Iris Johansen by 'Til the End of Time (html)

Author:'Til the End of Time (html) [Time, 'Til the End of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-07-07T20:44:19+00:00

"The scars." Her gaze was fixed on the darkening patch of sky she could see through the top of the pines. "It happened sixteen years ago in Said Ababa."

He became very still. "Sixteen years ago you would have been only twelve or thirteen years old. The wounds must have been very deep to create scar tissue like that." He tried to keep his tone expressionless, desperately afraid she would close up again.

"They were deep. They became infected. I was lucky I didn't get gangrene. Antibiotics were practically nonexistent at the camp." She moistened her lower lip with her tongue. "I probably would have died if it hadn't been for Dimitri."

"Camp?"

"I was in a displaced-persons' camp for two years in Said Ababa." The words were halting, and corroded with the years of repression. "After the overthrow of the government, the revolutionaries took power. They were even more oppressive than the tyrants they'd replaced."

"So I've heard." Horror stories had emerged by the hundreds after the revolution, Sandor remembered. And Alessandra had been in the center of that relentless reign of terror. "You're an American. How did you come to be in a displaced-persons' camp?"

"I didn't say I was an American. I said I hold an American passport. I didn't have any passport or any identification at all after the revolution. I could have been any nationality. James said there was a good possibility I was an American, because one of the government officials who ran the camp said he thought he remembered seeing me wandering in the streets of the company town near the American oil refinery." She shrugged. "There was some doubt. The town was several hundred miles from where they picked me up. I was barefoot and out of my head with fever, lying by the side of the road. James says walking that distance through the mountains and desert could have been the cause of my lacerated feet."

"James 'says,' " he repeated slowly. "Don't you know?"

"No. I don't remember anything before I woke up in the camp. That was why it was difficult to pinpoint my nationality. I spoke English, French, and German fluently. The oil refinery and the town itself were destroyed by the bombing." Her voice lowered. "They tell me the town burned for four days and you could see the flames clawing at the sky from a distance of over a hundred miles."

Clawing at the sky. The phrase evoked a vivid picture of desperation and terror. Had someone really used those words or had a wisp of memory managed to filter through the barriers a young woman had erected to protect herself from an experience too terrible to remember?

"There was a protest from the American government at the time," Sandor said. "But they had airlifted most of the personnel who were American citizens out of the area before the situation came to a boil. Weren't there any inquiries about you?"

She shook her head. "There were no records and no inquiries. It's not unusual, when you think about it.

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