“Oh, that.” She waved her hand dismissively, pretending more nonchalance than she felt. She was probably going to have to do a little creative groveling over that sooner or later if she was going to be able to help the boy-or maybe not. She was no longer feeling so smug. The smart thing for Giancarlo to do was to cooperate with her if he wanted results; but, although he was far from stupid, for someone in his specialty, he did not seem to have learned the value of cooperation, though no doubt he found it in himself to cooperate with those of higher rank. She would worry about it later, she thought, realizing at the same time that the effects of the cough medicine’s overdose hadn’t quite worn off. She was using a lot of her mental energy to keep from throwing her arms around Shongili’s neck and planting a kiss on the warm smile with which he was favoring her.
“Uh, sit down,” she said, brushing her own hair back from her face and hoping her hands had gotten washed somehow in the midst of all of this and she wasn’t resmearing herself with ashes. “Can I burn you some tea?”
“Please. I just got back from running with the search party.”
“Any trace of the others?”
He shook his head and sat on the bed. She lifted a finger to tell him to wait, ducked outside, dipped up a pan of snow from a high drift, where animals hadn’t been able to reach it, and returned to plop it back on the stove.
“No,” he said. “Not a trace. And it started snowing hard again, so we had to give up for the time being. If your friend the colonel would just release Lavelle, I’ll bet Dinah could help. She’s the best leader of all of the dogs, and if our people are still findable, she’ll locate them. We’ve been out for three days now.”
“You must be exhausted.”
“A little. I just came by to ask if you’d finished with the recorder yet.”
“Oh, frag! No, I haven’t, really. Clodagh came by once, too, but I completely forgot to ask her when she wanted to do the song for Charlie. If you need it, maybe I could-”
“No, no, that’s okay.” He peered over her shoulder. “Your water’s boiling.”
“Thanks.”
He took a deep breath and said, “What I actually wondered was, well, while you’ve got it, have you given any more thought to making the song about Bremport?”
“Oh, Scan,” she said, sitting back down hard. To her annoyance, she began to cough again, not because she had to but out of reflex. “Scan, I just can’t do that. It’s too soon. A lot of it’s classified. And I just don’t want to think about it. People here don’t want to hear it, either, trust me.”
He reclined on the bed, propping himself up on his elbow, and gave her a long hard look. “I could say the same thing, Yana. Trust me. You need to do this. We need to hear it.”
“Sean, I can’t. I’m no songwriter and I can barely stand to talk about it. Anyway, I only saw one small, awful part. The rest I’ve put together from what I was told before or since about Bremen”
“I’d like to hear about it,” he said, quietly insistent.
“Did you have someone there? Did you know someone there?” she asked.
“You,” he said, making and holding eye contact. “At least, I’m trying to know you.”
That unsettled her for a moment. She put some of Clodagh’s herbs in a bag and steeped them in the tea water while she thought. Maybe she should talk about it, not only because Shongili wanted to know, but because she was still furious about the whole thing. She couldn’t keep popping off at superior officers on whose goodwill she was dependent and get away with it.
“Okay,” she said. “Since you think it needs to be told to everybody else, let’s turn on the recorder. I don’t believe I could go through this twice.” He said nothing, but raised his eyebrows inquiringly and she said, “My coat. In the pocket.”