Hit in the center of the chest by a bullet, Alex’s body was moved there from the Métro’s Odéon station by ambulance. Her body was motionless beneath a sheet and a blanket, covered to the shoulders. Medics on the scene looked at the wound and tried to close off the blood, but given the force of the hit, they shook their heads.
The ambulance technicians who transported Alex to the American Hospital saw that her vital signs were almost nonexistent. When her heart stopped, electrical cardioversion was applied. Electrode paddles were applied to her chest and a single shock was administered.
She was unconscious at the time, somewhere between life and death, prepared to go either way. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, her heart flickered again. If she had been gone-wherever souls go to-she was back.
Or trying to get back.
She was admitted to an emergency room, where the bizarre nature of her injury was properly assessed for the first time. The bullet that had hit her had ricocheted off the Métro wall. Its impact had been greatly defused. And somehow, in the center of her chest, right above her breastbone, the bullet had scored a direct hit on the stone pendant that she had bought in Barranco Lajoya.
The stone had broken under the impact of the bullet, but it had defused the damage from the fired round. While there was a flesh wound and severe trauma to the breastbone, including a hairline fracture, the bullet had not broken through beyond the flesh at the surface. Contrary to how it appeared in the Métro, it had not entered her body.
Detectives who inspected the crime scene in the hours after the shooting found the spent bullet in the center of the tracks, in the spot to which it had been deflected.
The stone had saved her life.
On her first day in the hospital, she lay by herself in a private room under heavy sedation. She was groggy. She was on heavy pain-relief medication and an IV fed into her arm. Her chest throbbed. Under the bandages, the skin of her chest had turned the color of an eggplant. Every breath hurt. She was afraid to look at her wound. And above all, she was surprised to be alive.
On the second day she felt better. It was only then that she wondered whether anyone knew where she was, much less who she was. She inquired of one of her nurses.
The nurse informed her that people from the American embassy had arranged for her care, including the private room. Nonetheless, the pain and discomfort persisted. She was too distracted mentally and zonked out on medication even to read. She left the television on 24/7, the remote control at her bedside. All she had the energy to do was flick stations back and forth, the usual French fare-NYPD Blue reruns dubbed in French and a cheesy Gallic clone of The Jerry Springer Show were her grudging favorites-plus odd channels from CNN to Al Jazeera.
Her third day in the hospital was the first day when visitors were allowed. Mark McKinnon, the CIA station chief from Rome, was the first to see her.
McKinnon pulled a chair toward her bed and sat down.
“How are you feeling, LaDuca?” he asked.
“Surprised to be here.”
“You got very lucky,” he said. “Somebody sure is watching over you.”
“You could conclude that,” she said. Her chest still hurt. There were small burns where the electrode paddles had been applied. “Sometimes I wonder.”
She was also still groggy. The medication remained at its original strength.
“A bullet on a ricochet can kill someone,” McKinnon said. “Apparently you had some sort of pendant there on your chest? That’s what the doctors told me.”
“A pendant that I got in South America,” she said. “Very hard stone. It took the brunt of the impact. So they tell me.”
McKinnon was shaking his head.
“Lucky,” he said.
“Lucky,” she answered.
“What are the odds of that happening?” he asked.
“You tell me. I don’t have any answers anymore.”
He smiled and gave her shoulder a pat.
“I understand you’ll be here for a little while more,” he said. “Just rest, get your strength back. Eventually, the police are going to want to ask you questions. But we’re taking care of everything. Back channels.”
“Back channels,” she said. “Wonderful way to do things.”
He didn’t miss her irony.
“Banner year you’re having, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said.
He paused. “There’s still some outstanding business,” he said. “Yuri Federov may be dead. We don’t know. We have to assume that he’s still out there somewhere. You’re not completely safe until he’s completely out of business.”
“Killed, you mean.”
“That’s another word for it.”
“And that all ties into Kiev, doesn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Which in turn ties in how and why my fiancé got killed.”
He nodded.
“Someone betrayed me, didn’t they?” she said. “That’s why Maurice got killed. And Cerny. There’s a traitor somewhere on our side, and he’s got allegiances to the Ukrainian mob.”
“That’s a subject for future discussion,” McKinnon said.
“So the answer is yes?” she said.
McKinnon nodded.
“We had a leak in Washington,” McKinnon said. “Poor Mike Cerny. Cynical chap that he was, he hadn’t vetted all his assistants as well as he should have. Everything was getting to Federov almost before it happened.”
“Olga?” Alex asked.
“You said it. I didn’t.”
Alex shook her head in disgust.
“Anyway. Olga is someone you won’t be seeing again.”
“Arrested?”
“The opposition got to her first.” McKinnon said. “But we’ll discuss this later.”
“When I’m healthy enough,” she said, “we’ll go back at Federov, assuming he’s alive. And we’ll find any other traitor too. How’s that?”
“Federov is out of business, at least,” McKinnon said.
“How do you mean that?”
“He was deposed from his own businesses by his own peers,” McKinnon said. “That’s how it always works in the underworld. He drew too much attention to himself. If he’s not dead, he’s in deep cover. Like back into one of his priest outfits or something.”
“I’m sure,” she said, not really meaning it.
“One thing’s certain. You’ll never see him again.”
“I’m grateful,” she said.
“Federov’s still on our lists, though. Retired or not, if he’s alive we’ll go after him. But as I said, it’s no longer your problem, Alex.”
There was a pause while she remained silent. McKinnon stood.
“The French have posted an extra pair of their police in the lobby,” he explained. “Policiers en civil. Plainclothes. They look like a pair of bouncers. Then we’ve posted two of our own as guards on this floor also. Don’t know whether you’ve seen them.”
“I haven’t been out of this room since they wheeled me in,” she said.
“Of course.”
She gave everything some thought.
“I have some unfinished business in Venezuela too,” she said. “Barranco Lajoya. Those people. I’d like to do something.”
“Tough to accomplish much in that part of the world, isn’t it?” he commiserated.
She shook her head, the images of the carnage relentlessly replaying themselves in her mind’s eye. “Before I die, I want to go back and do what I can for those people. They deserve better.”
“You know what your boss, Mr. Collins, would say,” McKinnon said out of nowhere. “He’d say that’s where Jesus would be. Comforting the downtrodden and the desperate.”
She nodded. It suddenly hurt too much to speak.
“We’ve had discussions with Mr. Collins about Barranco Lajoya, by the way. Something may already be in the works. He’s willing to chip in heavily on an international relief effort.”