one more small angel dead by morning in her mother's arms. Disease followed war like morning followed night; it lurked in the ruptured water mains, in the rat-infested rubble. It riddled the dirt where the children played. But the weight of grief in Yugoslavia was impossible to comprehend. The Kosovars had lost their homes, their livelihoods, and now their children the one thing they had fought so desperately to save.
Caroline walked toward the flight attendant, her boarding pass extended, then stopped dead as the German translator's voice picked up where the newscaster had left off. Fritz Voekl was sending German medical teams into Kosovo armed with an experimental new mumps vaccine. Fritz Voekl who had fought NATO involvement in the Yugoslav civil war, who thought the Kosovars were just another bunch of poor-mouthed Muslims looking for a handout. So what if their children were dying? That left fewer to feed.
The teams would begin inoculating ethnic Albanian children throughout the province as soon as they arrived.
Caroline stared at the screen in disbelief as Voekl smiled for the flashbulbs.
She would never have called the chancellor a humanitarian. But refugees stay home, when home is safe and healthy. Maybe Fritz had figured that out at last.
It was unlikely he'd learned to care.
Part II
Wednesday, November 10
One
Pristina, 3:45 a.m.
Simone Amiot followed the orange glow of the man's cigarette as he crossed the rutted dirt road and made for her tent — a bobbing spark in the darkness of the wee hours, like a June bug uncertain of its flight. His figure was backlit by a single flaring torch the police guard had thrust into the mud — a bulky, formless silhouette, hands shoved into the pockets of a battered down jacket. His chin was lowered over his chest, as though he were lost in thought or intent upon watching where he put each foot. There was an air of assurance about him, even at this distance; of relaxed accommodation with his squalid surroundings, the uniformed men patrolling at his back. He could not, Simone decided, be a parent.
She removed the earpiece of her stethoscope and folded it briskly in three — then spared a second to lay her cool, smooth fingers on the bare chest of the four-year-old boy lying inert on the cot before her. She did not need her stethoscope for this one anymore. She drew the sheet over his head very gently and allowed her hand to rest on the brown hair, still damp with sweat. Drago Pavlovic. Three days ago he had been playing in the street with a combat fighter made of paper and sticks. He had grinned at her as she walked by, and roared the sound of his engine. Drago was sturdy for his age, with brown eyes and freckles on his nose. He was about to lose his right front tooth.
Drago was number three hundred and twenty-seven. Or was it twenty-eight? At least Simone was spared the job of breaking the news to his mother. The woman had been murdered the previous year.
She rubbed wearily at her forehead, as though she could push aside the burning sensation of tears and futility. Pristina was her third stint with Medecins sans Frontieres — Doctors Without Borders — but it was by far the most difficult. Last year, and the year before that, there had been bullet wounds. Burn victims.
Broken limbs. Dehydration. Horrible in themselves — but things Simone could treat. In Pristina, she was brought face-to-face with the limits of her own power. She had no tools to fight the mumps ravaging the squatter population. And nothing to keep it from spreading.
In the past five days, she had personally held vigil over more than two hundred children. Most were buried now in hastily dug graves on the edge of the squatters' camp, their delicate features dusted with lime. Her years of schooling, her years of practical knowledge, the drugs she had flown in from Toronto — none of them did any good. She might as well have been a woman of the Middle Ages, showering incantations and powdered bat wing.
A handful of Simone's more than two hundred stricken children had actually survived the mumps scourge. One of them, a little girl with bright red hair, was sleeping soundly on a cot in the far corner. Although still weak
