BERNARD SCROUNGED IN HIS suit jacket pockets. Pills. Where were those pills? The little blue ones. The ones that calmed him down, marshaled his words into succinct phrases.
The bottle was empty. He panicked. He’d already had the hunger strikers removed to the hospital. But after several hours they’d checked themselves out and returned to the church.
Bernard paced back and forth in front of his desk. Rays from his weak desk light pooled on his worn office carpet. What could he do with these people? How would he get Hamid out of the church?
Finally he found a broken blue pill in his pocket lining, chalky and only half a dose. He swallowed it, lint and all. Maybe it would help clarify his thoughts.
The captain of the Compagnies Republicaines de Securite had disappeared; then the minister had paged him. But Bernard had no phone. No aide de camp. He just clung to a thin rope above the raging rapids of Interior Ministry politics.
Bernard knew Hamid was too weak to conduct negotiations. And the buses bound for the air terminal were pulling up outside the church in Belleville. He remembered their rumbling engines. Like roars of hungry beasts waiting to be fed.