“Yes, sir,” Wally said briefly. He did not remind Dalton that the secure phones were down.
“There must be a 30 April body somewhere in that city,” the ambassador said.
“We must get to him before Krucevic does.”
“Isn't there some way to prevent 30 April from entering Hungary?” Shephard asked. “The borders should have been closed as soon as the bomb went off yesterday.”
“They haven't been, and they won't be,” Dalton told him. “The President undertook to give Krucevic his freedom until Sophie Payne is recovered. Any sign of an international manhunt, we jeopardize her safety.”
“That can't go on indefinitely.”
“As far as our German friends' are concerned, I imagine it could. It serves their ends to admiration. Why close the borders, when the enemy is within? You of all people must know, Tom, that the enemy is the infidel Turk. He lives among us. He is to be punished for 30 April's crimes, while 30 April gets away with murder.”
“Which raises a few questions about Fritz Voekl,” Caroline observed, “and his commitment to fighting international terrorism.”
Dalton smiled at her regretfully.
“There are so many questions about Fritz Voekl, my dear. Questions that even I shall not put to him, I'm afraid. We need more information the kind ofinformadon that can be used to pressure him if we are to proceed from a position of strength. And now, if you'll excuse me,” the ambassador said with a general nod, “I must present my respects to the chancellor and his daughter. It is young Kiki's sixteenth birthday, and Ie tout Berlin will be raising a glass.”
Eight
Pristina, 2:13 p.m.
Enver Gordievic was startled awake at the first knock on his shanty's door. His heart pounded. He glanced first at Krystie, the baby, who was napping in the lower bunk; she stirred drowsily and began to wail. Then he looked toward the door. No windows in the hut, no way to know who stood there. But it must be faced. Even if it was Simone.
He took the three steps at a run and pulled open the flimsy piece of wood. The Canadian doctor was framed in the doorway, her face lined with weariness, all her heart in her eyes. Alexis —
“You'd better come,” she said. And he didn't ask any questions, just gathered up the little one in her blanket and raced across the churned mud to the medical tent. Simone was there before him, by the side of the cot where his daughter had lain through the early hours of morning, an IV taped into her small wrist. Her hand was on Alexis's forehead, her stethoscope was searching the little girl's chest. His daughter looked spent; her eyes were closed. She was not, Enver thought, even moving. He waited, holding his breath, for Simone to shake her head, to draw the sheet up over his daughters golden hair — for his world to crack apart like a shattered glass.
He'd spent eight hours pacing the hospital tent floor, running his hands through his hair and talking, talking, to the woman with the French name, while friends watched his baby and Alexis spiraled downward into death.
“How will I tell her mother?” he had asked Simone once in despair, and she had looked at him in surprise.
“You're married?”
“Was married. She was killed in a fire. During the civil war. I was supposed to take care of the girls. She'd always wanted a little girl. Someone to dress up, like a doll. I wanted boys, you know? Kids I could play soccer with.”
“Girls play soccer, too.”
He'd nodded distractedly.
“It doesn't matter. I wouldn't trade my girls now. They're all I have left of Ludmila — she was only twenty- eight when she died. And I loved her.”
He had paused, embarrassed to be talking so freely to this woman, who had hundreds of other children to care for, other parents to hear. But Simone was sitting quite still, her eyes on his face; his confessions hadn't bored her.
“Your wife must have been beautiful,” she had told him. “Your girls certainly are.”
“She named them after movie stars. From an American television show. Dynasty — you know it? She wanted everything for Alexis. Everything she never had. And for a while, we were doing so well. I had my practice, she had her apartment house — she inherited it from her father. Six apartments, six families. None of them survived the fire.”
He had spoken without emotion; he had told this story too many times to feel it anymore.
Simone had risen and gone to a small boy turning restlessly in the cot next to his daughter's.
“How did you escape?”
“I was in Budapest. Attending a constitutional-reform seminar sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department. My mother brought the girls to me for a holiday — she had never been to Hungary herself — but Ludmila couldn't get away. When war broke out, she called and begged me to stay. She wanted the girls to be safe.”
He had looked directly at Simone, his eyes bright as if with fever.
“I never saw her again.”
“But you and your daughters survived.”
“So we could die here” he had retorted. It was the first sign of real bitterness he'd allowed himself to feel.
Simone had ignored it. She pressed a cold cloth against Alexis's forehead.
“You're a lawyer, then.”
“That doesn't mean much in Kosovo. Law has nothing to do with survival.”
“But someday, you'll use what you learned in that seminar. Don't give up hope, Enver.”
Alexis had whimpered in the cot, and Simone felt for her pulse. There were so many children now. One hundred and fifty-three more had arrived at daybreak.
They lay in the tent with barely eight inches between their cots, some on pallets on the dirt floor. They moved into beds when another child died “Why aren't you getting it?” he had asked her abruptly.
“This disease. Why is it just the kids?”
“I don't know. Maybe it doesn't strike adults. Or maybe, if you've had the more common forms of the disease or been inoculated against them, you're immune. We know so little about this strain we don't even know how the epidemic started. Or why the disease strikes boys far more savagely than girls every gland in the boys' bodies is swollen. But a German lab has been studying the virus intensively and has come up with a new vaccine. We expect some German medical teams to fly in any day and begin inoculation.”
“A vaccine? Specifically for this strain? How did they make it so fast?”
“I don't know.” Her eyes met his, and the agony in them was like a lash.
“Enver, I'd urge you to have your youngest vaccinated.”
“Do you think it's safe?”
“I think it can't be worse than what we've got.”
He had thought about it all morning, while Alexis worsened; he had carried the idea of a vaccine back to his shelter when Krystle needed a nap. He had fallen asleep despite his best intentions in the quiet of that room, thinking of mumps, of killing strains. And while he slept, his elder daughter's time had run out.
He took a step now toward Alexis's cot and reached for her hand. It was cold — colder than his own, which was clammy with fear and raw weather. If only she would open her eyes one last time and look at him if only he could hear her say his name... Simone shook her head and removed her stethoscope from Alexis's chest.
He would not look at Simone. He would not let the glass shatter, and with it, all the world —
“I'm so sorry, Ludmila,” he whispered to his dead wife. And buried his face in their daughter's sweat-soaked curls.
