The girls fell silent. He knew they probably looked at each other, that they wondered whether they should even acknowledge this reference to his missing daughter. It had been like that before.
“That is sad, she never brought you,” Hamidah said softly.
“We could find them. It would be like a treasure hunt, the three of us investigating where your friends live now!”
Zahra’s youth broke through her concern. A coltish girl, certainly. He could practically hear her leap and curvet.
“I don’t know,” he paused. “It would be trouble for you and we have Hamidah’s marriage to be concerned about.”
“Really, it would be no trouble, would it Hamidah? While you help him walk, I can ask questions of the people we meet. I can tell them that Mohammed Siddiqui is looking for an old friend named Mirri. What is her last name, Uncle?”
That was the question he feared. He knew the girl’s family, but was uncertain if the Mirri she saw now went by the name her General father had given her. “Her parents were killed and she may be married now. It was Shahabuddin. She had two brothers; one’s name was Mizra.” Of that, at least, he was sure. His daughter had had an insistent suitor.
“At least you have a name—two names. You keep going, Hamidah. Let me see what I can do.”
He heard the clatter of her new shoes over the rubble and the distant laughter of children. Let his daughter’s friends know he wanted to find them.
They would come for him, he was sure, because the more he thought about it, the more he was certain that whatever had happened to Khadija, it had begun here in Kaabul.
Chapter 42
Michael glanced over his shoulder down the sandstone gorge and felt like he was being swallowed down a long red throat. The river rushed beside him. The twists of the high walls allowed only a narrow view of Skazar anymore—hopefully that meant his passage had not been marked. The westering sunlight placed a glow over the town and winked in the windows of the Mujehaddin leader’s house.
The narrow road turned a corner and cliffs blocked the view. There was only himself and his faithful gelding and the betraying woman trailing behind on the fat roan Seyyed had traded for the rifle.
It had been a bad deal on Michael’s part, really. The horse would probably have traded for the Enfield, but Michael had no time for spirited barter. He just needed to be away before he changed his mind and left Khadija.
Or killed her.
Too many lives depended on those names remaining secret.
He squeezed his horse and the gelding jogged on. The truth was, he couldn’t have killed her. Every time he looked at her, something inside him softened and he could not hold to his anger at what she had done. He cared for her.
“Michael, how long is this journey?”
He didn’t turn back to her although her question surprised him. She’d been silent, cowed, as they left Skazar, her chador masking her huddled form on the horse.
At least they didn’t ride together. It stopped the worst temptation. Now there was only the sight of her and the jagged ache of his heart. Dammit, he had set feelings like these away years before. They were trouble: a weakness in the landscape of his life.
More feeling than he’d had for many years.
“The pass takes about a day by Jeep. By horse, who knows? Four days if we’re lucky. Then there’s the Panjshir Valley.”
She pushed the roan so the horse’s head was even with Michael’s hip and then rode with him, silence falling again except for the wind in the rocks and the rushing river. Overhead, a brown falcon hung on an updraft above the gorge.
“How can I make you understand?” Her voice was soft, pleading.
“I understand perfectly. You’re Hashemi’s messenger.” He left “whore” unsaid.
Silence, then: “I was never anyone’s whore.”
She didn’t sound like she believed it any more than he did.
He urged the gelding into a trot to stop his string of accusations. What was it you were when you gave yourself to me? What was that show after the river? What was the way you fucked me each night?
Yes, fucked. It was no more than that. His chest pained him and he pressed his arm against the wound. The roan kept up as the road lifted out of the gorge and began to track across a mountain slope almost barren except for the occasional dry patch of close-cropped grass. Sheep still grazed there.
“There was only you, Michael. You know that. I gave myself to you because….”
“You love me. I heard. But lovers don’t plot to turn each other over to enemies. Lovers don’t carry messages that may get their paramour killed. Lovers don’t become lovers because they’re trying to pry secrets out of each other.”
“Why won’t you listen? You choose to be mad! You want a reason to push me away.”
Her furious voice almost made him look at her, but to look at her would cut through him. Hold to the knowledge of her shadows, her clouds.
“You’ve already given me more than enough reason.”
He pushed the gelding into a trot again and heard the roan clatter behind. Wind rushed in his face, almost too cold. The sky hung clear and blue, but chained by the backs of the mountains that surrounded him. The sun was already falling away from noon and he had to push them. He had been on the road too long. His time had to be running out.
Soon.
They followed the Anjoman River as the road wound upwards. Here the water flowed north, the Anjoman Pass demarking the watershed of central Asia from that of the Indian subcontinent.
It felt like he was running from all the things that had happened on this side of the Hindu Kush. He wanted to get over the pass—not just for his mission, but also so he could return to his life, forget the things that had happened here. The trouble was, he was following a fault line to do it. The earth was unstable under his feet.
By the time evening came, he had pushed them hard. The horses were sweating in the thinning air. The wind howled around them and the sky was full of heavy, tufted clouds that clung to the mountain peaks ahead. Ignoring his own fatigue and the ache in his side, he kept them riding long past the time it was safe for the horses to scramble the slopes. He finally called a halt when the gelding stumbled and almost went to its knees.
He stopped them in a spot where the river ran next to the road and a stunted group of barren mountain ash grew close to the foot of the cliff. The remains of past fires in the shelter beside the cliff spoke of this being a favored camping spot for those who had come before. The gelding he set loose to graze. The roan he tethered on a long rope amid the trees, not knowing whether to trust the animal.
When he had finished, he found Khadija had gathered tinder and fallen branches and had begun to build a fire.
He squatted beside her and took over the task. She sat back on her heels, her face exposed by the chador she had pushed back over her head.
“I can make a fire.”
“If you want to do something, get water.”
Silently she obeyed, returning to wait with the dripping pot as he finished with the flame. While the water boiled they mouthed dry lentils in strained silence.
Their fire was a single eye in the darkness and Michael pulled his petu around him and leaned back against the cliff face, hoping for a break from the wind. His side gnawed at him and it was difficult to get comfortable. A shiver ran through him and he knew his fever had come back. If he could just get a decent night’s sleep he would be better. He opened his eyes and saw Khadija still seated by the fire.
“You should sleep. It’ll be a long ride tomorrow.”
She nodded and pulled the folded-back chador around her shoulders.
“Michael, I’ve been thinking—about what you told me about China. That something is about to happen. I think…I think I might know something.”
He met her gaze, and saw frown lines between her lovely dark eyes.
Michael looked away.
“Do you think I want this world in ruins? I see ruins all about
me in Kaabul and all over my country. No one would want that for the world!”
“You did. It’s a kofr world.”
“Bloody hell, Michael, would you listen!”
She scrambled to her feet, her face ablaze with the anger of the British epithet. It surprised him she would use it.
“You’re as closed minded as I was—your secular West is as bad as the fundamentalists! They’re both extremes. The West condemns Islam because they don’t understand—and don’t want to. You condemn me even though I want to help you. People can change, Michael. People can realize they’re wrong and change. Can you? Can your West?”
She went to her knees in front of him.
“Listen to me. You said you didn’t know when this thing will happen. I think I do. I told you, I brought a message north for Hashemi. It was nothing—a string of numbers. I thought it was a code, but now I’m not sure. It could be a date.”
He looked at her, really looked at her and saw the hope, the fear, in her gaze. She was trying—would try anything to get his trust.
“Tell me.” His voice was harsh.
“The numbers were 1-4-2-3-2-7.” She looked at him and waited. “The first four numbers could be the year—in the Islamic calendar.”
Michael sat up. The numbers could be a date. The Islamic calendar. It began in 622 and was eleven days shorter than the western Julian calendar.
“And the last two numbers could be month and day, last—in metric style,” he finished.
She looked up at the sky where the clouds covered the last sliver of a moon. The Islamic month began at the sighting of each new moon.
“The new moon will be in a few days. The month of Rajab.”
“The second day of Rajab.”
She turned back to him. “I converted it to the western calendar. It is September 9. On September 9, 2001….”
Michael scrambled to his feet, forcing Khadija aside. “On September 9 the Lion of Panjshir—General Massoud—was killed by Taliban agents disguised as foreign media. It was the signal for the attack on the World Trade Towers.”
“Couldn’t the attack in China be the same—a signal? A sign?”
A precursor quake, like there was often a tremor before a larger quake. A nuclear accident before a war between China and America. It would be far worse than the felling of the towers. So many more would die.
She had to be wrong. Dear God, let her be wrong. But it made too much sense. He couldn’t take the chance. He went to the fire, kicked it over. Stamped on the embers to put them out and then turned back to her as the blackness closed in.
She already had the roan saddled.
They had no time for sleep on this journey. September 9 was only days away.
Chapter 43
The night closed in around them, the wind blowing harsh off the cliffs. The road sloped up and up, crossing the Anjoman River on a stone bridge with the rushing water grinding rocks under them so that it sounded like the mountains gnashed their teeth.
The wind cut through Khadija’s petu and jalabiyya, raising gooseflesh, but it was nothing compared to what she deserved. He should have killed her back in Skazar—but then he wouldn’t have the information he needed. She clung to that, and watched him ahead, bent low in the saddle as if the burden he bore weighed him down.
They pressed on through the night with only a few breaks to rest the horses and chew more dry lentils themselves.
Finally the sky lightened, filled with clouds, and dawn found them as the road leveled out and the land opened around them, bringing them out to a small town beside an ice-rimed lake.
Michael reined in, studying the town, then looked at her.
“Anjoman. Named after the lake.”
Beyond the lake the backs of the mighty Hindu Kush rose topped with snow and swathed with cloud. The town, like Skazar and most Afghan towns, was only a ragged cluster of mud-brick houses set amid a scattering of stunted jujube trees and mountain ash—all bare now, at this height. Smoke threaded up from the houses to be torn away by the wind.
Khadija rode her horse beside his and leaned, exhausted, on the saddle. He looked pale and determined this morning, but unnatural color placed high points on his cheeks.
“We can rest the horses here. I think the gelding’s started limping. He had a split hoof I want to check.”
Was that a shiver that ran through him? She studied him more closely, but couldn’t decide and hesitated to ask.
“A hot meal would be good, as well,” she said, casually. At least that would let him rest.
“There’s no time. Just check the horses. Maybe see if we can get a blanket, then keep going.”
A single trickle of perspiration ran down his temple. He brushed it aside.
“You’re sweating.”
Michael shrugged and urged his horse forward. In the muddle of buildings, he dismounted in front of a chai channa.
When he bent to check the gelding’s hooves, he staggered, and Khadija swung off her horse. She came up to him, but he ignored her and bent to the horse’s hooves again. His breathing sounded harsh in the cold air.
She stepped closer, watching him check the horse’s heel with his fingers. The animal winced slightly when he pressed his thumbs.
Michael’s color—he was not a well man.
He released the hoof and straightened to look at the mountains.
“The terrain is only going to get rougher from here. Like Wakhan, it’s rock and more rock, with only narrow roads next to cliffs.” He glanced at her, eyes fever bright. “I need to trade horses.”
“I need to check your dressings.”
“There’s no time.”
“Michael, you need to rest. I’m talking as a doctor. You can’t keep going like this.”
“Watch me.”
He left her for the chai channa. She followed, almost stumbling in the sudden warmth. The interior was painted white, with bright murals of peacocks and flowers and blooming trees that gleamed in the light through the single window.
The warm moisture of the tea maker filled the air. Michael spoke in swift Pashto to the proprietor, asking about someone who might trade a horse. Asking about blankets.
The little Tajik came around the counter clad in his vest, a salwar kameez shirt, and a pair of cast-off Western trousers. He sent one of his sons running out into the town. The man tried to usher Michael to a seat on one of the carpets around the edge of the room, but Michael refused.
A noise drew Khadija back outside.
The wind carried the whine of a diesel engine laboring up the last climb to Anjoman. It might be one of the brightly painted cargo trucks, but there was also the chance of it being a Jeep—like Hashemi’s.
She ran inside to where Michael leaned on the counter.
“Michael. I heard engines coming from Skazar.”
He swayed and she grabbed his arm. Heat. Blazing heat. She turned his face to the window and placed her palm on his forehead.
“You’re burning up.”
“Surprise.” He tried a lopsided grin.
“We’ve got to do something or you’ll die.”
“And the alternative is I live while the rest of the world goes to hell? It’s not much of a life, anyway.”
He pulled away from her and staggered to the door, leaving her with the knowledge she was responsible for his desperate words and for keeping him alive as well.
Chapter 44
Khadija bent low over the roan’s neck as the animal galloped across the last of the fallow fields before the road ducked into the next curve of the pass. This horse was difficult to manage; it wanted to turn back to Skazar and home.
Michael was mad—fever brained. He had to be, to do this.
He hoped to make it into the pass unseen. It would give them a few more moments head start before Hashemi learned they’d been here and gone on. But there was only one path over the pass and once Anjoman yielded the fact they’d passed through, Hashemi had only to follow the road to find them.
&
nbsp; And this time Hashemi would know she’d betrayed him. If he caught them, they’d both pay the price. And so would Papa.
The roan galloped with the choppy strides of the unwilling. She kicked its sides again and peered over her shoulder. The glint of metal came from the far edge of the valley. Just a few more strides and they’d be in the shadows, they’d have the last copse of trees by the road to shield their escape.
Yes! The trees white branches whipped her face, tore at her chador and the roan’s sides as they ducked into the shadows. Ahead, Michael reined in.
“Damn it. The gelding’s getting worse.”
His fevered eyes studied the road and then the switchback that led up to the pass. The air steamed with his breath. She smelled his heat.
“How much farther is it?”
“A good day’s ride. We made good time last night.”
He looked at her—really looked at her. Was that a softening in his gaze? Had he—perhaps—found it in his heart to forgive?
“Khadija.” Her name was rough on his lips. “Thank you for the code—the date. At least now I know what I’m up against.”
He looked away from her and she felt the wind find its way under the edge of the petu and down the neck of the jalabiyya. He still held back—saw her as no more than a tool—just as Hashemi did. She deserved it.
“What we’re up against, Michael. Islam’s not a violent faith by its nature. We don’t believe in doing evil.”
“Well, someone does.”
He barely glanced at her before turning his horse and threading through the trees towards the shadows where the road ran into a narrow canyon beside the river.
He looked loose in the saddle, as if he was almost as if he was ready to fall. She didn’t like the way his skin shone ruddy in the muddied day light. She looked up at the sky. The cloud had thickened.
“The weather’s changing,” she said, urging her horse up beside Michael as his gelding broke into an uneven trot.
He glanced at the sky and shrugged.
“What choice have we got?” He rode in silence a moment, then: “It doesn’t snow until October, usually. They’re still picking grapes in the Panjshir.”
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