“Ishmael,” Alejo nodded at his boss, who, eerily, was impeccably dressed even at this ungodly hour of the morning.
Ishmael Khan was a philanthropist, giving away a lot of his wealth to build hospitals and schools here in Pakistan as well as in Bolivia. The broken hand of two-year old Jamila was what Ishmael Khan fought for. This was what Alejo’s handler saw every time he heard about another child killed by the Americans in Afghanistan: the tiny, coffee-colored hand of his niece, protruding from the rubble of her home in the mountains. She’d been crushed by a stray American missile back in 2008, massacred in the same day as her five siblings.
The Americans had apologized. The Khan hadn’t accepted.
Now Ishmael Khan was Alejo’s handler in the Prism, this Muslim organization dedicated to fighting against injustice for Allah. Alejo was the Prism leader for all of South America, excluding Colombia and Venezuela, where Marco’s replacement now worked.
The chill from his conversation with Stalin yesterday still sat in Alejo’s bones. The Khan was a strict Muslim, but would he really react so strongly to Alejo’s moving on as Stalin had implied? Maybe only the 964 really cared, because they were the ones who invested all the money in training Alejo.
Or maybe Stalin and Alejo were just painting themselves scary pictures from nothing, like campfire ghost stories under the moon.
Gabriel cleared his throat from the third row of seats behind Alejo. The rest of Alejo’s team had stayed behind in Peshawar. “I thought we might have to drag your butt out of bed,” he chuckled. “For the first time ever. You were looking pretty down yesterday.”
Alejo was irritated. They didn’t know why he personally hated Salazar so much. To them he was just another scumbag who was about to be offed. And, except for Stalin, they absolutely didn’t know a thing about the decision Alejo was trying to make.
The roads outside of Peshawar were cut into dry, dusty mountain faces, and incredibly sheer drop-offs framed their narrow edges. Eventually the Hummer left the peaks and jolted across a stony field where the rutted tracks were barely visible in the weak light of dawn. Everywhere, mud-brick houses sprung up out of the rocky dust; most were shattered from missiles, empty shells of the family life that must once have filled them. Small children sometimes lined the road, staring with huge, kohl-lined eyes as the impressive Hummer roared past, clouding their ragged bodies in billows of thick dust.
Sometime around noon, the armored Hummer arrived at a run-down village, consisting of a cluster of houses around a stone well. Mangy, skeletal donkeys wandered about, tethered to fraying ropes. Scrawny chickens had free range of the dusty central courtyard. A baby cried franticly from inside one of the single-room homes. A piece of burlap hung over the small window stirred, a dark form peered out, and the baby was immediately hushed.
Somewhere in the near distance, the dull echo of a missile launcher pounded against the surrounding mountains.
Alejo started, and realized they were near the current battle zone.
With a cool hiss, the metallic doors of the Hummer unlocked and opened. Mateen took a long drink from a two-liter bottle of luke-warm Coca-Cola. The Pashtun guards leapt out of the car, weapons gripped tightly in their rough hands.
“Settle down, settle down,” the Khan barked in Pashto, appearing amused. “There’s nothing to be afraid of right here, in this village. It’s still ours. Our commander is in constant contact with me, by sat phone.” Ishmael patted the pocket of his gray wool jacket from a posh London shop.
“You all stay here and guard the car,” Ishmael instructed his guards and driver. “Keeping a sharp eye out towards us, of course, as a precaution.” The Khan cleared his throat, spit a wad of hashish on the ground and turned towards Alejo, all smiles. “And as for you, your hour has come. Did I not tell you I had a surprise for you? Forgot to mention it, eh? Well, I have a little something I want to show you, and I think you will be very surprised. Pleasantly.”
Alejo hid his displeasure behind a passive mask. Yeah, he was surprised. What could be here, so near the battle zone, that the Khan wanted him to see? There was nothing here but run-down huts. And people who needed help.
“Come on, Alejo,” the Khan was saying, heading towards a larger, low-slung mud building that was on the close side of the courtyard. Alejo’s leather sandals sucked at the mud as he followed Ishmael. A thin plume of smoke snaked from the chimney of the building into the slate gray of the sky.
Alejo halted impatiently outside the splintered wooden door as the Khan called into the building in Pashto, A curt answer came back to him, and the Khan motioned happily for Alejo to open the door. Features impassive, Alejo pushed his way cautiously into the darkened building and found, more or less, what he had expected: a room tightly packed with mud-caked, exhausted mujahedeen, taking an early-morning snooze by the fire before heading out to fight the enemy combatants.
Most wore grimy shalwar kameezs and the traditional Pashtun hats, with a ring around the bottom, bulging like a wool muffin on the top. The men looked thin and under-fed and much too young to be here. Many had body parts wrapped up in dirt-encrusted, ratty bandages mottled with dried blood. Around one hundred pairs of brown, battle-weary eyes stared back at Alejo as his vision adjusted to the dim lighting. He felt the Khan push past him, forcing him further inside the room.
“Well, come see your surprise!”
Alejo was confused, but didn’t let it show, only cocking an eyebrow at Ishmael. He wasn’t interested in radical fighters and all their petty battles over slight differences in religion or generational blood feuds. What was he doing here?
“Asalaam alaikum!” Ishmael greeted the men enthusiastically, and they, obviously knowing who he was, made an effort to sit up straighter with respect and returned the Pashto greeting. “This is the man I told you about, the man I told your commander I would bring to you.” The Khan motioned widely towards Alejo, as pleased as a kindergartner presenting his newest coloring page to his favorite teacher. “Please greet our visitor.”
Alejo was perplexed to see grins spreading across the chapped faces of many of the men in the room. An unexplained feeling of dread crept across his chest as he watched them.
And then the men opened their mouths and spoke.
5
aquamarine
Pakistan
IF GABRIEL SHARA WERE ANY HAPPIER, he might just die.
It had happened. His dream had finally come true!
He. Was. Going to Marry. Ambrin!!!
Gabriel had never thought it would all happen so soon. But while Alejo was chatting with the mujahedeen warriors in that town with the mangy donkey, Ishmael Khan had pulled Gabriel aside and said the best words of the century:
“Gabriel my son, I’ve heard you have noticed my niece.”
It was all going to be arranged, next year when Ambrin finished nursing school. And though marrying Ambrin was about the most awesome news Gabriel could imagine, the Khan hadn’t been finished.
There was a client, a super-important client, hiring for a super-important mission. And the Khan wanted Gabriel to take the job!
“You’re the one, Gabriel Shara,” Ishmael had smiled warmly outside under the blazing Pakistani sun. “Think about it and let me know.”
But Gabriel didn’t need to think about it. He’d pretend to for a few days, just to negotiate the price a little. But why should he even do that? This mission was a dream come true, a gigantic victory in the cause of justice.
For goodness sakes, he should just do it for free!
Gabriel’s brain was doing cartwheels by the time they stopped for a bite to eat in a one-horse town along the road back to Peshawar. Absolutely everyone along the village’s single road stopped to gawk as Mateen pulled the black Hummer over next to a ditch of raw sewage, then ducked after the Khan into the village’s only eating establishment. The bodyguards were talking loudly about some TV show, but Alejo was lost in a world of his own, ever since they had left the Tribal Area.
He got like that sometimes. Gabriel had found if you just left him alone, he would come out of the funk before you knew it. He tried to catch Alejo’s eye with a smile as they entered the restaurant.
Grimy aquamarine walls dominated the small eating place with their shocking color, and cheap plastic mats spread across the floor. Several groups of men were already eating their lunch, one leg folded up to support their right arm, the other bent cross-legged on the woven mat. With their right hand, the Pashtun men scooped up cooked spinach with torn pieces of oven-roasted naan bread. Along one wall lay a scattered pile of black plastic sandals in varying states of muddiness. Several of the men’s blackened, bare feet twitched only a few inches away from the food.
Bon apetit.
Before digging in, Gabriel slipped his cell phone out of one pocket to check the time. Yep. Time for prayers.
Around twenty other men in the room began to unroll tattered prayer mats from a special corner of the restaurant, working as one man to spread them out in rows in the middle of the uneven concrete floor, facing Mecca. The town’s mosque must have been very near by, judging by the volume of the haunting call to prayer that suddenly cut through the air over a loudspeaker. The customers who were already here for lunch would simply pray together here.
A small spigot of water just outside the door in a concrete courtyard provided a place for the men to perform wudu, ritual washing for prayers. Gabriel waited his turn at the trickle of water and began to focus his mind on Allah as he washed all the parts required by the Prophet.
Alejo took Gabriel’s place at the faucet and began washing, quiet and morose. Gabriel’s bare, wet feet made a sucking sound as he padded back inside across the now muddy concrete, his large, moist footprints mingling with the others to create a mosaic of darkened patches on the restaurant floor. Frigid rivulets of water formed crystal drops like sweat down Gabriel’s face, from his wet, spiky hair to his chin.
Kneeling down next to Alejo, Gabriel prostrated himself on his mat and began to pray to the one who, alone, could reward him with eternal life.
He had to wait another week, but Gabriel finally got some time off. The rest of his team had flown back to Bolivia the day after that legendary trip to the Tribal Area, the one where Gabriel’s dreams of Ambrin began to come true.
Since then, Gabriel had been back, training a new group of recruits in the Tribal Area. He knew how to make stuff: Molotov cocktails, pretty good bombs, electronic bugs for picking up conversations. And he was a really good sniper.
He’d had to learn this stuff when Hezbollah trained him in Iran, along with Alejo, Benjamin, Stalin, and a bunch of other guys. He'd gotten a scholarship in Bolivia to go to university in Iran, and been recruited into the Prism there. The training had been excellent.
And now Gabriel was just passing it all on.
Hard work, but today I get a reminder that in the end it all pays off.
Literally. Sitting in the middle of one of the Khan’s gilded apartments, Gabriel flushed, glancing at the fat pile of cash gripped tightly in his hand. His salary for the next few months.
Gabriel, it’s not about the money! he scolded himself.
It was all about doing what Allah wanted.
A knock thudded against the apartment door, and Gabriel opened to find Ishmael’s employee Mateen. The huge Pashtun guard was clad in a cotton candy pink shalwar kameez, but the muscles bulging under Mateen’s shirt convinced Gabriel that the color somehow didn’t make the man look any less respectable.
“Mr. Khan sent me to tell you I will pick you up at eight for a little good-bye dinner,” Mateen announced. A smile twitched above Mateen’s bushy black beard and he bowed deferentially, then glided back towards the silver BMW idling outside the door.
You mean at ten, Gabriel raised an eyebrow at the departing guard. People accused Bolivians of always being tardy to everything, but really, they had no idea. Pakistanis had them beat.
Seeing the beard reminded Gabriel of his own pathetic attempt to grow a beard in order to be a good Muslim. The few inches of reddish, peachy fuzz dusting his chin at least showed that he had made the effort to be pious.
I will never be able to wear a pink shalwar kameez like Mateen, Gabriel thought. The door to the apartment pounded shut, and he sighed as he was left alone. A shiny, distorted image of himself glimmered back at him from a mirror in the golden wardrobe on the opposite wall, and Gabriel scowled at his measly beard
Pack. I’ve got to pack. Them maybe I can settle down and watch a sermon from one of the mullahs on TV.
His trusty hiker backpack was propped up next to the bed, and Gabriel opened the huge gold wardrobe and pulled out a stack of folded shalwar kameezs, sweaters and jeans. Now, on to his babies.
First, he carefully lifted his favorite Quran, inside its black leather Quran case, from its position of respect on the highest table in the room and gently placed it inside the backpack. Then came the hard shelled black case from under the bed. Gabriel fondly clicked the case open, revealing the smooth, honey wood of his violin.
This guy had been with him since his parents had given it to him for his sixteenth birthday, and the violin always came with Gabriel to anywhere he went that was important. He carefully placed the small case inside his backpack.
There. Now that the violin is here, wherever we go I’ll be home.
That left the money. He understood the reasons, but sometimes really wished his boss didn’t have to pay him in cash. Debit cards existed for a reason, didn’t they? Gabriel decided to deposit all this cash in the bank, one of the many banks close to the apartment where he had an account. He pulled a fraying gray sweater over his long shalwar kameez and headed to the bank.
Thirty minutes later, having disposed of the cash, Gabriel strolled lazily down one of Peshawar’s main thoroughfares under a thick haze of ochre smog and pollution. Bordering the sidewalk, heavy buses painted like kaleidoscopes rumbled by next to wooden donkey carts. A chorus of a thousand horns blared. Two female shapes, heavily-shrouded in black veils that fell to the ground, glided in front of Gabriel and began to weave their way across the street. Though modestly covered, the girls’ huge dark eyes were exposed and Gabriel could tell they must be young, maybe about his age.
Then he realized what he was thinking, and his face began a slow burn. He was ashamed for even noticing them.
Oh Allah, help me! Here I’ve been offered this great mission, and I’m so unworthy. You’ve got to make me pure and clean. Please!
Still praying, he ducked past a street vendor and a sizzling vat of curry into a winding alleyway, already shadowy in the approaching night. A crunching sensation of angst in his belly came at the same moment as Gabriel’s eyes told him he had erred and let his mind wander away from his surroundings. He barely registered the shadowy shapes of three men who had suddenly surged from behind into his peripheral vision, then came the flash of adrenaline. The force of their bodies propelled Gabriel face first against the coarse concrete wall.
Feeling true panic, Gabriel swore in Spanish. Two of the men gripped his arms tightly behind his back, while the third tore off Gabriel’s cap, threw it on the ground, and grabbed his hair so that he could not turn his face toward either side.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel gasped in Pashto. Maybe they had mistaken him for someone else. With his light skin, he did look a lot like an Afghani.
“Shut up! If you look at us, you’ll die!” yelled one of the men in a voice that sounded like a traffic accident. They yanked Gabriel’s head back by the hair, exposing his neck and scraping his nose and chin painfully across the pock-marked wall.
And then he felt the prick of a very wicked knife pressed against his throat. “I-I’m not looking!” Gabriel stammered, hating himself for not being able to control the tremor.
If I were Alejo I would fight these guys…
Something hot and tangy oozed off Gabriel’s bloodied lip onto his tongue. The taste of his own blood made him want to gag.
“Give us all the money you got from the bank.” The demand came from one of the men, shadowy in the darkness of the back alley-way. “Or we’ll cut your throat, dirty Afghan.”
Gabriel swallowed hard and took a steadying breath. “Of course. I have the money right here in my pocket. The left one. All my money is there, in my wallet.”
A hand thrust violently into the left pocket of Gabriel’s long kameez, causing him to totter and the knife at his neck to bite into his flesh. Gabriel gasped and told the men, “But I didn’t get any money at the bank. I went there to deposit.”
“You filthy liar!” one of them yelled, twisting Gabriel’s arm so hard behind his back that his eyes watered from the pain. “We saw you go into the bank. If you’re hiding the money, we’ll slaughter you like a pig.”
They had followed him from the bank! How had he not noticed?
You’ve been a fool, Gabriel. A fool. How could you get so lost in your thoughts?
“But…look in my wallet. You’ll see.” Gabriel swallowed hard, felt his Adam’s apple rub raw across the concrete wall. “There’s the deposit receipt there. You can see that I left a deposit there in the bank. All the money I have now is there in my wallet.”
Sweat ran down Gabriel’s face, along with the blood. He knew that there were only around two hundred rupees in his wallet, a paltry sum, enough to buy some potato chips and a Coke. Thank God he had nothing in his wallet to identify him as a Westerner, as usual. There was only his Afghan identity card, thanks to the Khans.
A snarl and several Pashto curses told Gabriel that, indeed, the thieves were not pleased with the pittance in his wallet or the rumpled slip that told them twenty thousand Euros had been deposited before their victim left the bank and they began to follow him. The man holding the blade at Gabriel’s throat swore violently in his ear. “Hold him!”
Prism (Story of CI Book 1) Page 4