Death awaited at the end of this mad journey. He'd been given loveâa graft of God's heart, Ivena had said. And now he'd found death. The price of love was death. Jan's chest tightened with remorse. What a fool he'd been to bring Helen to Bosnia. To Karadzic!
Oh, dear Helen, forgive me! Oh, God, help me.
A soft voice whispered in the darkness.
“It is a only a shadow of what I feel.
”
Jan caught his breath and lifted his head.
“No more than a faint whisper.”
The voice was audible! Jan held his breath and scanned the darkness but saw nothing. He was hallucinating.
“You feel this pain?
“Your worst pain is like a distant echo. Mine is a scream.”
This was not a hallucination! It couldn't be!
Oh, my God! You're speaking! I'm hearing the voice of God!
A tear slipped down his cheek. He stilled and listened to the loud inhaling and exhaling of his breath. He could see nothing but blackness. Then he spoke in a whisper.
“And my love for Helen?”
“A small taste. You could hardly survive more. Do you like it?”
Then it was true! “Yes! Yes, I like it! I love it!”
A small voice began to giggle behind the other. A child who laughed, unable to contain his delight. It fell like a balm of contentment over Jan. God and this child were seeing things differently, and it wasn't a sad thing they were seeing. Tears fell from Jan's eyes in streams. He began to shake, smothered in these words whispered to his mind.
His world suddenly flashed white and he gasped. At first he thought it might be the war memories, but he saw immediately that it wasn't. The field of white flowers stretched out before him, ending in a brilliant emerald ocean. The sky rushed toward the distant water, in rivers of red and blue and orange.
He shifted his feet and looked down. A thick carpet of grass squeezed between his toes, so rich and lush that it appeared aqua. Within three meters, the bed of red-and-white flowers began, swaying ever so gently with a light breeze. They were the flowers from Ivena's greenhouse. The sweet odor of rose blossoms swept through his nose.
Still the sky fled to the horizon, like a sunset photographed in time-lapse but never ending. Jan stared at the surreal scene and let his jaw fall open. It was not of this world. It was of the other. And it was part of his dream.
He heard a faint note on the air, like the distant drone of a huge wind. He was thinking that the sound might be coming from the field when he saw it, a single black line on the horizon moving toward him.
The line stretched as far as he could see in either direction. Slowly it grew, moving in with increasing speed. Jan caught his breath. Tiny shapes emerged from the faceless line. They flew toward him, below the streaming sky, against the tide, as though riding an airborne tsunami.
Jan jerked back a step and froze, unsure what to do. Then the sea of figures was upon him, rushing a hundred feet over his head, silent except for an aerodynamic moan, like a mighty rushing wind. He yelped and crouched low, thinking they might clip his head. But they were a good hundred feet up. It was the sheer volume of them that cast the illusion of proximity.
He stared, dumbstruck. They were children, mostly. He could see their blurred bodies streaking over him in hues of blue and red. A faint bubbling sound suddenly erupted from the children, running up and down the scales, as if magical chimes were moving with them. Only it wasn't a chime; it was laughter. A hundred thousand children giggling, as if their sweep down upon him was a great joke they now delighted in.
Jan's mouth spread in a smile. A chuckle escaped his mouth.
The laughter grew in response. And then Jan was laughing with them.
The line suddenly ended and he saw that the leaders had looped up into the sky, like a wave curling back on itself. They screamed in for another pass. A man with long hair led the flight, and at his right a smaller figure clung to his hand, squealing in fits of laughter; he saw them both clearly this time. They looked at him directly and their eyes sparkled with delight. When it seemed they were close enough to touch, Jan recognized them.
It was Father Micheal and Nadia!
Suddenly Jan wanted to leap up and join them. He stood to his feet. He was laughing with them, right there in the stone room; he knew that because his shoulders were feeling the pain from his body's jostling. But in his mindâin this other worldâhe jumped and flung his hands up futiley. He
had
to join them!
They looped back again, but this time they stopped high above and hovered like a cloud that covered the sky. The sound fell silent.
Jan pulled up, astonished. What was happening?
Then a thin wail cut through the air. And another, and another until the sky moaned with the sound of weeping. Jan stepped back, stunned. What had happened?
He lowered his eyes to the meadow. And he saw what they saw. A body lay on the flowers, ten feet from him, and he knew. It was Helen, and heaven was weeping for her.
Two emotions collided. Delight and grief. Love and death.
Jan's world snapped back to black, and he inhaled quickly. He was back in the dark room. The vision of heaven was gone.
THAT WAS
your dream, Jan. The dungeon and then the field. It was this. You have somehow waited for this moment since the day you saw Father Micheal and Nadia die. You were meant for this. This is your story.
“God?” His voice echoed in the chamber. He was speaking as if God were physically in the room.
Yes, and so he was. Is.
“God?”
But only silence answered him.
A sense of desperation welled up in his chest. A yearning for the laughter, for the voice of God, for the smell of the flowers from Ivena's garden. But they were gone, leaving only the lingering memory of Helen, lying on the grass. She was not laughing. Was she dead?
And what if she was? What if that was the meaning of this vision? Karadzic had killed her and now heaven was weeping. He straightened in his straps, suddenly panicked. In that moment he knew what he would do.
“Karadzic!” he screamed. His head ached with the exertion. “Karaaadzic!”
Fire burned at his shoulders. But he had to do this, didn't he? It was the thinnest of threads, but it might be Helen's only hope. “Karaaaadzic!”
A fist pounded on the door. “Shut up in there.”
“Tell Karadzic to come. I have something to tell him.”
A moment of silence. “He wants nothing from you,” the voice said.
“And if you're wrong? This will mean everything to him.”
A grunt sounded, followed by a long period of silence. Jan called out twice more, but the guard didn't answer.
The door suddenly rattled with keys and then swung in. Shafts of yellow light fell across Jan's body, and he lifted his head.
Karadzic stood in the doorway, slapping keys in his right hand like a baton, legs spread. “So, you wish to beg me for your life after all?” He chuckled and his voice echoed in the chamber.
“I'm no longer interested in my life. Only Helen's.”
“Then you're a fool and I pity you,” Karadzic said.
“Helen was always the prize. That's why Lutz offered you money for her death. If he can't have her, then he'll kill her. But believe me, if that dirty pig thought for a moment that he could have her as his own, willingly, he'd never kill her.”
Karadzic's lips twisted to a grin. “Is that it, Lover Boy?”
“Lutz would pay much more for Helen alive. I'm sure of it.”
The smile softened on Karadzic's face. “Don't try tricks with me, soldier.”
“Don't take my word. Ask Lutz himself. If he's paying you a hundred thousand dollars for our deaths, then he'll pay two hundred thousand for Helen's heart. I promise you.”
“And I'm not interested in your promises. You think your sly tongue will play to your favor?”
“I'm not speaking of my promises, you idiot,” Jan said. Karadzic's eyes narrowed. “I'm telling you what Lutz will say when you talk to him.”
“And what makes you think I'll talk to him?”
“Your greed will see to it.”
“And your stupidity will see to your death.”
“You would be a fool not to call Lutz. Demand double for Helen's willing return and he'll agree to pay you.”
“Even if you're right, how do you propose I force the woman to return to Lutz? You say he's a pig.”
Jan gathered himself and straightened against the beams. His shoulders throbbed, as if needles had been run through his joints.
“You persuade Helen to openly renounce her love for me.” Saying it made Jan sick.
Karadzic stared dumbly. “Renounce her love? You're talking women's talk.”
“If she were to renounce her love, it would break her spirit. That's why the priest wouldn't renounce his love for Christ. Haven't you understood that yet? It wasn't only words he was refusing to give you; it was his heart. If Helen renounces her love for me, she won't be able to live with the shame. She'll go eagerly back to America. And in America there is only Lutz for her.” How could he even say such words? Living with Lutz would be a death of its own. But then God could still woo her, couldn't he?
Karadzic was no fool in the art of bending minds; the war had taught him well. His eyes darted back and forth. “So you propose I break her heart by forcing her to renounce you? You think I am so naive?”
Jan took a deep breath. “No, you can't force her. She must do it willingly. So play one of your games, Karadzic. The same game you played with the priest. Perhaps you'll recover the shame he heaped on your head.”
Karadzic blinked rapidly. Jan had struck a chord there.
Jan continued quickly. “You can't force her, but you can motivate her. Tell her that if she doesn't renounce her love for me, you'll kill her.” He swallowed hard.
Karadzic licked his lips, understanding already. Jan went on.
“You tell her that, but if she chooses to die rather than renounce her love for me you do
not
kill her. You release her. And if she does renounce her love, then you release her to Lutz. Either way she lives. Either way you may kill me.” Jan forced a smile. “It's a game of ultimate stakes. She chooses to live and you become very rich; she chooses to die and you still get your ransom, but not for her. Only the half paid for me. She is free.”
“Her choice to die for you will set her free,” Karadzic stated with a glint in his eyes. “But her choice to live will hand her over to Lutz. Or I could just kill you both and collect the money already offered.”
“You could.”
Karadzic stared at him for several long seconds. Then he backed out of the room. “We will see,” he said, and he was gone.
The door closed and Jan slumped against his straps.
KARADZIC ENTERED the dimly lit quarters beneath the earth and stared at the large American seated cross-legged in his leather chair. The man stood to his feet and faced him. He looked albino in the yellow light; very white from his blond hair to his pale skin, this pig. Karadzic had never suspected that another man could send a chill down his spine, but Glenn Lutz did, every time he turned those black eyes his way. He did not like that.
“Well?” Lutz asked.
“He has a proposal for you,” Karadzic said, walking for his liquor cabinet.
“He knows that I'm here?”
“No. Of course not. He thinks I will call you.”
“He's not exactly in a position to give proposals, is he? What's his proposal?” Lutz demanded.
“He says that you will pay me double for the woman's heart.”
Glenn breathed loudly in the chamber. “I didn't make a thirty-hour trip to cut out her heart. I came to kill her. Straight and simple. Once she's dead, I don't care what you do with her. He's ranting.”
“He's not suggesting that I cut her heart out. He's suggesting that I play a game with her.” Karadzic poured scotch into a glass and faced the bulky American. “The same game that I played with the priest in the village.”
Lutz stared dumbly. He wasn't connecting. “I paid you to bring them in. Fifty thousand American dollars for each. Now I'm going to kill them both. I'm not interested in games.”
“And what if the game gave you Helen back? Hmm? What if she came willingly to you as yours and yours alone? What would you pay for that?”
Glenn pulled and pushed the stale air through his nostrils as if they were old bellows. His eyelids fell over those black eyes like shutters and then snapped open. The man had lost a part of himself somewhere, Karadzic thought.
Karadzic spoke again. “He says that you will pay me two hundred thousand dollars if I'm able to persuade her to renounce her love for Janjic. He says that if she renounces her love for him in the face of death, she'll lose her will to love him and return willingly to you.”
Glenn stared at Karadzic for a long time without moving his eyes. Finally he spoke. “And if she refuses?”
“Then we set her free. We kill only Janjic.” He took a sip from the glass.
“I came to kill them both,” Glenn said, but his conviction seemed tempered.
“Janjic is right. If the woman renounces her love for him, her spirit will be broken. She will be yours for the taking.” Karadzic smiled. “But either way I will kill him. You will have her alive or dead. Either way you will win.”
“I thought the game was to set her free if she chooses to die.”
“That was Janjic's request. But if she chooses to die rather than renounce her pathetic love for one man, then we will give her that wish.” It really was like the priest, wasn't it? Karadzic felt his pulse thump through his veins. A sort of vindication.
“And why should I pay youâ”
“Because you could not do it,” Karadzic interrupted, suddenly angry. “She would never renounce her love with you standing there.” He had no idea if that was true or not, but suddenly the money was sounding very attractive. And playing the game again carried a poetic justice that was starting to gnaw at his skull. “I will kill Janjic regardless. And I am offering you the chance to have your woman alive and willing. It's your choice. One hundred thousand for both dead, or two hundred thousand for Janjic dead and Helen in your arms.”