Snowfall at Willow Lake

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,” Sophie 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 this 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.

Wedding Fruit Cake

Place five pounds of mixed dried fruit (currants, raisins, dates, figs, prunes) in a very large bowl, and cover it with about three cups of Cruzan rum. Set this aside to macerate for two days or up to a week.

To make the cake, you will need the macerated fruit, plus:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 pound brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup molasses

1/2 pound butter at room temperature

6 eggs

Beat the butter in a large bowl and add the sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and molasses. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat in flour and baking powder and then stir in the fruit mixture.

Pour into two or three well-greased 13”x9” baking pans. Bake in a 350°F oven for about one hour.

Six

St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

6 January – Epiphany

Max Bellamy couldn’t stand weddings. In his family, weddings seemed to crop up on a regular basis, like flu season. Since he was just a kid, he wasn’t allowed to check off “regrets” on the invitation reply card and stay home. But boy, did he regret having to sit through a wedding.

Sometimes they even made him participate. Twice, when he was really little, he’d been a ring bearer. At age four, he’d thought it was cool until he realized they wanted him to dress up and stay clean and stand still through a ceremony that wouldn’t end.

At twelve, he was way too old for such an indignity, but his family managed to find a new one. Last summer, he’d been upgraded to usher for his cousin Olivia, who married Connor Davis at Camp Kioga on Willow Lake. That was when he knew for sure all weddings were pretty much the same. Same level of discomfort, in starched clothes and shoes that pinched, same droning ceremony and sappy songs, different couple at the altar.

His take on weddings—they were long and boring and everyone talked about love and promises, and it was pretty much all a load of crap, as far as he was concerned.

Today the discomfort came from a different source. Since the ceremony was on the beach, everybody got to wear beach clothes. They looked like a reunion of Hawaiian punch guys, as far as Max was concerned. Which was a lot more comfortable than tuxedos and tight shoes, but that didn’t mean he was having a great time.

How could he, when the groom was his dad?

Okay, so Max liked Nina Romano. A lot. She was going to do fine as a stepmother. He wanted her to marry his dad. He wanted them to be married. But he didn’t want to have to sit through all the endless vows and recitations. He didn’t want to have to listen to his dad say stuff like “I offer you my heart” to anyone.

That kind of stuff just skeezed him out. He wished they had sneaked off somewhere to do it instead of involving families. There were like a gazillion Romanos milling around. Nina had eight brothers and sisters, and most of them had kids, so between the Romanos and the Bellamys, this had turned into some huge deal.

Cheerful, Italian-American strangers had been coming up to him all week, thumping him on the back and acting like his best friend. They weren’t all strangers. Two of them—who by the end of the day would be stepcousins—were in his grade at Avalon Middle School. Angelica Romano was in his prealgebra class and Ricky Pastorini was on his hockey team. Ricky’s mom was Nina’s sister, Maria. She was the team mother. Although he was Max’s age, Ricky was already shaving and his voice had changed. Big deal, thought Max.

He tried not to grind his teeth in disgust as another lame song was sung about two hearts beating as one, while most of the women cried. It was just too sweet. He was going to slip into a diabetic coma if they didn’t end this soon.

He cast a restless eye through the gathering on the beach. Everyone was seated in white folding chairs, their feet in flip-flops, sifting through the white-sugar sand. Max’s hand stole into the pocket of his cargo shorts. He palmed his phone, checked the screen. His mom hadn’t texted him back after he sent her the picture earlier. He’d tried to put a positive spin on it, because his mom was all about trying to act like everything was fine, all the time, even when you had to sit through your own father’s wedding. Max’s message had been that St. Croix was awesome.

He couldn’t exactly say the same for today’s ceremony. It seemed as though everybody but him was really into it, though. He stuck the phone away, endured another reading. Finally the ceremony was winding down. There was a moment—a split second, really—when Max’s dad looked so happy that Max caught himself smiling in spite of himself.

During the kissing, he stared at the ground—enough’s enough—and at last, it was over. The ensemble played a reggae rendition of “What a Wonderful World” as Dad and Nina came down the aisle formed by the rows of chairs.

All the wedding guests filed out behind them to the pavilion with the banquet and dance floor. As they made their way to the feast, Max found himself surrounded by Romanos. Nina sure had a big family. The sun had just begun to set, turning everything in sight a livid sunburned pink.

His phone rang. He looked at the screen, seeing an international number he didn’t recognize. “I think this might be my mom,” he said.

Nina’s sister, Maria—the bossy one—gave a sniff. “Unbelievable. On today, of all days.”

He pretended he hadn’t heard her, and flipped open the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Max.” It was his mom. She sounded … different. Her voice was thin. “Max, I know this probably isn’t the best timing—”

“It’s all right.” He stepped aside and moved to the shade of a large tree where it was quiet. “I’m glad you called, Mom,” he said.

“Are you, Max?” She sounded so tired, more tired than he’d ever heard her. He wondered what time it was, over in Holland. The middle of the night. “I’m glad, too,” she said.

Daisy Bellamy loved weddings. She always had, ever since she was little and got to be the flower girl in her aunt Helen’s wedding. She still remembered the lacy dress, the flowers twining through her hair, the shiny patent-leather Mary Janes, the feeling that she had a critically important role to play.

Taking a break from her dad’s wedding festivities, she sat on the balcony of her hotel room, looking down at the pavilion that had been set up on the beach for the reception. Sunset painted the sky every color of the rainbow. In a few minutes, she’d take out her camera to get some candid shots of the party.

All her life, she had fantasized about the day it would be her turn to be the bride. She had actually planned the entire event, right down to the seed pearls on her gown. She could perfectly picture every moment of her special day, from the delivery of the flowers—daisies, what else?—to the roaring send-off, to the Parisian honeymoon.

The only detail she couldn’t picture was the face of the groom.

At nineteen, she still couldn’t help dreaming about her own wedding, but there was a difference now. It was only a dream, not an eventuality. That option had been taken off the table last August.

She glanced down at the infant nursing at her breast and knew that the fantasy wedding simply wasn’t going to happen. Unless Prince Charming was willing to take on Daisy and Charlie both.

Logan O’Donnell, the baby’s father, kept trying to convince her that he was the one. There was one problem with that. Logan wasn’t Prince Charming. Oh, he looked like a prince, which was what had landed Daisy in trouble in the first place. But now that reality had hit Daisy like a brick to the head, she knew it took a lot more than looks to make a prince.