Juan released his daughter just for an instant. He reached to click on the radio. A melancholy piano piece had replaced the waltz.
“Lots of children have nightmares. That’s normal at your age. You have a lively imagination, and you read a lot. That gets you excited. Don’t you worry, those are just dreams. They can’t hurt you.”
She couldn’t believe what he was saying. “But, Aita . . .”
“You dreamed it, Amaia. Dreams aren’t real, even though sometimes they seem to be.” He lowered her to the floor. The girl wept, intense and forlorn, her eyes squeezed shut. Juan was convinced she was refusing to look at him. He again gazed out toward that faraway point beyond the wall, this time in shame. Regretting his response, but unable to look at her, he bent down and kissed the top of her head. “But any time your nightmares scare you a lot, you can call me.” He turned back to his worktable.
Amaia wept for a long time without opening her eyes. When at last she did, her father was back at his work, and the notes from a new waltz floated in the air, mixed with the buttery scent of baking pastry. He continued rolling out the dough, his back to her, though he no longer seemed to have his heart in it. Amaia picked up her school bag and shuffled slowly to the 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.
But his immediate concern was for Bill and Bull.
Amaia and Johnson had exchanged only a couple of murmured phrases during the voyage upriver. They were affected by what they saw, but their reactions were contained, in contrast to those of Bull and Charbou. His FBI team members knew their own emotional responses were nothing in comparison to what the two cops must be feeling at the sight of their destroyed city. The extent of the devastation overwhelmed Bill and Bull and they quickly lapsed into a stupor.
Amaia, on the other hand, remained serene. She concentrated on breathing deeply, taking the warm, humid air in through her nostrils and releasing it very slowly from her mouth.
The building at 428 Maine Street was the only two-story structure in the area. It was run down and probably hadn’t looked that good before the storm hit. Fortunately, the apartments were all upstairs. Access to the apartments was via a second-story balcony that ran above the street. The succession of apartment doors was visible from below.
Just past the intersection of Highway 90 and Maine Street, they killed the motor so as not to betray their presence. The Zodiac’s momentum carried them the rest of the way, but just as their craft bumped against the steps, a strong new current began pushing them northward again. They glanced at one another, perplexed, grabbed paddles, and fought their way back to the stairs. Water had almost reached the eaves of most of the houses along the street. The lowest dwellings had disappeared beneath the flood.
They tied up to the stair railing. It tilted dangerously outward, and its base was completely submerged, like the foundation of a riverside pier. Dupree estimated that at least ten of the concrete steps were underwater.