State of Siege

FORTY

Secretary-General Chatterjee raced down the escalator to the infirmary, which was located on the first floor not far from the visitor’s lobby. An aide had joined her at the foot of the escalator and was walking with her. Enzo Donati was a young graduate student from Rome who was earning credits for his degree in international relations. He had her cell phone and he was in touch with the New York office of Interpol. They had learned that the prisoner’s name was Ivan Georgiev, a former officer in the Bulgarian army. The Bulgarian ambassador had not been at the soiree and had been notified.

Chatterjee passed through the Delegates Only doorway near the Hiroshima exhibit and made her way along the brightly lighted corridors. She tried not to think of the loss of Colonel Mott or the other security personnel, or of the deaths of the delegates. She focused on the approach of midnight, on the impending death of one of the young violinists, and how to avoid it. Chatterjee had it in mind to offer Georgiev a deal. If he would urge his accomplice to postpone the shooting, and help to defuse the situation, she would do what she could to get him clemency.

Chatterjee assumed, of course, that Georgiev was even awake. She hadn’t spoken to the emergency medical people since they’d brought him down here. If not, she didn’t know what she was going to do. They had less than five minutes. Mott’s military approach had been repulsed, and her own diplomatic efforts had failed. Cooperation was an option, but the six million dollars they asked for would take time to put together. She had called Deputy Secretary-General Takahara and asked him to sit down with the other members of the emergency team to figure out how to do that. She knew that even if they paid, there would still be further bloodshed. The NYPD or the FBI would move in as soon as the terrorists tried to leave. But at least there was a chance that they could still get some of the delegates and young violinists away safely.

Why did international crises seem so much more manageable than this? Because the ramifications were so severe? Because there were two or more sides where no one really wanted to pull the trigger? If that were true, then she really wasn’t a peacemaker. She was simply a medium, like a telephone or even one of her father’s movies. She may have come from the land of Gandhi but was nothing like him. Nothing.

They turned a corner and approached the door to the infirmary. Enzo slipped ahead of the secretary-general and opened it for her. Chatterjee walked in. She stopped abruptly.

Two EMTs were lying on the floor in the reception area. The attending nurse was also lying on the floor, in the doctor’s office. So were a pair of security guards.

Enzo ran to the nearest bodies. There were spots of blood on the tile. The technicians were alive but unconscious, evidently from blows to the head. The nurse was also unconscious.

There were no tears in their clothes, no indication that there had been a struggle.

There was no trace of the handcuffs and no sign of Georgiev.

As Chatterjee took a moment to process what had happened, there was only one conclusion to be drawn: that someone had been here waiting.