Black Diamond

his arm into his brain by counting and testing the heat of each tread.
    He reached a landing where the wall was hot, but the stairs then turned away from it and seemed cooler. He climbed on, and the smoke was thinner. His flashlight picked out two doors straight ahead, neither of them warm. He opened the first, and smoke seemed to be pouring from the ceiling. He clamped his mouth shut against the smoke and the fear, but the room seemed unoccupied. He stubbed his foot against a bed, felt along its empty length and turned back to the other door.
    Something was blocking it. He used his ax to lever thedoor open. His brain was shrieking at him to run, to leave, to save himself in flight. He knelt down to feel the blockage. It was a piece of rolled-up cloth that he was able to tug away. More smoke was coming from the ceiling, and Bruno knew he had better be fast. He couldn’t breathe in this much longer. He felt himself going dizzy, and his self-control was ebbing.
    The screams had kept him going in Sarajevo, an appeal for help from men he knew whose flesh was burning that had made him plunge again and again into the flames to haul them out. But there were no screams here. They’re dead already, a part of his brain was insisting. It’s wasted effort. They’re corpses. The smoke got them. They suffocated. Get out and save yourself.
    Bruno fought the fear and made himself think of water. Cool water. He was swimming, swimming in the river with Isabelle. No, it was colder than that, he told himself. It was snowing. He was in the mountains, and the snow was all around.
    He groped along the wall and reached a bed, and then his hand met a very thin leg. He felt along the length of the unconscious child, picked up the limp body and staggered to the window. Holding the child against his chest with his left arm, he used his right to break the window open with his ax, almost tripping as his feet encountered another body crumpled beneath the window. He leaned out and gulped at the clean night air.
    “This way,” he shouted as the ladder swerved toward him from the adjoining window. A fireman began clambering up as Bruno stuffed his ax into a pocket and held out the child in his arms. Smoke billowed thickly around him.
    “There’s another child,” Bruno shouted down to Albert, standing by the controls of the ladder.
    The first fireman took the child from Bruno’s arms and handed the small figure down to a second man who had clambered up below him. Bruno pulled his head and body back into the thickening smoke and held his breath as he hauled up the second child at his feet and passed it through the window.
    “Get out now,” Albert was shouting, and Bruno leaned out to grab the ladder with his right hand. He hauled a leg over the windowsill and then felt his ax tumble from his pocket, and he gripped the ladder tightly as he sensed it begin to swivel away from the window, and the room seemed to explode behind him. Hugging the metal step with both arms, his legs swaying in the breeze, Bruno felt a scalding heat on the back of his legs, and a great rush of flame roared past him into the night.
    “You damn fool,” Albert was saying from a great distance. “I told you to stay on the ground floor.”
    There was white foam all over him, and then a familiar face was looking into his eyes. It was Fabiola, pulling open his jacket to put a stethoscope against his heart.
    “The kids will be all right, Bruno,” he heard her say. “You got them out in time.”

27
    Fabiola stood beside him with a glass of milk, saying it would soothe his throat and nourish him. He felt his chest burn with every breath. He was in a strange bed, lying on his back, but he could see his feet. Both his legs were suspended in the air, a light gauze dressing on them. Dr. Gelletreau was at the foot of the bed, looking up from a chart to smile at him. Fabiola raised his head and eased a straw into his mouth. Bruno drank, realizing with relief that he was at the medical center in St. Denis. If he’d been badly hurt, they’d have moved him to the big hospital in Périgueux.
    “You’re a lucky man,” Gelletreau said. “Mainly second-degree burns, including some bad ones on the back of your calves. The smoke inhalation doesn’t seem too bad. A few days rest and you’ll be fine.”
    “I have to be in Bordeaux at three this afternoon,” Bruno said.
    “Too late,” Gelletreau said. “It’s almost three already.”
    Bruno looked out the window. It was