Christina was returning to the building where the offices of the prestigious newspaper The Sun are located, after spending months working on an assignment as a war correspondent, which she accepted because of the experience it represented to start her journalistic career and of course the prestige it represents.
They were months of arduous and dangerous work in a distant and especially hostile land for a western woman of free mentality and criteria, especially it was difficult for her to depend at all times on male companionship precisely because of the high level of danger that a war conflict entails.
Returning home was a great relief for the now hardened correspondent whose editorials met with the approval of her editor, who was unconditionally supportive and always had words of praise for Christina.
The night gave her a restful sleep session in her bed, after months of nights on an uncomfortable cot and the continuous sound of shelling in the distance. Finally Christina enjoyed the long awaited intimacy she had longed for, as a celebration she would take a long bath in the tub without the worry of the continuous and uncomfortable interruptions she had suffered on more than one occasion when taking a shower in the places where the international press stayed.
It was during a hot April morning when a mysterious woman appeared at the international press camp, claiming to be carrying a message from a local warlord known as El Halcón. Immediately all the correspondents gathered to find out what it was all about.
The message was clear:
"El Halcón was willing to grant an interview to the press in order to express his intentions to the civilized world. He would receive one to two people armed only with tape recorders and microphones, cameras would not be allowed". And he was only willing to receive female correspondents.
The latter would cause an uproar among the journalists, all of whom had been chasing this kind of exclusive for months, and in frustration all eyes would turn to Christina and Lorna, the only two female correspondents recently arrived in the country to cover the armed conflict, who had just started their first important journalistic assignment by joining the United Press correspondent's office.
Both women could not quite assimilate the enormous journalistic opportunity they had been presented with. The letter gave very precise instructions that if they accepted, they should take all their luggage and accompany the mysterious woman, who would guide them to the caudillo's secret bunker.
Any possibility of carrying weapons or an escort was denied; at the slightest sign of doubt about these indications, the woman who delivered the message would return completely alone, and there would not be another opportunity to interview the warlord until the end of the conflict, which at that moment seemed extremely uncertain.
Fear invaded both Christina and Lorna, who were already preparing all their things to go after that mysterious woman of fragile appearance, who was dressed in an outfit that reminded them of Che Guevara and recommended the women to wear military boots and an outfit similar to hers, which were already part of the equipment that the correspondents used.
The 3 women left the camp and would walk for hours under the burning sun and the sound of distant gunfire and artillery shots used by both sides, were disturbing. For the two journalists the mystery reached exhausting levels, of that woman only deep and penetrating gray eyes could be seen under the cloak that covered both her head and face, she only indicated them not to stop following her and made it clear that very soon all their questions would be answered, they arrived at the ruins of what looked like a country club.
-Let's rest here while we wait for our transportation. I am Irina Pavlova and my charge is to take you to our commanding officer and warlord who leads our cause of liberation." -These were the words of that woman whose calm tone sought to appease the fears of the two nervous correspondents, who had not yet got used to the inclement local climate and, by the way, were exhausted, sweaty and uncomfortable from the walk in such inhospitable territory.
Minutes later, a vehicle appeared in the distance, similar to a Dodge Power Wagon used in the filming of Mad Max, which had a rotating turret with a machine gun in the center, very similar to those used by the American bombers that fought in the Pacific during the Great War.
-It is necessary that from this moment on I cover your faces, I do it to guarantee your safety because our brothers in arms are usually very distrustful of you westerners. Do not think badly of them, they are patriots fighting for a just cause and it is the retribution of the territory and freedom that have been taken from us 2 generations ago." -Said Irina while covering the faces of the two correspondents, who were afraid to say anything at that moment when they heard that armed vehicle approaching, which would take them to an unknown place to interview a mysterious warlord who was fighting a war that they did not quite understand.
From the vehicle descended a whole squadron of heavily armed men whose coarse voices weaved a tension in the temperance of the two journalists on their first big assignment. Both Christina and Lorna were very young at the time, neither was over 25 years old and both were studying journalism in their respective countries.
Christina was a determined young woman, eager for the learning and experience that this assignment would give her as a journalist, in addition to the prestige it represented to start her career whose focus she wanted to lead with great seriousness. Her beauty and physical attractiveness were comparable to the passion she had as a student and editor of the university newspaper which was always distinguished by a very professional approach and perfectly supported by the great investigative work that would be performed by that brilliant promise of journalism.
Lorna was a girl whose audacious spirit always pushed her to go beyond what everyone expected of her. On the one hand she seemed like the typical spoiled Park Avenue girl whose whimsical nature would lead her to try the most unusual activities in her social circle. She possessed an exotic beauty that was the fruit of interbreeding between a shipping industrialist whose Greek ancestors built a shipping empire when they emigrated to New York after World War II. Her mother was a beautiful African who was studying drama in London and looking for opportunities as an actor, she would cross the Atlantic where a few months later she would meet a handsome young man during a walk in Central Park after an intervention in the staging of the musical Hair.
It has been impossible for them to separate since then and from that passionate union, one of the most solid marriages of New York high society, whose invaluable support for the arts, would serve to form in Lorna a free spirit whose eagerness to enrich her inner world through adventure distinguished her from her two older sisters.
During the tour, the conversation of those guerrillas was indecipherable, they conversed in a peculiar local dialect. Both women remained silent as directed by Irina, while each on her own reviewed their lives thinking about what had brought them there, just a week before Christina was an assistant in the editorial office of The Sun newspaper, dressed in an elegant and comfortable business suit. It was when the last peace negotiations between the guerrillas and the dictator's army failed, when she begged the editor-in-chief for the opportunity to cover the conflict before the inevitable return home of the newspaper's correspondent. The man returned for the birth of his first child, in addition to receiving a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his work covering the war.
The editor refused to give Christina the assignment, since the correspondent, among other things, was wounded in the line of duty. It was not a safe place for a sophisticated and beautiful young woman fresh out of journalism school. In the words of Karen Goldenblatt, the editor-in-chief of The Sun newspaper.
