“Help us!”
She waved her arms. They weren’t stopping. They weren’t listening. Oh Allah, please. She had sinned so many times but this time it was for the good of her country, for the good of the world, and for the good of the man she loved. Michael did not deserve to die in her service. He deserved a chance at life.
“Help, please!” She went to her knees. “An American is injured. He’s being held prisoner!”
She didn’t know if her words were heard or if it was something else. All she knew was that the convoy slowed and two soldiers leapt out of a truck, guns ready.
“Get out of the road,” the first soldier said in badly accented Pashto.
“You don’t understand.” Her Oxford English gave him pause. She explained Michael’s need, saw his incredulous look, the way he looked at his partner. He shook his head.
She had to do something.
“You have to believe me. My father is Mohammed Siddiqui, the doctor. The man who is held is Michael Bellis, an American agent. The man who holds him is Abdullah Hashemi—the Arab terrorist. It was he who led the destruction of Bamiyan. He leads Taliban forces now. He plans this war against all that is not Islam.”
Make them believe. Just make them believe, when she saw by their eyes they did not. Michael could be dead by now.
There was only one thing she had left—her truth. The same truth that had made her pull an old man from the front of these very same trucks. She held out her hands, the fear in her throat bringing tears to her eyes, even as her anger faded.
“Please. Michael Bellis is a good man. I give myself to your custody for his life. I know these things because I worked for Hashemi. I helped him in his plans. I help him no longer.”
Suddenly she was a prisoner, and as suddenly she knew her life had changed. Her fear and anger were gone.
Chapter 56
Michael rolled to the side, the kettle slamming into his shoulder. Numbness and pain he could not afford to feel. He pushed it away, readied his stance.
Hashemi raised a weapon and Michael was on him. Finish this man and his kind, and there was a chance for Afghanistan.
Kill him. Just kill him. He slashed at Hashemi’s belly, but the man ducked back, trying to gain enough distance to use the gun. Don’t let him. Stay on the attack. Where was the woman?
His body was slow. Too slow. Stay on Hashemi. Take off the head of the snake. He followed Hashemi back, back, slashing with the scalpel. He sliced through the kitchen curtain, when Hashemi tried to entangle him. He followed through the rear door to the garden. The light glowed on the red-husked pomegranates and the newly dug grave.
He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to kill in Mohammed’s garden. Hashemi slammed the gun barrel at him. It caught Michael in the stomach and he doubled over. Somewhere nearby a gun discharged.
Michael stumbled, righted himself. Don’t let Hashemi get the distance or he was dead. Pain. Pain through his body. The world narrowed to a tunnel with Hashemi at the end.
The Arab’s face was twisted in hate. Michael slashed again and caught Hashemi’s white robes. Crimson flowed like one half of an X-marks-the-spot. He lunged and the whole world shuddered.
Gun fire behind him. I’m dead. Finally, dead. He waited for the slam, the numbing pain. Slashed again and felt his blade cut. Metal on meat. Michael grinned at his opponent.
With nothing to lose, he lunged and felt the blade bite deep.
Hashemi froze. He looked down at his chest and Michael followed his gaze. A huge bloom of blood covered Hashemi’s abdomen. He looked back at Michael and sagged into his arms, his weight carrying the scalpel blade upward into his chest.
Pulsing blood ran down Michael’s arm and he found he could barely stand. A stranger—soldier—caught him. The man wore NATO and Canadian insignia on his uniform. Another took Hashemi from his grasp.
“Bellis?”
Michael nodded. He could barely stand, barely focus.
“Shit, man, you’re shot.”
Michael looked down at his leg and saw the blood pulsing through his trousers. Funny, that. He didn’t feel anything.
Then his legs gave and everything went black.
Chapter 57
Khadija sat beside her father in the garden amid the debris of yesterday’s wedding. Hamidah’s day had been delayed two weeks, but it had been worth it—glorious, with her dressed in the traditional Tajik wedding costume, silver jewelry bedecking her arms and high-crowned headdress, and bright crimson for her dress.
The other women had taken advantage as well, dressed in the finery they had hidden through the long wars, and the groom had been funny and sad in his earnest tenderness towards the stranger who would be his wife.
The garden on Kohi Asamayi had been filled with lantern light and fire and laughter and the music of tabla and rubab and the wailing sorna—so long banned under the Taliban.
The garden was not so glorious now. Charred torches remained on the walls. Bits of food and bright cloth littered the earth. The marigolds, though, they were a brilliant circle of color at the back of the garden. Somehow the revelers had respected their blooms. And the pomegranate tree was heavy with fruit.
It brought Anaargórrey to mind, and a pantheon of memories amid a larger loss. She sighed.
“What is it, Pishogay?”
She looked at her father who sat in the last rays of fall sunlight. She had spent the day cleaning the inside of the house of the debris from her houseguests. Tomorrow she would tidy the garden, but Papa had asked her to sit with him awhile. She took the time for those things, now.
Her father was even more precious for all he had given for her and his people. It was his vouchsafe that had freed her from the Afghani prison after five days she did not want to remember. It was his word that had kept her safe while there.
“Why do you ask?”
“I hear the sigh in your breath.” He reached and caught her hand, somehow knowing where it was. “Pishogay.” His voice was soft. “Michael is a good man, but he has many duties. He is a man broken—a man driven—by pain and guilt and longing for what he has not learned—peace.”
“Michael has nothing to do with it.”
Her papa was silent, but his blind eyes seemed to see so much. She had not told him of her intimacy with Michael, nor of her failings in England. Could he love her through that as he had for her time with the jihad? It was time to know. She would not hold secrets from him.
“Papa, I need to tell you something.”
“I’m here.”
His blind gaze seemed to see inside her. His body stilled in that way that had disturbed her before, but now seemed to show his ability to sense all that went on around him.
“Papa, I know this wedding puts you in mind of a marriage for me. I felt it in the grasp of your fingers and heard it in your discussions. You seek a good man for me, but you need to know the truth. No one will want me.”
He chuckled. “That is the fear of all maidens and their mothers, but don’t you worry. I’ll act the mother and make you a match.”
“Papa, you’re not understanding. The young men you seek won’t want me. I don’t want them. I’m—I’m ruined, Papa.”
The word was so quaint and yet in her culture it was the truth. She rushed on against the sickness she felt.
“It happened in London. I was seduced by the freedom and so I was seduced. I’ve sinned, Father. Since I returned to Kaabul I tried to rededicate myself to Islam and find my honor, but I only became more confused. I couldn’t undo what I had done, or what I had become.” She swallowed. Saying this was the hardest. “And so I fell again. With Michael. Papa, I loved him, but he’s gone.”
Her voice had softened so her papa had to lean forward to hear. She saw the tears fill his eyes and trail down the lines of his cheek. Felt her tears follow similar tracks. She had failed him so. Had failed everything he believed in.
“Oh, my daughter.” He came across the carpet she had spread and caught her in his arms. �
�My heart. My Khadija. My Pishogay. You fill yourself with pain when the Sufis say that lovers tear away the veils of intellect and shame and modesty to find the love that is the true love of Allah. Don’t feel shame. Feel joy you have tasted this thing. Hold on to the love of Allah. It’s his gift.”
His petu smelled of spices and torch fire and antiseptic—the scents of her father, the scents of her childhood. He rocked her against his chest, stroking her hair to comfort her, and she could not believe he had found a way to forgive her.
“I wish you’d told me,” he said quietly, stroking her hair. “You came home from London so distant and I thought I had forced you away. You harbored so much anger—I heard it in your voice, felt it in your actions—but I didn’t know why. The Inglisi stole something precious from you, but that can never mean you’re less precious to me or to those who love you.”
He tightened his arms around her and all the emotions, all the secrets and lies flooded through her. She buried her sobs in his petu. When she was done she dried her eyes.
“Papa, I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done. I thought you would hate me and I didn’t want to hurt you. I’ve wanted to tell you a thousand times since the thing with Hashemi and the Kaanaada soldiers took Michael away, but there never seemed to be the right moment.”
“Hush. We are together, and any man who would not want you is a fool. Even Michael.”
“You never named me fool before, old friend. But perhaps you were too polite.”
“Michael!”
Khadija scrambled to her feet, was across the garden to the kitchen door, but remembered herself a foot from him and stopped. She did not know how he felt.
He stood straight, the lines of pain no longer etching his features, his pale gaze on her face. He leaned on a cane. His hair was brushed back from his face and he wore Western trousers and a crisp buttoned shirt that he kept shifting on his shoulders, as if it made him uncomfortable.
She waited as he studied her. He had expressed his disdain for her in Skazar and though he had been kind to her while they worked together and had helped her family to freedom, he’d not expressed any commitment to her.
She had been through enough rejection in England. She would not set herself up again. She averted her gaze and nodded her greeting.
He looked to her papa.
“I apologize for entering unbidden. I knocked, but no one answered. Your neighbors said you were home.”
She could see the tension in his body, could hear it tightening his voice. He still carried his disdain, then. The realization made her heart ache. She would have to make the best of it.
“Michael, my son,” her papa said. He rose to his feet.
“You’re well?” She forced a smile at him. “Your side? Your leg?”
“Both well, though the cure sometimes seemed worse than the wound.” He limped forward and touched his side with a grimace. “Debriding’s not something I’d recommend to anyone.”
“Come. Sit. I’ll make more tea.”
She tried to fall back on polite hospitality, though her heart was pounding so hard she was sure he would hear. His pale gaze felt like it burned her skin.
“Pardon the mess. Hamidah’s wedding was last night.”
She ducked past him through the curtain and stood shaking in the dimness. Michael had come! She turned back to the door. It was surely just that he had business with her father. But he looked so different in the Western clothing. So foreign.
She dipped water into the kettle and set it to boil, then found herself standing close to the curtain. What were they saying? How would her father deal with Michael now that he knew of their intimacy?
She felt like a child as she pressed her face against the door frame, parting the curtain to peek through to the sunlit garden. Michael had caught her father’s arm and led him away from the house. At least they were not fighting.
They stopped under the pomegranate tree and Michael examined one of the fruit. They weren’t quite ready. He shook his head and spoke quietly with her father, so Khadija could not hear.
More business. Always it would be missions and messages and spying. That was what Michael was all about—all he wanted in his life. He’d been clear, so she should quit twisting her insides wishing for something else.
She shook her head in futile denial. She had her father and her work—as well as helping her father, she had begun a new medical residency at the Kaabul Hospital. At least she had that. Suddenly her father began to sag. He seemed to fold in on himself, begin to fall until Michael caught him.
She rushed through the curtain.
“What is it? Papa?” She glared at Michael. “What have you done to him?”
She caught her papa’s arm from him. She would not let anyone harm her family again. Inside the house, the kettle whistled. It could wait. She faced Michael, her father at her side.
“What did you do? Haven’t you torn this family apart enough?”
His blue eyes were grave and he sighed.
“I came to ask a question and to apologize—to you—to your father before I leave. I came to tell him how Yaqub really died—that I was responsible, and to try to make amends. They’ve asked me to take a desk job in the States and I’ve accepted—unless certain things can be—dealt with.”
She froze, her mind locked on the fact he was leaving, and looked at the face she had come to know so well. The part of her that had felt hope when she saw him, died anew.
A hollow ache inside. She would carry it always. She studied Michael’s face, intent on burning it in her memory.
Those blue eyes. That hard smile. The shock of coppered hair. Resolve filled his gaze, and guilt and grief that didn’t quite make sense to her.
“Can you bring the tea, Khadija?”
She nodded obediently. Perhaps saying goodbye would be easier for him over tea. Perhaps it would make grief easier for her.
She hurried to the kitchen, her mother’s china clattering in unsteady hands. Perhaps she should be slow—keep him here as long as she could.
Stop this. You never had him, so why grieve for what you never had?
Then why did she feel like she was dying, when she did not want to die? The earth was opening under her feet again, when for a short time it had felt firm.
She managed to bring the tea and settle herself on the carpet she had spread for her and her father. Neither Michael or Papa had seated themselves. Instead Papa stood still as stone and Michael studied the garden.
“They removed the body,” he said. “It was a good wedding?”
Khadija couldn’t bring herself to answer. It hurt enough to breathe.
“A fine match. A great celebration,” Papa said.
“Good. Life should go on.”
He was so calm. So cool and uninvolved as if life no longer involved him. Terrified, she couldn’t stop herself.
“The soldiers—they would not let me see you, but they said you were shot in the leg.” She kept her gaze averted. “They took you away to their hospital and would not let me visit after my release. They treated you well? Did they stop the rebels in China?”
Michael’s gaze barely touched on her and it broke her heart. As if he could not bear to see her. He nodded to Papa.
“After I got the message to Simon Booker at the embassy, the lines must have burned up between Washington and Beijing, but they stopped the bomb at the nuclear plant and found the American agent’s body. As for me, I’m fine. The leg will heal. It’s Yaqub I must speak of.”
“Yaqub?” Papa’s question.
“Khpel amal da lari mal,” Michael said. What you do, will come back to you.
It came out like flood of self hatred she could barely stand to hear.
How it was his fault Yaqub had been caught by Hashemi, because he allowed Yaqub to take the group of women alone. How Hashemi had tortured Yaqub while Michael sought a way to rescue him, and what he had found when Hashemi was done.
“He was too far gone to carry out. He was the d
octor—so there was no one to give medical care. I tried. Allah knows I tried, but he cried when I touched him, there was so little left. He begged for mercy and compassion and there was only one mercy I could give.”
The horror was too much. Papa staggered back. Khadija was too numb to move. Michael had carried this wound all this time?
“I begged Allah for healing but he was deaf to my plea. I swore vengeance as I set my gun to his head. As I pulled the trigger. As I held Yaqub’s body in my arms.”
Khadija couldn’t stop her cry.
“No. No. It can’t be!” Papa shook his head. “Hashemi said he killed him.”
“He lied. Now do what you will to me.” He faced them, bared his chest.
Papa’s face was grey. Khadija was immobilized by the wish for death on Michael’s face.
Her brother. Her beloved brother dead by this man. Allah, where was the reason for this? By Afghani tradition they were enemies to the death.
“I should have told you sooner, but how could I expect your compassion when even I can’t stand myself?”
It was so hard to think. So hard to know. There had been so much death. Far too much. She had no energy for hatred anymore. There was only pain at the loss, and sorrow at what Michael had gone through. She met his gaze and realized she was crying.
For Yaqub. For Michael. For all of Afghanistan.
“You’re a greater friend than you know.” Her trembling words seemed to shock him, but she rejected his disbelief. “Yaqub was with someone he loved—who loved him—when he died. Not caught in evil. That, at least, is a comfort.”
It was, though the sorrow cut deep and the wind held the chill of Hindu Kush snow.
“My daughter speaks well. She’s listened more than I thought, all these years. Allah has given each of us life and he will give us another and another and another, just as the sun uses a hundred lives each moment.”
Sufi poetry again. That was her papa. But Michael could not seem to bear their compassion.
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