by Judith Price
He hesitated; his eyes darted left up then left down. He was searching. Jill knew it. He was about to tell her a lie. “David’s spoken of him,” he said matter-of-factly.
“David spoke to you about his father. Why in the hell would he do that? What did he say about him? Was this recent?” The questions came fast.
His eyes darted again. “I don’t recall. Something about contacting his father. He never said why.”
“That’s it?” Jill sat back and considered this unexpected reaction as Zayed nodded. Why would Zayed lie? And who gives a shit about Stan Brown? Was Zayed just being polite about it all? There were just too many questions now, and Jill needed some time to herself, some time in the tunnels.
It wasn’t long before their flight was called. As they had bought last-minute tickets, Zayed and Jill would not be sitting together for this. She was grateful for this as she pulled out her notebook. The Captain announced over the scratchy PA that the flight would be 34 minutes. Not enough time … not enough time.
Chapter Eleven
08:20 Zulu Time—TEHRAN, IRAN
Tehran’s airport terminal was very different from Abu Dhabi’s. It was a massive building, similar to any major U.S. city. Inside, the terminal was sparkling clean with high ceilings and walls brushed with a deep rust color that complimented the beige marble floor tiles.
Jill and Zayed didn’t speak as they made their way to the next gate. Once there, Jill sat on a hard orange vinyl chair, opened her laptop and looked at the map. The clock at the gate said 13:12. She knew Afghanistan had mountainous terrain, but the satellite images did not do it justice. Jill would have to be connected to the Internet to see the terrain from different angles and she kicked herself now for not doing this earlier when she had the chance.
“There appears to be only one road to get to Kushka,” she told Zayed, showing him the map.
As he studied it, she noticed how long his eyelashes were as they blinked against his olive skin. The veins in his strong forearms bulged as he held her computer. After several minutes he turned the computer back to her without a word. Jill looked up and down the map and ran her finger along the route to Kushka. Along the way she noticed one of the cities Karine told her had been attacked by the Taliban. It appeared to be about fifty miles from the route they were taking. A hint of relief hit Jill knowing she would not be close to those areas.
Jill lifted her gaze from the computer to the large windows showcasing the aircraft, and her mind began to drift to thoughts of David. Jill pictured him in Kushka at a local hotel, working madly on his story. She remembered watching him many times at the eleventh hour, in his office, intensely punching the computer keys. David was always too enthralled in his writing to notice her standing there. She never disturbed him. She was hoping that was what he was doing, and she could picture there not being a phone in northern Afghanistan. Well, she prayed for that ideal scenario anyway.
“Zayed, you said you’ve been to Afghanistan. What are the hotels like there?”
“Jill, why do you think of such things right now?”
“Never mind.”
Darkness began to cover her thoughts when Stan Brown invaded them. Why was he trying to reach her? She did not know. She felt a twinge of anger and regret when she thought of David’s parents. They seemed normal enough when she first met them. But the too-perfect impression was truly a façade. When David was younger, he later told Jill, he would often find himself hiding in his room to avoid being whipped by his father’s belt. His father never hit David’s sister Margarita, though; she was always the loved one. Jill teared up at the memory of their conversation. David was a proud individual, and it took him a while to let Jill into this part of his past.
“He used to lock me in my room like a dog and wouldn’t feed me for the rest of the day. Sometimes he would turn off the power in my room and on hot summer Texas nights it was almost unbearable,” David had recalled. “That was his way of punishing me for not getting my homework done on time or not putting out the garbage. He would taunt me, especially if I had friends around, and especially when he was drinking.”
Jill often wondered if some of David’s quirks, like being an obsessive neat freak, were caused by such an unyielding upbringing. When they spoke about his family, it reminded her of how her father had abandoned her mother when she was pregnant, and how much Jill felt blessed that she had cool grandparents. With Jill, the craving for self-discovery and closure would briefly flare up, but just as fast as the notion came, it left.
From the outside no one would have guessed at the underlying dysfunction. David’s father was a successful businessman in Texas. Margarita was two years older than David and as the family favorite she got the first car and pretty much the first anything. “She had all the new clothes and annoying rich friends, compliments of Mother,” David had told Jill. “Mother is a doormat for my father and she has never stood up for me. I always found a way to separate myself from her. She was emotionally vacant and sometimes extreme in the way she thought. I could never do anything right in her eyes and she let me know it with her scathing, hurtful remarks. Margarita is the same—a younger version of my mother.”
When Jill met his sister she had no choice but to agree. Jill profiled her, and came to the conclusion that she had borderline personality disorder. Recently, they had been notified by other family members that she was being treated for a psychopathic disorder. Probably a good thing, since she had more plastic surgery than Joan Rivers and been married more times than Elizabeth Taylor. Jill couldn’t help but think of them right now. She wondered sometimes why she hadn’t known more details about them before she married David. She wanted a family that was as great as they first appeared; now she couldn’t help but feel ripped off somehow. She would call Stan. She would put her disgust aside because she needed to stay focused. She needed to find David.
Jill came out of her daydream at the barking words of a loud gate agent. While Jill was standing in front of the gate, in the absence of a PA system, the man yelled in vague English something that sounded like, “Boarding now!” Zayed and Jill boarded together.
This time the flight was just under one hour and they sat together. The plane was much smaller than the Airbus 330. Reaching in the seat pocket in front of her, Jill filed through the glossy cards, past the little white barf bag, and pulled out the airplane description card. It was a ritual of hers; she always looked at the card describing the exits and then confirmed how many rows she was from the exit.
This Boeing 727 was an older and more inferior plane than the ones she had flown on recently. She began to feel a little nervous. The name alone, Afghan Air, made her wonder how safe they were. She assumed that airlines in Afghanistan were more worried about the Taliban than about ensuring the maintenance was done properly. With this thought, she looked over at Zayed, then her body lurched back as the sound of the roaring engines drowned everything out.
They both gripped the armrests as the plane vibrated. The plane angled up and Jill felt a tickle from the hair on his arm touching hers. He didn’t move, nor did she. Jill laid her head back and, just as she began to close her eyes, the engine’s hum lulling her to sleep, Zayed spoke up.
“How long have you known David?” he asked. This was the first time on the trip that his voice held a hint of kindness. She’d come to accept the intensity and gruffness of his personality. “You seem very devoted to him, to go to an unsafe place like Afghanistan.”
Jill sensed an air of sadness. “I’d do anything for David. Besides, I’m a US Marshal and I think I can handle a little heat in Afghanistan. If the trip was too dangerous my colleagues would have insisted I not go.”
Without reserve, Zayed rested his warm callused hand on her forearm. His dark probing eyes peered into hers. “Maybe your friends knew that already and didn’t bother to try.” Their eyes locked for too long of a second and then they both looked away.
As the plane positioned for descent, the captain came on and said something
in Arabic. Zayed looked at Jill with concern and warned, “Tighten your seat belt.”
Jill was about to ask why when the plane banked hard to the left and the nose angled downward. They descended fast, turning sharp lefts. It felt like they were on a corkscrew. One man actually shrieked. The plane suddenly leveled and you could cut the relief in the air with a knife when the tires bounced the plane onto tarmac. Jill’s eyes bugged out when Zayed said, “Surface-to-air missiles. They have to be careful to avoid another incident.”
When the plane came to a full stop, she looked at Zayed and said softly, “Do you think we’ll find him, Zayed?”
He offered no response.
Chapter Twelve
11:17 Zulu Time—KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
Dusk settled upon them as they disembarked the airplane. They clunked down an old set of metal stairs onto the tarmac and followed the line of shaken travelers across the patched pavement. It was significantly cooler in Kabul, Jill noted.
The terminal was worse than she had imagined. The green-gray paint-chipped walls betrayed its age. The letter L was missing from the sign saying ‘KABUL’ implied no budget for maintenance. Inside, Jill’s nostrils wanted to shut down when they inhaled a smell unlike any other she had experienced. It seemed to be a combination of concentrated house cleaner, sweat, and wet sand. Her instant reaction was to clamp her nose shut with her hand but she resisted.
There were only a few people standing at arrivals, and the clock behind them read 16:04. This struck Jill as odd for an airport. Normally airports were full of people waiting for their visitor to arrive. Must be a security issue, she thought. Yet there was no shortage of guards with automatic weapons dressed in gray jumpsuits with AK-47s resting over their shoulders. They didn’t look in their direction while talking and smoking and seemed oblivious to their arrival. The customs agent was dressed the same as security and only grunted as they passed through the security machine. Exiting the building, a sea of colorfully dressed people had gathered: the arrival crowd. Jill always enjoyed waiting at the arrivals gate. It gave her a sense of joy to see the elation of others as they welcomed loved ones home from their destinations. She often thought what good therapy it would be for anyone depressed to spend some time at the arrivals gate.
Zayed did his scan again. Jill did hers. At eleven o’clock on the scan, a woman approached Jill carrying a small child. She held out her hand and begged. She was dressed in a bright blue abaya; the headdress was much different than what Jill had worn. There was a mesh mask over the eye area; it was even more restrictive than the burqa she had been wearing from Doha. Zayed said something slightly forceful in what Jill thought might be the local language, Pashto and the woman shyly ambled away.
Most of the people in the crowd were men. They were dressed similar to the taxi drivers in Abu Dhabi, yet not as clean looking in their faded clothing. They wore turbans wrapped loosely in balls on their heads.
Jill and Zayed pushed their way through the crowd and approached several taxis that were lined up with drivers smiling, waiting for a paying customer. The black-and-white cars were run-down and riddled with dents and chipped paint. Zayed chose one and Jill wondered how the trip to Kushka would be in that car. Would it even be able to make the trip? Zayed leaned his head in the window and spoke to the driver. Another whiff smacked her in the nose. Jill could not distinguish the smell. It was part sewage, part body odor, and maybe burnt jet fuel. After some discussion between Zayed and the driver, they got into the decrepit car. The driver honked his way through the wave of people.
During the ride, Jill saw yet another large portrait of someone famous. Next to the grandiose head-shot was a military fighter jet painted in camouflage green. As they drove under the wing towards the security gate, Jill noticed the number eighty-two painted on it.
At the security checkpoint the guard in military fatigues flicked his automatic rifle, signaling them through. There really was no point in checking the taxi or for security leaving an airport, Jill thought, and she curiously looked back to the inbound guardhouse. They were stopping vehicles going into the airport. A guard held a long stick with a mirror on it to scan underneath vehicles. Jill felt thankful she lived in the US as they left the airport grounds.
Kabul was as she imagined. Even at night she could see the devastation of war and poverty. The sides of the roads were lined with homeless, hopeless-looking people huddling together to stay warm. The sounds of honking horns added to the cacophony. Cars hit one another like taps on the shoulder and then continued driving. Chaos surrounded them this night and Jill looked over at Zayed, convinced they could not make the trip in the rat-trap taxi.
Kabul, as Jill had read, was over 3,500 years old, and prior to the civil wars in the ‘90s it was deemed a fairly cosmopolitan city. Now it just looked worn out. The gloomy grey buildings showed the strain from the plague of unrest. Kabul linked other major centers in Afghanistan via a ring road connecting Kandahar and Heart. This road would be the first part of their trip to Kushka.
Before Jill spoke her concerns, Zayed whispered, “We are going to go to a hotel, find a driver, and then leave in the morning. We have a better chance of getting through the checkpoints then.”
Jill was relieved that they did not have to embark on the long journey tonight, but the relief lasted only a moment when she began to wonder about the condition of the hotel. It must be better than the boat ride they took—anything would be better than that.
The taxi driver made a hard U-turn and stopped at a big gate. Two guards came out while a third watched knowingly. One guard had the leash of a scrawny German shepherd and held the dog tightly as it sniffed around their taxi. The guard with the mirrored stick gave no expression. Only the beret tilted on his head ever so slightly on his head showed a hint of personality.
The driver got out of the taxi, walked around to the back, and opened the trunk for inspection. They passed inspection, and continued up a long driveway to the hotel. Jill was taken aback when a sharply dressed porter came out and opened the door. He had a white ear-piece that curled down the back of his neck and Jill was comforted by her first impression—until she saw the doorway was equipped with a metal detector. She resigned herself to the fact that they were in a former war zone and walked through.
Stepping into the hotel was like stepping into a different country. The lavishly decorated lounge area had a distinct Moroccan flavor, with clean marble floors contrasting the spittoons placed every twenty feet along the walls. The walls themselves were painted a deep Indian red. Behind the lobby desk stood two men, and Zayed approached, speaking to them in Pashto, confirming to Jill that indeed Zayed must have been here before to have spoke this language. She had no way of know how well he spoke it, but they seemed to understand him. The taller of the well-dressed clerks pointed to a man sitting behind a desk in the corner. While they conversed, Jill looked around and was surprised to see a bank machine in the lobby. Does it even work? she wondered. She had no need to use it as one of the things her training had taught her was to always bring as much cash as possible; she was more curious to understand how a hotel like this could survive in the middle of war-torn Kabul.
Tired, she walked over and relaxed onto one of the colorful couches, and waited for Zayed. Within minutes he was back and he handed Jill her room key.
“I managed to get a car and a driver for us for tomorrow. They have room service, so go ahead and order some food and get some rest. I have to go out and arrange for the trip to Kushka. My room is next to yours. I will get a wake-up call for six a.m. Is that good for you?”
“Where are you going and what is it you need to arrange now?” Jill queried pointedly.
“I am meeting with the driver tonight to make sure we can trust him. It’s not a big deal, so please just go and get some rest. We have a long trip tomorrow.”
“Whatever,” she responded in a rebellious tone. She was tired of his overbearing behavior. Jill turned fast, marched towards the elevator and sharply punche
d the button. She refused to look back at Zayed.
She arrived at her room, and upon opening the door, was instantly elated. The king-sized bed was covered in a bright red Moroccan-styled bedspread. A flat-screen television sat at the end of the bed, and across the room she could see patio doors with a balcony. Jill put her carry-on down, walked to the window, and looked out. The view was one of scattered lights in disarray, from buildings along the horizon.
She turned around and spied the door to the bathroom. She was happy that it was spotless. Hand towels were rolled up beside both sinks while a bright orange orchid bloomed in a small vase. Before she could think of having a shower, she picked up the phone to call Stan Brown. Voice-mail. She didn’t leave a message. After all, what would she say? I know you are a disgusting pig but what do you want?
Jill undressed, turned on the shower, and stepped into the large tiled tub. She let the hot water massage her until she almost tipped over from exhaustion. She pulled down the thick white robe that hung neatly on a hanger behind the door, wrapped herself snugly in it, and headed back into the main room. Pulling the crisp bedspread down, she sat and contemplated what to do—the beauty of the room and a hunger pang made the decision easy. She hadn’t eaten much in the last twenty-four hours. Fast snacks on the plane were all she could bear. But now she suddenly felt famished. She knew that she needed to eat to keep her strength. After all, she really didn’t know what she was getting herself into, or what she would encounter tomorrow. She needed her strength right now. But even with thoughts of reason calming her mind, her heart somehow began to ache even more. After ordering room service, she plugged in her laptop and connected to the Internet. The speed was good when she checked her mail.
Nothing from David. She sighed and clicked on the e-mail from Karine. It was a short e-mail: