VANGUARD(97)

“Did you hear from him while he was in Orlisia?”

“Yes. He would send me a short message every day.” She took a breath and squeezed Michael’s hand on screen. “On September 10 of last year, the messages stopped. I knew something terrible had happened.”

“Was that when you started planning to get into Orlisia by forming the coalition?”

“No,” she replied. “I want to distinguish between my personal and professional interests here. Aid agencies began planning for intervention the day the invasion took place.” She used one of her key messages for the interview. “At Refugee Crisis International, it’s our job to improve the conditions of people who inhabit refugee camps. That is what we do best. It’s what I do best. As soon as the Parnaas camp started to form, we knew we would be going in.

“I didn’t know Michael Nariovsky-Trent would be in Parnaas. I hoped he would be. I even prayed for it. I won’t deny that it was a huge motivator for me. But that possibility didn’t distract me from my work. If anything, it made me better at it. It gave me the courage to help bring the coalition together. The patience to find consensus with the Soviet government on our entry plan. It made me try harder, work longer hours, and give more of myself than I’d ever given to a crisis before.

“We did not spend a single dime of donor money on the search for Michael. It was funded privately. Certainly the mission did not suffer in any way by my desire to find him. If anything the mission was more successful because of his presence in my life.”

In the living room, Sophie hid her face in Michael’s shoulder with embarrassment, but she was nonetheless pleased that they had used that clip in its entirety.

The voiceover went on to describe Commandant Jaros, showing pictures of the refugees with the brandings on their foreheads. Then it segued into a piece on the diseases that plague all refugee camps: dysentery, cholera, other water-borne illnesses, and, in their case, pneumonia.

“Did you know that aid workers had finally entered Parnaas, Michael?”

“Yes, conditions in the camp definitely improved upon the arrival of the coalition. We had clean drinking water almost immediately. Medical care. Emergency rations. Plastic sheeting for better shelters. People were still terrified of the Soviets and the Commandant, but knowing international aid workers were present made us feel hopeful. We thought maybe we would get out of there alive, and not die or become slaves.”

“Did you know that Sophie was with the coalition?”

His eyes softened. “No, but I hoped. I heard a rumor of an American aid worker who defied the guards and spoke Orlisian very well. A woman. I wanted so badly to believe it was Sophie. I would walk in the camp, searching for her. But we could not approach the administrative buildings where Sophie tells me she spent the majority of her time as leader of the coalition.”

Annabelle turned to Sophie on screen. “You did the same thing, didn’t you? Walked through the camp, searching for Michael.”

“Yes. I tried not to. I had a job to do, and it was not about running from tent to tent looking into the face of every man in the camp. But I had to find him.”

“What was the worst outcome you could have had from your search? Finding out that Michael was dead?”

“No,” she said. “It would have been not knowing. It would have been searching every tent, looking into every face and never finding the one I was looking for. It would have been following every lead, combing the country top to bottom, and never turning up any trace of him.” She could see tears in her eyes on the television. “Spending the rest of my life wondering what had happened, never knowing, never getting closure. Never seeing his face again, or hearing his voice.” On screen, Sophie had stopped talking because she was crying. Sitting on the couch with Michael, she felt the tears sliding down the sides of her face. He wiped them away and kissed the top of her head, holding her close. Michael, Michael, Michael. He’s here. He’s safe.

On the other side of the room, Carter blew his nose and pulled Janet closer to him.

“But you did find him.”

“Yes. Just in time.”

“Just in time because – Michael, you had contracted a bacterial pneumonia that had broken out in the camp?”

“Yes. I fell ill very rapidly, having been living hand to mouth for several weeks before arriving at the camp. The fever took me so fast that I was incapable of making rational decisions within hours of becoming ill. The men I shared my tent with were suspicious of the Soviets, and did not take me to the medical post that had been set up. I would have died on the floor of my shelter had things gone differently. The last thing I remember was an aid worker entering my tent, asking my name.”