She pointed down a corridor and said the morgue was adjacent to the side entrance, in the hospital basement.
After finding the entrance, we saw a flight of stone steps leading downward.
We found the morgue and walked into a dismal room. The only light came from scattered small bulbs, and the air was saturated with the smell of formaldehyde. A couple of fans were blowing, keeping the air cool. Half-a-dozen bodies, each covered by a cloth, hadn’t yet been placed up on the racks and lay alongside one another on pallets that were on the ground. Two uniformed military police nodded when they saw us. While we were introducing ourselves, two workers carrying a stretcher with a body beneath a piece of cloth entered the room, dropped the stretcher, and left.
Hammond only shrugged. One of the MPs winced as if to say that’s the way they do things over here.
“I’m Sergeant Olin. You’re here to see this Nolda guy?” When we said we were, he pointed, then walked down the row of bodies. We all pulled out our flashlights. He yanked off a sheet, exposing a bloated corpse.
“A floater,” Hammond said. “Looks like he was in the water a couple of days.” For good reason, Hammond stuck his handkerchief over his nose. The corpse stank.
Overcoming my aversion to bad smells, I got down on my haunches and shone my flashlight into the corpse’s eyes, on his face, on his skin. I pulled back some of his clothing to see that portions of his body were totally gone. I wondered whether he wasn’t in the water longer than a couple of days. Body parts had been eaten away, the result, I assumed, of having been dead quite a while. And the corpse was so bloated it seemed to have ballooned.
“Someone fished him out of the reservoir, sir. Because he was wearing a uniform, they called someone from ANA, and they called us.”
“And then they brought him up here?” I asked, getting back to my feet.
Sergeant Olin nodded. “This is the hospital for Afghan security people, sir. Dispatcher told us to come out here. No ID, just dog tags. That’s how they ID’d him.”
I took another look. Despite the condition of the body, there were enough facial features to see this was definitely the guy whose picture Hammond had showed me. This was our man.
When Hammond asked what I thought, I said, “We need to autopsy the body.”
“Right. Get the cause of death. He drowned, apparently.”
“He’d been in the water awhile. Is there anyone around here who can perform an autopsy?”
“Probably is.” Hammond took the MPs aside and told them to stay with the corpse. “Nobody touches the body. Is that clear?”
“How long, sir?”
“Not too long, hopefully. We have to autopsy the body. If we can’t get a doctor over here, we fly the body to Bagram.” Back upstairs, we started asking around. “They must have some Americans working here.”
After ten minutes of trying to find someone who spoke English, we decided that 0400 hours probably wasn’t the best time to obtain information. Hammond said he’d make an official inquiry later in the day, and we headed back outside.
“Breakfast?” I said when we were again in the van.
“Yeah, and I think we should invite someone,” Hammond said. “What do you think?”
“Wanda? Why not?”
“I’ll report everything to Major Jones.” Then Hammond told the driver to take us to ISAF Headquarters.
* * *
An hour later, Hammond, Stan Jones, and I were wolfing down breakfast in the Headquarters dining facility, one of the few military chow halls where you’ll find silverware and plates. I’d loaded my plate down with an omelet, sausage, and toast. Since I hadn’t eaten the previous evening, I was hungry.
“You guys are sure?” Stan asked. “You’re sure it was Nolda at the hospital?”
“It was him, all right.” Hammond smeared a piece of toast with butter. “There was enough left of him so you could tell.”
“So that pretty much wraps it up.”
I said, “Not necessarily. Pete was killed eleven days ago. The body was bloated. Badly. It had ballooned. Lots of body parts had been eaten away.”
“That’s for sure,” Hammond said. “It really stank.”
“That body could have been in the water for two weeks,” I said. “We need a pathologist to examine him.”
Stan grabbed his coffee cup. “What are you, Alex, some kind of expert? Why bother with a pathologist?”
“Pete was killed eleven days ago, on January 23. Right? If he was in the water for two weeks, that means Nolda didn’t kill Pete. That’s all. We want to be sure.”
Stan rolled his eyes. “Is this why you’re here, Alex? To cause problems?”
“You’re causing the problems, Stan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means there won’t be any problems if you do your job right. I say we try to pinpoint the time of Nolda’s death.” If I was being insistent on this topic, it was because I was already having second thoughts about Nolda being Pete’s killer.
Hammond continued to eat, pretending not to hear.
A couple of minutes later we were joined by Wanda, who was carrying a tray. She slid in opposite me. Before she could comment, Stan said, “Baram Nolda has turned up. He’s dead.”
Hammond went on to describe our visit to the hospital.
“You say he was in one of the lakes?” Wanda’s frown turned to disgust. She let the piece of toast in her hand fall back down on her plate.
“I think he’d been there awhile,” I said.
Stan said, “What makes you so goddamn sure?”
“I’m not sure. But that’s a mountain lake. The water’s cold. The body wouldn’t decompose as fast in cold water.”
Stan glared. “How the fuck do you know how cold the water out there is?”
“There’s a resort at Qargha. Two years ago a bunch of us drove out there. The water was cold. I didn’t stay in longer than five minutes.”
Stan tossed down his fork but didn’t say anything more.
“It was definitely badly decomposed,” Hammond said. “Who would’ve killed him?” Hammond seemed to be asking himself the question more than he was asking us.
“And why?” Wanda said.
“If we can get one of the local docs for an autopsy, we do it,” Hammond said. “I’ll call the dispensary.”
I shook my head. “There won’t be a pathologist at the dispensary.”
“Then we send him over to Bagram,” Hammond said, “to the hospital there. Let them do it.”
Stan frowned. “That might be the best option in any case. The medical people there are okay, and they have a pathologist.”
“You want a ride out to the hospital?” Hammond asked Wanda.
“I want to see the son of a bitch,” Wanda said abruptly.
Both Stan and I were surprised by the sudden harshness of Wanda’s tone, although I don’t suppose we should have been.
Indifferent to our reaction, she glared at us. “The son of a bitch killed my husband. I definitely want to see him.” She stood up, slurped some coffee. To Hammond, she said, “Are you ready to drive me out?”
* * *
At shortly after 1000 hours I arrived at Captain Eric Page’s Headquarters building office, where I was told that Captain Page had gotten back from Herat roughly an hour before and was now in a meeting. Sitting in a chair in the anteroom outside his office, I killed time with a four-day-old copy of Stars and Stripes. After twenty minutes, I watched as a pair of young officers came trooping out. Five minutes later, a thin, sandy-haired guy in fatigues with two bars on his shoulders stepped out of the office. We shook hands, and Captain Page pointed me inside.
“I got your message. You want to know about Pete?” He paused, scratched his cheek. “You’re investigating the case?” When I nodded, he said, “CID?” When I shook my head, he frowned. “Can I ask for some ID?”
I couldn’t blame Page for being mildly puzzled. Although I still wasn’t completely sure what it
was Jerry Shenlee wanted me to do, I’d begun to sense that things weren’t adding up. And according to Captain Corley, I should be trying to find out what it was Pete had been working on.
I said, “If you give Major Jones a call, he’ll verify who I am. Someone in D.C. asked me to come over.”
He hesitated when I said that. Just the mention of Stan Jones seemed to be enough to put Page at ease, at least a little bit at ease, but he’d frowned at the mention of D.C. After nervously pushing some papers back and forth on his desk, he said, “Anything in particular I can help you with?”
“Anything you can tell me could be helpful.”
“In what way?”
“I’ve heard you and Pete were colleagues but also friends.”
Page frowned. “Yeah, you could say that. We were. It was really tragic that happening. Have they got him yet?”
“We think so.” I went on to explain how Hammond and I had seen Nolda’s body the previous evening.
Page’s face took on a blank expression. “Nolda worked in our office. Seemed like an okay guy. But I guess you never know. Not until it’s too late.”
I asked Page what he could tell me about Pete.
“Pete changed over the time I knew him, which was eight, close to nine months. I’m not sure exactly what the cause was, but as time went on he became despondent.”
“What do you mean? ‘Despondent’?”
“Pete and I worked here in adjacent offices. When I first got to know him he was an upbeat guy. Didn’t let things bother him. He could give almost anything that happened a humorous twist.”
“I know what you mean. I knew him personally.”
Page relaxed when I said that. He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “But then he started to change. Little things began to get to him. It’s hard to explain. One obvious thing. When I first got to know him, he was looking forward to going home, used to talk about it. But then, he stopped talking about it.”
“Nothing more than that?”
“He began talking about extending again. He said to me one day, ‘Even with all the red tape and military chickenshit, I have fewer headaches over here.’”
I nodded, recalling that Stan had said something similar. “Most people like the idea of returning to the States.”
“Sure. I’m going back in a couple of months, and I’m already counting days. But Pete had things on his mind.” Page hesitated, as though he was about to say something but then thought better of it.
“Whatever was bothering him, do you think it was personal or job related?”
“The job was definitely bothering him. He told me once he was finding out things he wished he wasn’t finding out. I got the impression he was maybe finding out stuff that was gonna get him in trouble.” Page paused. “If you know what I mean.”
I shook my head and he continued, “Pete one time said he couldn’t believe the scope of the stuff he was dealing with. He used that word ‘scope’.”
“What was he working on?”
Page’s expression clouded. “The Kabul Bank. Where the money went.” He paused. “I can’t say much more than that.”
Under normal circumstances, the military wouldn’t involve itself with the Kabul Bank and its missing money. Had Pete stumbled onto something? Page eyed me silently, perhaps wondering if I’d picked up on that. I sensed that Page knew more than he wanted to tell. “Did Pete ever mention names?”
“No. What he was doing was highly hush-hush.”
“What did he do all day?”
“He used to spend a lot of time going over printouts, numbers, that sort of thing. Because he said so little about what he was doing, I never asked. You know what I mean, I’m sure. But half the stuff going on in this department here is hush-hush.” He flashed a grim smile.
“Nothing too unusual there.”
“No. We can’t talk with reporters without getting permission.”
“And if you ask for permission, they tell you ‘no.’”
“I don’t suppose you know anything about the Threat Finance Cell.” When I said Major Jones had mentioned some people investigating the bank, Page said, “They’re trying to find out what happened. Top secret stuff. They’re from Treasury, the FBI, the Pentagon, you name it. Pete said when our government asked Karzai who we should appoint to run the bank, he gave them names, all his buddies. Sherkan Farnood and Khalil Ferozi ended up being the top bank officials. Ferozi never had anything to do with finance.”
“Pete knew all this?”
“Another guy Pete was investigating was Omar Zakhilwal, the finance minister. According to Pete, Zakhilwal collected nearly a hundred million in bribes from the bank. It’s amazing how much Pete knew. The bank officials bribed any number of Afghan government people.”
Page paused, shook his head.
“A couple of times Pete spoke about the amount of money our government is spending over here. That led me to believe he knew something about how we were financing the war. He used the word ‘unbelievable’.”
“What was unbelievable? The amount of money the war was costing?”
“No, we all know the war’s costing a helluva lot of money. Something else.” He shook his head again. “But like I said before, Mr. Klear—”
“Alex.”
“—Pete was pretty depressed for the last couple of months. But exactly what was bothering him, I don’t know. I’m sorry I can’t be more precise.”
“Don’t be sorry, Captain.” I stood up. I sensed that Page knew a lot more than he wanted to tell me. I said, “Pete wasn’t the kind of guy to bother other people with his problems.”
“That’s for sure.”
After we shook hands, I scrawled my telephone number on a card with my name on it. I told Captain Page to give me a shout if he recalled anything about Pete that struck him as unusual.
* * *
“It really is nice to see you again, Alex. Even under these circumstances.” Wanda smiled, and we touched glasses, both of which contained Sprite.
I’d invited Wanda for a late lunch, and we were in a cozy corner of Sufi Restaurant, opposite a wall with a lot of pictures of turbaned elders. Although we had chosen a table, people in the adjacent dining room were seated on cushions on the floor. We’d each had kabob, and now we were dawdling over dessert.
“It’s pleasant here. I’m kind of surprised there are places like this in Kabul.”
“There’s a garden outside, which is great in the nice weather if you don’t mind sharing your food with lots of flies.”
“But what really makes lunch here so nice is it helps me forget seeing the murderer of my husband.” Wanda shuddered. “His body was horrible to look at.”
I decided that this might not be the best moment to comment. I was convinced that the corpse Wanda had seen at the hospital wasn’t that of Pete’s murderer.
“Thanks for the tour. Kabul is different from what I expected.”
I’d taken Wanda on a brief tour of downtown. “Kabul gets a lot of bad publicity, but it’s a big city with all kinds of things going on. Right now, we’re not far from ISAF Headquarters.”
“The big yellow building? The one with all the flags in front?”
I pointed toward the window. “This is Butcher Street. You drive down a little further, you see our Embassy. Further down is the Afghan Parliament. A few years back, a suicide bomber tried to drive a car filled with explosives into the entrance of Parliament. He got close, caused a lot of damage.”
“I remember reading about it. That’s the reason for all the checkpoints, I assume.” When I nodded, she said, “I’m beginning to go bonkers alone in my room.” She shook her head. “I miss Pete.”
Wanda picked up her glass, gazed into it, then took a small sip. Her dark blond hair hung to her shoulders. She was wearing a long-sleeved jacket and white blouse, which wasn’t her sexiest outfit, but in Kabul, the less skin a woman shows the better. Out in the villages, women are expected to wear burqas, and you seldom see them on the s
treet.
“I was really surprised to see you here. I mean, after all these years . . .”
“I thought you’d forgotten about me, and I couldn’t blame you if you had. First, you married Pete, then you needed to pay attention to your career. I thought I’d receded into the black hole of total forgetfulness.”
“Let me tell you something, Alex. You may have come in second to Pete, but it was a close second, a very close second. I liked you. I liked you very much. Anyway, you didn’t propose to me. Pete did. I mean, what’s a girl to do?”
At that moment a waiter arrived to refill our glasses. Wanda was right about the Sufi Restaurant. It was a nice place. With the waiter gone, she smiled at me, sighed. “Who would have thought we’d ever meet again? And under these circumstances.” She paused, gazing over my shoulder toward the window. “I wasn’t sure . . . if it would be the right thing to do.”
“You mean to come over?”
“Yes. But somehow I just felt I had to do it. Do you understand?”
“I think I do, although in your place I wouldn’t make things unnecessarily hard on myself.”
“I wasn’t sure if people would understand. And do you understand why I just had to go out to that hospital today and see that person?” When I nodded, she said, “Anyway, as I was saying, Alex. If you’d only paid me a little more attention way back when instead of lavishing all your attentions on Katherine. It was really too much the way you two, I mean . . .”
“Do I detect a tiny spark of jealousy?”
“Of course you do. Is there anything wrong with that? Katherine used to tell me all kinds of things about you.”
“Like what?”
“I know that . . . well, that you’re a sound sleeper.” When I frowned, Wanda laughed. “You’d be surprised the things women talk about. But she also said you’re . . . well, energetic? That’s not exactly the right word, but you may know what I mean.” She paused, her blue eyes twinkling. “You know, Alex, I’m just a little surprised to hear you’re finally settling down.”
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