She stopped in front of him. “For five points: Kavsaks are forbidden to leave the city. Why?”
Daniel looked around the giant warehouse, his gut spiraling. “Because nothing beats a captive market?”
“Good. For ten: Given that the Nationalists ring the city and control every major route into and out of Kavsak—where do the Marlboros and the French wine, and the Cuban cigars come from? And the answer isn’t the airlift.”
Daniel pondered the question.
“Think, now. The warehouses don’t get shelled.”
The only explanation he could think of was too fantastic. “My God. Collusion with the Nationalists? They besiege the city, then let supplies through for a percentage?”
She started ambling again. “There are rumors of a tunnel—that millions of Euros worth of supplies are brought in through it.”
“So how do you tell the good guys from the bad?”
“Ah,” she said. “Good question.”
“Wait a sec.” He stopped, confused. “Coming down Mt. Ottoman, all those checkpoints were manned by uniformed Separatist troops. I don’t get the link between the Mafia and the Separatists.”
“They want the same thing.”
“Control of Kavsak?”
She nodded and took the corner into an aisle with rows of flats piled nearly to the ceiling. “Check these out,” she said and turned smoothly, panning the huge display with the micro-DVR.
Food parcels. Thousands of them. Labeled UN Humanitarian Aid.
“Each of these boxes contains food for a month—cooking oil, canned mackerel, corned beef, sugar, feta cheese, and concentrated milk,” she said. “The mackerel and feta cheese are the most popular items right now.”
For sale. Aid was supposed to be distributed free.
An armed soldier with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth saw Brenna, dismissed her at first glance, then shot her a second, more careful look. He started over, eyeing her like a movie fan intent on confirming he’d just spotted a major star.
Daniel stiffened. Heard her quick intake of breath. Her face had been all over the news recently in connection with the market footage. Maybe the Ukrainians had satellite TV. Maybe the Mafia could turn her over to Cavic for a pretty penny.
Brenna held up two fingers before the soldier confronted her. “Two UN boxes,” she said in Kavsak.
The soldier grunted. “Two?” he asked, in Ukrainian. He held up two fingers in mirror image of her own.
“Dvije.” She wagged her two again, replying in Kavsak.
Daniel reached for his wallet, but Brenna pulled a wad of wrinkled bills out of her side pocket first. Without haggling, as Daniel had noticed other patrons doing, she handed them over. Judging by the bundle she gave him, two was a large order.
The soldier hefted the boxes into Daniel’s arms.
Apparently there was no curb service.
Brenna moved away as if she still had more shopping to do. “Time to go,” she whispered, when he caught up to her.
His thoughts exactly. Even after the warehouse door closed behind them, Daniel couldn’t shake off the feeling he was about to be shot in the back.
Jasha was leaning against the Golf, a new tire and rim in place. Seeing them coming, he jettisoned his cigarette and helped Daniel stow the boxes in the trunk.
“A wee giftie for your Mom,” Brenna told Jasha, the shake in her voice belying her off-hand air.
“Two? Thank you.”
As they circled the car to get in, a man with a missing leg and a pasty complexion hobbled toward them on makeshift crutches, and accosted Daniel. Speaking rapidly, the man pointed to a woman standing in a cluster of over-painted, under-dressed women that he hadn’t noticed before.
Jasha looked over the top of the car at Daniel and translated. “Prostitute? She can come to the hotel if you like.”
He shook his head.
Jasha waved the man off and got in the car.
As Jasha backed up, Daniel asked: “Was the guy on crutches a pimp?”
Jasha gave him a puzzled look. “Pimp?”
Brenna answered from the back. “He’s that woman’s husband. He negotiates the price.”
Daniel laid his head back on the seat rest. Kavsak offered every imaginable vice and degradation. “Is this where Geoff Garrett gets his heroin?”
“Probably,” Jasha said. “Heroin is plentiful. Lower price than before war.”
Jasha pulled out of the barrack gate and hit the gas.
Driving at breakneck speed, they were at the hotel within the half hour.
“Damn!” Daniel jerked forward in his seat and peered upwards. “It’s on fire!”
“Incendiary bomb,” Jasha replied matter-of-factly, gunning the engine across the open parking lot. “Only top floor.”
Daniel glanced at Brenna. She looked equally unconcerned.
“We get shelled all the time. Preferentially, even. There’re no guests above the fifth floor, nothing left to burn up there. Anyway, the hotel has a fire crew and emergency water if it gets bad. Meantime, it’s free heat.”
The Golf shot down the parking garage ramp, made a screeching turn, and stopped just short of the wall. Jasha turned the key and pocketed it.
Upstairs, a pall of smoke drifted through the lobby, but otherwise it was business as usual.
Jasha said he was heading off to check in with Liberation, the city newspaper, in case there was anything he could contribute. Before going, though, he wordlessly held his hand out to Brenna.
She put the camera and the gear bag into it. “Give Louie the memory cards, would you? From the micro-DVR, too, don’t forget. Satellite to EBS, attention Sam Chisolm. I’ll get everything back from you tomorrow morning.”
Jasha nodded. “Goodnight,” he said to them both, and headed toward one of the high-tech shanties lining the lobby walls.
Daniel gave Brenna a nod, turned toward the front desk. He still hadn’t picked up his key. For all the use he was getting out of the room.
“Wait,” she said. “Dinner. You’ve scarcely eaten all day.”
“I’ll have something sent to my room.” Astonishingly, the hotel still offered room service.
“Have dinner with me.”
“I’ve had enough of this day, Brenna.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Work can wait ’til morning.”
“It isn’t about work.”
He stopped. She wanted to talk about the fiasco in the hospital stairwell.
“Please, Daniel.”
His patience frayed. “It was a mistake. It never should have happened. It won’t happen again. Do we really need a whole dinner hour to say that?”
“I have feelings too,” she said quietly. “And those aren’t them.”
Chapter 12
The Kavsak Holiday Inn originally had two south-facing restaurants off its lobby, but after the siege began and river views became lethal, they were closed. Now guests were served in a windowless former conference room located on the mezzanine. The room contained a couple dozen tables dressed with shabby linens, and—proof of the hotel’s determination to carry on as usual—a pianist was playing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ as Brenna preceded Daniel to a table at the far end of the room.
She sat across the flickering candle from him. He looked exhausted. She laced her fingers in her lap, curbing the impulse to fiddle with her silverware.
She’d been emotionally numb for three years, bizarrely comforted by her lack of feelings. And now, with the stealth of a sunrise, this quietly extraordinary man had opened a rift in her with no more than his constancy and kindness.
After Ari, she thought she was finished, too broken to feel love again. And yet, miraculously, she did. Here in Kavsak, where love could hold you hostage like nothing else.
The waiter arrived, greeted her by name, and began describing the evening’s fare. She cut him off. “Just bring two specials and bottled water,” she said in Kavsak. He left and, belated
ly, she realized she hadn’t given Daniel a chance to consider other options. She was already making a mess of things. “I’m sorry. I just ordered the nightly special. Do you want something different?” Not that there was an extensive menu.
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
He was so quiet, so still. But she had no idea what to say. She knew she had to tell him who Ari was, and why she’d blurted out his name without realizing it. But Ari was complicated. Not just because of the photo and the Pulitzer that followed it, but because he had been so dear to her, and she was so conflicted about her actions after he died.
She’d never spoken to anyone, not even Luc, about her last minutes with Ari—and still, the whole world had an opinion about what she’d done. Most people characterized Ari as no more than a plaything to her, another lover in a long string of lovers. People whispered that she took advantage of his death to increase her fame and snag herself a Pulitzer. She hadn’t submitted her photo to the prize committee—her editor had done that. She hadn’t wanted the prize when it was awarded. She didn’t list the Pulitzer on her curriculum vitae. She had donated the prize money to a peace foundation in Israel and put it behind her.
When she had tried to explain the truth to Rachel, Ari’s foster niece, Rachel condemned her for exposing him to ridicule. Ari was a career soldier. He had dedicated his life to his country’s security, she said. And now his enemies would mock a great warrior for having died with his pants open and his dick out. If Brenna hadn’t taken the picture, that vulnerability would have remained in the family and Ari would not have been subject to ridicule by his enemies.
That much was true.
As much as Brenna hated Ari’s profession, she understood his underlying convictions. His entire extended family had been extirpated in concentration camps. He was determined never to allow such a thing to happen again. She respected his willingness to protect other people’s families. His work had defined him, and he believed it to be honorable.
A photo that portrayed a fragile warrior betrayed that. Or so Rachel and half the world believed.
What Brenna didn’t know was whether it was ever wrong to capture the truth.
Or if the senseless loss, the fragile humanity that the photo depicted would have been more clearly seen, if it had been taken by anyone other than her.
The waiter returned and set their plates down. Daniel looked at his dinner and his face fell. Mackerel and feta cheese. UN rations.
“Eat anyway,” she said. “It’s what there is.” They were hungry and there were no alternatives. Everyone in Kavsak was complicit.
He reluctantly picked up his fork.
They ate in silence.
When the waiter came to clear away the plates, she pulled a handful of wrinkled bills out of her front pocket, paid him, and asked in Kavsak that he leave them alone.
“I’m sorry about today,” she told Daniel softly. “I wish I could undo the hurt I caused you.”
He wordlessly turned a spoon between his fingers.
Great. She could have said that in the lobby. He deserved the full explanation. She began again. “You remember that woman in the market yesterday? Not the one who was raped. The one you didn’t want me to tape?”
Something else he was displeased with her for, she thought. But, yes, his sharp glance told her, of course he remembered.
She lifted a shoulder, let it fall in a half-hearted shrug. “Three years ago, that was me. Making that awful sound.”
Her mind drifted back. Ari worked covertly. He disappeared for days or even weeks at a time, never revealing where he had been or what he had done. When he came home he was troubled, full of conflicted feelings that she helped him tame. Usually with sex. Intense sex that rooted him in her world again.
The last night they were together, a military bus dropped him at a stop near their apartment. Ari had called ahead, asked that she meet him when he arrived. She walked the few blocks and was at the stop when the bus pulled up. He looked wild that night, half-crazed by whatever he had participated in. He needed her desperately, couldn’t wait to get home, and pulled her into a doorway. She didn’t put him off. She let him lift her skirt and forge the connection he so urgently needed.
Daniel shifted in his chair, waiting for her to continue.
“In Tel Aviv,” she added, giving him the rest of the pieces he needed to connect the dots. “I wailed over an Israeli Colonel who was killed by a car bomb.”
“The man in the Pulitzer?”
“Ari,” she corrected. He had a name. “Ari Rosen.”
His head came up. “Is it true that—just before—you two were…”
“Yes.”
He took his eyeglasses off and rubbed his eyes.
“I…Well, with you, today…It was my first time with a man since that night.”
“So it was some sort of flashback.”
“No. I knew I was in that stairwell. With you.”
“And still.”
“He wasn’t just some guy, Daniel. He was my husband.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You were married?”
His incredulity stung. No one pictured her as the faithful type, capable of being a devoted life mate. Only as a wanton, promiscuous woman. Which, admittedly, she had briefly been in her youth. “Few people know. We married privately, kept it to a small circle.” She didn’t even tell her father. Her brother James and his partner Gary were the only members of her family she’d invited to the ceremony. “I was crazy in love with him.”
“So you fantasized I was him.”
“No! I thought—foolishly—that I could have the physical contact without—” She broke off. She was making it worse. Even to her own ears, it sounded like stud service.
He took the napkin off his lap and set it on the table. “Well. Thanks for the explanation.”
“Daniel, wait!” The urgency in her voice caught him before he stood up. “I’m trying to say that I was afraid of feeling—”
“What,” he demanded.
Love.
She dropped her head in her hands, miserably shook it. “Jesus. Just afraid of feeling.”
Tch. She heard a rustle, a shift, a long, deep breath.
“Ari taught me not to separate my heart from my body,” she said, lifting her eyes. “He said that no matter how scared I was, I had to keep my heart open. If I couldn’t trust the man enough to do that, then I wasn’t with the right one. Today, with you, what he said…it was just on my mind. That’s all. I’m sorry.”
He eased her hands away from her face and studied her. “And how did you do with that?”
She shrugged. “His lesson stuck.”
“Ah, Bren.” He brushed the backs of his fingertips up her wrists, took her hands, folded them into his own. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
In Kavsak? It was the worst.
“Oho!” Geoff Garrett boomed, attracting the attention of the entire dining room. He was headed toward them, swaying dangerously, stumbling over his own feet. “Regard the couple. Holding hands. What say, Danny Boy? Have I won the pool? Did you fuck her yet?”
Brenna felt her face ignite. The piano music halted. The room fell silent.
“You’re a pig,” Daniel said savagely.
“But a rich pig, now. Big pot o’ money riding on that girlie’s sex life. And I believe I just won it.”
“Stop,” Daniel commanded. “Right now.”
Garrett snorted defiantly, making rough sounds in his throat and nose, imitating a pig.
Brenna reeled in disgust, catching a whiff of old vomit on him.
Geoff’s noise suddenly morphed into a bubbling sound. His eyes widened with surprise. He heaved. Bright red blood spewed from his mouth.
Daniel cursed and rocketed from his chair.
“No!” she shouted, leaping after him. “Don’t touch him!” She grabbed him and pushed him away from the convulsing man on the floor.
Daniel protested, trying to push past her to help Geoff.
“He has A
IDS!” she said. “Don’t touch him. There’s nothing you can do. He’s been dead for a long time.”
Daniel’s horrified expression told her he had gotten the point. She spun to the room. “Nobody touch him. You need gloves. You could become infected.” A waiter who had approached Geoff jumped back, out of splash zone.
Daniel approached Garrett cautiously and squatted as close to him as he dared, resting his forearm on his knee. “You’ve had enough, Geoff,” he said in a calming voice. “Don’t fight it. Let go. Be peaceful.”
It took Garrett three interminable minutes to die.
When it was over, the veteran journalists in the dining room picked up their forks again. Brenna asked the waiter to beckon the concierge. While she waited, she pulled two chairs over, patted the seat next to her, and sat with Daniel in quiet vigil over Garrett’s body.
“You probably can’t imagine who he started out as,” Daniel said.
She shook her head. “Too much time between the man you knew and the one I did.”
“He started out so idealistically. How could such an extreme transformation happen? I mean, how can we trust our core identities if life can alter us so much?”
She wasn’t sure. Just knew that idealists fell the hardest.
“What do you think happened—him bleeding out like that?”
“Esophageal varices, my guess. Alcoholics get ’em.”
He lifted his eyebrows in silent question.
“Like varicose veins, except in the throat. They become fragile and can burst suddenly. Probably when he was making the pig sounds, he—”
“How do you know something like that?”
“I helped my brother James study for his medical boards. I picked up a few things.”
“So how’s that listed in the textbooks? Death by Pig Sounds?”
She chuckled.
He tried to smother a laugh.
She clamped her hand over her mouth. “Oh. This is so inappropriate,” she snorted.
He laughed until his sides hurt—until he dropped his head into his hands and groaned. Sometimes laughter was just this side of tears.
Day Three Page 18
