Butterfly on the Storm
Walter Lucius
* * *
BUTTERFLY ON THE STORM
The Heartland Trilogy
Part 1
Translated from the Dutch by
Lorraine T. Miller and Laura Vroomen
Contents
Part One: DANCER
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Part Two: GHOST
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Part Three: STORM
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part Four: FALLEN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Five: HOME
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get somewhere else – if you ran very fast, for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’
‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.’
– Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass,
and What Alice Found There
For Nicole – Her name embodies love
Part One
* * *
DANCER
He was making his way among the trees so quickly that he’d already stumbled twice. It was dark. He’d lost his sandals and was now running barefoot. The fallen branches cut the soles of his feet but he barely noticed the pain. And although he kept stubbing his toes on roots, that didn’t bother him either. He’d never run this fast in his life.
He’d only just broken into a sprint, but already felt himself slowly lifting off the ground. He was floating, with branches sweeping past his face and lacerating his body. When a dangling earring got caught on a branch and was ripped from his earlobe, he felt no pain. The euphoria of the escape made him numb to pain, made him stronger, made him faster.
Everything in him was instinctively geared towards running. Every breath, every heartbeat, every movement served his flight. The direction didn’t matter. Running, that’s what it was about. As long, as fast and as far as possible.
He’d tried before, but he’d been caught. The injuries caused by the beating had kept him awake for weeks. Yet it didn’t stop him from trying again. The man with the long black hair had planted a kiss on his glowing cheek, pressed his large hand against his back and yelled an order in an incomprehensible language.
He’d started running when he heard the shots. If he kept running he’d be safe. He ran towards the light that appeared behind the trees. All he heard now was his own breathing, his heartbeat. He wanted to embrace the rapidly approaching light as though it were salvation.
The light hit him with a dull thud.
1
Farah Hafez carefully placed her necklace with the silver-plated pendant beside her three silver rings and the black leather cuff. She looked into the bright-blue eyes of her naked reflection in the mirror and caressed the many tiny scars on her arms, breasts and belly. She’d scored them into her caramel-coloured body herself, back when it dawned on her that there could be no love without pain.
Time to get ready: sweep up her jet-black hair falling well below the shoulder in a cascade of curls and pull it into a tight topknot. Put on those loose-fitting, black satin trousers and fasten them around the hips. Place her arms into the wide sleeves of the jacket and then tie the red satin sash around it, so both ends fell across her left hip.
Farah took another look at herself standing there in her martial arts outfit. There may have been only an ultra-thin layer of fabric between her and the outside world, but she’d erected an imaginary suit of armour around herself. An invisible, yet impenetrable coat of mail. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and tried to ignore the cheering of the audience that carried in irregular waves from inside the old theatre via the catacombs into her dressing room.
She bent her knees slightly and began the warm-up exercises she once learnt from her father. Soon all she heard was her own breathing. She was five years old again, standing in the walled garden at the back of her parental home, under th
e old apple tree in Wazir-Akbar-Khan, Kabul’s affluent neighbourhood. Next to her father in his crisp white shirt and handmade linen trousers. He was counting out loud in what was to her an incomprehensible language, which he’d learnt from his Indonesian nanny as a little boy, ‘Satu, dua, tiga …’
Now Farah was whispering those very same words in a dressing room in Carré, an age-old brick circus building on wooden piles in Amsterdam. The same words after each exhalation, ‘Satu, dua, tiga.’
Just then the door swung open, revealing the silhouette of her coach. The deep voice of the emcee announcing the fight blasted in. She walked through the narrow corridors to the main auditorium, catching snippets of the introduction.
‘Farah Hafez! An avenging angel with the body and power of an oriental tiger!’
Oriental? She’d been in the Netherlands since the age of nine. And though she obviously had an Afghan heart, she considered herself to be a Dutch woman in every other respect.
Blinking, she stepped into the bright glare of the spotlight, and climbed the steps to the ring. Her opponent in the other corner, a white-haired Russian woman, looked like a vulture. Cold and ruthless. Farah failed to detect any signs of respect in her. She felt a stab of confusion. She was doing this gala because she loved this martial art with all her heart. Besides journalism, it was the mainstay of her life. Pencak Silat, the noble art of war from the Indonesian archipelago. Her father had taught her, and for that reason alone she’d continue to practice it for the rest of her life. It was a lasting bond. But it was also a way of life: an ongoing mental and spiritual challenge focused on the positive and humane.
She closed her eyes and returned, one last time, to the silence in which she’d done her warm-up. Her father reappeared by her side. Back from the dead. He spoke with the calm voice of a spirit who’d left all cares behind.
‘Do you remember what you were doing when you first felt the fear?’
She remembered.
‘You need to feel the fear to go through it.’
She took up her starting position, only inches from her opponent. Her right hand open and held up as if about to hit an imaginary wall. The Russian woman formed her mirror image. Farah felt the electric charge when their palms all but touched. She knew that strength alone wouldn’t get her anywhere with this woman. She had to be quick and agile too.
When the referee yelled the starting signal, she reacted a split second too late. The Russian grabbed her left arm and pushed her back with all her might. The fear instantly paralyzed her. She had two opponents now: her assailant and herself. She ought to be like bamboo, bending and bouncing back hard, not like a tight string, snapping at the slightest touch. She had to focus. Breathe. Think.
Out of the corner of her left eye, Farah saw a punch coming her way. She blocked it and put her opponent in an arm lock. Tugging and pulling at each other, they spun around on the mat. All of a sudden, the Russian reached for Farah’s head and began yanking at her hair. With tears of pain squirting out of her eyes, Farah kicked the Russian woman in the back with her right shin and made a scissoring motion that enabled her to throw her opponent on to her back and then clasped the woman’s outstretched hand to her chest. The Russian was now lying underneath her, caught in an arm lock.
Suddenly she felt a searing pain in her left calf. Her opponent had sunk her teeth into it. The pain rushed through Farah’s body, but instead of letting go she pulled even harder on the arm, so the hold tightened.
There they lay for a while, the Russian caught in an arm lock with Farah firmly on top of her, both screaming with pain, until the referee slapped their taut bodies with the flat of his hand.
‘Berhenti, berhenti!’ Stop, stop!
She released the hold, rose unsteadily to her feet and after brushing a hand across her calf noticed the smears of blood on her palm. As she stared into the Russian’s squinting eyes she suddenly felt an overwhelming force take hold of her. These were the moments she feared most. Something or someone took possession of her and made her do things that were beyond her control.
Before she knew it, Farah had thrown a right uppercut at her opponent’s chin. She pounded the woman’s ribs with her left hand and then with a right kick sent her flying backwards across the mat. The Russian went down like a rag doll.
She heard someone calling her name from very far away. She looked over her shoulder. Her coach had jumped into the ring behind her. She could see the panic in his eyes. When she turned around again she saw the referee and the attendant kneeling down by the Russian’s body, lying motionless on the floor.
It was dead silent in the hall.
2
The ambulance’s bright-blue flashing light reflected almost fluorescent against the raindrops hitting the windscreen. Although the wipers were going like mad, visibility on the unlit wooded road was poor. But Danielle Bernson had complete trust in her driver who was in constant contact with police central dispatch. It wasn’t clear where the victim would be lying.
The accident involved a child. The caller hadn’t indicated much more. In the side-mirror Danielle saw a police car’s emergency light rapidly approaching. When she glanced up again she shrieked. A pitiful heap of flesh was lying motionless on the road barely fifty yards in front of them. The driver, pumping his brakes to slow down, stopped the Mobile Medical Team ambulance alongside the body, diagonally blocking the lane. Grabbing her blue case and the resuscitation bag, Danielle jumped out of the vehicle into the rain.
It was a girl. She was lying face down on the wet tarmac. Her head was sideways, smashed against the ground. Her right arm was bent at an unnatural angle. Her left arm was limp and her right leg was twisted bizarrely, as if it wanted nothing more to do with the rest of her body.
Danielle knelt and together with the driver carefully lifted the girl’s head and neck and slowly turned her over. She supported the neck with a brace. Judging from the child’s dark-brown skin and jet-black hair she could have been Middle Eastern. Her eyes were darkly lined with kohl and greasy crimson lipstick was smudged around her mouth. She was dressed in a purple embroidered robe as if she’d just attended some kind of traditional festival. And she was hung with ornaments: in her ears, around her neck and wrists, even her ankles. Jewellery with small silvery bells that tinkled faintly with the slightest movement.
The girl’s eyes were shut. The only sign of life her distressed breathing. Danielle brushed a sticky lock of hair, clotted with blood, away from the head wound and began giving her oxygen.
Behind them a police car skilfully manoeuvred via the road’s right lane and then, a good distance away and with its emergency light flashing, blocked the road. Meanwhile Danielle heard brakes screech to a halt behind the ambulance. A car door opened and was slammed shut again, followed by rapid footsteps. Seconds later a somewhat older Moroccan-looking man squatted down across from her.
‘Give me room to work,’ she said irritably. When she glanced up, she saw the look of disgust on the man’s face.
‘Detective Marouan Diba,’ he stated without making eye contact. ‘Any witnesses?’
‘Nobody. She was lying here alone.’
A second detective had opened an umbrella above Danielle and was holding a torch to assist her.
The girl’s lips were turning blue. Danielle grabbed her stethoscope and listened to both sides of her chest. On the right side she heard the faint sound of breathing; on the left side she heard nothing.
‘Collapsed lung with tension pneumothorax.’
She knew the child was at death’s door. No doubt a number of her ribs were broken from the impact of the collision and the pressure building up in the chest cavity made it hard for the heart to circulate her blood. Danielle took her thickest infusion needle out of the case, located the space between the girl’s second and third ribs, slid the catheter over the needle into the chest cavity, then carefully removed the needle. She heard a hissing sound as the air in the lung decompressed. It sounded like a balloon deflating.
&n
bsp; The detective muttered a curse, though it was obviously as a form of release. Danielle continued to ignore him.
‘It must have been a serious blow to the head. She probably hit the windscreen first and then the tarmac,’ Danielle said. ‘In the best-case scenario, she’s got a severe concussion.’
‘And in the worst case?’ the detective asked.
‘Internal bleeding,’ she answered as she checked the girl’s breathing again and then instructed her assistant to prepare a drip. She examined the strange position of the left leg. She now saw a piece of bone jutting out of the thigh and noticed that the leg was starting to swell.
She carefully felt the girl’s pelvis and was disturbed by what she found.
‘There’s a good chance her pelvis is fractured, meaning she could bleed to death internally.’
She removed a pair of scissors from her kit and began cutting away the girl’s clothing so she could better evaluate the injury. Right away she saw that the girl wasn’t wearing underwear.
And that she was a he.
The detective cursed again. He rose and walked away. Danielle took the pelvic sling from her assistant and together they stabilized the boy’s hips.
‘Bore needle,’ she shouted.
Danielle had to drill into the boy’s right shinbone to insert the needle. Fortunately, he groaned in reaction. That meant his brain was still functioning, but Danielle knew time was running out. She attached the drip and covered the leg wound with sterile gauze. Next, with the help of her driver and her assistant, she cautiously rolled the boy on to the yellow spinal board. She placed two blocks around his head to immobilize him.
‘At three,’ she called and began to count.
The detectives helped lift the board into the ambulance. Danielle leapt in beside the injured boy, the doors were slammed shut, and the driver contacted the hospital to provide their ETA. As the ambulance sped out of the Amsterdamse Bos along the woodland road, Danielle realized she wasn’t prepared to part with this child until she was sure he was out of danger.
3
Back in the dressing room Farah came to her senses again. As if she’d woken from a nightmare.
She’d looked at her coach with a question in her eyes, and he’d started talking to her. Calmly.