“Did you hear from him while he was in Orlisia?”
“Yes. He would send me a short message every day.” She took a breath and squeezed Michael’s hand on screen. “On September 10 of last year, the messages stopped. I knew something terrible had happened.”
“Was that when you started planning to get into Orlisia by forming the coalition?”
“No,” she replied. “I want to distinguish between my personal and professional interests here. Aid agencies began planning for intervention the day the invasion took place.” She used one of her key messages for the interview. “At Refugee Crisis International, it’s our job to improve the conditions of people who inhabit refugee camps. That is what we do best. It’s what I do best. As soon as the Parnaas camp started to form, we knew we would be going in.
“I didn’t know Michael Nariovsky-Trent would be in Parnaas. I hoped he would be. I even prayed for it. I won’t deny that it was a huge motivator for me. But that possibility didn’t distract me from my work. If anything, it made me better at it. It gave me the courage to help bring the coalition together. The patience to find consensus with the Soviet government on our entry plan. It made me try harder, work longer hours, and give more of myself than I’d ever given to a crisis before.
“We did not spend a single dime of donor money on the search for Michael. It was funded privately. Certainly the mission did not suffer in any way by my desire to find him. If anything the mission was more successful because of his presence in my life.”
In the living room, Sophie hid her face in Michael’s shoulder with embarrassment, but she was nonetheless pleased that they had used that clip in its entirety.
The voiceover went on to describe Commandant Jaros, showing pictures of the refugees with the brandings on their foreheads. Then it segued into a piece on the diseases that plague all refugee camps: dysentery, cholera, other water-borne illnesses, and, in their case, pneumonia.
“Did you know that aid workers had finally entered Parnaas, Michael?”
“Yes, conditions in the camp definitely improved upon the arrival of the coalition. We had clean drinking water almost immediately. Medical care. Emergency rations. Plastic sheeting for better shelters. People were still terrified of the Soviets and the Commandant, but knowing international aid workers were present made us feel hopeful. We thought maybe we would get out of there alive, and not die or become slaves.”
“Did you know that Sophie was with the coalition?”
His eyes softened. “No, but I hoped. I heard a rumor of an American aid worker who defied the guards and spoke Orlisian very well. A woman. I wanted so badly to believe it was Sophie. I would walk in the camp, searching for her. But we could not approach the administrative buildings where Sophie tells me she spent the majority of her time as leader of the coalition.”
Annabelle turned to Sophie on screen. “You did the same thing, didn’t you? Walked through the camp, searching for Michael.”
“Yes. I tried not to. I had a job to do, and it was not about running from tent to tent looking into the face of every man in the camp. But I had to find him.”