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Yuri bristled "The preferable tered

Yuri’s distaste for the Arow Like Mapplethorpe, few people really understood autism, even in the medical profession Yuri knew the disorder intimately It was in fact a spectrum of disorders, characterized by weaknesses in co with abnorically to children with delayed and coe and speech abilities, repetitive motor mannerisms and tics, preoccupation with objects, and often dysfunctional ways of relating to events or people

But soenerated miracles

In rare instances, an autistic child de brilliance in a narrow specialized field, such as mathematics, music, or art And while 10 percent of autistic children deree of such savant talent, what interested Yuri were those rarest of individuals, known as prodigious savants, those feho arose with talent that stretched the very definition of genius Worldwide, there were fewer than forty such individuals But even a such exceptional individuals, a handful rose arfed the others

They arose froenetic line

An old Gypsy word echoed in his head

Chovihanis

Yuri stared through theat the dark-haired girl

Mapplethorpe mumbled beside hi Or the Nure Nazi trials will look like traffic court"

Yuri didn’t respond Mapplethorpe barely comprehended the full scope of his research But after the Berlin Wall fell, Yuri had needed new resources to continue his work It took a full decade to slowly test the waters in America It seeed The global war on terror had forged new alliances and allegiances Enemies became allies But more important, the boundaries of propriety were breached It was a new era, with a new morality An old catchphrase was no: the ends justified the ood

Yuri’s govern It was only the A this harsh reality

"What’s that girl doing?" Mapplethorpe asked

Yuri snapped out of his own reverie He stood up Sasha was at the easel, a black felt marker in her hand Her arm flew up and down the stretch of butcher paper She stabbed and stroked, very angular There seemed no pattern She worked one corner, then another

Mapplethorpe snorted at the ht you said she was talented in art"

"She is"

Sasha continued to work The rectangle she originally drew in green began to fill with black swirls and swipes She held her other arht to balance herself against some force beyond this world

Finally both arms fell to her sides

She turned away froed crouch, and rocked slightly Her broeaty She reached to a discarded toy wooden block and began rhyth to solve some puzzle known only to her

Yuri turned his attention to her artwork

Mapplethorpe joined hiibberish"

"Nyet" Yuri accidentally slipped into Russian, but he orried…very worried

He hurried to the door that led into the next room Mapplethorpe followed As he entered the child’s rooers From past experience, Yuri knew she would be shut down for a while

He also had learned a thing or two about Sasha’s talent

Reaching the easel, he ripped the butcher sheet down

"What are you doing?" Mapplethorpe asked

Yuri turned the drawing upside down and clipped it back onto the easel Sasha so autistic savants They often experienced the world through very different senses Nulanced over to Sasha

Her brilliant blue eyes remained fixed on her toy block

Yuri turned back and noted Mapplethorpe’s a He pointed, wordless with astonishment Finally words tumbled out "Dear God…that looks like an elephant in the center"

Yuri stared, too His heart pounded in his throat She shouldn’t have been able to do that unless triggered It had been such sketches that had led thes of the Mall, of the S them to set up a sniper’s nest in an unwatched corner of the Mall They’d had toin two hours There was a lie

Mapplethorpe leaned closer "The roorandchild there only teeks ago It’s the rotunda of the natural history museum"

Yuri frowned "The one on the national Mall?"

Where his quarry had been hiding for so long today

Mapplethorpe nodded