Snowfall at Willow Lake Read online

  She grabbed Fatou by the hand and drew her to the shadows of the palace. It was still snowing, the thick wet flakes already settling on André’s unmoving form. “We’ll find a security agent,” she said, leading the way back into the building. They hesitated in the hallway and stood for a moment, listening. The light trill of singing drifted from the grand hall. Her first impulse was to burst in and sound an alarm, to babble that someone had murdered her driver. Then a feeling, like a breath of cold air on the back of her neck, made her hesitate.

  She felt certain the murder of André was not an isolated incident. She looked around, saw no one. “We mustn’t go back in there,” she whispered. “We’ll go to the security office.” There were cameras everywhere, though they’d done André no good at all. She knocked at the door. Getting no response, she pushed at it, expecting to find it locked. But the door opened.

  Sophie hesitated. There was this thing that happened to her sometimes, a cold clutch of awareness in the center of her stomach. It told her when someone was lying, when something didn’t add up—like now. The lights were off, the room illuminated by the bluish haze of monitors and electronic equipment. There were three men inside; at first she thought they might be passed out, drunk. Then she noticed a faint odor of bitter almond.

  “Gas,” she hissed at Fatou. “Stay outside.”

  Sophie held her breath. She could probably hold it longer than anyone she knew, thanks to her years of swim training. The men wore the uniforms of the Diplomatic Protection Group. She went to the nearest victim, who lay on the floor, and touched his shoulder, finding his body disconcertingly stiff and resistant. She tried not to look at his face—still-wet blood streaming from his nose—as she found the tiny alert device on his lapel and depressed the button, praying it worked as it was supposed to, instantly alerting the team in the ballroom downstairs, as well as deploying an antiterrorist squad from their remote headquarters in Rotterdam. She had no idea how long it would take for help to arrive, though.

  The array of monitors, still glowing dully, showed nothing amiss anywhere in the building. The reception was still going on. She caught sight of a security agent in his dark suit in the ballroom. He showed no outward sign of having received the alert, yet to Sophie he seemed to move with a briskness of purpose that was reassuring. His hand rested on the front button of his suit coat, and he was murmuring into his mouthpiece.

  She ducked out of the room, nearly bursting from holding her breath. Shutting the door behind her, she told Fatou, “I think it worked. They’ll evacuate everyone and—” Fatou was looking not at her, but at a point somewhere past her shoulder.

  “Ne bougez pas,” said a low voice in a thick accent, “ou je tire.”

  The words made no sense to Sophie for approximately two beats of her heart. Then something was shoved against the underside of her jaw. Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.

  A second man appeared behind Fatou, and Sophie realized he’d been there, in the shadows, all along. Dressed as a security agent, he had a big, bony Dutchman’s face and a pistol of some sort with its barrel pressed up under the girl’s jaw.

  “Oh, please, no, she’s only a child. Don’t harm her,” Sophie said.

  A third man, an African also disguised as an agent, stepped forward, kicking open the door to the security office, crossing the room to crank open the windows. So she’d been right about the gas.

  It was too soon to feel afraid. Too surreal to grasp the idea that with one squeeze of a stranger’s finger, she would be gone. She said nothing, though her heart pounded so loudly she was certain it could be heard. Two thoughts filled her mind—Max and Daisy. Her children. She might never see them again. In her mind, she reviewed the last time she had seen them, talked to them. Her phone conversation yesterday with Max. Had she spoken with kindness, respect, love? Or had she been in a rush? Had she been demanding? Daisy always accused her of being demanding. Maybe exacting was the word. She was too exacting.

  “Merde,” said one of the men—the French African—leaning on the counter to study an image of the main hall. The security agents at the ceremony were taking action, their weapons drawn as they gave orders to evacuate. “The alert went through.” As he spoke, he straightened up and turned and, with a curious grace, smacked Sophie across the face with the back of his hand.

  She had never been touched with violence before, and the shock of the attack preceded the pain. Then it felt like the time she’d been hit in the face with a field hockey ball. She saw a flash of white followed by multiple images, the monitor screens floating in front of her. The blow jostled her against the man with the gun. She shut her eyes, terrified he’d panic and pull the trigger.

  “Stop,” ordered one of the other men. “An alert’s been sounded. We may need her.”

  For what? Sophie wondered. She caught a whiff of something emanating from the man holding the gun on her. It was the sweat of fear. She didn’t know how she knew this, but she somehow recognized the reek of terror, sharp and bitter, more dangerous than cold determination. Perhaps he would obey orders, perhaps not. She could be gone in an instant.

  Just like that.

  She made herself focus on the monitors. The agents in the room were already in control of the situation, with the white-coated waiters on the floor and the room being swiftly evacuated. Thank God, thought Sophie. Thank—

  “Vite,” said the Frenchman. “Bring the girl, also.”

  Sophie was all but thrown down the stairs, then dragged along the corridor to the service bay. A crowd of agents moved toward them. Sophie flinched at the dull gleam of a gun. The men held Sophie and Fatou in front of them like shields.

  “Drop your weapons or the women die,” shouted the Frenchman as they forced their way into the ballroom.

  Four of the security agents instantly complied. A fifth hesitated, made a move toward the Frenchman. The hiss of a silenced shot quivered through the room, and Fatou crumpled to the floor. No, Sophie thought. Please, God, she’s only a child.

  A woman screamed, and the fifth agent dropped his gun and raised his hands.

  Many of the guests had been evacuated to safety, probably due to the alert sent by Sophie. The queen and prime minister were nowhere in sight. Those who remained were now herded to the center of the room and made to lie facedown on the floor. Sophie nearly cried out when she spied Tariq, his black eyes on fire as he caught her gaze. Instinct told her not to focus on anyone in particular lest she single him out. She noticed the reporter, Brooks Fordham, staring dully at her, and prayed he would stay silent. Also remaining was the military attaché, his arms around his family, his angular face alert with bitter rage. And vigilance.

  Some of the children remained in the room. They should have been the first evacuated, yet four of them lay on the floor. Everyone was eerily silent, even the little ones. They were from a war-torn place. They had probably endured worse than this.

  The Frenchman quickly took control of the situation, issuing orders to the men in the catering jackets. They jumped up, seized the agents’ weapons and, just like that, the tables were turned. The men dressed as caterers brought out guns they’d smuggled in on serving carts, concealed by crisp white linen tablecloths. And the massacre took place in silence. Sophie knew that no matter how long she lived, she would always remember the eerie, unexpected silence of these moments as the five agents were executed with swift and chilling dispatch. Instead of mayhem, the killings proceeded in orderly fashion, which was somehow even more horrifying.

  For the first time, Sophie got a look at her captor’s face. He was African and young, his cheeks boyishly rounded, his eyes feverish, probably with narcotics. She could only pray an anti-terrorist squad was now racing through the city, en route to the palace.

  Sophie looked at Fatou on the floor, motionless, bleeding. The girl made a sound, a whisper for help. Sophie took a step toward her but a barked order froze her in her tracks.

  Only for a moment, though.

  “This is absurd,” Soph
ie declared. “This is the Peace Palace. We don’t leave children to die on the floor here.” She dropped to her knees beside the fallen girl. Fatou was bleeding, but she was conscious, blinking, and moaning in pain.

  “Stop,” said the Frenchman. “Do not touch her. Get away.”

  Sophie ignored him. She found that it was possible to ignore everything, including the fact that a murderer had a gun pointed at her. She kept her focus, pressing a wad of linen napkins to the wound. Somehow, the close-range shot had failed to kill her. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to.

  “Get away now,” the man ordered.

  Sophie didn’t look up. Something possessed her. Not courage or some high sense of compassion or outrage. Instead it was the absolute conviction that she could not abide one more killing. Even if they shot her.

  They didn’t shoot her, but the African boy pulled her away from Fatou. The men issued orders for everyone to stay on the floor. Some of the others were closing doors, locking them from within. We’re hostages, she thought. We’ve been taken hostage. The big Frenchman and the blond man who had been serving champagne earlier got into an argument over whether to stay and negotiate or flee with a human shield.

  Sophie had undergone mandatory violence-prevention training, and the class had addressed hostage taking. Like everything else in her field of work, there was an acronym. The trouble was, she couldn’t remember it. E-I-S…something. E-evaluate the situation. That was easy. The situation was bad. Extremely bad. I-isolate. As in, isolate the perpetrator. After that, she drew a blank.

  She did recall learning that while it was politically popular to declare you didn’t bargain with terrorists or extremists, it was also extremely risky. In a hostage situation, one of the key strategies was to buy time, and another was to foster divisiveness among the hostage takers. They were already doing this on their own, which she took as a good sign. She alone was still standing, with the fearful, dangerous boy holding her. Brooks Fordham appeared to be on the verge of saying something. The moment he glanced her way, she gave the barest shake of her head. No.

  One of the caterers noticed the reporter looking around the room, and delivered a kick to the head with emotionless dispatch. Brooks made no sound as he fell still. Tariq exhorted the thugs in Arabic, earning the same response, his beautiful face shattered by the toe of a large boot. Sophie felt dizzy with the urge to throw up.

  At the same time, she felt a crushing, overwhelming sense of futility. She and dozens of others had given everything they had to restoring peace and justice, but ultimately, people were still being bullied and killed. André lay dead in the courtyard. Staring numbly at Fatou, Sophie realized she’d been fooling herself thinking she was making a difference in the world. Greed and evil were tireless enemies. The larger truth was that nothing—no amount of sacrifice or diplomacy—could stop the killing and rid the world of people like this.

  She guessed that the French-speaking African was a cohort of General Timi Abacha who, with the diamond merchant Serge Henger, had fled the prosecution of the ICC. So, although the media would probably see these men as terrorists, fanatically devoted to a cause, Sophie knew better. This wasn’t about anyone’s ideals or sense of justice. It was not even about revenge. It was about money. Not a belief system or family or patriotism. Their “cause” was simple greed. The action of the court and the enforcement of UN troops had deprived them of their fortune, and they wanted it back.

  In a way, this made the situation simple. A transaction.

  “Taking children hostage is only going to make you hated and hunted by the world. You don’t want the world to hate you,” she said. Her jaw ached from the blow she’d taken, making it hard to speak. “You just want what was taken from you.”

  “We are clear on what we want.” The blond Dutchman checked the chamber of the pistol he’d taken from a security agent.

  “Then be clear on how to get it,” Sophie stated. Was this her speaking up? Negotiating with terrorists? “You’re not stupid. You’ve gotten this far. You can leave now without incident.”

  The man stared at her. Then his eyes glittered and he smiled at her, his mouth curving like a cold slice of moon. “And Madame Bellamy, we are familiar with you.”

  Dear Lord. They knew who she was. They probably knew she was a member of the prosecution team. She felt the color drop from her face, though she struggled to show no reaction. “As familiar as you are with the Kuumba Mine case,” he added, “and with the process of setting up accounting in a country with no laws of extradition.” Faintly, from a distance, the two-toned sound of sirens drifted into the room. Their predicament flashed through her mind like lightning. If they stayed here, there would be a standoff—until it deteriorated into a shoot-out.

  “None of this will matter,” she told him, “if you allow yourselves to be trapped here.”

  The ring of a cell phone sounded, causing Sophie’s captor to tense, reminding her that she was a trigger-squeeze between life and death. One of the men she had noticed earlier—the name Karl stitched on his catering livery—rifled through the jacket of a fallen security agent and took out a mobile phone. He glanced at the Dutchman, then answered. She strained to hear, but he was speaking Dutch in a low, rapid voice.

  “You don’t need a group of hostages,” she said to the men with her. “In fact, you should go now, while you still can. If you try to stay here and bargain for your fortune, you’ll fail.” She looked from one man to the other. “These things always end badly.”

  The next rapid exchange took place in the Umojan dialect. Sophie was nominally familiar with it but she couldn’t catch what was being said. The African gave an order and the men dressed as caterers made for the door. The Dutchman went to the attaché, handed him a mobile phone. The shiny-eyed boy with Sophie kept hold of her upper arm, yanking her forward.

  She balked, tried to pull away, but the boy held her fast. The African turned to her. “Madame, you must come with me.”

  She looked up into his face and saw no humanity there. Only cold determination. It dawned on Sophie that she made the ideal hostage. She was easily outmatched, unarmed, defenseless. Yet she spoke multiple languages and was known in diplomatic circles, thus adding to her value as a bargaining chip.

  She briefly considered putting up a fight here and now. She could feel the attaché urging her, and knew he would take action. She also knew that would get him killed.

  Seconds later, she found herself in a haze of numbness, being shoved into one of the catering vans. I’m so sorry, she thought, wishing there was a way to beam the silent message to her children. She was in the hands of murderers. She had all but guaranteed she would be taken from her children. They would survive. Despite her faults as a mother, she knew they were smart and sturdy—survivors. Perhaps she hadn’t been much of a mother, but at least she’d given them that.

  It was still snowing outside. She was crammed into the front seat of the van with the Dutchman and the African boy. Her legs were awkwardly canted to one side of the stick shift. Her captors didn’t bother restraining her, no doubt—and correctly—deeming her no physical threat.

  Four more conspirators crowded into the back, protesting in French and Dutch. The entire operation had gone awry, Sophie gathered, because she had alerted security. From their agitated talk, she gleaned that their plan had been to barricade themselves in the building, demanding the restoration of their impounded fortune and their safe transit to Africa. “We leave with nothing, nothing,” groused a reedy voice.

  “You leave with your life,” the driver snapped. “That is something.”

  “And a life insurance policy,” said someone else.

  To her horror, Sophie felt a touch at the nape of her neck. It made her skin crawl. She drew her shoulders up and leaned forward to draw away, eliciting nervous laughter from some of the men. She tried not to think about what they were capable of, but her mind filled with images of torture, rape and murder. She had spent two years building a case of such crimes, but until t
his very moment, they had been merely legal concepts. Now they were very, very real.

  The Dutchman drove, taking corners too fast in the snow and heading for the port with the confidence of someone familiar with the city. The vehicle sped down the roadway that ran alongside the Verversingskanaal that flowed into the Voorhaven, a lock-controlled waterway of the North Sea.

  A bridge rose in a high arc over the locks station. Snow flew at the windshield. The tires slipped and spun on the slick roadway. The bridge was entirely deserted of traffic, aglow with amber lights on tall poles, which turned the covering of snow to pure gold.

  From the rear of the van, someone said, “There’s a helicopter. We’re being followed.”

  “Not to worry,” said the Dutchman, accelerating past 130 kilometers per hour. “I left instructions.”

  Sophie realized then what the man’s exchange with the attaché had been about. They had promised to kill their hostage if their needs were not met. She also realized that, at some point, they would kill her anyway. Why give them that chance, then? She had lived her life trying to do everything right, yet things so often turned out wrong anyway.

  Her hands seemed to belong to someone else as she moved with a speed and strength she didn’t know she possessed. She grabbed for the steering wheel and dragged it into a sharp turn.

  The Dutchman cursed and tried to wrestle back control of the van. But it was too late. The bridge was too slippery, the guardrail too flimsy to stop the van from hurdling over the side of the bridge and plunging into the ink-black water.

  Part Three

  St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

  Three Kings Day

  Three Kings Day, or Epiphany, is the culmination of a month of celebration on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, a place famed for its sugar, molasses and rum. Wedding fruit cake is so dense and richly flavored that it must be served in small pieces as a memento of the event.