to another, happier topic, but it wasn’t an appropriate moment. Besides, she needed a more positive sign than a missed period before she said anything.
She got it from Dr. Manfred the following noon, after school let out. In the cubbyhole that served as his office, he gave her a blood test—more accurate then a urine test, he said—and sent the sample to the cubbyhole that served as a lab. Half an hour later he said, “Congratulations!” and Ulrika hugged her. “So you see, you did not need those fertile pills.”
Encircled by her security detail, Quinette floated to the mission, where she was to conduct a women’s Bible study. The news lifted her out of the mixed anger and dejection she’d felt over Nolli’s death. Here was a new life to compensate for the one lost. A new life inside her, binding her own more firmly still to the lives of these people, to this place.
The class was assembled under a tree. Michael should be the first to hear, but she couldn’t restrain herself and, through the interpreter, told the women she was pregnant. She received a chorus of ululations. Even the grim watchdogs smiled. She opened to the tale of Sarah, miraculously conceiving in her old age, a story she thought fitting, although she was far from old. She had just gotten into it when a platoon of soldiers came running across the mission grounds, shouting in Nuban as they surrounded the church. Negev and another bodyguard seized her under her arms and, with the four remaining guards forming a cordon around her, brought her inside. Two men took up positions alongside the door, rifles ready to fire; two more stood at the windows, one on each side of the church, while Negev and his comrade all but dragged her up the aisle, as if she were a captive bride, and motioned for her to get down behind the altar, a mud-brick block. They flanked her, weapons slung to hang level from their shoulders, their fingers on the triggers.
“Negev! What is it?”
“Commander’s orders to protect you, missy. There is a big trouble.”
Not a minute later a burst of automatic rifle fire came from the direction of the garrison. Not a minute after that, Fancher and Handy were escorted into the church by more armed men and told to sit alongside Quinette, shielded by the altar. They had no idea what was happening, and beyond “There is a big trouble” Negev would not or could not say more.
Another round of shooting started, more intense and prolonged than the first—fusillades of gunshots interspersed with muffled explosions. “Those are RPGs,” Handy said. “It must be a ground attack. We need to pray.”
Which they did, Fancher calling upon the Lord to shelter them with His wings as the noise diminished, rose, diminished, and rose again, almost symphonic in its rhythms. They sat in anxious, helpless ignorance, listening to the battle’s ebb and flow. “Two hours they’ve been at it,” Fancher announced, with a look at his watch. “This is like being outside a football stadium during a game. You can hear the crowd but you don’t know who’s winning.” That was no football game out there, Quinette thought, terrified for Michael, for the microbe of life in her womb.
The shooting changed tempo, to isolated bursts, long sentences of silence punctuated by single shots. The angles of window light grew shallow, and the racket ceased. After ten minutes of quiet Fancher declared that it was over and stood up. A soldier near him pushed him back down. They waited, Quinette feeling like a defendant while the jury deliberated her fate. At dusk the doors burst open and she heard the voice she’d feared she might never hear again. She and the missionaries were at last allowed to come out of hiding. Accompanied by several officers, Michael strode up the aisle, his uniform splotched with mud, his complexion paled by dust. His expression was like none she’d seen before—his battle face, features immobile, bloodshot eyes almost demonic, like eyes caught by a camera’s flash.
“You are safe now,” he said in a voice from which all wrinkles of emotion had been ironed out. “We’ve made an end of it.”
“An end of what? An end of what, Michael?”
He seemed not to recognize her. Resting a hand on her shoulder, he stared at the floor, muttering, “An end of what.” Then, looking up, his gaze flitted between her and Fancher and Handy. “An uprising. We got most of them,