“And you allowed her to take the vaccine?”
“She was from the Health Ministry,” Greta bleated pathetically. “She signed her initials to the dock manifest. I cannot make them out. And then the health minister, Herr Schuler, arrived, and he said it must be a joke. A joke!”
She sounded as though she was nearly peeing with terror, on the verge of tears.
You stupid cow, he cursed her silently. You hopeless and sodden piece of human shit. Gently now, gently, before she fainted.
“What did this woman look like?”
“Dark. Black hair, black eyes, black clothes. She spoke with an accent like” She had been about to say, like yours. “Like someone from your country.”
“Anything else?”
“A white scarf. Around her neck.”
Anger flared like bile and flooded his mouth. Zaibal Fucking mother of a whore. She! She had taken it! Then by the bloody cross of King Tomisav, I will find her. And when I do, I will slit her throat as a traitor and a Serb.
“What am I to do?” Greta begged in a whisper.
She was already stupid, but fear would make her dangerous. He must give her something to do, a purpose, before she destroyed them all. Krucevic's mind leapt forward, considered and discarded options.
“Close the office and get to Budapest,” he told her. “I have a job only you can manage.”
“I shall not fail you, mein Herr” She was sickening in her gratitude. He could do with her what he chose. He cut the connection.
His enemies were trying to destroy him. But God was on his side. He had discovered the treachery before it was too late. If only he were in Budapest now! But all movement was impossible before dark. He had roughly one hundred kilometers to travel three hours by road, twenty minutes by air and time was slipping through his fingers. He must be patient. He must not allow rage to make him careless.
A white scarf around her neck.
The error of improvisation.
Krucevic cursed the Czech border guards, cursed Slovakia, cursed Vaclav Slivik and all the women he had ever known. He cursed Olga Teciak with particular virulence. She was the most available object of his hatred.
Olga was a stranger. He distrusted her simply because she was unknown and because she was a woman. She was huddled now in her bedroom with her young daughter cradled in a blanket. Both of them were terrified. Olga had probably figured out who Sophie Payne was; it was no secret any longer that the American Vice President had been kidnapped. Word had gotten out, by newspaper and television broadcast. He had been a fool to follow Vaclav's advice. Teciak could not possibly be trusted.
He required some sort of insurance.
“Mian,” Michael said behind him. “Mrs. Payne is awake and eating.”
It was one of Krucevic's rules that they refer to the woman with courtesy. Courtesy was another form of cruelty. He dismissed his anger, the shadow of fear, and moved on to the next step.
“Good,” he said briskly. “She'll need her strength. It's time to take a picture for the President.”
Jozsef was chewing companionably with Sophie on the bathroom floor, although the meal was quite dreadfuclass="underline" canned orange juice, stale white bread, some sort of processed cheese. She choked on the food and the persistent taste of blood. It must be something to do with the anthrax, she decided. Not everything had an antidote.
“Do you know where we are?” she asked the boy.
“Bratislava, I think. But you should not ask me any questions. About the operation, I mean.”
Sophie smiled faintly.
“Is that what I am? An operation?”
“That is how my father calls it.”
“I see. But we were in Prague a few hours ago. Your father said so, when he was filming me.”
“Yes.” Jozsef's voice dropped apprehensively. “We were not supposed to come here, I think. We changed our route quite suddenly last night, because the guards were searching people. Michael got you through the first crossing — from Germany to the Czech Republic — with his American passport, but Papa did not think it would work this time. And so we turned back.”
Hope stirred in Sophie's heart.
“So it was the Czech guards your father was afraid of. But crossing into where?”
“If you ask me questions, lady, and I talk to you, there will be trouble.”
“My name is Sophie,” she said.
Jozsef turned this over in his mind.
“My mother's name is Mirjana.”
“Do you miss her?”
The fringe of lashes lowered over his eyes. He was rolling sonic-thing rapidly between his fingers.
“What is that?” Sophie asked.
The fingers stilled, then were thrust into his pocket.
“Nothing. Do you want that piece of cheese?”
She shook her head. He seized the cheese immediately. She waited while he ate.
“There is a woman here,” Sophie said. “And a child. The woman's name is Olga, but I do not know the girl's.”
“A girl? How old?”
“She is sucking her thumb still, and she is very frightened by all of us. The woman is frightened, too, although she tries not to show it.”
“So the woman is not one of you?”
“I told you. We were not supposed to come here. The woman is a friend of Vaclav's. That is dangerous for her and probably for Vaclav, too,” he added.
“Dangerous how?”
The boy drew his finger across his throat. The gesture was all the more appalling for its casualness.
“But she's helped you!” Sophie protested.
“She had no choice. And now she will say anything to protect her little girl. Those who are afraid, lady, are like snakes under the heel. They strike as soon as you move.” Sophie was about to argue with him about to utter stupidities about the impossibility of hurting the innocent but the words died in her mouth.
“When I was young,” Jozsef continued, “I had two friends. Brothers. They lived on the street where I lived, and our mothers used to push us along the pavement together in our prams. Our mothers liked to talk. They shared things from their kitchens; they sewed together and drank coffee. When I had a ball or a toy, I shared it with the brothers, and they with me.”
“That's good,” Sophie said encouragingly when he stopped. “It's good to have friends, Jozsef. Have you lived all your life in Belgrade?”
“No,” he said doubtfully, “I do not think I have ever lived in Belgrade, or if I did, it was very long ago. My mother is there now. She is Serb. That is why my father took me from her. We are Croats. And at the time I am speaking of when I was a young boy we lived in Sarajevo.”
“And do you still have friends there? In Sarajevo?”
He shrugged.
“What happened to the boys? The brothers?”
“They were Muslim dogs.” His beautiful eyes met hers. “When the war came, my father knew that their father would kill us if he did not kill him first, and so Papa went in the night and cut his throat. Then he killed the boys one after the other as they lay in their beds, and showed their mother what he had done. He dropped their bodies at her feet.”
Sophie forced herself to speak.
“No one who had a boy of his own could do such a thing. No one.”
Jozsef's black brows came down, puzzled.
“But they were Muslims and we are Croats. If my father had allowed them to live, they would have grown up to avenge their father's death. I would do the same.”
“I cannot believe that.”
“Then you are very foolish, lady. Or you have not seen enough of the world.”
Sophie thought of the endless trips on Air Force Two, the succession of state visits and briefings and prepared speeches.
“Perhaps you're right, Jozsef. And your father? He told you that he had killed your friends?”
“He took me with him that night. I watched what he did.”
The boy's fingers were worrying the object in his pocket again. He drew it out, and she saw that it was a rabbit's foot a triangular bit of dirty white fur, pathetic.