The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,104
door, giving him time to stop her, to call her back. But that call never came. She turned at the door to look at him, a condemned prisoner hoping for a last-minute reprieve.
At that moment, the door of the bakery workshop and that of the conference room on the other side of the world were one and the same. Amaia was simultaneously the girl who couldn’t stop crying and the woman who couldn’t weep at all. They both turned and looked at their father.
“Agur, Aita,” they say.
“Agur, maitia,” he says from the far side of the room.
Amaia entered the ops center just as Charbou started waving frantically to attract the others’ attention. “Series of gunshots on Maine Street, in Jefferson! The woman who called it in heard five shots, fairly close together.”
“We have records of several families living in that area,” Johnson said, spreading out a map and locating the house.
“We got a problem,” Bull interrupted. “We don’t know why yet, but for the last half hour, all the information coming in says the water is rising, even in places that weren’t flooded before or where it’d started to go down. It’s rising fast, all over the place. There’s a rumor going round that the levee has broken at Seventeenth Street. No confirmation yet, but someone just called to say the water is waist deep on Poydras Street.”
“All right,” Amaia said, “Jefferson Parish was already flooded anyway. I assume you weren’t expecting to come back with dry pants. Right? So what are we waiting for?”
Dupree studied her. He got up, went toward the door, ordered them to check their equipment—supplies, batteries, flashlights—and mentally adjusted his plan. He gave her a nod as he passed, a sign of respect more than anything, for her ability to make the decision.
“Do you want me to have them send an acknowledgment to Spain?”
“No. My aunt already knows. But . . .”
“What?”
“Could you let Inspector Gertha Schneider know? She’s a German officer in the Europol group in Quantico. Tell her mountain folk are strong. She’ll understand.”
PART TWO
What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls the butterfly.
—Attributed To Lao Tzu
On the afternoon of Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina moved inland and began to break up. It devastated the coast but passed just east of New Orleans, sparing the city from total destruction.
This is the story of what happened after that.
38
AFTER THE STORM
New Orleans, Louisiana
Monday, August 29, 2005
They left the fire station in their inflatable flat-bottomed Zodiac. It was as if they’d landed on another planet. Gone were the frantic calls to the ops center for help. As were the weather reports, blurry video from traffic cameras, calls from patrol cars, and excited outbursts from newscasters reacting to the disaster. But one thing was undeniable: nothing they’d heard about the horror and desperation could have prepared them for what they encountered.
Dupree leaned on the armrest and looked around to study the faces of his team. When they’d set out from the base, he’d expected to be concerned about Amaia. He knew the risk he was running by including someone who’d so recently received such terrible news. It was clear to him that when Wilson and Verdon had given him that information, they’d been granting him the discretion to decide whether to keep her on the team or put her on a plane back to Spain. Something told him she’d do just fine.
In Texas, when he’d sent her back to Quantico, she’d asked him, “Why me?” He’d ducked the question by stressing the need to use individuals as tools. Investigators were part of the mechanism, vital cogs to keep it targeted and on track.
He’d been lying.
He knew Amaia was a searcher, one of those exceptional beings naturally gifted with the ability to detect and track evil. A dubious distinction, certainly, and one that was a lasting effect of enduring her own personal hell. Salazar was as arrogant and temperamental as you might expect of an officer who’d already achieved star status at the age of twenty-five; but at the same time, she was so calm and divorced from her emotions that he had to ask himself if that was a defense mechanism or a gift she didn’t fully understand. If the latter, she was truly extraordinary. She was a rare bird in any case, and if things went as he expected, she’d soon be put to the test.