Like the one she was living herself. Otto was snoring on Olga scrounging for food in the kite, Otto was snoring on Olga Teciak's couch. Vaclav was scrounging for food in the kitchen. Tonio was bent over a laptop computer, absorbed in the numbers he was crunching;
Michael stood guard before the bathroom door. Mian Krucevic pulled the carved antique chair close to the television screen and watched the evening news. A restless anger fretted at his entrails.
The lead story was Vice President Payne's disappearance. The White House refused to release any information about her captors or their demands, citing the sensitivity of the issue, but media speculation was rife. Most of the world's terrorism experts had deconstructed the Brandenburg hit and concluded it was entirely engineered to mask the political abduction. The FBI was analyzing footage of the helicopter's occupants to determine their identity, but the German police maintained that the terrorists were Turkish. An intensive interrogation of Berlin's resident alien population was under way. A curfew had been imposed on Turkish neighborhoods. The image shifted to the Brandenburg Gate, where police guards in black and red and gold surrounded the bomb crater.
Tourists crowded to the international lens, and the Volksturm looked hostile.
Eleven
Bratislava, 6:37 p.m.
“Michael,” Krucevic said over his shoulder. “Bring Jozsef. He should see this. Hurry, before the footage ends.”
It was important that the boy understand the effects of violence the political as well as the actual. What Krucevic had caused to be done in Berlin was a direct challenge to every Berliner's comfort. Krucevic had brought fear into all their lives; he had returned them to the state of nature, when every day survived must be considered a form of victory. Jozsef should be made to understand what power truly was.
“Look at that,” he said, sensing the boy behind him.
No response.
He looked around and saw his son's white face, Michaels hand on his shoulder.
Both were staring at a blond woman whose camera was pointed at a Volksturm guard; the guard was screaming at her in German. In another instant the uniformed man might snatch the camera away.
“Americans,” Krucevic said bitterly. “They behave like children wherever they go.”
He moved to turn off the set, but Michael said, “Wait.”
It sounded oddly like an order. There was a set expression on his ashen face, an expression Krucevic had seen only once before, when Michael was on the verge of killing a man. Looking at him, Krucevic forgot to be insulted and said quickly, “What?”
“Bombs in Prague. There were bombs in Prague after we left.” The fixed look wavered and vanished.
“The Czechs called for German assistance. Could be why the border was tight.”
Krucevic considered this. It would be beyond Fritz Voekl's control, of course, what the Czechs actually did. But a miscalculation nonetheless.
“Would you like to fly tonight, Jozsef?” he asked the boy playfully. “A small plane, something Vaclav can manage? If you're very good, I'll let you take the controls.”
His son gave him a look so dark and glassy with fever that he was appalled.
Krucevic rose to his feet, hand outstretched, but the boy's eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the floor.
“Get him to the woman's bed,” Krucevic snapped at Michael. “He's sick. Can't you see that he's sick?”
Without a word, Michael scooped up the child and carried him away. Fear jangled in Krucevic's brain. He bit back a curse and went in search of his antibiotics.
The little girl named Annicka was huddled in a corner of the bedroom with a blanket, murmuring to a doll. Olga hovered in the doorway, one hand clutching the neck of her robe tightly, as though the men might rape her. It was ludicrous, Krucevic thought as he bent over his unconscious son. Whatever beauty the woman had once possessed, whatever had attracted Vaclav Slivik, was long since gone. She was too thin, too tired. Too beaten in spirit to be anything but abysmally depressing. He slid the needle into Jozsef's vein and sent a small prayer with it.
Olga came to stand silently beside him.
“What do you want?”
She swallowed nervously. Jozsef moaned and his head turned once on the pillow.
He was still unconscious. If the anthrax had re surged … if the antibiotic wasn't working .. . But it must be working. He, Krucevic, had designed it himself.
“Well?” he asked Olga.
“I want to send my daughter to my sister's.”
“No.”
“But Annicka goes there whenever I work!”
“You're not working tonight.”
Her head drooped like a condemned woman's.
“Mian,” said Vaclav from somewhere behind her. “There will be talk. Olga has a concert tonight. If she does not appear, the phone will start ringing. There will be knocks on the door, explanations — ”
“Yes, yes,” Krucevic snapped. “When is the performance?”
Hope flared in her eyes.
“Eight o'clock. I usually leave at six-thirty.”
He rose from the bedside and studied her face. Olga's fingers clutched at the robe convulsively. He reached out, irritated by the terror, and took her icy hand in his.
“Then go,” he said. “Do everything you normally would. Except for the child. She stays here until you return. Understand?”
“But my sister — ”
“Tell her Annicka is sick. Tell her you have asked a neighbor to sit with her. Tell her anything but the truth.” His grip tightened on Olga's wrist. “If you tell the truth — to your sister or anyone — your little girl dies.”
Olga's eyes dilated, then shifted imploringly to Vaclav's face. Krucevic released her hand.
“Get dressed,” he said.
Sophie lay alone on the tile floor of the bathroom and stared at the ceiling.
The patch of damp she had seen upon first waking had darkened with the failing light. It seemed to have grown, too — it was growing still, as she watched, like a visible manifestation of some inward cancer, the edges creeping remorselessly into the dull gray plaster.
A wave of heat rolled over her. Was her mind betraying her? Was she getting delirious? The point was to focus on something other than herself, something beyond her fever, beyond the room. She searched her brain for a safe finger hold a pit in the rock she might cling to.
Then something, something — twilight and black night .. .
She shuddered, coughed. And tasted blood.
The door opened.
