The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,102
screen to attract her attention. “Salazar, come with me!” He turned and went to the door.
Dupree crossed to the conference room, where he started ripping down the brown paper that covered the windows. Amaia closed the door behind her and stood watching as her boss worked.
He turned. She could see from his expression he was serious. He was bottling up a lot of anger. “Salazar, I think you need to sit down for this.”
She stood where she was, staring at him. Maybe to encourage her, he went to the table, pulled out a couple of chairs, took one, and gestured toward the other. Amaia settled in across from him.
“You were in the ops center; I don’t have to tell you the hurricane was a lot more destructive than we expected. Most of the city has no power and no potable water. The eye of the hurricane passed to the east, sparing New Orleans from total destruction, but we know the water along the coast will go up almost twenty feet. The Coast Guard helicopters are back in the air, and imaging from the crews shows nothing but desolation. The French Quarter came through okay, but other parts of the city were flattened. The West End is flooded. Operation Cage, at least as we planned it, is a no-go. In the face of all this, I need everyone on the team to be totally committed.” He paused and looked down for a moment. “Salazar, Washington told me that your aunt called from Spain. I’m sorry to have to give you the news: your father died yesterday morning.”
Amaia took a deep breath. She needed all the air in the room, all the air in the world. Dupree went back to the now-exposed window, worked at the latch, and got it to open. He pushed, and the sash of the tall, narrow window rose with a ripping sound as it pulled duct tape off the casement.
The humid, smelly air surged in. The sudden draft swept all the photographs off the tables onto the floor in total confusion. Amaia stared down at them.
Dupree studied her expression for a moment, then started toward the door. “I’m going to be with the rest of the team in the ops center. If things go as we expect, it won’t be long before the call comes in. It’s up to you. If you decide to leave, I’ll try to get you transportation back to the naval air station. The last I heard, they were bringing in a Marine Corps aviation team to evacuate the remaining FBI personnel. Once you get away from the storm, you can book a plane ticket to Spain.”
Amaia sensed his presence as he started past her and then paused for an instant. He extended his hand as if to touch her shoulder but dropped it instead. She heard him quietly close the door behind him.
She bent over to pick up the photo that had landed closest to her. She studied it for a few seconds, folded it in half and then in quarters, and tucked it inside her blouse.
37
OUR FATHER
Elizondo
Amaia inhaled the rich aroma of melted butter. She liked it better than that of caramelized sugar, which the least moment of inattention could convert into a smell as acrid as burned embers, or the smell of flour, a coarse, primal odor that was deceptively mild but as suffocating as dirt from a grave.
She watched her father working heavy sheets of pastry dough. Her heartbeat accelerated. A Strauss waltz wafted from the radio he kept on while he worked. He smiled when he saw her, and she tried to reciprocate, but couldn’t. How can you tell someone you love something that you know will make him terribly unhappy? She seemed to observe herself from above, a nine-year-old girl standing hesitant behind him, searching for words that by all rights she shouldn’t know at all. She loved him so, so much . . .
She listened to the impetuously accelerating waltz on the radio, imperial and elegant and completely inappropriate for talking about her fears. She pressed her lips together in a determined expression. She knew then that she wasn’t going to tell him, because if she did, he’d stop smiling, he’d turn off the radio, and the waltz would disappear into the ether, to be replaced by the crackling sound of hot ovens and the relentless drip of water from the faulty faucet at the deep steel sink.