by Fritz Galt
As blue fumes rose from the sink, she reached upward with a wet facial tissue and covered the smoke detector. The papers curled quietly like burning leaves in autumn.
Careful not to get splashed, she ran water over what remained and opened the drain. A suck of air expelled the illegible fragments into the atmosphere at thirty thousand feet.
To mask the pungent odor, she picked up a plastic bottle of perfume on the bathroom counter and sprayed the air and her salwar kameez.
Then, she returned to her seat to await the unknown.
As she looked out of her window at the utter blackness below, she realized that she was flying over Kashmir, that Indian state that was split between the edgy Indian and Pakistani militaries and the major reason for the nuclear umbrella that cast a shadow over the entire region.
The area swarmed with militants, freedom fighters and armies.
At that moment the cabin speaker crackled. “This is your captain speaking. In compliance with Afghan aviation regulations, we must dim our cabin lights when entering Afghanistan air space.”
The lights went out.
With a bone-jarring jolt, several skids that threw her against her seatbelt, and a herd of scrawny goats scampering from under the Boeing’s wheels, Natalie arrived at Kabul International Airport.
Like blackened monuments to soldiers who had fallen in war, burnt-out carcasses of airplanes littered the scrub brush just off the landing strip.
As soon as the Ariana Afghan Airlines Boeing 727 landed, arc lights that had momentarily bathed the airfield in an eerie pink glow turned off, plunging the entire airport into unholy darkness.
“Welcome to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the captain said proudly over the loudspeaker. Perhaps he was more proud of his safe landing than of his country.
Their landing lights finally fell upon a darkened terminal building. Natalie saw patches of snow on the ground. How quickly she had left balmy Bombay behind for the cold reality of November in Central Asia.
The aircraft stopped just short of the terminal and a ground crew pushed mobile steps up to the exit.
Slipping across ice patches, she followed the steaming breath of others toward a guardhouse that resembled Checkpoint Charlie welcoming one to the former East Germany.
She had definitely not brought the right clothes for the trip. By the time she entered the building and realized that it was unheated, her hands and feet were numb. Only then did she notice how the other passengers were all wrapped in woolen shawls.
Before she reached the two uniformed immigration officials, she heard a voice call to her from a corner, “Madame Pierce?”
It was a stumpy man wearing a green military uniform. She made a mental note to report back to whoever wrote the briefing papers that not all men wore beards. This man had only a thick moustache. Obviously some remnants of the former military could ignore the decree.
She stepped out of line and shook the man’s soft hand.
“You know my name, and I don’t know yours,” she said.
A smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “You are very beautiful,” he said.
She pulled a long face.
“No, no, no. What I mean to say is, I haven’t seen a woman in years, aside from my wives.”
“Yeah, well, you’re looking at one.”
The man stood back, his eyes drinking in her slender frame.
Natalie wondered if the officers she had met in Karachi had it all wrong. Rather than face beatings by religious police, she might be able to move a few mountains with a slight shift of her hips. She made another mental note: a little femininity might get a woman a long way in Afghanistan.
His eyes finished their inspection and returned to her face.
“Your eyes are blue,” he said.
She rolled them. She was used to being gawked at in India and had hoped to leave all that behind. She studied him again and realized that his look was somehow different than a gawk. He seemed transported by some ideal virtue she possessed.
“Okay, I’ll try to speak more plainly,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Commander Yusaf Akhram, Ministry of Information.”
She leaned forward and whispered to him. “Why do you need military commanders in the Ministry of Information?”
“No, no. I am not a military commander. This is our designation within the government. We are at war.”
“Oh. I see,” Natalie said.
“Come this way, please,” Yusaf said, and led her through an icy wind to a car waiting on the tarmac.
She stepped inside the small vehicle and found that the driver didn’t have the heater on. Nor did the headlights appear to work as they lurched across the pitch-black airfield.
Natalie squeezed in a question between bumps. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but does he know where he’s going?”
Yusaf looked out his window. “He uses the stars to guide him.”
Natalie looked out her window and saw an array of stars the likes of which she had never seen before. The desert night was beautiful.
After a minute, the driver slowed down, flicked on his headlights several times and illuminated a gate in a chain link fence.
A guard released a rope and a counter-weighted arm rose to let them pass.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Not far. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The driver doused the headlights.
Natalie looked for a glow on the southwest horizon where the city ought to be. There was no glow whatsoever in any direction.
Instead, she saw an occasional candle in a window. They swept past dark forms of robed men walking along the side of the road. Donkeys and short horses plodded along with them, rifles strapped across the beasts’ backs.
The driver pulled up to a concrete wall and flashed his headlights. A gate blocked their view inside.
Two guards with modern rifles shined flashlights on the driver’s face. The gate slid open and the car entered what looked like a military compound. The driver turned off the engine and rolled silently up to a stone building that in the starlight reminded Natalie of a hacienda. It seemed silly to remember romantic evenings she had spent with Mick at their house in New Mexico. Not only was it a different country, things had irrevocably changed with Mick.
Yusaf took her bag inside and turned on a wavering light bulb. Dark insects scattered noisily toward the corners.
She rubbed her hands and stomped her feet to keep warm. She was beginning to remember how deadly cold desert nights could be. Perhaps she was only wishing that Mick were there to light a fire, hold her and make things right.
Yusaf set her bag on a dust-covered bed, and said, “I will pick you up tomorrow.”
He was halfway back to his car, when she called out, “What time should I expect you?”
He shrugged and smiled indifferently. Then he left.
Later she would realize that nobody wore watches in Afghanistan. A country that didn’t have electricity couldn’t run clocks. Furthermore, people with television sets and radios, even if they had electricity to operate them, which they didn’t, couldn’t check the correct time on the news because television and radio stations were banned.
The longer she stood in the darkness of the frigid room that was reminding her more and more of a prison, the more meaning she read into his empty smile.
Perhaps like the country, her time had run out.
Chapter 21
Mick watched early morning sunlight filter through brown smoke from burning wood and cow dung. The yellow disk glinted off metal roofs of Asia’s largest slum, one square mile of absolute squalor. Moments later, his commercial jet touched down at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport on the outskirts of Bombay.
Flight delays across India, initiated by fog in Delhi and further aggravated by airline staff and local workers who had fled their jobs in panic from the outbreak of malaria, had caused most international flights to arrive hours behind schedule.<
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In fact, as he fought off an aggressive mob of taxi drivers, it felt to him like his was the only plane to have landed that day. He selected a driver like a sheepdog isolating a sheep from the flock.
The cab skirted an empty parking lot and came to a halt on a choked highway. People had set up tents on the dusty asphalt and were cooking breakfast in the middle of the road.
City buses and trains seemed to have stopped running altogether.
The taxi driver explained that transportation and railway workers had panicked and left their jobs for their native places in the countryside.
Mick looked out his window and saw a still form in a blue sari surrounded by several children. The woman had collapsed in a tent made of black plastic. An older son was pulling off her golden toe rings, nose stud and bracelets. Crying, a toddler plucked at her sari. An older daughter picked him up to soothe him, but she, already, was shivering from chills.
The driver squeezed between stopped cars, sitting people and wandering beasts.
Old men in white caps and gowns trudged through the dust and hobbled with purpose. Young men in starched white shirts and pressed pants swept through crowds, having just been somewhere and having somewhere important to go.
Men and women hugged jugs and baskets before them, no longer balancing them on their heads.
Equally intent, taxi drivers hunched forward under their yellow roofs and pressed against their horns in the snarled roadway.
Errant tufts from braided black hair caught the slanting rays of sunlight as women, both young and old, bent over to walk more briskly, their saris fluttering in their wake.
It was a nation in the grip of crisis.
They drove until the Arabian Sea shimmered in their front window. Then they turned south past several decrepit sailboats jacked up in the sand and used as homes by the families of Koli fishermen. Colorful flags still waved proudly from each ship’s stern. They briefly entered a Muslim neighborhood in Mahim, then Mick saw the shadow of Hinduja Hospital darken the road.
Wrapped human forms lay on a sidewalk in neat rows before the modern hospital.
Mick wondered whether the shipment of corpses was heading for examination or cremation.
Either way, the hospital couldn’t have provided much help.
The cloths that covered the faces and skin of the dead couldn’t keep the army of rats and the cloud of insects away.
Abu Khan’s neck already ached that morning as his luxury sports utility vehicle, a Tata Safari, jolted over a rough shoulder to avoid a slow-moving procession of men. Ahead of him, two bullocks pulled a cart bearing two human bodies strewn with yellow and red flowers.
The road from Bombay to the south of India grew increasingly uncomfortable and congested the further south he rode.
“Slow down and don’t spoil the auto,” Abut told his driver. The Sikh separatist leader at the wheel rolled his eyes and whispered a prayer.
They had overnighted in Goa to offload weapons at Casa do Rio, one of Abu’s family estates. That morning, they had resumed their trip to Kerala, India’s southernmost state. Flanked by two of Abu’s bodyguards in the back seat, Keri Butler was an uncomplaining passenger.
An hour outside of Goa, Abu’s cell phone beeped its Beethoven’s Fifth jingle. He unclipped it from his belt and answered.
“Hello, old friend,” a shy voice said.
Abu jerked upright. “Osama, you called me.”
“Of course. I have your number. I wanted to congratulate you.”
“On what, exactly?”
“I heard about the World Health Organization press conference last night. They say you have spread malaria over more than half of India. That’s very impressive.”
“It’s working. You should see the bodies in the streets. I also want to congratulate you,” Abu said, buoyed with euphoria at the personal call from the Emir himself. “I have read about several countries succumbing in the south Indian Sea.”
“We have very good friends in those places. They have done an effective job.”
“Thanks to your support, no doubt.”
“And a little planning,” bin Laden said with uncharacteristic boastfulness. “But I admire your planning as well, and I wanted to offer you this: if you are successful in India, I will invite you to join al-Qaeda’s supreme council.”
Abu’s breath stalled midway up his throat. His reaction could influence his future with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. For several seconds, he neither inhaled nor exhaled.
He looked around the interior of the vehicle. His driver was his personal commander in the Sikh separatist movement. His bodyguard was a Bangladeshi commando based in Assam, tucked away in India’s northeast corner. His captive in the back seat was the daughter of a U.S. Congressman. Yes, he also thought big.
Now the question was, did he think bigger than Osama bin Laden? He had expressed to bin Laden his vision of conquering all of Southeast Asia and parts of China, and he wasn’t sure he was destined to be the world-renowned terrorist’s underling, or even his equal.
Perhaps bin Laden’s uncharacteristic cockiness was an attempt to thwart Abu’s ambitions.
Abu lowered his chin as if to increase the gravity in his voice, “Inshallah, if God wills it, we could come to some sort of arrangement.”
It was bin Laden’s turn to hesitate. At last he said, “I will inform my council members.”
When Abu clicked off his phone, he could hardly contain a grin.
“Allahu Akbar,” he shouted. God is great. He raised a fist over his head, just as his car skidded to a halt for another funeral procession.
The day after Alec returned to Mauritius, the American Embassy reopened for business. He passed a circle of Marines guarding the entrance in full battle gear with bayonets drawn, and noticed that the embassy’s windows were boarded up.
His group of Bank of America employees had landed safely in Mauritius, only to catch the next plane out. The families had looked gratefully upon the American ambassador to Mauritius, who was being recalled to Washington for consultations. The ambassador and a host of evacuating embassy dependents stepped off the commercial flight to South Africa in order to make room for the bedraggled group.
Alec opened the cipher lock to his office door and entered his small haven. To his surprise, he found a man standing inside.
“Who are you?” he asked the man, whose business suit was wrinkled and whose thin blond hair was matted with sweat.
The man held up the badge hanging around his neck for Alec to read. It was coded red for visitors who had top security clearance. “Cal Mumphries, CIA.”
“Welcome to Mauritius.”
“Yeah, welcome to you,” Cal said. “It appears that your country fell apart while you were on vacation.”
“I couldn’t help that.”
“They sent me here to figure out what’s going on.”
“Well, I’m here. I’ll write the report.”
“I could be watching the Redskins cream the Dolphins right now.”
“Sorry. You can watch the cock fights instead. Now state your business or get out.”
“All right, you caught me in a bad mood. I hate flying machines, and I especially hate landing at airports that haven’t been FAA approved. If we don’t have direct flights to a place, the FAA doesn’t check ’em out. And we certainly don’t have direct flights to this dinky island in the middle of nowhere.”
“Sorry you had to make the trip. Have a seat. When did you arrive?”
“This morning. For me it’s still,” he looked at his watch, “Eleven p.m.”
“So what is Washington saying about me?” Alec asked.
The two men sat in the only two chairs available in the cramped room with boarded up windows.
“They say you haven’t been on the case,” Cal said.
“I was on it before it happened.”
“Well, Washington thinks you’re not on it if you don’t report on it. They figure you’ve been lazing around. The presi
dent has absolutely no intelligence whatsoever to go on about what’s happening here.”
“Things are evolving. I can send in specifics about the key players behind the coup. I just don’t know their motives yet.”
“Let’s hear who’s behind it.”
“An Islamist group seems to be coordinating the attacks in the region,” Alec began. “I just came from Comoros where a similar thing was happening, backed by the same players. I’m not sure who’s ultimately behind this, but I do know how they operate. They use foreign mercenaries rather than indigenous revolutionaries. The attacks were coordinated, presumably for surprise. They’re well equipped and serious.”
“Yeah, but what are they up to?”
“I’m not sure whether they’re after fame, fortune, or Islamic Law, but I’m working on that. Give me a few days.”
“Okay, I’ll give you one day.”
“And then what?”
“You’ll be reassigned off the island. I’m sorry. Washington wants you back yesterday.” Cal gathered his briefcase and leaned on the door handle. “Glad you’re back. Now I can catch up on my sleep.”
Chapter 22
In the morning, Natalie spent several hours outside her quarters in the sunlight trying to warm up and waiting for Yusaf to arrive.
As it was already long past sunrise, she assumed she wouldn’t face any gallows that day.
To pass time, she dragged a toe through the fine gray sand. She had debated wearing the black Muslim dress and veil that she had purchased in Karachi, but decided against it. Her Indian outfit covered her head, arms and legs. Certainly that was conservative enough.
She hadn’t slept much the night before because of the bone-chilling cold. She had tried the hot tap in the sink and shower, but the briefing papers were correct on that point. There was no hot water in Afghanistan.
At first she had been surprised to find a bathroom and shower in her room at all, until the flame from her candle fell on the words: “USAID” stenciled on the bathroom door. The complex must have been built by American money a quarter of a century before when democracy was first taking hold.