The car crunched to a stop inches from the cliff. Filling their windshield were three bearded Afghans with rifles at their hips. Adam saw no vehicle – it was as if they had dropped from the moon. As though he were at a tollbooth, Hamid rolled down the window and greeted them in Pashto. The men did not explain themselves; they did not need to. Adam felt certain that they belonged to Pasha Khan.
Calmly, Hamid told them that he was the guide and translator for an American news crew, requesting passage through the mountains. Adopting an air of mystified concern, Adam kept his gun hand free. Branch did the same. If the men tried to search the S.U.V., Adam would kill the Afghan closest to the window. Jumping out with the car door for cover, Branch would take the man beside him. Rotner would shoot the third man through the windshield. Silent, Adam’s target regarded Hamid with a deep displeasure.
‘If these foreigners are newsmen,’ he said at length, ‘where are their cameras and transmitters?’
‘They are not newsmen,’ Hamid responded irritably. ‘Their job is to find quarters and vehicles for a crew who is coming. Let me show you their credentials.’
Left hand raised in a plea for trust, he opened the glove compartment. Gingerly, he pinched a phony C.B.S. card between his thumb and forefinger, tendering it to his interrogator as though it were a missive from God. Pointing out the trademark eye on the card, Hamid explained that this was the symbol of American television. ‘They know nothing,’ the translator said of his passengers in a scornful tone. ‘So I am driving them to Khost and helping find what they need. Without me they are children – only with beards, which they believe makes them more acceptable. But I have real children to feed.’
Their antagonist cocked his head, looking past Hamid at Adam. Miming fear, Adam mustered a nervous, ingratiating smile. He could feel Branch’s stillness. As the Afghan studied him, Adam allowed his smile to fade, exposing the naked terror of a civilian.
With a disdainful air, the Afghan gestured them forward.
Thanking him, Hamid inched their S.U.V. around the cliff as the Afghans backed against the sheer rock on the right. No one else looked back.
‘Nice performance,’ Branch murmured to Adam. ‘You were the scaredest-looking guy I’ve ever seen.’
Adam felt the tension seep from inside him. ‘Some days it’s easier than others.’
*
Shortly, they began their slow, laborious descent. Skirting Gardiz, they avoided Camp Chapman, the site of a C.I.A. installation ringed by Afghan guards and American troops. Though the presence of the C.I.A. was not a secret, these four men, and their mission, could not be associated with the agency. They were on their own.
In twilight, they reached the town of Khost. Its location near the Pakistan border was convenient to their mission; its character was not. The city was marbled with Taliban and Al Qaeda; its roads, laid out on a grid, centred on an enormous mosque financed by Osama bin Laden. Near this was the bunker-like headquarters of the Afghan police; across from that, a ruined building blown up by a suicide bomber who, intending to destroy the headquarters, had taken fire that caused his truck to veer off course. The few Afghans on the street no doubt included people who – a decade before – had supported the Taliban in harbouring the attackers of 9/11.
By prearrangement, Hamid drove them in to the police compound, where a mustached Afghan colonel greeted them as honoured American aid workers – their cover for this purpose – and offered them a dinner of stewed lamb. Hamid left to secure a room, insulating the Americans from inspection by a potentially hostile landlord. In Khost, the Taliban network had tentacles everywhere.
After dinner, the colonel took them to a quiet room with chairs and oversized Afghan pillows. Against his better judgment, Adam distracted himself by taking out his laptop – innocuous civilian equipment – and rereading Carla’s email, as though he were an aid worker away from home. Carla’s description of her career told him a good deal he had not known. But he suspected that in its margins, unspoken, was more pain and dislocation than she felt safe describing. Still, he appreciated her honesty, and the effort this no doubt required. He imagined her bent over the computer, her lovely face intent and serious, her body swollen with the child growing inside her.
What would become of him? he wondered. And of her? Who would nurture the boy, and share this woman’s love? He had always told himself that his lack of attachments was a virtue. There was no one to distract him, and his death – should it happen – would not distort the life of a wife or child, left only with the imaginings of a father. His return to Martha’s Vineyard had ripped the scab off his past, exposing the gap between the archetype of a family and the reality of his own life. But some irreducible part of him, which he had thought dead, had stirred with the fleeting vision of a future different than his past.
Closing the computer, he focused on the danger outside their walls. ‘It’s good we’re moving out at night,’ he observed to Branch.
The Seal nodded. ‘I took that crater across the street as a negative indicator. Just like the demographic trends of the last two centuries. Makes you wonder why our British friends signed up for a second go.’
‘That’s easy,’ Adam answered carelessly. ‘We promised them that this time would be different.’
*
Deep in the night, Hamid led them to the room he had secured.
He had gotten a key to the building – they did not require the assistance of a landlord who would know them as Americans, or wonder what equipment they carried in their heavy suitcases. As Adam had requested, the room was on the second floor and had a balcony that overlooked the street below. Once inside, they drove wedges beneath the door. Duplicating a common practice of Afghans who were cleaning their rug, Rotner draped a carpet over the railing of the balcony, blocking the view from the street. Adam took out the satellite telephone receiver and placed it behind the rug, assuring optimal reception for text messages. In appearance, the phone was standard N.G.O. equipment. The giveaway to any intruder would be the body armour, guns, and ammunition concealed within the room.
So as not to be associated with them further, Hamid left. Before the others slept, Branch placed a wooden chair against the door. They lay on top of the beds, keeping their hands free, trying to rest as best they could. Before commencing his own broken sleep, Adam emailed Carla. ‘I’m on a road trip,’ he tapped out swiftly, ‘and tied up for a while. As soon as I can, I’ll send you something longer.’ The words underscored the chasm between Adam’s life and what he could tell her. But in a day or two this might not matter at all.
Shutting off his computer, he mentally rehearsed each move in the darkness as he approached the building where – his superiors hoped – al Qaeda held the P.O.W.
*
As dawn broke – a thin ribbon of light peering over the mountains to materialize the tan, low-slung city – Hamid returned to the room.
Overnight, he had switched out their S.U.V. for a Mitsubishi to confuse anyone who had seen the Toyota. But his face was graver than normal. Handing Adam a piece of paper, he said, ‘Night letter. The Taliban left it on doorsteps around the city.’
As Branch and Rotner sat on the edges of their beds, Adam read the letter aloud. There were Americans in the city, it said baldly – the Taliban would kill any Afghan who helped them. But a person whose information allowed a spy to be taken alive would receive $10,000; a man who killed one would receive a lesser bounty of $5,000. The difference, Adam did not need to add, was a measure of how merciful it was to be killed instead of captured.
‘Think they know we’re here?’ Rotner enquired in the tone of a man seeking information about the weather.
‘No way of telling,’ Adam responded. ‘Because there’s a C.I.A. station nearby, they do this pretty often. We came in at night, dressed like locals. So maybe it’s coincidence.’
This did not sound satisfactory to him or, from their expressions, the others. Hoping for more information, he crept on to the porch behind the cover o
f the rug.
There was a text message on the satellite receiver. But it contained nothing about the Taliban. Instead, cryptically, it said that their timeline had been accelerated. Branch and Adam were needed at the forward operations base before nightfall.
Swiftly, Adam reflected. Unless his superiors had learned that it was too risky to stay here, the likely reason for this change was information that al Qaeda would move the P.O.W. in the next twenty-four hours. But it was far more dangerous for Branch and Adam to strike out for Pakistan in daylight. Everything about this order narrowed their chances of survival.
Telling Branch, Adam said none of this. He did not need to. Taking in their new orders, Branch was quiet for a moment. Then he shrugged, saying only, ‘Good thing we look so much like Afghans,’ as he fingered his blond, sandy hair.
NINE
When Carla emerged from the doctor’s office, Teddy Blaine was waiting.
As he looked up at her, concerned, Carla saw a young, obviously pregnant woman glance from her to Teddy in frank surprise. For an instant, the incongruity of any relationship between herself and a man still suspected in Ben’s death penetrated Carla’s shock. Then what she had just learned overcame her. All that she could manage was to give Teddy the briefest of nods, a signal to leave, then walk slowly out the door and down the long hallway toward the parking lot.
A few people were coming the other way – visitors or patients, a nurse pushing an older man in a wheelchair. Carla barely saw them. With Teddy at her side, she looked straight ahead at the swinging glass doors until he pushed them open. She walked a few more steps and then, noting the cheerlessness of a dark, lowering sky, stopped to draw chill air into her lungs.
‘What happened?’ Teddy asked with quiet urgency.
Staring at the pavement, Carla could only shake her head. Like an automaton, she followed Teddy to his vintage Mercedes sedan, once Ben’s, and slipped through the door he opened into the passenger seat, her stomach heavy, her heart leaden.
Putting his key in the ignition, Teddy stopped to look at her. Oddly, it was the expression of concern on his sensitive face that shattered Carla’s self-control.
She sat back, shivering once, and felt the tears running down her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a husky voice, though she was not sure to whom.
Teddy simply waited. At length, with no one else to lean on, Carla told him what she had learned.
*
When the exam was finished – the usual indignities somewhat leavened by Dr Stein’s crisp professionalism – he had asked Carla to dress and come to his office. Once she did, he closed the door behind them, gesturing her to a chair with unwonted gravity that suggested their conversation would not be perfunctory or pleasant.
‘So these contractions keep coming,’ he began.
Nodding, Carla watched his face. ‘Every other day or so, usually with spotting. I try to keep myself calm, and eventually they stop. Does that tell you anything?’
‘Nothing definitive. Perhaps it’s simply hereditary, reflecting the problems your mother had carrying a child to term.’ Stein folded his hands in front of him, regarding her with studied calm. ‘It could also suggest problems with the baby. We have the test results back, and they’re somewhat worrisome.’
Carla felt a constriction in her throat. ‘In what way?’
A brief, involuntary grimace left a residue of concern in the doctor’s eyes. ‘Your blood test indicates the probability – though not the certainty – of Trisomy 18. Most babies who have this anomaly die in utero, and there’s also a significant risk of stillbirth …’
‘Why?’
‘If – and I emphasize the “if” – your baby has this genetic disorder, it raises the prospect of heart abnormalities, or kidney problems, or other internal organ diseases. Sometimes the esophagus doesn’t connect to the stomach. The heart defects are particularly lethal. But any or all of these problems can lead to a very low survival rate.’ Stein paused to let her absorb this, then added quietly, ‘I’m sorry.’
Stunned, Carla crossed her arms, as though hugging herself against cold air. ‘Is there any hope?’
‘There is. Though there are subtle signs of Trisomy 18 on the ultrasound, they’re inconclusive. The statistical probability that your child has this disorder is just that – a probability, not a certainty. Mostly we’re going off your blood test. The experts in Boston compared it to a group of pregnant mothers whose foetuses have similar indicators. It’s a little like forecasting the weather: we say there’s a twenty per cent chance of rain because, when the meteorological conditions are the same, it rains twenty per cent of the time.
‘Based on that comparison, they place the possibility that your baby has Trisomy 18 at a little over fifty per cent. Which leaves a significant chance that you’ll have a completely normal baby.’ He hesitated, this meagre note of encouragement draining from his voice. ‘But there’s an equal or greater chance of miscarriage, or that your child won’t survive the birth itself. And, if he does, that he won’t live past infancy.’
Carla felt nausea overwhelming her first spasm of disbelief. ‘What can I do?’
Stein gave her a look of clear-eyed candour. ‘For the baby, nothing. But I have to tell you that termination is an option some women choose. That way, the mom avoids the probability of further suffering – for herself, and for the child—’
‘No,’ Carla cut in angrily, and realized that she had sat bolt upright. ‘I’m Catholic enough to believe that this baby is a life. We still don’t know that there’s anything wrong with him. And, even if we did, I’m going to give him every chance. That’s my obligation as his mother – not to spare myself “suffering” by ripping him out of the womb—’
Stein held up his hand. ‘I’m your doctor, Carla. I had to present the options.’
Carla had the sudden, superstitious fear that to continue this conversation threatened her son’s life. ‘You did,’ she snapped. ‘The subject’s closed.’
Stein’s quiet look of regret tamped down Carla’s rage. ‘Then we need to monitor this,’ he told her. ‘I recommend that you see me every other week. If I understand your wishes, you’ll do everything possible to take this child to term.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we should talk about delivery. I’d like to contact a high-risk-pregnancy specialist in Boston. At around the eighth month or so, should your pregnancy proceed, you should find a place there until the baby is born. It would be better if he were delivered by a specialist.’
Her anger gone, Carla felt enervated. All she did was nod.
Leaving Stein’s office, she felt as if her life had changed, and that the child inside her, perhaps already doomed, might become another death to mourn. To see Teddy Blaine felt shattering.
*
At the end of her narrative, Teddy fleetingly touched Carla’s arm, a gentle brush of his fingertips. ‘How can I help?’
Carla touched her eyes. ‘Please just keep doing what you’ve done. And don’t tell Adam. There’s nothing he can do.’
‘Does he know you’re afraid of losing the baby?’
‘No,’ she answered softly. ‘After all, he’s not the baby’s father, is he?’
She felt, rather than saw, his quiet acknowledgment of the complexity of her position, and that of Benjamin Blaine’s ostensible sons – only one of whom, though Teddy did not know this, would be her unborn child’s brother. ‘I should take you home,’ he said at length. ‘Don’t forget your seat belt.’
They drove to the guesthouse in relative silence. Arriving, Teddy noted the Ford parked in front. ‘Company?’
‘I’m sure not. Sometimes Whitney has gardeners here, or handymen. But they don’t come in when I’m not home.’
Teddy faced her. ‘Count on me for the groceries. And if you have some emergency – day or night – call me.’ He paused, then added, ‘Actually, you don’t need a reason. You’re pretty alone here.’
She gave him a faint, rueful smile. ‘Pretty
much. My own doing, but that’s what I needed.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Teddy said with a wry understanding. ‘When people take a certain kind of interest in you, it tends to make you antisocial. I’ve been like that for months now.’
Carla gazed at him, reminded by this elliptical reference that, in the minds of many, Teddy remained implicated in Ben’s death. ‘Thanks for taking me,’ she said, and got out as quickly as she could.
*
Alone again – except for the baby, Carla reminded herself – she paused in front of the guesthouse.
Its walls would close around her soon enough; since her forced inactivity, the hours and days had passed too slowly. Still, she had done her best, scrupulously maintaining her morning ritual of prayer. She researched healthy foods, and all the ways where she could help her body sustain this baby. Mercifully, Whitney Dane’s lifetime accumulation of hardcovers had spilled over to the guesthouse, and so Carla’s regimen of self-improvement included consuming novels she should have read long before – The Brothers Karamasov, Tender is the Night, and, more contemporary, David Foster Wallace’s brilliant but occasionally head-scratching Infinite Jest. She scoured the New York Times online and, until she reached her daily saturation point of cleverness and bloviation, followed politics on Cable News. But the baby, her only companion, was the source of constant worry. When was the last time, Carla asked herself, that she had laughed aloud, or been overcome by gratitude for the sheer wonder of being alive?
She could no longer remember. At times she felt like a house that had never been furnished, or brightened with warm colours. For years she had been a striver, desperate to outrun her stunted beginnings. Then she had become Carla Pacelli, more vivid in the minds of others than in her own. Then she was Carla the alcoholic, standing in the ruins of her barely examined past, stirring the embers for clues, struggling to maintain a semblance of dignity, to construct a personal code of honour, the foundation for a new life – all the while pursued by a tabloid press that feasted on her affair with Benjamin Blaine, the meaning of which was too personal to her to make excuses to anyone else. Though Carla could be merciless in self-appraisal – a necessity, she believed – she gave herself credit for trying. But this wilful effort to wrest sobriety and grace from turmoil did not create much space for spontaneity, or joy. And now there would be more days spent killing her allotted time on earth, darkened by the shadow of heartbreak over the transcendence she longed for as the mother of this child.
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