Snowfall at Willow Lake

“I’m so happy you’re here now,” Sophie said, “and that you’re safe.”

“Yes, madame. Thank you, madame.” She smiled again.

And that smile reflected all the reasons Sophie did what she did, living far from her family and working more hours than a day actually had, or so it seemed, sometimes.

Just then, a murmur rippled through the crowd. The girl looked apprehensive, but Sophie overheard someone whispering. There was a rumor of snow.

“Come,” Sophie said, taking Fatou by the hand. “Look out the window.” She led the way to a tall Gothic window and pushed aside the velvet drapes. “Look,” she said again.

Fatou cupped her hands around her eyes and leaned forward. The snow was coming down in thick flakes now, turning the palace gardens into a winter wonderland, bathed in a glow from the sodium vapor lights. “I have never seen such a thing before. It is magic, madame,” Fatou said.

Outside, on a small cobble-paved driveway, shadows flickered across the fast-whitening ground. Sophie leaned in for a closer look, noting that the courtyard was deserted and peaceful. She wished Max and Daisy could see this, the splendor and the gravitas of this night. She was glad, at least, that the friendly girl beside her was sharing the moment. She turned to her with a smile.

Fatou didn’t notice but kept looking out the window, seemingly mesmerized by the snowfall.

Three

Once everyone had marveled over the snow, the performance resumed. Sophie went to a long serving table to peruse the offerings. Like the music, the food would represent the community of nations gathered here tonight. A tray of buttery gougères, cheese pastries baked to a light golden-brown, made her mouth water, but she resisted the temptation to sample them. She couldn’t allow herself to eat anything. She needed to look her best for tonight’s presentation. Pastry crumbs or faded lip color would never do.

To her surprise, the culinary display, usually so meticulous, appeared haphazard tonight, the food and flowers artlessly displayed. The head waiter, a big-boned blond man, snapped his fingers and issued an order into the mouthpiece of his headset. As he reached to replenish the chilled prawns, he managed to break an ice sculpture, and Sophie was certain she heard him swear under his breath. Enjoy your evening, she thought as she took a flute of champagne from the end table. You won’t be back. Here at the most powerful court in the world, the catering had to be impeccable. One false move and the caterer was toast.

She made her way to a group of people gathered around Momoh Sanni Momoh, Premier of Umoja, resplendent in his robe of saffron silk and tall, intricately wound headdress. While waiting to greet him, she encountered a colleague, Bibi Lateef. A native of Umoja, Mme Lateef was decked out tonight in native garb, a startling contrast to her usual somber court robes.

“You are staring, madame,” she said to Sophie, offering a smile as bright and wide as the moon. Victory and joy danced in her eyes.

They embraced, and Sophie stepped back to regard her friend. “I’m dazzled. This is a good look for you.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Mme Lateef said, “because I will no longer be needing the robes.”

Sophie beamed with pride. Her colleague was as accomplished and educated as any of the jurists of the court, and she would be given a major role in the new government. “You have a new title, then? Can you share?”

“How do you like ‘Minister of Social Welfare’?” Mme Lateef said.

Sophie took her hand. Bibi Lateef had lost family members in the fighting; her struggle had been personal. Returning to her native land was bound to be bittersweet. “It sounds perfect for you,” Sophie said. “Congratulations. I’ll miss you, though. No one wanted to see the conclusion of this case more than I, but I’ll miss working with you.”

“There is much work to be done. Displaced families and children orphaned by war will be my most urgent concerns. You must promise to visit.”

“Of course.” Sophie had been to Umoja several times. It was a land of heartbreaking beauty, even in the wake of war. The fighting and encroachment by mining had decimated its cities, but there were vast regions that lay untouched—high red plains and mountain rain forests, and the river-fed regions where towns were already recovering.

“I will hold you to that promise,” said Mme Lateef. The genuine gratitude in her eyes touched Sophie’s heart. “I’m grateful to have known you.”

“It’s been an honor to serve the cause of justice, truly,” she said, watching her colleague’s face even as she stepped away to speak with the children in their native tongue. This was what Sophie lived for, this moment when she was absolutely certain that what she did mattered. That it was worth all the pain and sacrifices she’d made. But always the question remained—would her own children agree?

As she hung back, still waiting to greet the premier, a man with a press badge appeared. “Brooks Fordham, New York Times. Please, tell us what tonight is about.”

Sophie offered a restrained smile. “Mr. Fordham, if you really want the story, it would take hours to tell.”

“I really want the story. Why don’t you give me the digest version. And please, call me Brooks.”

Sophie knew his type—spoiled, ambitious, overeducated, handsome, and he knew it. But she obliged, summarizing the situation that had brought them to this night. Umoja had been a nation enslaved, oppressed by a semi-legal syndicate of European diamond merchants and their African collaborators, led by a notorious war criminal named General Timi Abacha. For two decades, the nation had been run by a ruthless militia funded by the blood diamond trade. In time, the atrocities became so severe that finally the world took notice.

Then came the photograph, the one that finally put Umoja on the map and in the public consciousness. The picture showed a young native boy, missing a hand and an ear, glaring at the camera with eyes that had lost all innocence. He had been ripped from his family, forced to work and punished by mutilation, all because he was small enough to fit into a mine shaft. The photograph made the front page of newspapers and journals and galvanized the world community to take action. A team of international investigators verified incidents of slavery and abuse, of child conscription and rape. The case was built with meticulous care, imperiling many of the key players. “Accidents” befell those who questioned the wrong people or found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sophie knew the tale by heart, perhaps better than anyone in the room. In preparing for the case, she had sunk herself deep into the red clay earth of the landlocked nation. On a map, it was shaped like a pitcher, its spout tipping down into the top of South Africa.

And that, of course, was what made it such a rich prize. In its borderlands were some of the most prolific diamond mines in the world, yielding up rough stones of exceptional quality. For untold generations, the native tribes had defended themselves from European colonists and rival tribes. Finally, ten years before, a rogue tribe, armed and financed by diamond interests, took over the nation in a bloody coup.

Its people suffered tortures beyond imagining—rape, ethnic cleansing, genocide. Little boys were conscripted as soldiers; young girls were used and discarded, or forced to bear the children of their rapists. In preparing the case against the dictator and warlord, Sophie and her team had interviewed victims of every possible crime. There were so many stories of unspeakable brutality that some members of the staff had resigned, traumatized. Others turned numb as a defense, desensitized by an overload of horror.

Every time Sophie heard of a boy, no older than her own son, brainwashed and forced into drug addiction, and turned into a killing machine, she bled a little. When she heard of a young woman, a teenager perhaps her daughter’s age, raped within an inch of her life, she bled a little more. Every story ripped at her heart, and very early on in the case it became personal.

Protests and calls for international sanctions were insufficient. Calculating as coldly as the diamond lords who called all the shots, she set about building a case against the regime, ousting the government and restoring the natives to power.

The process had taken two years. Sophie had worked herself into exhaustion. She’d lost her marriage and now lived an ocean away from her children. But tonight she reminded herself that the battle had been won. Tonight was about recognizing those who had restored a nation to its rightful keepers. No longer did villagers flee before armies of thugs. No longer were people forced to work in the mines, suffering abuse and starvation until they died at the hands of the inhuman jackals who had stolen their country.

She felt Brooks watching her. She tried not to look at him because she was afraid he would distract her. Though they’d only just met, she sensed he had the sort of easy charm and witty insouciance that would bring a smile to her face. Emerging from the emotional pain of divorce, she was discovering she had a great liking for men. And as soon as that thought crossed her mind, she felt a blush creep upward through her cheeks.

Sophie served as assistant deputy counsel for the prosecution. When illness struck two of her superiors, she found herself directly addressing the fifteen judges of the International Criminal Court. It was said that her relentless and passionate arguments were key to attaining a conviction. After that, UN troops moved in, ousted the corrupt government and restored the exiled premier to his rightful place.

“Anyway,” she concluded, addressing Brooks, “that’s the digest version, and I can already see your eyes glazing over.”

“Jet lag,” he said, taking out a hand-size notepad and wooden pencil. “Phone number?” He flashed her a grin.

She gave him her second assistant’s mobile number. That was close enough.

He wrote it down and added some notes, then gave her his own number. “Don’t you want to write it down?” he asked.

“I already have it,” she said. It was a gift of hers. She had a near-photographic memory for phone numbers. She could remember the number of the arbitrator who had handled her divorce more than a year before. The number of her son’s hockey coach, whom she’d never met in person. The number of Greg’s new wife, Nina, though Sophie would never call it. She looked up at Brooks and repeated his phone number back to him.

“A woman of many talents,” he said. “Really, it’s an incredible story—”

“That will be reduced to a one-inch blurb under ‘Around the Globe’ and buried on page 19-A,” she finished for him.

“I’ll try for more space,” he said. “Another question.”

“Go ahead.” She folded her arms in front of her.

“Is it true you gained access to the syndicate’s banking records by using the same methods as the Nigerian banking scam?”

Sophie felt her mouth twitch with a smile. “We finally found a use for e-mail spam. The investigative team did the technical work, but it did amount to duping the syndicate’s chief treasurer. It’s not the oldest trick in the book, but close. And it made them look incredibly foolish.”

In the tradition of the Nigerian banking spammers whose scam was so notorious it was known as a 419, they had targeted the dictator’s top treasury official, Mr. Femi Gidado. He was known to be an ambitious, greedy man whose high-risk investments had brought high returns to the regime.

Having learned this about him, Sophie’s team had sent him a “phishing” e-mail, posing as an innocent government official in charge of a staggering fortune. They had “begged his worthy indulgence” on a “matter of utmost financial urgency,” promising a sum of $3.5 million if he would simply provide his banking information to be used in a simple, clandestine transaction.

After a relatively short exchange of e-mail information, Sophie and her staff found themselves in possession of the regime’s fortune. Since it was obtained through illegal means, they couldn’t use the money at all—but the insanely simple ploy gave them leverage. They offered the dishonest treasurer a choice. He could serve as the key witness in the case against the dictator, or his participation in the banking scam would be revealed to his superiors. Since the punishment for betrayal was excruciating torture followed by a beheading, he chose to throw in his lot with the Umojan people. His cooperation had proved to be the undoing of the regime.

“What became of General Timi Abacha? And the head of the diamond syndicate, Serge Henger?”