by Eric Meyer
The man ceased to exist. One moment he was there, taking aim, and the next, the heavy round slammed into his body and threw him back like a ragdoll. He slammed to the ground several meters back. Lifeless, but while he was in air, they’d seen the terrible damage done to his chest. A raw, gaping, ragged patch of red blood and ruined tissue.
“Oh, my God,” Lena breathed.
“Sacrilege, you shot an innocent man,” Mazari snarled, “You will burn in the fires of hell!” The dog growled a low warning, and he shut up.
“He was about to spray bullets all over this place. You could have been hurt. It was us or him.”
There was silence for a few moments. She looked at him. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Stoner, Ma’am. The guy with the rifle is Greg Blum.”
She regarded him for a few moments in silence, still shocked by the eruption of violence at her home. “What is your business here? Why have you come?” Her voice was brittle with shock.
He explained about needing to examine a cemetery that was on her land, to check out one of the grave markers. He didn’t give her a reason, and she didn’t ask him for one.
“If you’d give me permission to look at it, I’d be grateful.”
She looked around at the dead bodies close by, and then at the body lying outside her gate.
That man was about to shoot at me. He could have killed me.
She relaxed. “I suppose I should be grateful, you and your friend rescued me from a bad situation. They were about to kill this man as well. You saved his life. Of course I’ll give you permission, and I’ll take you there myself.”
“These are infidels!” Mazari snarled at her, cutting in on them. The dog gave another low growl, but this time he ignored it, “Murderers! They killed my men.”
She gave him a cold glance. “Imam Mazari, you came onto my property to kill Max Olin on a false charge of burning a Koran. Besides, your driver was about to open fire with his pistol. I saw him.”
“The Koran burning is true. I have witnesses,” he mumbled.
This time her glance was scornful. “That’s nonsense. You know how Max is always respectful of Islam. He’d never burn a Koran. The question I have, Imam Mazari, is why are you making such a false accusation? Is that not blasphemous?”
He glared back at her. “That is for Imams to decide, not for a mere woman. I ask you for a last time, will you accept my offer of marriage or suffer the consequences?”
She stared back at him. “I can’t believe you’re serious, not after this. The answer is never. Get off my property, and don’t ever come back!”
His face had stretched tight with hot anger. “I’ll be back, Lena Stori, never fear. I promise you things will become unpleasant for you in the city of Panjab.” He looked at Stoner and Blum. “As for you two men, you will regret this day’s work. Call off your dog. I wish to leave.”
“Archer, release,” Greg said, and instantly the dog returned to him, although he kept his gaze fixed on the cleric. Mazari walked toward the Toyota and grimaced at the bloody body sprawled in the driver’s seat. He started to drag it across to the passenger seat so he could drive.
Stoner called across to him. “Friend, don’t forget your pals. I doubt the lady would want you leaving your rubbish lying around her front yard. We’ll load ‘em up for you.” He went rigid with anger as the two men dragged the bodies to the vehicle and tossed them in the back, “Don’t forget the guy outside the gate as you drive past.”
He shook with incandescent rage as he climbed into the driver’s seat, his previously immaculate robes soaking up blood and tissue from the interior. Even his white kufi was encrusted with blood and brain matter splattered the interior of the roof and windshield. He started the engine and drove away with a squeal of tires, stopped outside the gate, struggled to load the last body into the back, and continued on his journey.
Lena Stori watched him disappear in a cloud of dust, and then she turned to the two men.
“You know what you’ve done? You’ve insulted the Muslims. In this city, that means just about everybody. They’re sure to want revenge. God only knows what they’ll do next.”
Before she could go on, the man they’d beaten groaned in pain. She rushed over to help him.
“Max, how bad is it? Help me. I need to get him inside. I think he’s badly hurt.”
They helped her carry the semi-conscious man into the house, and she directed them to lay him on a couch. Stoner glanced around. It was obvious she was a woman of considerable wealth, even if he hadn’t already known she owned a substantial transport company. The walls were lined with paintings, which he suspected were not copies. The furniture was mainly antique, none of it reproduction. Even the carpets were thick, Persian, and the rug in the center of the living room would probably have cost ten years salary of the average Afghan.
She disappeared into a nearby kitchen and returned with a bowl of water and a first aid kit. She stripped off his shirt and shuddered when she saw the bruises.
“They nearly killed him!”
Stoner shrugged. “If they’d wanted him dead, they’d have put a bullet in him. I guess they wanted to drag him away for a public execution. Plenty of bruises, a couple of cracked ribs, he’ll live.”
She grimaced at his coldness and concentrated on swabbing the blood from the cuts and grazes on his face and body. She wound bandages around his ribs, where they were indeed cracked, and then he came awake, groaning in pain.
“Have they gone?” he croaked.
“Yes, he’s gone.”
“What about his men?”
“They’ve gone, too. I mean; they’re dead. These two men killed them.”
His eyes flicked open wide. “Killed them! They’ll go crazy at the mosque. I need to get back to my office. We have to prepare for trouble.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Max,” she soothed, pushing him back down, “Not until you’ve recovered from that beating. Stay here overnight, and you can go back in the morning.”
They argued, but in the end, he backed down and saw sense. Besides, if they were going on the rampage, the center of Panjab was the last place any sane person would want to be. Stoner and Blum hovered in the background, and she helped carry him to another living room at the rear of the house where he could sleep on a wide, comfortable sofa. They returned to the main room, and she turned her attention to them.
“You know this could mean war, killing those men?” Her expression was brittle with hostility, but then it softened, “On the other hand, they came to kill Max, and he’s a good friend. If you hadn’t happened along, he’d be in a cell awaiting execution by now. You have my thanks.”
“You’ll still show us the cemetery?” Stoner asked. The issue with the cleric and his gunmen was a sideshow. He was here for another reason. A name. A man he needed to kill if he was to keep his promise to a dead girl.
She inclined her head. “Of course, I said I would. First, perhaps we should have something to eat. You look like you’ve traveled a long distance. You must be hungry.”
“Jalalabad, it’s a fair way. Some food would be good.”
“That means you drove overnight. It’s a long way.” She looked thoughtful, almost as if she doubted him; “There’re a lot of dangerous people on the highway at that time.”
“Maybe they thought we were even more dangerous and left us alone.”
She gave Stoner an appraising glance and nodded. “Perhaps. Make yourselves comfortable, and I’ll fix some food.”
They seated themselves on one of the many couches around the room while she organized the food. It meant summoning her cook, and less than an hour later, she called them to the dining room and served traditional Afghan food, kebabs, rice, kofta, a kind of meatball, and side dishes of kaddu buranees. There were sweet pumpkins and ashak, vegetable and chive-filled dumplings topped with tomato and yogurt sauces. They dived in and attacked the food with relish.
While they were eating, she repeated what she�
�d said about starting a war.
Stoner frowned. “They’ll like that. These religious people live for killing.”
She shuddered. “It’s the last thing the locals need. Panjab has been a success story, and Stori Transport is a major part of that success. We’ve had trouble before, during the Taliban days, but since ISAF arrived and beat back the Taliban, things have settled down.” She sighed, “The last thing we need is for trouble to break out again. Men walking around with guns, trucks with heavy machine guns driving around and shooting at rival factions. Sunnis killing Shiites, Shiites killing Sunnis, we thought it was all over. People will suffer. There’s no question. The last thing I want is a war.”
Stoner was unimpressed. “In my experience, these people are never far from the next battle. There’s only one way to handle them, and that’s to always be prepared. ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum.’ So they say.”
She looked puzzled, so he translated. “If you want peace, prepare for war. It’s Latin, some fourth century Roman scholar, I believe. Or maybe it was a Greek.”
“I see. Do you dislike Muslims?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Not much, not the men. I despise them for the misogynist scum most of them are. Like that Imam we saw off. I despise their vicious brutality. There’s not much to like.”
She sighed. “Mr. Stoner…”
“It’s Stoner. Just Stoner.”
“Very well, Stoner. I don’t want a war, and I don’t believe my employing a squad of armed men would help matters. I’d appreciate it if you’d finish your business here, take a look at that cemetery for whatever reason, and then leave town. I suspect the longer you stay, the more trouble we’re going to have. By the way, what exactly are you looking for in the cemetery?”
“It’s personal.”
He wasn’t about to say more, and she turned her attention to Greg Blum and his German Shepherd. He was feeding Archer some of the spare kebabs. The dog was large for the breed, with a glossy black coat highlighted by a golden blaze beneath each ear, and golden socks. An attractive animal, and a hungry one, too, he’d eaten as much as his owner had.
“He’s an interesting dog. A family pet?”
Greg smiled. “He’s a former U.S. Marine Corps dog.”
“Why did you decide to call him Archer?”
“We named him after the Russian homing missile, the Strela. It translates into English as ‘arrow.’ Behind the arrow, you have the man with the skill. The Archer. You give this dog a target, it may even be something small he can pick up a faint scent from, and he’ll locate it.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
“Impressive.” She turned back to Stoner. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about not telling me the reason for wanting to view this grave marker, and I’m afraid I must insist. We have enough trouble on the way, and we don’t need any more. Either you tell me what you’re looking for, or I’ll have to say no. I’m sorry, and I know you helped us against those men, but I’m a woman living in a Muslim city. The only way I can survive is to be careful about every step I take.”
He was silent for a few moments as he considered what she’d said, but he didn’t have an alternative. He told her the whole story, his fiancée, the girl he wanted to marry, Madeleine Charpentier. How she devoted her life to helping others through her work with UNHCR, only to have it snuffed out by a Taliban IED. How he’d vowed to get justice by killing those responsible. He told her of the man who’d told him of the existence of the grave, Ivan Vasilyevich. That the headstone would carry the family name of the man he sought. At the name of Ivan Vasilyevich she flinched.
“Ivan, I wonder could that be Ivan the Terrible.”
Greg chuckled. With his Russian ancestry, his father had raised him on tales of the formidable Russian. “I doubt it could be the same guy. Ivan the Terrible was the nickname of Ivan the Fourth, Tsar of sixteenth century Russia. History has him down for a paranoiac psycho mass-murderer. During the Massacre of Novgorod, he accounted for the slaughter of more than ten thousand innocent souls, all on some crazy suspicion. No, it can’t be the same guy.”
“You misunderstand,” she said, “We have a local warlord in the region, and they call him Ivan the Terrible. For the same reason as this Russian Tsar, I imagine. He hides out in the mountains, at Band-e Amir. That’s a national park, a mountainous region about thirty kilometers from here. He’s a drug runner mainly, although he’s engaged in just about every kind of illegal activity there is, from gun running to murder. You name it.”
“Have you ever met him?” Stoner asked, thinking hard.
Why would a warlord drug trafficker tip me off about the grave marker? It doesn’t make sense, if it was the same man.
She shook her head. “Never. Perhaps it’s someone else. What will you do when you find the man you seek?”
He didn’t reply, and her gaze turned cold. “You’ll kill him, which means more trouble for Panjab. Another blood feud to tear this place apart.”
“You’d let a guilty man, a murderer, go free, Miss Stori? Those men we killed, they were about to murder your friend. You’d give them a free ride, too, I guess.”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t mean…”
She looked back at him. Stoner both infuriated and intrigued her. The casual way he’d pulled out a huge pistol and shot dead Imam Mazari’s driver suggested a dangerous man, a violent man. Trouble. There was something deep and secretive with this man. Whatever he kept hidden inside, it would be best if he took it back with him to Jalalabad. God only knew she had enough problems dealing with the Imams and the Mullahs.
I’ll show him the cemetery, and he can go on his way. Besides, with any luck, the grave marker will be long gone. The local stonemasons sometimes steal them to recycle for new commissions. Should I call someone and ask them to remove it? No, I don’t know which one he’s looking for.
They finished lunch in an awkward atmosphere, and she suggested they take a stroll to the cemetery. “It’s less than a kilometer from here, and you may be interested in my setup here. You know I have an airfield?”
“I didn’t, no,” he smiled back at her, “You’re full of surprises.”
She flushed red and went to leave. They walked along a neat path and came to the edge of a rough strip, little more than five hundred meters in length, with a hangar at one side. Two aircraft were on the stand, and he recognized them as De Havilland DHC-3 Otters.
“You have good taste in aircraft. Those babies have been flying since the early fifties, and they’re just as good today. Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines?”
“You know much about aircraft, Stoner?”
“Some.”
“I would only use Pratt and Whitney Wasps. I guess you know the Russians built copies of the Wasp engines, but they’re not so reliable.”
“Nothing they build in Russia is reliable. Except maybe the AK-47.”
Greg intervened. “Dammit, Stoner, that’s a heap of crap, and you know it. Russian technology is the equal of any these days. Take my GAZ...”
“And toss it on the scrap heap?”
Before he could fire back an angry retort, Lena interrupted, “It’s a pleasant walk. Let’s leave the macho bullshit, okay?”
She surprised them both with her assertive tone. Stoner recalled she was the absolute owner of the land they walked on, a wealthy woman running a successful business in a country where many women were not even able to leave their homes without the stifling enclosure of the burqa. They walked on in silence until he asked her about Mazari, “What’s the deal with that guy, were you and him an item?”
She stopped and almost doubled over with laughter. “He’s a slimy rattlesnake. All he wants is to get his hands on my company and my bank account. I hate him.”
“Uh, okay. I just wondered.”
“Now you know,” she snapped.
They walked for almost a kilometer, and the path entered a thick wood. In the center of the dense foliage a low, crumbling w
all surrounded a small cemetery. Most of the graves were old and untended; although in places there was evidence of a more recent burial.
“They have a new cemetery on the other side of the city, so this one is rarely used,” she explained, “They only inter the relatives of people already buried here, mostly their women. If you’re looking for a man, it shouldn’t be too difficult. There’ve only been two or three men buried here in the past few years.”
They were about to enter the gate when an aircraft came in low to land on the strip, another de Havilland Otter. She looked up and nodded her head in satisfaction. “I have three Otters in total. That pilot is Joseph Chow. He’s the best man I have. Always on time, always reliable.”
“That’s good to know,” Stoner said, staring around at the grave markers.
Inside, he had a feeling in his guts that a long quest was coming to an end. That the man who’d ordered Madeleine’s killing was close. He started checking the headstones, looking at the newer stones first. The man he sought would have been buried recently, so he could discount the older stones covered in green moss. In the end, it came down to a choice of two. One had died at the ripe old age of eighty-five, so it seemed unlikely he was the brother of a Taliban bomber. The second marker was what he was looking for.
Lena interpreted the Afghan inscription for him. “Here lies the grave of Ishaq Khan, hero of the Islamic struggle for freedom and independence from the foreign infidels. It also gives his age. He was twenty-seven when he died.”
Her face had paled, but he didn’t notice. He only had eyes for one thing. The name.
“He was twenty-seven when a U.S. sniper killed him,” he amended, “Ishaq Khan was Taliban. What do you know about him?”
“Nothing!”
He glanced at her in surprise. She was lying, although he couldn’t work out the reason. He glanced at Greg, who shrugged. Then he looked back at her.
“There’s something you don’t want to tell me, but you’re wasting your time. I’ll find out, even if I have to tear this entire city apart. Who was he?”
She walked out of the cemetery and stood just outside the gate, her head bowed. It was obvious she was thinking things through, but when he joined her, she’d come to a decision. She met his eyes.