and to give you the information you needed to make it.”
“And then you’ll take me back to Atlanta immediately if I decide I don’t want to stay?”
“Of course. Jill always keeps her word. Even if it means I have to bear the brunt of it.” He gave her a keen glance. “But I think I’ll probably get a good night’s sleep tonight here in Maldara. I’d wager that intensity usually wins out when it comes to children. Why else are you here?”
“Your friend, Jill, conned me,” she said flatly.
“Then she had her reasons,” Gideon said. “And it probably hurt her more than it did you. Jill is one of those rare people who take honor seriously. She’d agonize over it.” He paused. “And I bet she made it as painless for you as possible.”
“The hell she did,” Eve said curtly. “She wrote me a biography on each of those children that would tear your heart out.”
Gideon gave a low whistle. “Ah, that pen of hers can be a lethal weapon. She’s a great wordsmith. But she is usually responsible about how she wields it. Maybe you’ll find that she was this time, too.” He’d negotiated the turn in the road, and they’d suddenly left all semblance of the modern world and were in the jungle. He drove on a bumpy dirt road for another few minutes, then pulled to a stop and gestured to a large, square structure several yards away. “Robaku.”
Eve stared in shock. Destruction. Chaos.
It was a burnt-out shell of a building. No roof. Only blackened, jagged openings that had once been windows. There was a wide, gaping opening that must have been a door, which vines and shrubs were trying to devour.
Eve could almost smell the acrid scent of the smoke from the flames that had destroyed the school. It had been a long time, but she could swear the smell lingered. She had thought it would at least have been cleaned up, perhaps flowers planted. Some attempt made to have the painfulness of the scene erased.
“Nothing…has been done.” She got out of the Land Rover and stood looking at that gaping mouth of a door. “Jill said Zahra…some kind of memorial.”
“This is Zahra’s concept of a memorial. She ordered the villagers not to touch the school.” Gideon got out of the car. “She said that everyone should see the horrible destruction that the war brought to her country so that they would never be tempted to repeat it. Unusual, but it sounded vaguely patriotic when she was quoted in the newspapers.” He was striding toward the door. “Step into Robaku’s pride and joy, Eve.”
No hint of either pride or joy here, she thought, sick. She followed him slowly until she reached the doorway and stood staring into the half darkness. It was worse inside than it was outside.
The desks…
Most of them were blackened and destroyed, but a few of them had escaped the fires and sat there on the burnt-out floors as if they were waiting for the child who came to occupy them every day.
Eve could feel her eyes sting. “Oh, shit.”
She moved into the huge room. The blackboard…broken and melted.
Something dark streaking the floor that was neither ash, nor dirt, nor burnt-out boards.
“Jill was told that’s not blood on the floor,” Gideon said. “That Zahra had given permission for the blood to be cleansed when the body parts were taken from here.” His lips curled. “But since Zahra’s own people extracted the bodies, I wouldn’t give odds that they were careful about cleaning up the blood.”
She couldn’t take her eyes from those dark streaks.
He was looking at her face. “You don’t look well. Maybe I’d better get you out of here.”
She paid no attention to him. She was being bombarded by visions of what must have happened here that morning. The children at their desks…The teacher at the blackboard…probably chatter and smiles filling the room. Everything normal and right, as it should be for children in a classroom. As it was in her son Michael’s classroom.
“Did…they have any warning? Why didn’t they run away?”
“No warning. The school is located on this hill at the far end of the village. It’s about a ten-minute walk to the village itself. Varak’s militia struck the school first, then went on to burn the village. Hajif said they heard the screams from the children and ran toward the school to save them. But it had already been torched by the time they got there. A few of the