Steph's voice was hard, angry.
"It's not really about the Chinese, is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean, Steph."
"No, I don't."
"I know you don't want to hear this but hiding out down here in your cave isn't the answer."
"I don't think I want to have this conversation."
"We've been friends for a long time," Elizabeth said. "If your friends can't tell you what you need to hear, you're in trouble. No one blames you for being angry or feeling like you want to retreat. But isolating yourself isn't the answer."
"How would you know? It wasn't your baby."
"I was pregnant, once," Elizabeth said.
Stephanie looked at her, surprised. "You were? I didn't know that."
"Not many people do."
"What happened?"
"I miscarried about six months after I'd gotten married. In hindsight it's just as well, given what happened later with the jerk I thought was the love of my life. But at the time I thought I'd never be all right again. I thought it was my fault, that somehow if I'd done something different everything would've been okay. But the truth was that there was nothing I could have done about it. Just like there was nothing you could've done about those people who shot at you."
"It's not fair," Stephanie said. Her eyes filled with moisture.
"No, it's not."
Steph took a tissue from a box on her console and dabbed at her eyes. She blew her nose.
"I haven't been sleeping well," Steph said. "I have nightmares. Sometimes I'm back in that car and there's blood and glass and screaming. At first I don't know who's screaming, then I realize it's the baby."
"Oh, Steph."
"Then I realize it's me," Stephanie said, "and I wake up and my face is covered with tears and the bed is soaked with sweat and Lucas is saying my name…"
"Oh, Steph," Elizabeth said again. "I'm so sorry."
"Lucas wants me to see someone."
"It might be a good idea."
"I'm not sure if it is."
"Well, you don't have to decide right now."
"I don't think I can decide much of anything right now."
"Come upstairs and we'll have lunch," Elizabeth said. "Bring your coffee. We need to talk about what's happening in Macedonia."
"You heard from Nick?"
"He called in about half an hour ago. Things are getting complicated over there."
Stephanie smiled, the first time Elizabeth had seen her smile in a week. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"I don't think anything Nick comes up with would surprise me at this stage of the game," Elizabeth said.
CHAPTER 18
The street in front of Valentina's hotel was packed solid with supporters of the 11 October movement. They'd been arriving since before dawn, bundled against the cold. No one seemed to mind the freezing temperatures. Todorovski was scheduled to speak at 10 o'clock. Mitreski's state-controlled television had carried nothing about the event but word had spread throughout the city.
Anyone could see that a revolution was coming. Whether it would be peaceful or violent remained to be seen. Valentina had no interest one way or the other. She didn't care what happened in Macedonia. It wasn't her job to care. Her job was to follow orders, in this case assassinate a troublemaker who was causing problems for the Kremlin.
Valentina's room was directly across from the balcony where Todorovski would stand to make his speech. It would be an easy shot. She would fire from within the room, through a window already open enough to allow a clear field of vision through the PSO-1 scope. Sheer white curtains of thin gauze-like material blocked any curious eyes on the street from seeing into her room. She'd weighted down the ends so they wouldn't move in the morning breeze.
She'd placed a narrow table end-on to the window, where she would rest the rifle on its bipod. She'd pulled a chair up where she could sit and wait. When the time came to take the shot every eye would be on Todorovski. No one would notice the muzzle of the rifle inside the room across the street.
She took the Dragunov SVU from the flower box and assembled it with practiced movements. She mounted the scope. Every PSO-1 scope was matched to a particular weapon by serial number. The scope was an older design that had been slightly modified over the years, the perfect choice for the kind of shooting needed today. She would have preferred a different scope if she were shooting at extreme range.
She had used the PSO-1 before and liked it. The scope was filled with nitrogen to prevent fogging. It featured a range finding reticle illuminated by radium that relied on human thinking rather than fault-prone, computer rangefinders. A small ^ symbol in the center provided an aiming mark. A stadiametric rangefinder using a 0 to 10 scale curved upward in the left of the shooter's vision.
The street was a major artery through the city, wide and modern. She looked through the scope and the thin barrier of the curtains at the balcony where Todorovski would stand. She used the rangefinder to split the distance between the floor of the balcony and the top of the window behind it and estimated the distance at about 50 yards.
Child's play.
She cocked the weapon. With a gentle squeeze she dry-fired at the balcony. The trigger pull had been adjusted to a little under three pounds, about what she'd expected. Smooth, easy, with no noticeable creep.
She inserted a ten round magazine and charged the weapon. The Dragonov used a 7.62 X 54 rimmed cartridge that had been in service for over a hundred and twenty years. Normally the cartridge was fitted with an armor piercing, jacketed bullet. Valentina's rounds had been modified to explode on impact. Todorovski would be dead before he hit the ground.
She looked at her watch. It was a little after eight-thirty in the morning. She settled back in her chair to wait and allowed her mind to drift.
She remembered the day everything changed. It had been the beginning of a long journey that had taken many turns and placed her in this room, waiting to kill again.
The snow fell in big flakes outside the window of her room at Specialized School 144, turning the industrialized landscape of Ekaterinburg into a fairytale wonderland that resembled a gigantic, frosted cake. She was reading her latest assignment, The Grapes of Wrath by the American writer, Steinbeck. School 144 specialized in advanced English studies.
She was nine years old, marked as someone with unusual abilities, someone who would go far in the service of the Rodina, the Motherland. She didn't understand everything in the novel about something called the depression, but she understood the unfairness of the way the characters were treated by the evil capitalists. She knew they were capitalists because she had been through many courses teaching about Lenin and capitalism and what was good and what was not. The Party taught the only correct way to think. By the time she was nine she'd learned not to question the teachers unless it was within prescribed limits. A challenge was always met with stern disapproval and rebuke.
Because of her status she had her own room. Most of the students at School 144 lived in dormitories but a few like herself had special privileges. Valentina took it for granted. Her mother was a decorated agent in the KGB. Valentina wasn't sure what the KGB did, but she knew it was very important for the safety of the Motherland. Her uncle Alexei was also in the KGB, recently promoted to major. He had visited her a week after his promotion wearing his new uniform. Everyone had been impressed.
There was a knock on her door and uncle Alexei came into her room. Valentina ran to him.
"Uncle, it is so pretty outside. Can I go out and play in the snow? I can wear my new jacket."