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The vehicle tore through the wall and flew onto the sandy road to the deafening roar of detonating ammunition. A bright glow of fire rose over the village, lighting the way for the escapees.
«Now you can turn on the headlights,» Trevor said quietly after some time. The burning building disappeared behind the hill. «Sangin is maybe twenty-five kilometers from here, not more. Just drive to the river without stopping. There is a British base somewhere there… A patrol should see us.»
Trevor was slurring his words. Only then did Kate notice that he was pressing his hand to the left side of his chest. Blood was dripping through his fingers.
«Are you wounded? What’s wrong?» Kate asked.
But Trevor remained silent. He lost consciousness and his body went limp.
«Please, keep talking!» Kate shouted frantically, but she received no answer. Realizing that she was now essentially alone, Kate pressed her hand against Trevor’s wound and stepped on the gas pedal.
Trevor woke up in a bed of a military hospital. Kate was sitting next to him in a white coat draped over a military uniform, with an open book in her hands, dozing.
«Where am I?» asked Trevor faintly.
«We are in Kandahar, on the US base,» Kate answered sleepily. She smiled.
«How long was I out for?»
«Almost three days. You had to have surgery, but it’s all over now.»
Trevor looked around, then glanced at Kate with a barely noticeable smile:
«I believe we haven’t had the chance to be introduced. I am Trevor Blanche.»
«I’m Kate, Kate Larsen. From Australia. I wanted to thank you for saving me.»
«No need, Kate. I am here thanks to you, so we are even.»
The next day, Trevor and Kate were transported from Afghanistan to Switzerland. In Zurich, Trevor continued to undergo treatment and spent all his free time with Kate. Trevor even tried to romance her, but after a few nights spent together Kate made it clear that she had no intention of starting a serious relationship with him, to avoid disappointment, she said, and thought it best to keep what they had uncomplicated. In truth, Kate was testing Trevor. She liked him a lot, but her female intuition told her he wasn’t into committed relationships, so she tried to instill a keeper’s instinct in him.
Trevor, however, easily accepted her terms and continued to regard Kate only as a colleague.
Initially, this irritated Kate, but she hid it well and always seemed happy to see him whenever they were set to work together.
In fact, this kind of relationship between a man and a woman should have ended once and for all after some time, but they were doing the same job. So, after two-, three-week trips, they would part and return to their respective homes, friends and families – to their own worlds.
Trevor had known Etienne, a cameraman, for more than a decade, ever since he worked in Sierra Leone. Etienne was French, but with some Scottish blood flowing in his veins, from this mother. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland, on the shore of Loch Linnhe, in the town of Fort William, where his mother was born and where her family still lived.
Etienne absorbed Scottish traditions into every cell in his body. He was extremely proud of the history of Scotland, which he deeply respected and considered his own. That was why, at the age of 35, his French heritage could only be found in a few traits on his slender face. Even the tattoo on his left shoulder bore the words of Scotland’s motto in Latin: «Nemo me impune lacessit»[8 - Nemo me impune lacessit(Lat.). – No one attacks me with impunity.].
Etienne was not a talkative sort, or showed feelings at the drop of a hat. In fact, he was careful to hide all emotion. He even joked with a stony face, while his highest praise was a curt «Not bad».
Trevor valued his friendship with Etienne. They had worked side by side for many years. Etienne accompanied Trevor on almost all of his journeys.
In addition, Etienne has been seeing Kate for over a year; they spent a lot of time together. Trevor thought it odd to see the tall, lean Frenchman with an aquiline nose and long hands tenderly treat the small Kate, who was a foot shorter than him. Trevor had been observing them with a smile, comparing their relationship to a dance of fire and ice. It was clear that Kate’s hot heart was melting the ice that covered Etienne’s heart.
Trevor began working with Dan eighteen month ago. Dan was a short, open-hearted young man, a pacifist and a bit of a ladies man. Only twenty-five, he was accepted to Les Mondes as a promising, young and ambitious reporter immediately upon graduating from Tampere University. Rochefort, chief editor of Les Mondes, took the young reporter under his wing. Rochefort appointed Dan as Trevor’s assistant, and Dan ended up accompanying Trevor and Etienne on several trips to the Middle East. A rumor went around that Dan was a distant relative of Rochefort, or even a love child from a long abandoned liaison. Be that as it may, Rochefort was clearly concerned about the future of this young man and he was helping him to find his own place in journalism.
After Etienne and Kate made their relationship official and Kate had moved to Paris to live with him, Dan became Trevor’s buddy during his sojourns to the nightlife of Paris and Zurich.
Dan, too, was secretive about his past. He never spoke about it, but he was happy to be useful to his more experienced colleagues and closely watched Trevor, acquiring the essential skills of a hardened war correspondent. It was Dan, as Trevor’s assistant, who was lately covering the USA v. Woud trial, the scandalous case of the biggest illegal arms dealer in history, tried by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Chapter 3
Geneva, Switzerland
15 December 2011. 15:45
Trevor was sitting on the veranda of a busy restaurant watching an elderly couple talking quietly at the table near the entrance. He was amused by how the man was stealthily feeding a small dog that was sitting under the table.
Trevor flipped through a fresh newspaper, trying to find the latest news on the Woud trial, but seeing nothing asked the waiter for the bill. That was when the encounter happened that turned his life upside down, inadvertently exposing that part of him which he had not even guessed existed.
Trevor was surprised to hear someone speak in Serbian. A man and a woman, clearly tourists, were talking to one another. They had two children with them, close to the age of seven. The man’s voice sounded familiar. Trevor was ready to swear that he knew the man well. He shoved the newspaper aside and stared at the retreating silhouettes of the family. The woman was walking ahead, holding the children by their hands. The man was inspecting the cobblestones engraved with the names of cities, incidentally turning towards Trevor. He was a short, stout man, about fifty, balding, with thick glasses, and dressed in a well-worn but clean suit and an oversized navy raincoat.
Suddenly it dawned on Trevor that he knew the man. He got up and shouted in Serbian: «Jovan? My friend, Jovan, it is you!»
The man glanced back. His wife also noticed the stranger who was loudly calling after her husband. Both children immediately clutched their mother.
«Jovan, hey! It’s me, Trevor. Don’t you recognize me, old man?»
«Teo?!» the man responded, throwing open his arms. «Trevor! Well, I didn’t expect to see you here! It’s been a while! It is a small world, I guess!»
The friends hugged tightly.
«I thought I’d never see you again,» said Trevor. «How long has it been? Ten? Twelve years?»
«Teo, fifteen years at least! You were serving in the Legion back then,» Jovan responded slowly, tears of sincere joy fogging his glasses. «I forgot how you look. Let me see you!»
Jovan wiped his glasses and after putting them back, he scanned Trevor. Grabbing his shoulders, he joyfully exclaimed: «You are a real badass, and you still look cool. Haven’t changed a bit! Right, Anna? This is Trevor… Teo, a friend I once told you about.»
Jovan’s wife held out her hand and gave Trevor an appraising look.
Anna was a tall, slim, conventionally attractive woman with no makeup, dressed in a cheap grey coat and long black skirt, which could not hide her aristocratic posture. Trevor took immediate notice of her wonderfully manicured and well-cared-for hands, although he was taken aback by her contrasting appearance.
«Well, you were also once a tall, handsome guy with green eyes and thick dark hair,» she joked, lightly stroking Jovan’s bald spot. «As far as I know from what my husband told me, you are the same age, and were thick as thieves many years ago.»
Anna spoke Serbian well, but with a slight Russian accent. She looked, maybe, ten years younger than Jovan and seemed unnaturally guarded; even her joke sounded forced to Trevor.
«Jovan, you talked about me?» Trevor said, and immediately offered: «Friends, let’s sit on the terrace. My table is free, as if it was waiting for you.
«Yes, I spoke a lot about us, my friend,» answered Jovan as he sat down at the table. He turned to his wife and continued: «Honey, we have been friends since we were twelve. Oh, the trouble we got into! We even planned to serve in the Legion together. Right, Teo? I didn’t pass the medical then, but we did dream to be together always. By the way, how long are you here for?»
«A couple of days. I wanted to spend Christmas somewhere in the mountains, close to the snow, because I don’t think we’ll have snow here this year.»
«Yeah, it’s pretty warm for December. Well, Trevor, tell me what you are up to these days?» Jovan smiled.
But Anna took Jovan’s hand and said: «Honey, you stay and catch up with your friend and the boys and I will take a walk along the waterfront. I’m sure you will have fun without us.» She stood up.
As Trevor was helping Anna with her coat, he noticed a small piece of paper stapled to the inside of the collar. It was a receipt with a drycleaner’s number. Jovan had the same receipt stapled to his coat. Trevor thought about it for a moment, but Jovan’s voice distracted him.
«A fine woman, isn’t she?!»
«Yeah…» he replied hollowly and glanced at Anna’s retreating form. Both kids dragged their feet after her and soon all three were lost in the crowd on the square.
«You can’t imagine how lucky I am with her. We’ve been together for ten years.
«Is she Russian?»
«No, Serbian, but lived all her life in Catalonia. Ok, enough about me. How are you? Married? What about work?»
It really had been a long time and they did have a lot to talk about.
Trevor met Jovan in the early 1980s, at school in Paris, where Jovan’s Serbian family had moved from Yugoslavia, having fled Kosovo after the 1981 clashes. As a kid, Jovan would often tell Trevor about those events, when crowds of refugees traveled from Kosovo to Serbia, leaving behind their houses and villages because of Albanian nationalists. Albanians had burned the village where Jovan’s family lived to the ground, turning hundreds of people into refugees.
Trevor befriended Jovan the moment he crossed the school’s threshold. At first, Trevor felt sorry for the modest, quiet and always hungry boy, who spoke very poor French. After some time, however, they became the closest of friends. Jovan was a frequent guest at the house of Aunt Anne Frachon.
After graduating from high school, the friends decided to enlist together in the Legion, but Jovan, who was a tough-looking young man, unexpectedly failed his medical exam and got the «unfit for military service» stamp because of flat feet. Their paths diverged shortly thereafter.
They stayed at the restaurant till late and then went to a small hotel on the other side of Leman[9 - Leman (French: Lac Léman, Le Léman, Lac de Genève) is another name for Lake Geneva.], where Jovan was staying with his family. They stopped on Mont Blanc Bridge, which connected the two halves of the city, admiring the restless surface of Lake Geneva.
The night city sparkled with colorful lights that were reflected in the iridescent water, like in a Van Gogh painting. The fountain that pushed a thick 40-meter stream of water into the sky proudly stood over a small man-made cape.
«Teo, you know, we are not here on vacation,» Jovan said after a moment of silence. He shifted his gaze away from Trevor as he spoke, pretending to stare at the dark waters of the lake. «I’m here for psychological adaptation after treatment for alcoholism.»
The roar of the fountain muffled Jovan’s words, but he continued, a bit louder: «This is the third time I’ve been in treatment, Teo. The third time! But today is 94 days that I’ve been sober. There is a very good psychologist here in Geneva who is helping me. I come here once every three months for a week. I have a session every morning.»
Trevor stared at him in silence.
«Life is not an easy thing, Teo! You dream about one thing and get something totally different,» Jovan continued bitterly. «I got somehow sucked into it. But now I hope that I’m done for good. There is this young woman, a great psychologist, who can induce a state of hypnosis, and she helped me. I was referred to her after I had lost almost everything. I was living alone by that time and practically homeless. Now, things are looking up again.»
Trevor decided to change the subject, as he could tell how hard it was for Jovan to open his heart to him. Yet Trevor felt uneasy.
«Jovan, do you recall how we went to see that touring hypnotist? Remember, we were the only ones he was unable to hypnotize and we were asked to leave the club?» Trevor smiled and continued: «Ever since then I have been convinced that I am immune to hypnosis and other such types of suggestion.»
«Trevor, you don’t understand. She’s got incredible skills! And her looks…» Jovan winked at Trevor and continued: «I can introduce her to you, if you want. She’s an incredible woman in every sense. I have my last session with her tomorrow morning. By the way, she is classy and she is single.» Jovan pronounced the last word with a knowing tone and winked.
A real hypnotist, thought Trevor. A classy woman and a good psychologist. Seems like too many praises for one person.
«How about your job? I think I remember you wanted to be in politics,» Trevor said, again trying to change the subject. Then he seemed to remember something: «I think you went to Moscow State Institute of International Relations?»
«Yes, I graduated with honors». Jovan nodded. «You have a great memory, my friend. After I graduated, I worked, got married, had two children, and joined a small law firm in the center of Prague. The calm, measured life relaxed me and I almost ended up losing everything. But I hope that’s all in the past now.»
«Yes, Jovan, life has a tendency to adjust our plans. Sometimes it seems we are simply watching life go by. So, you are saying you leave tomorrow? When?»
«We leave by train at midday, right after the session. We’ve rested, fortified our constitutions, so enough, duty calls. This time tomorrow, I’ll be in Prague, but don’t worry, we will speak tomorrow. The most important thing is that we found each other,» replied Jovan, patting Trevor on his shoulder.
«Right, and I am really happy we did. It’s kinda weird that we so unexpectedly…»
«You have some business in Geneva?» Jovan asked. «Are you here alone or with somebody?»
«No, Jovan. I’m done with business for the year. I’m vacationing here. By the way, now’s a good time for some decent brandy.» Trevor pointed towards the downtown. «Let’s go, I know a great place here. You won’t drink, I know, but you can keep me company.»
«No, Teo,» Jovan protested. «I’d love to, but I keep a strict schedule. I must be in bed in 30 minutes, and preferably on an empty stomach.»
«Well, if you have to, I won’t keep you.» Trevor smiled. «I wanna hang out a bit longer. I like the liveliness of the city. Besides, I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately.»
«That’s another reason to speak to a good psychologist,» Jovan said happily. «You just need to reboot your brain. You will sleep like a baby after the first session with her. What have you got to lose? An hour of relaxation and you will feel better right away.»
«Fine, Jovan,» Trevor answered after a moment’s thought. «Have it your way. I’ve got time anyways. Let’s go to her tomorrow. When is your session?»
«Okay, look, it starts at 9am and lasts not more than 40 minutes. I will schedule you for 10 am and wait for you there. Sound good?»
«Sounds good,» agreed Trevor and hugged his friend goodbye. «Let’s see your «classy woman’. By the way, Jovan, what’s her name?»
«Amanda. Her name is Amanda.»
The two friends bid each other farewell and agreed to meet the next morning at Rue du Cendrier 19.
Chapter 4
Prague, Czech Republic (Robert)
16 December 2011. 17:15
«Insomvita[10 - Insomvita (Latin «in» – «into», «upon», Latin somnum – «dream», and Latin vitae – «life») – life in the dream.]? A life in dreams? Right… Interesting… Very interesting… Ahem… Insomvita… Is this your own idea or did somebody put you up to it?» a man in his sixties in a white coat and a thin gray beard said as he examined Robert. He paused and stared into Robert’s eyes, half-smiling in distrust. «Mr. Blanche, if everything you are saying here is true and there is not a hint of deceit, then you are a true discovery for a psychiatrist!»
Dr. Alexander Friedman did not look one bit like a psychiatrist. To Robert, a psychiatrist was a serious, stout man in an expensive suit, with the neat hands of a piano player, high forehead and wide, neatly trimmed beard up to the ears. But the man standing before Robert was short, skinny, and elderly, with a small, carefully trimmed beard and a closely clipped moustache. His face, streaked with a web of thin wrinkles, was well cared for, small and feminine by most metrics. His gray hair was neatly cut and combed back in long streaks.
The doctor was very nimble. When he spoke, and he spoke very quickly, his hands flew in a flock of gestures. At the same time, his enunciation was precise and he spoke every word very clearly.
The psychiatrist followed his examination ritual, going from eyes to tongue and throat, massaging hands and lightly swinging the reflex hammer against the knees.
«Everything seems to be in order! Do you take antidepressants? Do you suffer from migraines?»
«No. I’ve never needed antidepressants and I hardly ever take pills,» Robert answered. «For a migraine, I don’t even know what to say. I don’t remember the last time I had one.»
«What about your sleep? Maybe you suffer from insomnia?» The doctor was clearly confused and did not try to conceal it. «You look a bit fatigued.»
«Doctor, I sleep like a baby. I can sleep anywhere and in any position.» Robert smiled. «I just got back from a business trip. Haven’t slept for nearly 24 hours – different city, the flight.»
«Exhaustion? Sleep deprivation? You work a lot?»
«No, doctor. I’m fine. The question is totally different. I want to know if you’ve seen anything like this before?»
«Did you use to take drugs? Smoke pot?» the doctor continued his interrogation, ignoring Robert’s question.
«Doc, nothing like that. I even have alcohol intolerance. So, I almost don’t drink and I’ve never smoked.»
