Snowfall at Willow Lake

The Hague, Holland

6 January – Epiphany

The shiny black limousine glided to a stop in front of the carved-stone Gothic building, its blocky silhouette cutting into the false glow of yellow fog lights. A hard rain peppered the roof of the Citroën with the tinny sound of birdshot.

Behind the bulletproof glass windows of the passenger compartment, Sophie Bellamy performed one final check of her hair and makeup and snapped her compact shut. She tucked her evening bag into a cubby in the armrest. With security so tight at the palace these days, it was just simpler to enter the building with nothing but her prescreened credential card and the clothes on her back.

When she’d first started attending functions at the Peace Palace, she used to feel naked without an evening bag. Now she’d grown used to spending a formal evening without lipstick or comb, a set of keys or a mobile phone. Such things were forbidden in the interest of security.

Tonight, cautious measures were warranted. The recent decision rendered by the International Criminal Court on war crimes, a case that had consumed two years of her life, was controversial and apt to incite violence.

The limo took its place in a line behind a few others and waited its turn. Sophie used to be consumed by excitement when she attended ceremonial events, but now they had become routine. It was amazing how accustomed to this she had grown. Drivers and security agents, a couture wardrobe and smiling dignitaries, translations whispered into an earpiece—all were commonplace to her these days.

Guests were being shuttled to the outer guard gate under black umbrellas, their corrugated shadows reflecting silver-black on the cut-stone surface of the Paleisplein. She’d been told to expect media coverage of the event, but she only saw one windowless news van, its bedraggled crew setting up the requisite thirty meters from the building. Despite the historic significance of tonight’s event, despite the fact that Queen Beatrix herself would be in attendance, the occasion would go unnoticed by the world at large. In America, people were too busy watching the latest Internet video to tune in to the fact that the geography of Africa had just changed, thanks, in large part, to Sophie herself.

Her phone vibrated—a photo and text message from her son, Max: white sand beach and turquoise sea with the caption “St Croix awesome. Dad & Nina getting ready 2 tie the knot. Xoxo!”

Sophie stared at the words from her twelve-year-old. She’d known today was the day, though she’d been trying not to think about it. Her ex was on a tropical island, about to marry the woman who had stepped into the shoes Sophie had left vacant. She gently closed the phone and held it against her chest, trying to quiet the feelings churning inside her and gnawing a hole in her heart. Not possible. Not even tonight.

André, her driver, turned on the hazard lights to signal that he was about to exit the vehicle. He adjusted the flat cap of his uniform. His shoulders lifted as he took a deep breath. A native of Senegal, André had never been a fan of the weather in Northern Europe, particularly in January.

A sudden squeal of tires and a sound like a gunshot erupted. Without a single beat of hesitation, Sophie dropped to the floorboards, at the same time grabbing for the car phone. In the front seat, André did the same. Then came a honking horn and a voice over the loudspeaker, giving the all-clear in Dutch, French and English.

André lowered the shield between the driver and passenger compartment. “C’est rien,” he said. “A car backfired, that is all. Merde. Always some reason to be on edge.”

For the past week, the city had been on special alert due to gang violence, and foreign service drivers were often targets for robbery, since they tended to park for hours in public places, sleeping in their cars.

Sophie reached for the compact mirror to check herself again. She’d undergone hours of crisis training and she dealt with some of the most dangerous people in the world, yet she never really feared for her own safety. There were so many security measures in place that the risk was extremely low.

André held up a gloved hand to ask her wordlessly if she was ready. She abandoned vanity and nodded, clutching the laminated carte d’identité in her hand. The passenger door opened and a dark umbrella bloomed overhead, held by a liveried palace attendant.

“On y va, alors,” she said to André. Here we go.

“Assurément, madame,” he said in his lilting French-African accent. “J’attends.”

Of course he would be waiting, she thought. He always did. And thank God for that. She was going to be high as a kite by the end of the evening, on champagne and a soaring sense of accomplishment, with no one to babble her news to. André was a good listener. During the short drive tonight from Sophie’s residence to the palace, she had confessed to him how much she missed her children.

She would have loved to have Max and her daughter Daisy by her side tonight, to bear witness to the honors that would be bestowed upon her. But they were an ocean away, with their father who on this very day was getting married. Married. Perhaps at this very moment, her ex-husband was getting remarried.

The knowledge sat like a stone in her shoe. The dull truth of it stole some of the glitter from the evening.

Stop it, she admonished herself. This is your night.

She emerged from the car. Her foot slipped on the wet cobblestones and, for a nightmarish second, she nearly went down. A strong arm caught her around the waist, propping her up. “André,” she said a little breathlessly, “you just averted a disaster.”

“Rien du tout, madame,” he replied, hovering close. The light glimmered over his solemn, kindly face.

It occurred to her that this was the closest she’d come to being held in a man’s arms in … far too long. She shut down the entirely inappropriate thought, steadied her footing and stepped away from him. The cold drilled into her. Her long cashmere coat wasn’t enough, not tonight. There were predictions of snow. It would be a rare occurrence for The Hague, but already, the rain was hardening to sleet. Under the broad umbrella, she hurried past the guardhouse to the first checkpoint. A walkway circled the eternal peace flame monument, shielded from the weather by a hammered metal hood. It was another twenty meters to the portico, which had been fitted with an awning and red carpet for the occasion. Once she was safely under the shelter of the arched awning, her attendant murmured, “Bonsoir, madame. Et bienvenue.” Most of the personnel spoke in French which, along with English, was the common language of the international courts.

“Merci.”

The attendant with the umbrella ducked back out into the rain to collect the next guest.

The line to the main entrance moved slowly, as there was a cloakroom to pass through, and another security checkpoint. Sophie didn’t know any of the people in line, but she recognized many of them—black-clad dignitaries and their families, Africans in ceremonial garb, diplomats from all over the globe. They had come to pay homage to a new day for Umoja, the nation the court had just liberated from a warlord financed by a corrupt diamond syndicate operating outside the law.

There was an American family ahead of her. The uniformed husband had the effortless good posture of a career military man. The wife and teenage daughters surrounded him like satellite nations. Sophie vaguely recognized the husband, an attaché from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium. She didn’t greet them, not wanting to interrupt what appeared to be a delightful family outing.

The attaché’s wife pressed close to him as though shielding herself from the cold. She was plump and easy in her confidence; like Sophie, she wore plain gold earrings unadorned by gemstones. To wear stones, especially diamonds, to an event like this would be the height of insensitivity.

The American family looked safe and secure in their little world of four. In that moment, Sophie missed her own children so much it felt like a stab wound.

A searingly cold wind swept across the plaza, stinging her eyes. She blinked fast, not wanting her mascara to run. She lifted the collar of her coat and turned her back to the wind. At a side entrance to the palace was a caterer’s van. Haagsche Voedsel Dienst, S.A. Good, thought Sophie. The best caterer in town. They must be running late, though. The white-coated waiters were rushing about with a frantic air, shoving heavy carts into a service entrance to the building and speaking in agitated fashion to one another.

Sophie was shivering when she reached the cloakroom. There were few places that felt as cold as The Hague did during a winter storm. The city lay below sea level, built on land reclaimed from the frigid North Sea, walled off by dikes. During a storm, it felt as though nature was trying to wrest back its own. The wind sliced like a knife, cutting to the bone. In The Hague there was a saying: If I can stand up in it, I can go out in it.

Reluctantly, she peeled off her butter-soft deerskin gloves and surrendered her long cashmere coat, handing them over to an attendant and making a note of the numbered card: 47. She slipped it into the pocket of her dress. As she smoothed the front of her outfit and turned toward the entranceway, she noticed the attaché’s wife watching her, a hint of both envy and admiration in her eyes.

Sophie had spent half the day getting ready. She was wearing a couture gown and shoes that cost more than a piece of furniture. The gown fit her beautifully. She’d been a distance swimmer in college and still competed at the master’s level, an endeavor that kept her in shape. Her every blond hair was in place, pulled sleekly back into a chignon. Bijou, her stylist, claimed she looked exactly like a latter-day Grace Kelly. An actress, which was appropriate. A big part of this job had to do with image and theatrics. Smoke and mirrors.

She smiled at the attaché’s wife and felt a twinge of irony. Don’t envy me, she wanted to say. You have your family with you. What more could you want?

After walking through a metal detector, she proceeded unaccompanied down an open, colonnaded walkway toward the grand ballroom. She waited amid a milling crowd in the doorway for her turn to be announced.

Standing on tiptoe, she craned her neck to see. So much of her work took place in the glass-and-steel high-rise of the International Criminal Court that she often forgot the romantic ideals that had driven her career to this point. But here in the ornate palace, built by Andrew Carnegie with no regard for expense, she remembered that this was a job most people only dreamed of. She was Cinderella, but without the prince.

The majordomo, resplendent in palace livery, bent toward her to study her identity card. He was wired with an interpreter’s mike, a tiny coil into his ear. “Have you an escort, madame?”

“No,” Sophie said. “I’m by myself.” In this job, who had time for a prince?

“Madame Sophie Lindstrom Bellamy,” he proclaimed in ringing tones, “au Canada et aux États-Unis.”

From Canada and the United States—she had dual citizenship, thanks to her Canadian mother and American father. Although the U.S. wasn’t a member of the ICC, the rest of the world concurred with the need for a vehicle to prosecute war criminals, so it was as a Canadian citizen that Sophie served the court. Fixing a camera-ready smile on her lips, she entered the ballroom, brilliant with golden light beaming from chandeliers and wall sconces, the air ringing with greetings from other guests. Despite the warm welcome, she understood that she would face tonight the way she had faced nearly all the greatest moments of her life—alone.

She chased away the thought with a flute of champagne served by a tall, awkward waiter. She was not about to spoil this with regrets and second thoughts. After all, it wasn’t every night you got to meet an actual queen and accept a medal of freedom from a grateful nation.

The Hague was a royal city, the seat of the Dutch government, and Queen Beatrix was tireless when it came to performing her official duties. Britain’s royals might have their scandals, but the Oranje-Nassau family of Holland had a monarch who was as hardworking as any salaried official. Security agents in street clothes discreetly patrolled the periphery of the room, their restless eyes scanning the crowd. It was an international, festive group. There was a woman in a head scarf, her tiered dress a bright flare of color, and another in a kimono, several men in colorful dashikis, as well as the Westerners in their tailored suits and evening gowns. For these few moments Sophie felt vibrant and alive, letting herself forget what was happening with her family. In their crisp, starched school uniforms, smiles displaying the gaps of lost teeth, a children’s choir performed with contagious joy, their bright voices filling the cavernous Gothic hall. The music was a mix of cultural offerings—traditional songs for Epiphany, such as “Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant” and “Ça Bergers,” as well as native dance songs and the throaty humming of a ceremonial chant.

The choir launched into “Impuka Nekati,” an action chant dramatizing the chase of a cat and mouse. They were still able to sing, these orphans of war. Sophie wished she could take every single one home with her. She recognized some of them from earlier in the week when a group of them had come to deliver flowers to the prosecution team.

Her fight to stop transnational crimes against children took all her time and attention, and the ones who paid the price for that were her own kids. How many of Max and Daisy’s recitals and performances had she missed because of work? Had her son and daughter ever sung with their faces filled with joy, or had they scanned the audience, their eyes dimming when they failed to spot their mom? Dear Lord, how she wished they could be here to see the results of their sacrifice. Maybe then, they would understand. Maybe they’d forgive her.

There was a girl, all knobby legs and big white teeth, who sang as though singing was the same as breathing for her—necessary to sustain life. When the song ended, Sophie sought out the show-stealing girl. “Your singing is beautiful,” she said.

Oh, that smile. “Thank you, madame,” said the girl. She bashfully added, “My name is Fatou. I come from the village of Kuumba.”

She didn’t have to explain further. The militia’s attack on that village had rivaled the worst of wartime atrocities. Remembering the reports of Kuumba, Sophie felt a new surge of rage at the men who committed their inhuman acts upon children like Fatou.

Imagining what those velvety brown eyes had seen, what this child had endured, made Sophie wonder how Fatou was still standing, how she could face the world. How she could open her mouth and sing.