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That’s where it all happened.
The blinding sun abruptly caused his eyes to darken. Robert felt light-headed and his ears clogged. He blinked and then glanced around with a look of bewilderment. Next to him sat a stranger. He was telling him something, but Robert couldn’t understand a thing, whether from surprise or the constant ringing in his ears, he could not be certain. In fact, he did not even try to understand the language of the strange boy. It seemed as though he was seeing everything for the first time, everything was odd, unfamiliar and incomprehensible. Robert’s face exhibited genuine surprise.
He did not understand where he was, on whose roof he sat, or what he was doing there. Robert stood up and inspected his clothes. He was stunned – the clothes were new, as was the barn and, ultimately, the whole yard.
Robert could not understand what was happening to him. Everything around him was completely unfamiliar. With eyes wide from bewilderment, Robert looked up at the sky.
There, the horse with a fish tail was still floating proudly with his mane spread across the sky. Rays of sun broke like long threads through it and disappeared again. The horse appeared to be smiling.
The first thought that came to Robert was that he was delirious. He knew that sunstroke could cause a loss of consciousness, but he could not comprehend how such hallucinations could at once seem so real and unreal. His heart was threatening to burst from his chest. A primal fear was starting to overwhelm him.
The boy could not help but think that this was some mysterious, fantastic, but strikingly realistic dream. He kept looking around with an open mouth and wide eyes. He wanted to flee that roof to the ground, and without thinking he took a step. The hot roof burned his bare heel like when he was on the beach in Pattaya several days earlier, where his father had taken him and his mother to see the Gulf of Thailand. The sea had been teeming with jellyfish and Robert accidentally stepped on one.
«Jellyfish. It’s just jellyfish, nothing to worry about,» the doctor had said calmly at the local hospital where the boy was taken with the burning foot. To the child, the word jellyfish meant a sudden stinging pain. The throbbing foot was covered with bright red marks.
It lasted for just a moment. Feeling a sharp pain, Robert squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath.
«Jellyfish! It doesn’t look like a horse-fish at all!» Jovan sat next to him laughing loudly. «Look, Robbie, see – there’s the head and there’s some tentacles. Like the one in our biology textbook.»
The snapshots of a distant, hot country disappeared abruptly without a trace, like the surprise Robert’s face bore just a few minutes prior.
Robert smiled at Jovan and looked at the sky.
And yet, it was a horse that was floating in the sky, not a jellyfish, he thought.
Jovan and Robert, two inseparable friends, continued to enjoy looking at the clouds.
Meanwhile, the horse with a long fish tail continued to float across the sky, smiling.
Chapter 2
Geneva, Switzerland (Trevor)
17 December 2011. 09:03
Bright sunlight seeping through a crack in the curtains lit a narrow strip of a wide bed. The rest was covered in darkness. A cell phone on a glass nightstand was persistently ringing. Running water could be heard from the shower. Men’s socks, trousers and women’s underwear were scattered on the floor.
The phone went silent, but soon started ringing again. Trevor, in a bathrobe and with a towel draped over his head, approached the bed and picked it up.
«Good morning, Victor… Sure, in an hour… Thanks.»
The line went dead. Amanda’s assistant reminded Trevor about the time of the session.
Trevor dropped the phone and threw open the curtains. Light broke into the room. The windows of the Beau-Rivage Hotel on Lake Geneva revealed a fountain and the snowy mountain peaks of the Swiss Alps. On the bed, snoring softly, a young girl with long dark hair was sleeping. A gray, silk sheet enveloped her naked body like second skin. Breaking his gaze, Trevor recollected the previous evening at the nightclub he frequented whenever he was in Geneva.
Last night the club featured some band that was probably quite popular, judging by the two hundred young people who crowded the stage, singing loudly along with the vocalist to the deafening accompaniment of drums.
The thick blue and yellow beams of projectors caught the faces and hands of the fans in the crowd. Laser chasers were blinding Trevor, so he turned away from the stage and headed to the nearly deserted bar. The young bartender with short, bleached hair and a colorful tattoo took his order and poured a glass of whiskey. A girl sat alone at the other end of the bar, watching Trevor. When their eyes met she smiled and looked down. But then she looked at Trevor again with a tenacious, penetrating, somewhat inquisitive, even defiant look. Trevor slammed down his drink and confidently approached the girl.
In the morning, he could not remember her name, where she was from or what they had talked about at that club. The several glasses of whiskey he had consumed scorched his memories of that night, melting away all that was unnecessary and leaving only fragmented, disconnected shots of their embraces and kisses. Trevor could not remember how they left the nightclub, how they got to the hotel, to his room, but his memory shamelessly continued to show him moments of their lovemaking. Trevor remembered her as passionate, bathed in sweat in his arms, illuminated by a narrow ray of pale moonlight, and he smiled.
«Chloe!» The name of the stranger struck him like a bolt out of the blue. «I think that’s what she called herself? Right, it was Chloe.»
Trevor dressed and opened his wallet. A plastic window revealed an ID with PRESS written in big letters on it. He pulled out four hundred Swiss francs, placed them on the bedside table next to the girl and quickly left the room. Soon, he was outside the hotel on the street.
Christmas was fast approaching and the weather in Geneva was warm and autumnal. At night the temperature would fall to near freezing, which was unseasonably warm, but for Trevor, who had recently flown in from the Sahara, the weather was quite pleasant. The temperature in the desert at night also rarely rose above 3—4
C.
Beau-Rivage Hotel to Rue du Cendrier is about a twenty-minute walk along the city’s promenade.
Trevor felt very agitated before the second session. Until this point, he did not fully understand what had happened to him the day before. Over the past twenty hours, he kept thinking about the office of the psychologist Amanda, listening over and over to his own voice broadcast by the speakers of a small portable recorder, telling an incredible story of a part of his life that nobody knew about, hidden somewhere deep in his subconscious.
It had all started several days earlier, after an unexpected encounter and what he thought was an innocent proposal.
***
«Yes, Trevor, these are some fine rocks,» said an elderly jeweler, who was unable to roll his «r’ as he spoke, as he examined a round diamond the size of a hazelnut. «Take this one – pure perfection.»
A short gray-haired Jew with horn-rimmed glasses perched on his head had been inspecting the diamond for five minutes through a thick magnifying glass, holding it with fine tweezers in his white cotton gloves.
He carefully returned the stone and picked up another from the handful of nearly identical in size and shape diamonds scattered on a black lacquered table.
«Wonderful!» He was clearly admiring them. «The cut is amazing! The girdle on all of them is as sharp as a knife. The colors and purity are like dew from the sky…
Trevor was introduced to Lev Goldenberg, a jeweler and emigrant from the Soviet Union, by Rochefort, chief editor at Les Mondes, who often ordered jewelry from him.
Lev Goldenberg created remarkable copies of the best collections offered by the leading jewelry brands of Europe.
«Show me a photo of a masterpiece and I will make you one that is hundred times better at half the cost,» he loved to say every time potential clients approached him. Indeed, he was the finest craftsman.
«I have a client who can purchase all of these in one lot,» said the old jeweler as he eyed yet another rock. «If you negotiate well, he will pay five million right away, maybe more.»
«Lev, I wasn’t thinking of selling just yet. I just need a safe place to keep them for a while.»
«Teo, you don’t understand,» the jeweler said softly, prying his gaze from the diamond to give Trevor a piercing look. «Five million euros, not dollars. That’s a lot of money, my friend.»
«Lev, I need a safe place for a couple of days, until Christmas. I’m staying at a hotel and it would be extremely reckless of me to keep them in a safe there.»
– Tov[5 - Tov (Yiddish) — good, okay.], my friend, all right,» said the jeweler somewhat dejectedly. He gathered the stones in a green velvet bag. «You know you won’t find a safer place. But if you do decide to sell, just let me know and I will arrange everything within two-three hours.»
Shortly after the conversation with the jeweler, Trevor was sitting on the open terrace of a small restaurant in the heart of Geneva, sipping coffee and reading the latest newspapers.
Military service was in the past, the only reminder being a pale tattoo of a skull on his left shoulder, a device of the Reconnaissance Battalion of the Marine Brigade of the French Foreign Legion headquartered in Algeria. The department of the French Press Institute at Paris II Panthéon-Assas University was also in the past. Now, he was a special war correspondent for Les Mondes.
Trevor remembered only bits and pieces of his childhood, as the family moved around a lot. His father was from Carpathian Ruthenia[6 - Carpathian Ruthenia (Czech Podkarpatská Rus, Země Podkarpatoruská; also Carpatho-Ukraine or Zakarpattia since September 1938 – Czech: Země Zakarpatskoukrajinská) – the name of one of five (later four) regions of the First Czechoslovak Republic 1919—1938 (from 26 October 1938 renamed Carpatho-Ukraine, an autonomous regions of the Second Czechoslovak Republic). The region is located in the modern-day Zakarpattia Region of Ukraine.] (territory of modern Zakarpattia region in Ukraine), a Ukrainian Ruthenian (Rusyn)[7 - Rusyns (Ruthenians, Rusnaks) – name of Ukrainians before the 18
century; in West Ukrainian regions – before the beginning of the 20
century. The name is still used in Zakarpattia. Initially, the word «rusyn’ was used only in singular form as a derivative of the plural form of «Rus’. Many Croatian historians identify Rusyns with White Croats, believing they are the descendants of the White Croatian tribe.].
However, at the beginning of the Second World War, when Zakarpattia, then a part of Czechoslovakia, was occupied by the Hungarian army, his family fled first to Prague and after the war to France, where Trevor was born in the early 1970s. His father would converse with him only in the Rusyn language so that he would remember his heritage. Trevor’s mother, a teacher of French and French literature, tried to instill in him a love for everything French.
His father, an expert in hotel construction, had traveled regularly for work to different countries, and he would often take his family with him. That was why Trevor’s childhood memories were reduced to faded color and black and white photographs against the backgrounds of public markets in India, islands and temples of Thailand, sands of the Middle East, and the endless construction sites of Hong Kong, Dubai and Bangkok. As a child, Trevor got so used to moving around and the constant changes that even when he entered adulthood, he could not imagine himself as an office employee, working at the same desk day after day. That was the reason behind his fascination with journalism.
But then the accident happened.
When the boy was twelve, his parents died in a car accident. Trevor spent nearly a month in a hospital until his mother’s older sister, Anne Frachon, became his legal guardian and took him to Paris.
Aunt Anne was unmarried and gave all his love to Trevor. She was the one who insisted that Trevor enlist and later study journalism at university.
Over the past fifteen years, Trevor had traveled to nearly all the world’s conflict zones.
He received the Prix Albert Londres war correspondent award.
His career as a journalist began in 1999 during the Yugoslav Wars. He was sent there as a young, promising reporter by the newspaper in place of an experienced correspondent, who had unexpectedly fallen ill. As a former soldier who served five years in the French Foreign Legion and had intimate knowledge of military matters, Trevor was more than ready for that kind of work.
During the assignment, he became embroiled in a scandal after he published a controversial investigation on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Trevor was one of the first to reveal that the alliance had used cluster bombs prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Despite the pressure and criticism by military experts and politicians, the young journalist was noticed and recognized.
In the fall of 1999, Trevor was sent to West Africa together with a group from the BBC to prepare an investigative report on war crimes committed by Foday Sankoh, former leader of the Revolutionary United Front, who was appointed vice president of Sierra Leone in 1997, and his ties to another infamous war criminal, then president of Liberia Charles McArthur Taylor, who was later indicted for crimes against humanity thanks to the materials collected and published by Trevor. In 2000, Sankoh was also accused of being a war criminal and indicted, while Charles Taylor was apprehended and held at the International Criminal Court in 2006.
From then on, Trevor was the top journalist covering the majority of military conflicts. His insightful reports and uncompromising articles were published by most of the European press.
In 2007, Trevor was covering wars in Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, and Sierra Leone, where he investigated Viktor Woud, an arms dealer from Russia, who was suspected of illegally selling arms and munitions to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and UN-embargoed countries.
Trevor’s colleagues from Russia had told him that Woud could be a secret dealer for the Russian state arms export agency and a big player in Russia. They warned Trevor about investigating this story, as Woud’s operations were directly linked to the newly emerging Russian mafia, which had global aspirations.
Nevertheless, he probed and published, and some of his reports were aired by top European channels.
Viktor Woud was arrested in 2008 in Thailand and extradited to the U.S. on November 16, 2010, where he was indicted. Finally, on November 2, 2011, a jury unanimously found him guilty of illegal arms dealing.
All these events were well covered by Trevor from the start of the investigation in 2007, although due to another trip to a collapsing Libya, he could only follow the trial of Woud online and through the reports of his colleagues.
His track record included reports from Baghdad during the Iraq War, Gaza Strip during the Gaza War and the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Misrata, which were nearly leveled by NATO airstrikes.
That is why Trevor was considered to be one of the most experienced journalists, the lead expert on Africa and the Middle East.
Working in the most unstable countries, Trevor needed trustworthy and reliable friends and partners.
Kate, a twenty-eight-year old journalist from Australia, was one person Trevor fully trusted. Kate was a graceful and sweet blonde with short tousled hair, a cheerful smile full of even white teeth, beautiful, full lips, as if painted by a master artist, and big green eyes. Despite appearing delicate, she always wore a light uniform and a felt hat.
Kate was one of those women who, despite approaching the age of forty, remained cute and cheery, like a teenager in appearance and behavior.
They met in early 2007 in Afghanistan.
A few days earlier, Trevor was captured by the Taliban in Musa Qala, Helmand Province. The abduction had been planned, even though he was on his way to meet one of their leaders for a special story.
There was a young blonde woman and two men, tired by the heat and hunger, already in the house where the bound prisoners were brought. Trevor gathered from the conversations he overheard that they were all journalists and that they had been held there by the militants for over a month.
A local driver and an Afghani reporter were captured together with Trevor. The next day, to intimidate others, two Afghanis were publicly executed in front of the prisoners. The Taliban were planning to demand a ransom for him and the other journalists.
For three days Trevor was brutally beaten in an attempt to break his will, but on the fourth day Mullah Saddam, a prominent Taliban field commander, arrived at the camp.
***
Musa Qala, Helmand, Afghanistan
22 February 2007 15:35
«Well, well, well. The big infidel is on his knees before the little Afghani mujahedeen?» Mullah taunted in bad English as he approached Trevor, who was lying helplessly, tied up in the dust.
«I am not a soldier; I am a journalist. And I am French,» replied Trevor, despite the agony of the ropes.
«Press?» The militant said with unconcealed malice, grabbing Trevor by the shoulder with one hand and striking his face loudly with the other. «I not ask you, dog, who you are.»
He took Trevor’s plastic ID card in his hands and inspected it with a satisfied smirk.
«Press is good. We need press, very need.»
«What do you want from me?»
«Nothing from you. What can you? You are weak and sick. You can’t anything. Your master can! He pay me. Pay a lot.»
«Nobody will pay you a dime for me. I’m not important,» Trevor said quietly. He spat blood.
«Pay, pay a lot. You make video tomorrow. You ask him to pay,» hissed the Mullah, pressing his foot against Trevor’s face. «If not pay, you go home to Paris in pieces, we send to your office.»
The Mullah gave some instructions in Pashto to some militants. Trevor was lifted and dragged not to the pit, where he was held earlier, but to a clay shed, where the other prisoners were now being kept. It was at least dry there. He was thrown into a small room, separated from the rest of the prisoners by a double plank wall. They put shackles on his wrists and ankles, chained him to a wooden beam and gave him some food and a mug of water. To the militants, Trevor seemed broken and not dangerous.
And that was the opportunity he was waiting for. The Taliban were convinced that a chained, starved, exhausted, beaten prisoner would only dream about getting some sleep, so they carelessly left only one armed mujahedeen near the shed, who as soon as it turned dark smoked some local weed and fell asleep against the wall.
Trevor had learned how to escape from any restraints during his service in the Legion. When he was sure that the camp was settled for the night, he easily freed himself from the shackles and climbed outside through a hole in the roof.
After taking out the guard and grabbing his assault rifle and grenade pouch, Trevor opened the other door of the shed and quietly ordered: «Come on out! Quick!»
However, only the girl rose and resolutely headed towards the exit.
From the darkness of the stuffy room came a coarse voice of a man: «Kate, think about it, you will be caught and executed. Don’t do it.»
But Kate confidently took a step towards the opened door and took Trevor firmly by the arm.
«Can you drive?» Trevor asked as they left the shed. He pointed to a white pickup truck and whispered, «Usually they leave the keys in the armrest. Turn on the engine and wait for me. If something goes wrong, the road to freedom is just behind that wall.»
Kate ran to the truck while Trevor poured gasoline over the other two vehicles and ammunition boxes stacked near a small tent. Alerted by the sound of the running engine, two militants rushed from a building only to be met with the blast of a grenade Trevor had thrown at their feet. Chaotic shooting burst from the building’s windows. Trevor lobbed two grenades at the building and fired at the gasoline. In an instant, everything around him lit up. After unloading a full clip at the building, Trevor threw another grenade towards the ammo boxes, jumped into the open car door and shouted: «Go!»
«Where to?» Kate asked. Her hands were shaking as she grabbed the steering wheel.
«There!» Trevor yelled. He grabbed the wheel with one hand and pressed gas pedal with his left foot together with Kate’s foot, directing the vehicle at the clay fence. «Hold on tight!»
