The Good Son

by Michael Gruber

  I brought up the subject of Gul Muhammed, and Masoud said he’d heard that he was living in Afghanistan, in hiding, more or less. He’d been active in the war against the Taliban and they’d put a price on his head. But he didn’t know what village he was in. I asked him if he’d ever heard of al-Faran.

  He stroked his beard. “Yes, I think so. There are so many groups it’s hard to keep them straight. You would not believe what a good AK fetches now, even a Dara copy; the demand is out of control.”

  “It’s the insurgency,” I said.

  “Yes, the jihad against the Americans, although in the Russian jihad we had the opposite problem, the Americans and the Saudis were sending so many weapons it was almost impossible to make a living.”

  “But as to al-Faran?”

  “Yes, if I am not mistaken, this is a group based in Swat, I forget where, one of the groups doing jihad against the idolators in Kashmir. I think I sold them some rockets last year. Why do you want to know?”

  “They kidnapped some foreigners. One of them is a relative of mine. I’d like to see if there is anything I can do to get them released.”

  “Oh, yes. That was on the news. Of course they used this al-Faran, but everyone knows that that was an ISI operation.”

  “Do they?”

  “Of course. Al-Faran does not take a shit without ISI telling them where to drop it. It was that rich American they wanted. They will have a huge ransom and then they will use the money to fund a coup.”

  “And what about the others?”

  He brought the edge of his hand sharply down on the back of his neck. “On videos. This is to show that al-Faran are true mujahideen and not merely pawns of ISI. And they will sell a lot of videos, too, with so many executions. I have some in my shop, if you would care to watch one.”

  “Not today, thank you,” I said.

  “Then how may I serve Kakay Ghazan?” All business now.

  I asked him whether he had any of those Speznatz Stechkins left. He grinned and said he did, and we both talked about the day me and Wazir had brought him a case of twenty-four that our group had won in one of our ambushes.

  The Stechkin is basically a machine gun you can put in your pocket, and this batch had been modified for the Soviet special forces to include folding wire stocks and silencers. They’re rare now, and extremely expensive, but Masoud gave me the mujahid discount, and I also bought Makarov 9- mm ammunition for the thing, and five extra magazines.

  We took my purchases out to the testing range, which was the roof. They don’t do returns in Karkhani, so you have to make sure the gun works before you leave the shop. I fired the Stechkin on both single-shot and full auto, and it worked fine.

  I loaded all the magazines and slung it in its odd wooden holster by a strap around my neck and shoulders, concealing it under my Chinese jacket. I skipped visiting the camp. It was getting late and my bad leg was acting up, complaining about the pounding I was taking from the bike on the bad roads. I went back into Peshawar to the Qissa Khwani Bazaar and had dinner at the Salateen Hotel, which makes the best mutton karhai in the world. I could’ve used a drink, but there wasn’t one on offer, which I took as a bad sign for the future of Peshawar.

  When I got back to my bike and paid off the street kids I had hired to watch it, I noticed a brown Toyota hatchback with a bent front bumper parked nearby, and I seemed to recall seeing it before, maybe in Kharkani, maybe earlier on the trip, but I was aching and tired now, and I didn’t think much about it; there are lots of brown Toyotas. Leaning against it were two men. One was a burly guy, a Punjabi by the look of him, wearing a khaki safari shirt and slacks. He had cropped hair, aviator sunglasses, and a neat brush mustache, and I thought soldier. The man he was with was taller and thinner, a Pashtun, in a shalwar kameez and a round white hat. His beard was thick, long, and black, dropping from peculiar knobby cheekbones that stood out like a couple of golf balls in the rough. In Peshawar they don’t wear T-shirts with TALIBAN written on them, but you can tell who they are.

  They seemed to be arguing when I strolled up, but they stopped and the two of them stared at me, and I looked at them and gave them a polite nod. I got on the bike and rode off.

  About twenty klicks south of the city, on the long grade up to the Kohat Pass, I saw the same brown Toyota again in my rearview mirror, coming up fast on my tail. I slowed a little and pulled to the left to let him pass, Sometimes in a combat situation you see a threat emerging, or rather you feel it’s going to happen without really knowing how you know, your mind has just put together a bunch of unconscious details, and so you don’t go through a door or stick your head up or whatever, and I had that feeling then.

  So when the Toyota swerved violently toward me to knock me off the road, I jammed on the brakes and put the bike down and skidded for about forty feet, throwing sparks and tearing the leg off my trousers along with some patches of skin. I saw the hatchback screech to a halt in a cloud of dust and then pull a U-ey and come running back to where I was. It stopped and the passenger door and the two rear doors popped open and three guys got out, the military dude from the bazaar, hefting an AK, and two guys I’d never seen before, short wide men who had the dark skin and flat faces of Tajiks.

  I pulled myself away from the motorcycle and got to one knee, my upper body bent over like I was hurting, and I lifted the Stechkin from its holster and thumbed it to full auto, and when they were about two yards from me I knocked the three of them over with one long burst.

  I pointed the pistol at the driver and yelled out in Urdu to lift his hands from the wheel and get out of the car. After a brief hesitation he did so, and I made him sit on the ground with his hands behind his head. I looked him over: early twenties, shortish hair, a mustache. I figured him for a Punjabi soldier or cop of some kind. He was shaking slightly, like a bush in a faint breeze. I leaned over and checked out his hands.

  I know guys who like this part, but I’ve never cared for it, it’s not combat anymore, and it’s embarrassing, to me at least, to have that kind of power over a human person. On the other hand, there are situations, like this one, where you need information.

  I said, “What is this all about, brother? Why did you want to kill me?”

  “Oh, God, are you going to shoot me now? Oh, God!”

  “No, of course not. You are no threat to me, Naik. Is it naik?”

  He dared a look up at my face. “Lance-naik. I am only a driver, sir.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Shabbir Hussain.”

  “Very well, Lance-naik Hussain, why was your officer trying to kill me?”

  “He wasn’t trying to kill you! He was going to give you to those Afghans and they would take you away. He would put it out as a kidnapping. It happens all the time on these roads.”

  “And why was… this officer, what was his name and rank?”

  “Captain Ahmed Waqar.”

  “What unit?”

  He lowered his face. “I am not allowed to say.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Shabbir. You have no choice, and no one will ever know what passed between us. I am trying to save your life, so help me, please. What unit?”

  “Intelligence. But I am only a driver. I don’t know anything.”

  “Thank you. And now, why was Captain Waqar of the ISI trying to have me kidnapped?”

  “I told you, sir. I am only a driver.”

  “Yes, you keep saying. Would you like a cigarette?”

  He would. I gave him one and let him smoke half of it in silence. Then I said, “Let’s begin again, and let’s not continue with this story that you’re only a driver. An ISI captain on a mission like this would not take along a lance-naik driver. He would require someone who could take charge if he were out of action, perhaps a senior NCO, a havildar major or a subedar, and you are too young to be either of those, so I suspect you are a lieutenant. And by the way, lieutenant, drivers have little cuts and scars on their hands and grease around their fingernails. You have
never changed even an oil filter with those soft hands.”

  He took in this comment and his shoulders sagged.

  “Shoot me, if you like,” he said sullenly. “I’m not saying anything more.”

  “Why not? Captain Waqar is dead, and your main problem will be figuring out what to tell Major Laghari when you return to Pindi. Fortunately, I understand he’s not too bright, so you should have little difficulty making up a plausible story.”

  He stared up at me. “How did you know-” he began and then realized his mistake.

  “How did I know you were sent by Major Laghari? Because, my friend, you have been suckered into a family affair. Major Seyd Laghari is my uncle. I bet he didn’t tell you that.”

  He gaped at me. “No. He said you were an American spy.”

  “I’m sure. Well, the fact is I’m not here to spy on Pakistan. I’m here to look for my mother. She’s one of the people kidnapped with William Craig. You’d know all about that, too, wouldn’t you?”

  I was looking into his eyes when I said that, and I saw them register surprise and something deeper too. Perhaps guilty knowledge. I thought then that Lieutenant Hussain did not have a shining future as an intelligence agent if he could not lie more convincingly.

  “And the Taliban that Captain Waqar was talking to in Peshawar. What’s his story?”

  “I don’t know,” said the lieutenant sullenly. “Some Afghan.”

  “Name?”

  “Baz Khatak.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Nobody. An informant.”

  An insurgent was more like it, but I didn’t press it because I thought I’d got everything I was going to get out of Lieutenant Hussain without actual torture. I made him drag his boss’s body back to the Toyota and heave it into the back compartment, and all the time he was doing that he kept looking at me, like I was going to pull some fiendish trick of the kind we Americans are famous for, maybe shoot him at the last minute. But I did not, and instead made him toss the dead Tajiks and the AK down the dropoff and let him get in his car and drive away.

  The Ducati had lost some of its fairing but it was still in running order and I used it to return to Peshawar, because I was not going to try to drive back to Lahore with ISI searching the roads, as they would be as soon as the lieutenant called in what had gone down. I should have capped the poor bastard, but I didn’t have the heart; he looked too much like my cousin Hassan, even though I’ve shot dozens of people who resemble my relatives. It was just not his day to die.

  15

  W hen Rashida comes in the next morning with the eternal naan, dal, and tea, Ashton says, in reasonable Pashto, “Rashida, my gazelle, where are my eggs and bacon? I specifically ordered eggs and bacon this morning, and whole-wheat toast, and strong coffee.”

  Rashida ignores him as she always does. She does not acknowedge the presence of strange men; she places her tray and tugs her dupatta more tightly around her face.

  “Well, if I can’t get a decent breakfast, we’re never stopping here again,” he continues. “What do you say, Schildkraut? Next time we’ll do the Pearl, I think. Baths, coffee, and, I believe, they don’t do decapitations.”

  Schildkraut smiles thinly at this, and the captives all gather around the breakfast tray, except for Sonia. She has observed Rashida’s subtle signal. She rises from her charpoy and follows the girl into a corner of the room.

  Rashida raises her arm, flashing a clutch of gold bangles, and, grinning, says, “I am betrothed to Batur. God willing, we will be married as soon as my father has sold three cows and can pay the walwër. Perhaps it will be one week from now.”

  “God’s blessings be on you and him and may you have twenty sons,” says Sonia, embracing the girl.

  “Thanks in the name of God,” says Rashida, “but it will be a poor wedding, without sweetmeats and wedding clothes, if the emir does not open the road to Mingaora before then. We hear there will be another chop soon,” she adds in a lowered voice.

  “Why will there be another chop soon, Rashida?”

  “Because the infidels have made an attack on a place where many of the leaders of the jihad are staying, I don’t know where, and some may have been killed. Everyone is talking about this, and waiting to see if any were killed, God forbid. And if any were, one of you will be chopped. But it will not be you; you will be the last of all. Or that is what they say.”

  “I see. Then I will tell my friends. Is this the reason the roads are closed?”

  “No, the road is closed because of the bombs. We have many strangers coming in trucks to take the bombs away to Afghanistan to destroy the tanks of the crusaders there, which is a very good thing. Even in Iraq they will use our bombs, they say. They are in silver cases with the name of God marked on the outside. It is a great secret, so they close the roads against spies like you. We are not supposed to look, but no one notices a girl.”

  She lets her dupatta slip away from her face, and Sonia can see that her perfect bisque forehead is knotted with worry.

  “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to tell you. The emir is very angry with you. He is angry with Idris, but it is about you. He says if you do not stop interpreting dreams falsely he will put you back in the goat pen and beat you. And Idris says he shall not and they fought, and only Abu Lais stood in their way or their men would have spilt blood. My cousin Amira was cleaning in the house, and she heard it all.”

  “This Abu Lais must be a great man.”

  “Yes, they say so. He is a real Pashtun from a good family, not like the emir, who is a mongrel dog, my father says, although he buys loyalty with his money. Abu Lais has made the bombs, which is a good thing, but he eats with Arabs, whom no one likes. They cannot speak properly and they smell wrong, although they say they are Muslims. But everyone must respect Abu Lais, because he is a brother of the sheikh Osama and Mullah Omar. So now you are warned. I hope they don’t whip you, because I don’t think that the women can save you again.”

  Sonia thanks the girl, who gives a quick smile, veils herself, and leaves the room. Sonia goes back to the prisoners, who are still eating their breakfast. Manjit makes a place for her and shows that he has saved her four slabs of naan and a mound of dal. Her tea has cooled but she drinks it and eats the food gratefully, despite the tension she feels among her fellows. She tells Amin what she has learned from Rashida.

  Amin waits until they have finished eating, then clears his throat and says, “Yesterday we lost our friend Porter Cosgrove. We now have information that there is to be another victim, so we must have another drawing of the cards.”

  “Sonderkommando.” This from Ashton, half underneath his breath.

  “Excuse me?” says Amin, but Ashton shakes his head and looks nastily at Sonia. Amin continues to stare at him, waiting.

  Schildkraut says into this silence, “I believe Harold was referring to those Jews in the Nazi camps who, in order to live a few months longer, managed the actual execution of their fellow inmates. They were called sonderkommando.”

  “Well,” says Amin. “Remarkable. I didn’t know that. And you believe, Harold, that our moral situation is the same?”

  Ashton shrugs. “How is it different? We’re cooperating in our own destruction in order to live a little longer. We’re participating in this obscene lottery for just that reason.”

  Manjit Nara says, “I thought we were turning cards to avoid an even more obscene situation, which is leaving Sonia with the task of choosing each of us for death. I thought it a gesture, you know, of human solidarity.”

  “Is that what it is? It seems to me more like sheep milling about and baaing over who’s first for the chop. Human solidarity would be bending every nerve at a plan to get out of this fucking place. I was ready with such a plan, as some of you know, and had we been allowed to carry it out, Annette and I might have been miles away by now, armed and in a vehicle, quite possibly in contact with the authorities. A rescue mission might even now have been in the works. But she decided it wo
uld be preferable to curry favor with her co-religionists and betray us.”

  They all look at Sonia for an instant, like a literal flock when a predator steps into the fold, and then drop their eyes. Amin says, with exhaustion now showing in his voice, “Harold, really, you can dismiss that idea from your mind. I have known Sonia for years. She is the last one to sympathize with the Taliban, and I cannot for a moment believe that she, as you say, betrayed you.”

  “But I did,” says Sonia; all eyes are on her again, their expressions range from puzzlement, through shocked amazement, to hatred on the part of both Ashton and the widow Cosgrove. “And I must disagree with Harold. If I’d let you go on with your plan, you would not now be either safe or even approaching safety. Harold would be dead, and probably not in a way anywhere near as quick as decapitation, Annette would be pegged out on the ground with her legs spread apart in a place with a very long line of men outside it, and the rest of us would have spent the remainder of our lives tied up with wires and lying in our own piss.”

  “It was our risk!” cries Annette. “You had no right to make that decision for us.”

  “I had every right, and a responsibility also, simply because I understand our situation and you don’t. This area is completely controlled by the Taliban. That’s why they brought us here, and that’s why there’s an important weapons factory next door. It obviously has reasonable cell-phone service, because as you might have seen during our last outing every third man is talking into a cell phone. As far as vehicles go, you must know that in this country they pull the distributor rotors at night the way they used to hobble their horses, so you would not have been able to steal a truck. And even if you had, the region for a hundred square miles would have been raised against you, every track would’ve been blocked and guarded, and as far as leaving the roads and going cross-country, do you honestly believe that a slightly pudgy English academic and an American woman could escape across these mountains from a thousand armed Pashtuns? A pair of SAS commandos in peak training might have a ghost of a chance, but not you.”