Part 4 — The Desperate Crying of Three Infants on the Train Made Me Rise to My Feet, But When Roman Vale Looked at Me, His Hand Was Trembling

The footsteps behind the door stopped.

Roman carefully took Judy from my arms.

“We have to get the children out of here.”

“Are your people waiting for you at the station?” I asked.

“My people are. But now I no longer know whom to trust.”

Victor hid the phone in his pocket.

“Roman, if you suspect me, we still first have to find out who is at the station.”

“I have already found out.”

Roman snatched the phone from his hand.

“You will not call anyone anymore.”

Victor pressed himself against the door.

“If you do not open the door for me, the children will die.”

“Your bottles nearly killed them.”

There was neither shouting nor threat in his voice.

Only coldness.

The train entered a tunnel. The light in the compartment flickered. I watched all three children. Judy was breathing better already, but his brothers were still eating weakly.

Roman called the attendant for his security, but no one answered.

A few seconds later there was a knock on the door.

“Roman, open up!” a man shouted from outside.

Roman looked toward me.

“From this moment on, you will do exactly what I tell you.”

“I am not your employee.”

“I know. That is why I am asking you.”

He opened a hidden lock under the seat. From there he took out a small radio, a first-aid bag, and three baby blankets.

“We will go through the train’s technical passage,” he said.

“Victor?”

“He will stay here.”

Victor smiled bitterly.

“Roman, do you think I arranged all this? Kincaid does not need to make the children sick merely to kill you.”

“Then why did you do it?”

Victor could not answer.

Roman did not call the police. Instead he called a number that, as I later learned, belonged to a federal investigator.

“I have a recording,” he said. “Victor Rowe admits that Kincaid put medicine in the children’s bottles. I want protection for my children and a guarantee for Naomi Bell.”

Victor raised his head.

“A recording?”

Roman put the small radio on the table.

“Elise hid this device. All your conversations were recorded.”

Victor’s face changed.

Then, for the first time, he heard his own voice from outside.

His hoarse conversation sounded from the radio:

“They will sleep for several hours. Roman will go to the meeting. There Kincaid will finish everything.”

Victor froze.

“I did not say that.”

The radio repeated his voice.

“If Naomi appears, tell her that the children need her milk. Then both of them will be in one place.”

I looked at Roman.

“They wanted to use me.”

“Yes,” he said. “But Elise knew that you would not be only a victim.”

Elise’s voice sounded from the radio.

“If Naomi goes to the children, trust her. She has the courage that I lost.”

My eyes began to burn.

I remembered my child. That small body that had been taken from my hands at the maternity hospital. For years I thought that I had failed to save him.

Now three children were breathing in my arms.

The train stopped at the station.

The men behind the door knocked again.

Roman opened the technical passage. We went into a narrow metal corridor. The walls were covered in oil, and the floor swayed so much that I could barely keep hold of Judy’s carrier.

“Naomi, left!” Roman shouted.

The sound of a door opening came from the right.

We rushed through the left door.

Two armed men were waiting there.

Roman stepped in front, but I pressed the children to my chest and instinctively stepped back. Then one of the men saw my silver badge.

“It is Elise’s badge,” he said.

Roman narrowed his eyes.

“Lower your weapon.”

The man slowly lowered his weapon.

“We are not Kincaid’s people. We are Elise’s protection.”

At that moment I understood that Elise had planned everything before her death.

Federal investigators were already waiting at the station. They took Victor away, while the recording of Kincaid’s call from Roman’s phone and Elise’s letter were handed directly to the investigation team.

Kincaid was arrested the next day.

His clinic was closed. The investigation confirmed that for years they had falsified newborn records in order to blackmail wealthy families. My son’s case was among them.

When I entered the courthouse for the first time, Roman was waiting for me at the door.

“You can go back,” he told me.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“For the first time, I am.”

Victor confessed to the crime and agreed to testify. Kincaid was sentenced to severe punishment. Roman closed all illegal activities and transferred his companies to independent managers.

But I did not touch his money.

I wanted only my son’s record, the truth, and the right to stop blaming myself.

Three weeks later, the doctor confirmed that the infants were no longer in danger.

Roman called me.

“The children are asking about you,” he said.

“Infants cannot read yet.”

For the first time I heard his short laugh.

“Then perhaps they are simply looking for your smell.”

I did not remain in Washington. I moved to a small neighborhood in Baltimore and began working at a neonatal clinic. In the mornings I opened the window, made coffee, and looked at my son’s photograph on the wall.

Beside the photograph I hung a small drawing by the three children. Roman had sent it to me. Three messy circles, four figures, and a large yellow sun above.

Below, in childish letters, it said: “Naomi is with us.”

Months passed.

When the first snow came, Judy was already able to grab my necklace with his own fingers. His brothers took a toy away from each other and then laughed as if the whole house belonged to them.

Roman stood at the kitchen door.

“They want to see you every week,” he said.

“You too?”

He could not answer immediately.

“Me too.”

There was a request in his voice, but not an obligation.

That was precisely why I stayed.

One day I received a letter by mail.

The sender was Victor.

“You were right. I thought that protecting Roman gave me the right to do everything. Now, for the first time, I understand what I was doing.”

I read the letter to the end and put it in a drawer.

I did not reply.

Then a message came from Roman.

“If you ever want, we can leave the children your surname.”

I held the phone in my hand for a long time.

Then I wrote:

“They already have a family. As for the surname, time will show.”

Roman wrote me only one word.

“I understand.”

It was his first truly calm answer.

That evening the three children were sitting on the floor in my living room. Judy ran toward me and gave me a small piece of paper.

A silver badge was drawn on it, but this time there were three suns above it.

I took the badge off my neck and placed it in the child’s hand.

“This belonged to my son,” I said. “Now you will protect it too.”

Roman looked at me from a distance, but said nothing.

For the first time I was no longer wearing this object to preserve pain.

It was growing warm in the small hand.

And when the three children called me at the same time, I remembered that old noise of the train—the desperate crying that everyone avoided.

This time no one stayed silent.

I ran toward them.