Simone rose from the dead child's bedside and moved toward him.
“Is someone ill?”
He hesitated. The air of assurance faltered a little. In the half-light thrown by her propane lantern, she saw him for what he was: a man torn from sleep, eyes bleary with worry, but determined not to panic.
“It's Alexis. My oldest girl. She's rather .. . hot.”
“I see. I'd better come.”
Simone delayed only long enough to inform one of the nurses about Drago Pavlovic's death. Then she pulled on a jacket over her white coat and jeans, gathered up her medical kit, and followed the man out into the darkness. People were already stirring all over the camp; she heard the clang of coffeepots, caught the flare of fires, the guttural hawking of an old man's throat. A wave of fatigue so powerful it was akin to vertigo nearly knocked her off her feet.
She was not the only doctor in Pristina — there were at least fourteen volunteers from North America and Western Europe — but the epidemic had strained them to their limits. And today would bring a fresh wave of sick and dying.
“I'm Enver,” he said, holding out his hand. “Enver Gordievic. You're the doctor from Canada.”
“Toronto, yes. Simone Amiot.” He had surprised her again. But she was accustomed enough to camps by this time to know that gossip is every refugee's lifeblood.
She kept her hands in her pockets and smiled at him; the casual gesture of shaking his hand was just one more way of passing sickness.
“Do you know Canada?”
He shook his head.
“I've only been to D.C.”
Not “Washington,” not “the United States” — but “D.C.” Simone decided to assume nothing about Enver Gordievic.
He led her to a shelter built out of scraps of lumber, a windowless box the size of a dolls house. It was canted unsteadily on a cinderblock foundation; but it had a door that swung on rope hinges, and when Simone ducked through the opening and stepped inside, she found the interior fairly warm and dry. He had built bunk beds for the children. There were two of them, both girls.
“Alexis,” he said softly — and then, in a language Simone could not understand, added a few more sentences. His hand smoothed the child's golden hair. She raised her head weakly, then let it fall back on the pillow. Even at a distance of five feet, Simone recognized the glassy eyes and flushed cheeks of fever. She drew a quick breath of rage and frustration, then crossed to the little girl's bedside. “She's burning up! Why didn't you bring her straight to the clinic?”
“Because the kids who walk in there never walk out,” Enver said bluntly.
“She has the mumps?”
“Of course. I can tell just by looking at her. The swelling hasn't come out yet, but it will in a matter of hours. It's the dehydration that concerns me. She needs an IV feed, and quickly.”
“No.” He reached for Simone's arm and steered her firmly toward the hovel's door.
“Thank you very much for your time. Dr. Amiot, but all I needed was the diagnosis. I'll take it from here.”
“Are you nuts?” Simone swung on him furiously, then her eyes widened.
“You're planning to get her out of the camp. I can assure you, Mr.” His last name escaped her. “Enver, that the care your daughter will find elsewhere in Pristina is no better than what we can offer her here. If you move her, she'll die.”
“That may be true. But there aren't a hundred other kids lying in beds next to her, competing for attention, elsewhere in Pristina. I'm taking her to my mother.” He bent down and gathered the little girl up in his arms. His face, when he looked at Simone, was deliberately calm; he was a man who knew what he needed and how to get it.
“Will you do me a favor?” he asked her.
“Please, Enver. Don't move the child.”
“Would you watch Krystle for me? The little one? It'll take me an hour to get to my mother's and back.”
Simone turned away from the two-year-old slumbering in her bunk and pulled open the door.
“I can't. I'm sorry. I've got to find Dr. Marx. Perhaps he can convince you to bring Alexis to the tent”
“Don't waste your time.”
“I don't,” Simone said abruptly. “I use every spare minute to save these lives. Your daughter can't leave. She can't set foot outside this camp. As of midnight we were put under strictest quarantine. Surely you've seen the police patrol? The epidemic cannot be allowed to spread throughout the rest of the city, or the province. Try to leave, and the police will beat you silly. Try harder, and they'll shoot.”
“I've got to go to work in the morning! I've got clients!”
“They'll have to wait.”
“How long?”
“I don't know.” Her fingers spasmed on the doorknob.
“Until this is … over.”
He stood there, his daughter in his arms, and Simone watched as his expression changed. The easy assurance fled. What replaced it was a look she had come to know: hunted, desperate, defiant of the odds.
The look of a cornered animal.
Two
Georgetown, 4:13 a.m.
Dare Atwood was dreaming of trees: spectral branches writhing like the architraves of a cathedral when one stares at them too long, neck craned backward, the self diminished by an inhuman height. The light under the leaves was cathedral-like, too; dim as clouded glass, smothered with incense. She began to walk through the tunnel of tangled limbs, but the branches were keening, they screamed for sunlight and air. She had never known a tree could grieve — and with her knowledge came an unreasoning fear, so that she turned abruptly in her sleep and repressed a whimper. She must run, must find the road again and the car she had abandoned — but the trees had closed and shut off her path.
I need an ax, she thought, and looked down at her hands. All she held was her Waterman pen.
The shrill cry of a bird in her ear — primeval, ravenous. She jumped, and the trees shattered as though they were painted on glass. The phone was ringing.
The phone.
She struggled upward, heaved back the bedclothes, and groped into the darkness for her secure line.
“Dare Atwood.”
“Director,” came the apologetic voice in her ear, more cordial than primeval birds.
“I'm sorry to disturb you.” It was like Scottie Sorensen to sound collected and urbane at 4:13 a.m. The wee small hours were Scottie's native element; it was the time when hunting was best.
“We've just heard from the CDC — and you had asked to be called.”
“Go ahead,” Dare said tersely. The CDC was the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The hypodermic dropped with Sophie Payne's clothing on the steps of the Prague embassy had been flown there by jet for analysis. Dick Estridge — a twenty-three-year veteran of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology, an authority on chemical and biological weapons — had been dispatched to meet the plane. Presumably he and a CDC epidemiologist had worked for most of the night.
“It looks, walks, and talks like anthrax,” Scottie told her.
“So Krucevic wasn't bluffing.”
“No. If this is really the needle that inoculated the Vice President.”
“That's an assumption we have to make.” Dare considered the point, as she had considered it a thousand times since Payne's abduction. The needle and its contents represented a worst-case scenario. If they were merely a bluff, so much the better. If they weren't, then the President and the Agency should be prepared.
“Or don't you agree?” she asked Scottie. “Does the CDC think the needle is a fake?”
“No. From what Estridge tells me, the anthrax bacillus is particularly hardy. It can survive exposure to sunlight for days, and it can live in soil and water for years. The trip to Atlanta in a used hypodermic was nothing. And then there's the blood.”
“Blood,” Dare repeated.