“Brenna Rease,” he said. “You are truly remarkable.”
Her hand froze under Daniel’s jacket.
He knew who she was. She hadn’t said two words aloud since he’d entered the room. Just bebe, spoken in Kavsak. She hadn’t knowingly divulged anything about herself or Daniel. Her camera wasn’t in the apartment, and her press ID and travel papers were in her pocket.
She recalled, now, that Maric had spoken to her in English. You are as intelligent and courageous as I suspected. He knew all along, and she had been too fragmented to notice.
He waited, no doubt registering her surprise.
“He needs a doctor,” she said. Not that Maric was about to drop everything and drive them all over to Luc’s infirmary at the airport.
“My son did a good job, neutralizing the threat.”
“You must be proud.”
“He did one thing right—two. He did not shoot you.”
Maric pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, shook one loose, and offered it to her. When she didn’t respond, he shrugged, and stuck it between his lips. He struck a match, lit the tobacco, and inhaled. He gave the match a shake, and used it to point at Daniel. “You love him.”
She lifted a shoulder. “So, you know my weakness.”
“I could help him.”
The statement was bait. She wouldn’t take it.
“Sure,” she said, her eyes and voice both level. “Knock yourself out. Maybe you have a CAT Scan out in the truck.”
Maric chuckled and flicked the dead match across the floor. “You are so much your father’s daughter. Any other woman would be begging by now.”
“You hate the sound of crying.”
He studied the glowing point of the cigarette. “You don’t dare hope, do you? Not even for your lover.”
Especially not for him.
He laughed, a short derisive sound with no mirth. “You have been here too long. You do not believe in the goodness of man.”
“What do you want, Captain Maric?”
He looked at her with surprise. He was the interrogator, not her. But he answered: “A few minutes with the woman who filmed Cavic at the market?”
What was he doing? Collecting anecdotes for when he handed her over to Cavic? God, was there a bounty on her head? She appraised him, decided he wasn’t after money. He was a law unto himself. Hadn’t he, without a sign of emotion, just served as Dragoslav’s judge, jury, and executioner? Slaying Dragoslav wasn’t the act of a man tied to a chain of command.
He was a rogue.
She tested her hypothesis. “So what do you think? Did I capture your guy in a good light?”
Maric spat. “Cavic is a barbarian. He has dragged my city into the fourteenth century. He has reduced our lives to ethnic and identity politics.”
“Your city? You’re from Kavsak?
“Born two kilometers from here.”
“But you’re shelling it. Attacking your own people. Starving them.”
He sucked in smoke, spoke as he released it. “I fire on my own cousins, on my childhood friends. The apex of absurdity in an absurd war.”
“Why aren’t you fighting the siege, instead of being part of it?” As long as he was talking, he wasn’t shooting. Maybe she could establish a connection with him and persuade him to let Daniel and the children go. She herself would never be released. As the daughter of the U.S. Special Envoy, her political value was too high. She was spoils of war. The idea of rescuing Daniel and the children seemed crazy. But if Maric meant to execute them, wouldn’t he have done it by now? Didn’t he have a neighborhood to occupy? She chided herself for her spurt of hope. Maybe Maric was just relishing the preamble to his unique judicial process.
He squatted, leaning against the near wall. “Kavsak is a diverse city—but it is also the seat of Fundamentalist power. They wish to eradicate us. They tried, you know, after World War II. Hundreds of thousands of us were exterminated. Our bodies floated down the river. They seek a totalitarian, clerical rule. Have you read the city president’s book? He seeks a religious empire.”
She had read the book, and was familiar with the inflammatory passages, but she wanted to hear what he had to say. Know thy captor.
“The Fundamentalists have made Nationalists out to be the villains. First, they hold a referendum—”
“—which your community boycotted—”
He waved his cigarette dismissively. “The referendum was not a democratic act. Inside the city of Kavsak, we were a minority, outnumbered three-to-two. Of course a vote would come back with the results they desired. The international community recognized the president’s government. Ignored the ethnic minority inside the city. So we took the militia, moved into the mountains, and became Nationalists. We have to defend ourselves, defend our open society against clerical fascism.”
And just like that, the so-called aggressor was redefined as the victim.
Maric, however, was at least partly right. Balkans carried history like a bag of grudges. The past was a labyrinthine path of grievance and counter-grievance. All the factions had blood on their hands.
She glanced at Daniel. Each minute that passed placed him at greater risk.
“The Separatist-Fundamentalist coalition forbids civilians to leave the city,” Maric went on. “They loot their neighbors. They shell the airport to close the airlift and drive up the prices of black market goods. They set up movable artillery at the hospital, fire at us, then conceal themselves. When we fire back, we are blamed for targeting civilians.”
Fantastic as his arguments might sound, they were not entirely improbable, either. Perfidy knew no bounds.
“I am a man without a country, forced to take sides, when such a choice was never necessary. The people in my city were living in peace before Cavic and the city president came with their oratory and separated us like species of animals. All to feed their own desire for power.”
Maric was a complex and tormented man, she realized, an intellectual trying to make sense of chaos.
“And so I ask: What is the truth?”
Truth, she had learned during her thirty months in Kavsak—and during her time in Israel—did not raise a clean flag and announce its whereabouts. It was hidden, desecrated, twisted, transformed as it moved from hand to hand. “Truth is rooted in a point of view,” she answered.
Maric dragged pensively on his cigarette.
She chafed Daniel’s hands. She felt rage flaring up inside her like flames, licking at volatile chemicals her body could no longer regulate. HELP HIM! she wanted to scream. FUCK THE TRUTH! THERE’S NO SUCH THING!
But Maric couldn’t abide emotion. He’d seen too much of it. He was as desperate for rational answers as Daniel was for medical care. What good is a man who doesn’t think? he had asked his son. He needed meaning. He needed to understand how his world had come to this, why he was firing on his friends and family, how he came to be sitting in the ruins of another man’s home with a gun in his belt.
And for some insane reason, he thought she could provide insight.
Her, of all people, who after thirty months of living under siege in Kavsak, had unconsciously begun to see the Nationalists as the enemy, the ‘other’.
But she and Maric were the same person.
They both wanted the same thing: enlightenment. They were both adrift, seeking some magical truth that explained everything. All that they had been taught about morality—about good and evil, about justice and humanity, and the value of the individual—had crumbled under the pressure of war. They were both going through the motions, clinging to survival, yielding to the expedience of unfolding events, and trudging on.
They had both become deranged in their quest to understand the incomprehensible.
Maric’s eyes shifted from her to Daniel. “You take no pictures outside of Kavsak.”
“I picked a territory, not sides.”
“What I did, shooting Dragoslav. You saw my intention, but you did not cry out. You
did not object.”
A dark undertow rippled through her. “He shot Mr. Fierce.”
“Mr. Fierce?”
“The baby.” She nodded at Daniel. “Daniel gave him the name. He gave all the children names. He’s a good man. Kind. Gentle.”
“Not like Kavsak men.”
She shrugged. “He hasn’t been here long enough. Given enough time, push him hard enough…he could be lost, too. Let him go, Maric. Let him take the children. He’ll take care of them, I promise you. I know he will.”
Maric ignored her, his thoughts still elsewhere. “You did not warn Dragoslav. You wanted revenge.”
The undertow seized her and pulled her under. “Yes,” she whispered. “I wanted revenge.”
“So. You understand.”
She hung her head. “Yes.”
Maric stood up. “Leave, then. Take the man.” He barked an order for his men to stand down and let her pass.
Brenna sobbed, one deep clutch of emotion. Could it be? Just like that—reprieve? Daniel, safe. And her, too? “The children,” she said. “Let me take the children.”
“No. They are Kavsaks. Their fate is ours.”
“They won’t survive.”
His face closed, dark and fearsome. His hands went to his belt. “This city is six hundred years old.”
“I’ll get them foster parents, Kavsaks living abroad. They can come back when this is over.”
“What kind of Kavsak abandons his city?”
She circled herself with her arms and rocked forward. The children. Squeak. She couldn’t leave them. “Keep me, if you want a hostage.”
“Your argument falls apart. I already have hostages—a whole city full.”
“My life for the children’s, then. If you need blood, take mine.”
He snorted. “Death is too easy. Now, go. You delay me. Other units await us.”
“I can’t leave the children.”
“All right. Stay and take care of the children.” He pulled his gun out of his belt and walked over to Daniel. “But the man dies.”
“No!” she said, terrified. “Stop!”
“Choose. Now,” he said. “I order you to pick a side.”
“Oh, God, Maric, please. You can’t do this! Please—”
“You beg. I cannot stand begging.” He lifted the gun to Daniel’s head.
“No!” she cried. “I’ll take him!”
Maric slowly lowered the pistol.
Brenna crumpled.
“Ah,” he said, straightening. “Now you understand the impossible choice. The next time we meet, we can finish our conversation.”
Brenna lurched down the center of the road, weaving like a drunk, her thighs quivering under one-hundred eighty-five pounds of shifting dead weight. Maric’s men had carried Daniel down the stairs, lifted him onto her shoulders firefighter-style, and left her.
Brilliant flashes of destructive power lit the night sky, deadly strobe lights that alternately blinded her and cast her into darkness. She staggered over the uneven ground, picking a path through the potholes, the chunks of concrete, the garbage.
Grief clutched her, a wringing, body-wide spasm. I left them. I walked out on four babies. Heckle and Jeckle, Grub, and most of all, Squeak, had looked into her eyes and trusted her.
She doubled over, feeling like she was going to vomit.
Daniel’s body shifted. She spread her feet apart, rebalancing. If he slid off, she’d never get him on her shoulders again. Resolutely, she straightened, swaying beneath him. She didn’t know how far she’d come, didn’t know how far she still had to go. She just knew she had to keep placing one foot in front of the other and get him to the airport, to medical care. She had to save him. If he died, she would have lost the children for nothing.
Despair eddied through her like a dark current. She stumbled grimly forward. Dark-windowed ruins lined her procession route, shocked mourners mutely witnessing her final fall from grace.
Leading with her right leg, she searched the ragged pavement with her boot, seeking her next solid foothold. The sky flashed, and her pupils contracted like the iris of a camera lens, turning everything black around her.
The ground disappeared. She pitched forward and fell into a shell hole with a spine-jarring thud. Cold water, pooled at the bottom of the pit, flooded her boots. Daniel’s center of gravity shifted over the tipping point, too heavy to counter-balance. Slowly, like some mythological beast that had been lanced with a final, mortal spear, she folded, one hinged joint at a time, and succumbed to the inexorable pull of the earth. “No!” she roared out, her rump splashing to the bottom of the pit. Oh. God. Damn it. No.
She barely managed to control his descent enough to keep his head from hitting the ground.
Extricating herself from beneath him, she scrambled to his side. He was half-in and half-out of the crater. “Daniel,” she whispered, lifting his bloodied face in her hands. Wake up now and dispel the nightmare.
His head rolled sideways. Moonlight fell across his swollen face.
She gathered him into her arms and tried to lift him. He was too heavy. She had nothing to grab him by—he had no shirt on, and his jacket kept falling open. Her boots scrabbling against the edges of the mortar hole, she climbed out, plopped her butt on the pavement, and bracketed him with her legs. She snaked her hands under his arms, lifted his upper body against her chest, and locked her hands together. She leaned backwards, using the length of her own torso to gain leverage. Straining, she pushed with her feet, her muscles trembling from exertion.
He budged.
Tightening her fists, she heaved herself backwards again. “Move,” she growled, her frustration mounting. Move.
He inched upward, then halted. His jeans had gotten caught on the asphalt rim of the crater. She yanked at the waistband. Unhooked, his weight shifted suddenly, and she lost her grip on him.
Daniel slid downwards, deeper into the hole. She cursed, jumped in, skidded alongside him, cradling his head as she went.
His legs folded into the pool of water, slowing his descent. She staggered awkwardly beside him, barely able to keep her feet beneath herself. His trunk slid sideways like a car leaving the road in a snowstorm, and he came to a rest on the slope of the shell hole.
She stumbled, fell across Daniel, her legs under water like his were. She lunged forward, couldn’t get up. She was too weak, trembling from over-exertion.
Finished.
The eastern sky was getting light. The Herc would be on its way by now. Soon, it would land, unload, and take off again—without Daniel.
She gathered him into her arms as she had once gathered Ari’s lifeless body, and she rocked him, the keening in her chest escaping her, growing louder as the full import of the situation made itself clear.
She saw herself as if from above, spiraling, becoming smaller and smaller, a tiny figure dwarfed by a flashing sky and the violence of man.
She hallucinated.
Heard whispers. A thump into the hole beside her.
Shh.
She felt the brush of fingers. A mirage set its hand on her shoulder. It squatted beside her, face silhouetted against the lightening sky. “Come,” it murmured. “Come with us.”
She turned her head slowly, and blinked, bewildered. Five or six figures, clad in black, AK-47s in their hands, surrounded her and Daniel. She reached out a disbelieving hand.
“Jasha?” she whispered. “Are you real?”
“Yes,” he said, capturing her fingers. “I am here.”
The sight of him, the sweetness of his care, broke over her. The last vestige of her self-control vanished. She broke down, babbling incoherently, her words a senseless torrent about Maric and his men, about Daniel and his head injury, about Mr. Fierce and the other children—and most of all, about trust and betrayal and the infant girl, Squeak.
Shh. Shh, Jasha admonished.
But she couldn’t help herself. She was disintegrating.
A soldier behind her snarled at Ja
sha in Kavsak. She was making too much noise. Drawing attention. They were exposed in the middle of the road.
Jasha nodded, then tipped his head in Daniel’s direction. The men moved in.
“No!” she cried, holding him tighter. “Daniel!”
Jasha put his hand over hers. “It is all right. They will carry him.”
Daniel’s weight came off her. She felt herself lifted to her feet, assisted up the incline of the crater to flat ground.
“Come,” Jasha said, supporting her. “To the airport.”
The men led off, carrying Daniel by his arms and legs like a bagged deer on a pole. His head hung backwards, barely clearing the ground. She stumbled after them, her feet and legs still numb from being immersed in the frigid water.
She followed silently, relying on the support of Jasha’s strong hands. She was exhausted, emotionally depleted. Every step she took felt like the last one she could manage.
Ahead of her, the men halted at an intersection, in the lee of the last of the apartment buildings. A row of abandoned houses stood across from them, all abreast along a straight road. The service road and the airport runway surely lay behind them.
She noticed an old farmhouse standing off to the left, away from the more-recently-built rowhouses.
The men shot across the road, headed toward it.
Brenna searched the sky. Sunrise. They were heading eastward, toward the lightening sky with its whimsically pink clouds. Away from the terminal. “Jasha—”
“I know. Keep going.”
She obeyed. She was in his hands.
The men double-timed it into a wooden shed attached to the farmhouse.
Jasha pulled her alongside and followed them into the darkness. Voices rose excitedly. She heard the scuffle of boots, the clatter of rifles, felt the heavy presence of males crowding a small space. A light came on, narrow as a laser beam, and flashed chaotically across sandbags, ammunition boxes, uniformed Separatists, and Jasha’s scarred face before it was extinguished.
In rapid Kavsak, his edicts unmistakably those of a commander, Jasha issued orders to the men carrying Daniel. The soldiers’ boots thudded heavily over the rough-hewn plank flooring. The men pushed the farmhouse door open and entered.
Day Three Page 28
