Snowfall at Willow Lake Read online

  They embraced, and Sophie stepped back to regard her friend. “I’m dazzled. This is a good look for you.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” Mme Lateef said, “because I will no longer be needing the robes.”

  Sophie beamed with pride. Her colleague was as accomplished and educated as any of the jurists of the court, and she would be given a major role in the new government. “You have a new title, then? Can you share?”

  “How do you like ‘Minister of Social Welfare’?” Mme Lateef said.

  Sophie took her hand. Bibi Lateef had lost family members in the fighting; her struggle had been personal. Returning to her native land was bound to be bittersweet. “It sounds perfect for you,” Sophie said. “Congratulations. I’ll miss you, though. No one wanted to see the conclusion of this case more than I, but I’ll miss working with you.”

  “There is much work to be done. Displaced families and children orphaned by war will be my most urgent concerns. You must promise to visit.”

  “Of course.” Sophie had been to Umoja several times. It was a land of heartbreaking beauty, even in the wake of war. The fighting and encroachment by mining had decimated its cities, but there were vast regions that lay untouched—high red plains and mountain rain forests, and the river-fed regions where towns were already recovering.

  “I will hold you to that promise,” said Mme Lateef. The genuine gratitude in her eyes touched Sophie’s heart. “I’m grateful to have known you.”

  “It’s been an honor to serve the cause of justice, truly,” she said, watching her colleague’s face even as she stepped away to speak with the children in their native tongue. This was what Sophie lived for, this moment when she was absolutely certain that what she did mattered. That it was worth all the pain and sacrifices she’d made. But always the question remained—would her own children agree?

  As she hung back, still waiting to greet the premier, a man with a press badge appeared. “Brooks Fordham, New York Times. Please, tell us what tonight is about.”

  Sophie offered a restrained smile. “Mr. Fordham, if you really want the story, it would take hours to tell.”

  “I really want the story. Why don’t you give me the digest version. And please, call me Brooks.”

  Sophie knew his type—spoiled, ambitious, overeducated, handsome, and he knew it. But she obliged, summarizing the situation that had brought them to this night. Umoja had been a nation enslaved, oppressed by a semi-legal syndicate of European diamond merchants and their African collaborators, led by a notorious war criminal named General Timi Abacha. For two decades, the nation had been run by a ruthless militia funded by the blood diamond trade. In time, the atrocities became so severe that finally the world took notice.

  Then came the photograph, the one that finally put Umoja on the map and in the public consciousness. The picture showed a young native boy, missing a hand and an ear, glaring at the camera with eyes that had lost all innocence. He had been ripped from his family, forced to work and punished by mutilation, all because he was small enough to fit into a mine shaft. The photograph made the front page of newspapers and journals and galvanized the world community to take action. A team of international investigators verified incidents of slavery and abuse, of child conscription and rape. The case was built with meticulous care, imperiling many of the key players. “Accidents” befell those who questioned the wrong people or found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Sophie knew the tale by heart, perhaps better than anyone in the room. In preparing for the case, she had sunk herself deep into the red clay earth of the landlocked nation. On a map, it was shaped like a pitcher, its spout tipping down into the top of South Africa.

  And that, of course, was what made it such a rich prize. In its borderlands were some of the most prolific diamond mines in the world, yielding up rough stones of exceptional quality. For untold generations, the native tribes had defended themselves from European colonists and rival tribes. Finally, ten years before, a rogue tribe, armed and financed by diamond interests, took over the nation in a bloody coup.

  Its people suffered tortures beyond imagining—rape, ethnic cleansing, genocide. Little boys were conscripted as soldiers; young girls were used and discarded, or forced to bear the children of their rapists. In preparing the case against the dictator and warlord, Sophie and her team had interviewed victims of every possible crime. There were so many stories of unspeakable brutality that some members of the staff had resigned, traumatized. Others turned numb as a defense, desensitized by an overload of horror.

  Every time Sophie heard of a boy, no older than her own son, brainwashed and forced into drug addiction, and turned into a killing machine, she bled a little. When she heard of a young woman, a teenager perhaps her daughter’s age, raped within an inch of her life, she bled a little more. Every story ripped at her heart, and very early on in the case it became personal.

  Protests and calls for international sanctions were insufficient. Calculating as coldly as the diamond lords who called all the shots, she set about building a case against the regime, ousting the government and restoring the natives to power.

  The process had taken two years. Sophie had worked herself into exhaustion. She’d lost her marriage and now lived an ocean away from her children. But tonight she reminded herself that the battle had been won. Tonight was about recognizing those who had restored a nation to its rightful keepers. No longer did villagers flee before armies of thugs. No longer were people forced to work in the mines, suffering abuse and starvation until they died at the hands of the inhuman jackals who had stolen their country.

  She felt Brooks watching her. She tried not to look at him because she was afraid he would distract her. Though they’d only just met, she sensed he had the sort of easy charm and witty insouciance that would bring a smile to her face. Emerging from the emotional pain of divorce, she was discovering she had a great liking for men. And as soon as that thought crossed her mind, she felt a blush creep upward through her cheeks.

  Sophie served as assistant deputy counsel for the prosecution. When illness struck two of her superiors, she found herself directly addressing the fifteen judges of the International Criminal Court. It was said that her relentless and passionate arguments were key to attaining a conviction. After that, UN troops moved in, ousted the corrupt government and restored the exiled premier to his rightful place.

  “Anyway,” she concluded, addressing Brooks, “that’s the digest version, and I can already see your eyes glazing over.”

  “Jet lag,” he said, taking out a hand-size notepad and wooden pencil. “Phone number?” He flashed her a grin.

  She gave him her second assistant’s mobile number. That was close enough.

  He wrote it down and added some notes, then gave her his own number. “Don’t you want to write it down?” he asked.

  “I already have it,” she said. It was a gift of hers. She had a near-photographic memory for phone numbers. She could remember the number of the arbitrator who had handled her divorce more than a year before. The number of her son’s hockey coach, whom she’d never met in person. The number of Greg’s new wife, Nina, though Sophie would never call it. She looked up at Brooks and repeated his phone number back to him.

  “A woman of many talents,” he said. “Really, it’s an incredible story—”

  “That will be reduced to a one-inch blurb under ‘Around the Globe’ and buried on page 19-A,” she finished for him.

  “I’ll try for more space,” he said. “Another question.”

  “Go ahead.” She folded her arms in front of her.

  “Is it true you gained access to the syndicate’s banking records by using the same methods as the Nigerian banking scam?”

  Sophie felt her mouth twitch with a smile. “We finally found a use for e-mail spam. The investigative team did the technical work, but it did amount to duping the syndicate’s chief treasurer. It’s not the oldest trick in the book, but close. And it made them look i
ncredibly foolish.”

  In the tradition of the Nigerian banking spammers whose scam was so notorious it was known as a 419, they had targeted the dictator’s top treasury official, Mr. Femi Gidado. He was known to be an ambitious, greedy man whose high-risk investments had brought high returns to the regime.

  Having learned this about him, Sophie’s team had sent him a “phishing” e-mail, posing as an innocent government official in charge of a staggering fortune. They had “begged his worthy indulgence” on a “matter of utmost financial urgency,” promising a sum of $3.5 million if he would simply provide his banking information to be used in a simple, clandestine transaction.

  After a relatively short exchange of e-mail information, Sophie and her staff found themselves in possession of the regime’s fortune. Since it was obtained through illegal means, they couldn’t use the money at all—but the insanely simple ploy gave them leverage. They offered the dishonest treasurer a choice. He could serve as the key witness in the case against the dictator, or his participation in the banking scam would be revealed to his superiors. Since the punishment for betrayal was excruciating torture followed by a beheading, he chose to throw in his lot with the Umojan people. His cooperation had proved to be the undoing of the regime.

  “What became of General Timi Abacha? And the head of the diamond syndicate, Serge Henger?”

  Great. He would ask her that. “They’re still at large. But since everything was seized, they have no staff or assets. It’s only a matter of time before they are hunted down.” She paused, then added, “And I hope you’ll include that in your article.”

  “Are you kidding? We should make a video to run on the paper’s Web site. You’re great, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you worried about retaliation? Attacks? Before the army was disbanded, they were one of the most heavily armed militias in the region. It’s said a number of them have gone into hiding right here in The Netherlands.”

  “Cowards who are motivated by greed will always be with us. I’m not going to live in fear because of them.”

  He wrote that down—a good sound byte. “You’re very young to hold this position,” he remarked.

  “Age has nothing to do with it,” Sophie told him. “It’s dedication and experience, and I have plenty of that.” She knew he could discover her age with a few clicks on his BlackBerry; it was a matter of public record, as were her blood type, passport numbers, rank in class at her law school and the fact that she’d set collegiate records in distance swimming. She decided to end his suspense. “Thirty-nine,” she said. “Divorced. Two kids who live in Avalon, New York.” Summed up like that, so nice and neat, she sounded like a professional, career-minded international lawyer. The nonchalance of her “They live in Avalon, New York” comment did not begin to cover the agony of her shattered family in the aftermath of divorce. And she wasn’t about to go there with him, though she lived with the pain of it every day. She was a mother without kids to raise. Her mothering was carried out by phone, e-mail, text message and IMs. But the things that happened in her absence were legion. She might find that Daisy had turned into a brunette or Max had started drum lessons…She might find that her ex-husband was getting married. That Max was still begging for a dog, and that Daisy was about to start college. Sophie was forever torn between her simultaneous yearning to be involved in their lives and her abject fear that she’d make more of a mess of her kids than she already had.

  Brooks was asking her something, and she realized she hadn’t been listening at all. “You have a whole room full of dignitaries here,” she told him, gesturing at the milling guests. “Why me?”

  “Because you make good copy,” he told her bluntly. “I write about you, and I’ve got half a chance of getting it placed somewhere other than in the footnotes.”

  “And I should help you because…”

  “Look,” he said, “this is a big deal, what’s happening here—a sovereign nation was saved from being erased off the map. But we both know John Q. Public doesn’t give a rat’s ass about that. He’s too busy texting his vote for American Idol to worry about the state of some third-world country he’s never heard of.”

  “Don’t think writing about me is going to change that.”

  “It will if you do something outrageous that’ll play well on YouTube.”

  “What, like drive across Europe wearing Depends? I can see you’re completely tuned into the solemnity of the occasion,” she said.

  “Seriously,” he said, “how does a nice girl like you wind up toppling warlords and dictators?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “When people think of world court personnel, they think of seventy-year-old guys in musty robes. Not…” He gave her a meaningful look.

  She forced herself not to respond. One of the strictest rules of this job was to increase public perception of the court’s mission. “First of all, you could clarify the trial was through the International Criminal Court, which was created only six years ago, so it’s not some venerable, old institution. And honestly, the only reason I served as a prosecutor is that the lead counsel and his deputy got sick right before the first hearing.” Willem De Groot was an older man who shared her passion for a just cause. Hooked up to a dialysis machine, he had guided her and his staff through the case, week after week.

  “So it was a matter of luck meeting opportunity,” Brooks said.

  “Bad luck meeting necessity,” she clarified. “I’d give anything if he could be here tonight.”

  “You really don’t want to be the star of this, do you? What a waste of looks and talent.”

  “You seem preoccupied with my looks.”

  “It’s the dress. You had to have known it would affect men this way, even without jewelry. I assume you’re making a statement.”

  “I’m opposed to diamonds for obvious reasons. And so many other stones are questionable that it’s simpler to wear none. But pearls! They’re produced by oysters and hunted by happy divers, right? I should take to wearing pearls.”

  “You could wear pearls in the video,” he said.

  Sophie was about two sips of champagne away from ditching this guy. “You’re obnoxious, Mr. Fordham. And I’m leaving. Everything is about to start.”

  “One final question and I’ll leave you alone,” he added.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Will you let me take you to dinner tomorrow night?”

  “That doesn’t sound like leaving me alone.”

  “But does it sound…like a plan?”

  She hesitated. He probably had a degree from an Ivy League school, a pedigree back to the Mayflower and a brazen sense of entitlement. Still, going to dinner with him meant not eating alone. “I’ll have my assistant call you to arrange things.”

  “It’s a dinner date, not an international summit.”

  “My assistants are excellent at arranging things,” she assured him. A date with this man might be a diversion. Her romantic past was…undistinguished. Perhaps that was the word for it. Forgettable teenage gropings in high school had given way to slightly more sophisticated dating in college—frat parties and raves. And then there was Greg. They’d married before they even knew who they were. It was like grafting together two incompatible trees—tolerable at first but eventually the differences could not be ignored. Had she loved him? Everyone loved Greg. He was the adorable, charming, indulged youngest of the four Bellamy siblings. How could anyone not love him? This sense that she should love him had sustained the marriage over sixteen years, long enough for her to be absolutely certain the love was gone. Afterward she had walked around shell-shocked for several months.

  Only last fall had she dared to stick her toe into the dating pool. The first time a man had asked her out, she had regarded him as if he’d spoken in a dead language. Go out? On a date? What a novel idea.

  Thus began the dating phase, which was infinitely preferable to the postdivorce shell-shocked phase. Her first prospect
was a diplomatic protection agent who was more interested in showing off his 007 trappings—an alert device hidden in his lapel, a cigarette pack that could dispense cyanide gas—than in discovering who Sophie actually was. Despite her disenchantment, she’d tried to move seamlessly into the sleeping-around phase during which a newly divorced woman indulged her every fantasy. Women who slept around always seemed as though they were having such fun. Yet Sophie found it disappointing and stressful and quickly retreated to the benign safety of casual dating. She told herself she would stay open to the possibility that one day one of the attachés or diplomats or Georgian nationals she was dating would unexpectedly inflame her passions. So far, it hadn’t happened.

  She regarded Brooks and wondered if he might be the one to make her drop her natural reserve. To make her remember what it felt like to be held in someone’s arms. Not tonight, she thought.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, and headed for the dais.

  She looked around for a place to set down her champagne flute, and approached a passing waiter. He didn’t seem to see her.

  “Pardon,” she said.

  The man jumped, and a glass fell from his tray, shattering on the marble floor. In the immediate area, people fell silent and turned to stare. At the periphery of the room, the security agents tensed, prepared to take action.

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie murmured. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s nothing, madame,” he murmured, his accent very thick. She was about to ask him where he was from when she caught the look in his eyes. It was a glittering, burning fury all out of proportion with a broken glass.

  Sophie lifted her eyebrows, wordlessly conveying a warning, the way she might to a key witness. He moved slightly, and the light fell on his face, illuminating ebony skin highlighted by twin rows of shiny scars, a pattern of ritual scarring that looked vaguely familiar to her. He was Umojan, she surmised. Employing him was a nice touch by the caterer, and it explained his inexperience.

  The waiter started to move away.