She signed the agreements, took the car keys, and asked for a map. Ten minutes later she and the two bodyguards, Samuel and Max, went out to the parking lot to find the car. It was tiny and looked battered. The two men barely fit into the car, as Christianna slipped easily into the backseat with her backpack, grateful that she was small. Samuel started the car, as Max opened the map. From what the woman at the car rental had said, they had a thirty-mile drive ahead, and would probably arrive at eleven o'clock that night. Samuel was driving, and once in the parking lot, they had taken their weapons out of the bag they'd checked, and put them on. Max loaded them for both of them, as they drove out of the parking lot, and Christianna watched. She had no qualms about guns, and had been around them all her life. Her bodyguards were useless to her without them. She had even been taught to fire weapons herself, and was an unusually good shot, better than her brother, who found weapons offensive, although he liked the social aspects of duck and grouse hunting and went often.
They were starving by the time they left the airport, and stopped for dinner halfway through the trip in a small restaurant by the roadside. Samuel spoke a few words of Russian, but mostly they pointed at what others were eating, and sat down to a simple, rugged meal. The other diners were mostly truck drivers, traveling at night, and the pretty young blonde and two powerful healthy-looking men were instantly noticeable among them. They would have been even more so if any of them had even imagined that she was a princess. But all she looked like was a pretty young girl, in jeans, the heavy workboots she'd had in Berkeley, a thick sweater, and a parka. She had her blond hair pulled back. The men were similarly dressed and had a military look about them. Others would have guessed easily that they were security of some kind, but no one questioned them here. After eating, they paid and drove on. They noticed a number of Daewoo minivans on the road that were used as shared taxis and were called “Marshrutkas,” Christianna learned later. They were a favorite form of transportation.
Unable to read the signs and confused by the map, they took several wrong turns and arrived at their destination at nearly midnight. They were quickly stopped by a roadblock manned by Russian soldiers in riot gear. They were wearing helmets, face masks, and carrying machine guns, as they questioned why Christianna and her guards were there. Christianna spoke up from the backseat and said in German that they were looking for the Red Cross representatives in order to work with them. The sentry hesitated, told them in halting German to wait, and consulted his superiors, who were conferring at a short distance. One of them talked to him, and then approached the car himself.
“You're Red Cross workers?” he asked, frowning at them, and looking at them intently with suspicion. He wasn't sure what they were, but they didn't look like terrorists to him. He had a sixth sense for that, which told him that the threesome in the Yugo were there for the reason they said.
“We're volunteers,” Christianna said distinctly, and he hesitated, continuing to look them over. Nothing he saw set off red flags for him.
“From where?” The last thing he wanted was tourists wandering into the mess they already had on their hands. Like the first man they had talked to, he looked tired. It was the second day of the siege, and a dozen more children had been killed that afternoon, and dumped in the schoolyard, which had demoralized everyone. Two others trying to escape had been shot. The entire situation was a copycat event of the similarly awful hostage crisis that had happened several years before in Beslan, in the same region of North Ossetia. This was nearly an exact duplicate, on a slightly smaller scale. But the death toll was rising daily, and it wasn't over yet.
“We're from Liechtenstein,” she said clearly. “I am. The two men are Swiss. We're all neutrals,” she reminded him, and he nodded again. She had no idea if it would make any difference or not, but she thought it couldn't hurt to remind him.
“Passports?” The guard in the driver's seat handed them to him, and he had the same reaction as the customs official to Christianna's. “Yours has no surname,” he told her, sounding annoyed, as though it were a mistake she had made in the passport office when she got it. But this time she didn't want to hand him the letter, she didn't want people in the area knowing that she was there, or making a fuss about it.
“I know. My country does that sometimes. For women,” she added, but he remained unconvinced, and began to look suspicious. He had to be, given what was going on. Reluctantly, she handed him the letter. He perused it carefully, stared at her, then at the two men, back at her, and then looked at her in astonished admiration. “A royal princess?” He seemed utterly amazed. “Here? To work with the Red Cross?”
“I hope we will. That's what we came to do,” she explained. The officer then shook hands with her driver, told them where to find the Red Cross enclave, handed them a pass, and waved them through. It was a most unusual occurrence, to give them access to a hostage scene, and Christianna had the feeling that if she hadn't been a princess, they wouldn't have let them in. The officer respected her, and the two men who had accompanied her to Russia. He even gave them the name of the person in charge. And before they drove on, Christianna asked him quietly not to explain to anyone who she was. She said it would mean a great deal to her if he didn't. He nodded, still looking impressed as they drove off. She hoped he'd be discreet. Having people know who she was would spoil everything for her, or certainly make it difficult. Anonymity in these circumstances was far easier for her. And if the press caught wind of her presence, they would pursue her everywhere, and she might even have to leave. That was the last thing she wanted. She wanted to be useful, not cause a journalistic feeding frenzy, fed by her.
As they approached the school, there were police cordons, military barricades, riot police, commando squads, and soldiers with machine guns everywhere. But having made it through the initial barricade, they were no longer checked as closely. Their passports, when asked for, were only glanced at and no longer thoroughly inspected. They looked at the makeshift passes, and nodded. Most of the civilians they saw were crying, either parents or relatives of children or teachers still inside. It was so exactly reminiscent of the earlier hostage situation in Beslan that it was hard to believe an almost identical event had occurred, in the same state. And finally, after searching thoroughly, and drifting past a fleet of ambulances, they found four large Red Cross trucks, with an army of workers around them, wearing the familiar red and white armbands to identify them in the crowd. Several of them were holding children. They were serving coffee, tending to frantic-looking parents, and standing quietly in the crowd.
As soon as she saw them, Christianna got out of the car, and Samuel, the bodyguard with the commando training, followed her closely, while Max went to park the car in a field that had been designated for families and press. The car had been tight for them to ride in, but at least it had gotten them there. Christianna asked for the name that the officer at the barricade had given them, and was directed to a cluster of chairs standing near one of the trucks. There was a woman with white hair sitting there, speaking to a group of women in Russian. She was reassuring them as best one could. There was very little one could see of what was happening inside, only the constant shifting and moving of soldiers, standing ready and alert. And all of the Russian women were crying. Christianna didn't want to interrupt and stood off to one side, waiting until the older woman finished talking to them. She knew it might be hours before the woman was free to check them out. Christianna stood patiently by until the woman in charge of the Red Cross team noticed her, glanced up, and met her eyes with a questioning look.