The Prisoner's Wife

by Gerard Macdonald

  Shawn thought it over, then climbed into the jeep’s shotgun seat. On the edge of town, they were waved through a Pakistan army checkpoint, manned by a single nervous soldier with a submachine gun. Shawn watched until he was out of sight. A sign on the side of the road, beyond the checkpoint, read, in English and Urdu, WASH HAND BEFORE YOU PRAY.

  “Is there something I should know? Some other reason for this trip?”

  “Like I told you,” Bobby said, “we need a chat. Plus, I want to overlook Wana and Miranshah. Get an idea of the territory. Locate ACM camps. We plan to bomb the bastards.”

  They were leaving Peshawar now, through the Karkhano market. The market stalls led up to the arched gate that separated Peshawar from the lawless tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line. In one direction, the highway led through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Bobby took the other fork, onto an unpaved road—a dusty track, which Shawn, in his Peshawar days, had never seen.

  Gazing upward, into the mountains, he recalled the Pashtun wedding his comrades had bombed. He wondered how Danielle would judge these latest attack plans.

  To Shawn’s left, along a deep defile, stood a cluster of mud-brick Pashtun dwellings, hedged with flowering ashoka trees like those under which—so his Muslim lover said—the Buddha was born.

  In ascending waves of sound, a U.S. fighter-bomber passed low overhead, banked, turned, and was gone, to bring down God’s wrath on southern Afghanistan. Higher and slower, an unmanned Predator circled hawklike over the mountains, seeking prey. Shawn pointed a thumb. “Still kids in Nevada flying those things?”

  Bobby nodded.

  “Drones based where? Helmand?”

  “Here,” Bobby said. “Baluchistan.”

  Shawn considered his colleague. “We’re bombing Pakis with drones based here? In their own country? Islamabad knows?”

  “Would we know if the hajjis put bombers in Iowa?” Bobby asked. “Of course they fucking know. What do they do? Throw hissy fits. Bitch about cross-border bombing. Then they name a price.”

  “Well,” Shawn said, “some things still surprise me. Should I know what it means? ACM?”

  “New jargon,” Bobby said. “ACM, basically, that’s ragheads. Latest designation. Pentagon’s not happy, calling them insurgents.” Bobby was looking to left and right, edgy now. “Insurgent, it’s a term gives the wrong impression, you know what I mean.” He was driving too fast for the road, swinging from side to side of the track, hurling Shawn against the door of the jeep. “Anticoalition militants. Currently approved designation.” He pointed upward and eastward. “Word is, that’s where they train. Someplace up there.” He grinned and raised his voice, shouting at the empty land. “Wake up, guys. Smell the coffee.”

  The jeep was climbing through steep planes of mica schist. In declivities to right and left stood shivering windbreaks of gray-leafed poplar. Some of the trees had died; of drought, Shawn guessed.

  In the distance, men led strings of hollow-ribbed camels toward flat land below.

  The jeep was still climbing. As the gradient grew steeper, Bobby kicked down one gear, then another. Shawn tried to watch both sides of the track. Rafe Ramirez’s killers came from these mountain villages. The only humans he saw were two men, old men, sitting motionless on the mountainside, knees drawn up to their chins. They wore thin shawls and woolen caps; their music was the belling of fat-tailed sheep. They gazed into the far distance, not turning their heads as the jeep went by.

  “What’s the prime minister say? She may have an opinion on what you guys plan.”

  “Pakistan doesn’t have a prime minister. You should know that. It’s election time.”

  Shawn thought of Danielle, reading the local Urdu news sheet. “That’s not what I hear. I mean, election’s over. We have a result.”

  “Okay,” Bobby said. “Okay. As of this week, technically, yes, Pakistan has a prime minister. Nashida Noon. But come on, she’s not in charge. How could she be? Transition time. She’s out here in the boonies—Quetta, someplace like that.” He pointed back toward the town below them. “She’s coming this way. That’s one of the things we need to talk about.”

  Shawn shook his head. “You lost me. Why would we need to do that?”

  “We’ll get there,” Bobby said. “Tell me about your woman.”

  They were on the crest of the mountain, looking down on a rock-strewn plain. Glancing to his right, Shawn saw, high among the rocks, three men watching him. They carried Lee-Enfield rifles: old-fashioned, single shot, but, he knew, remarkably accurate. In Alabama, he’d trained on Lee-Enfields.

  Bobby was swinging the jeep wildly, dodging holes in the road. Dust enveloped them, caking exposed skin. Bobby’s normally high complexion was pale now under coats of dirt and sweat. “Who’s she work for? Your girl?”

  As they climbed higher, apricot trees stood, golden with fruit, in narrow terraces hacked from the stones of the mountainside. Later, the orchards gave way to sheer walls of terra-cotta rock on which nothing grew, not even weeds.

  “We’re fighting a fucking war here,” Shawn said. He pointed down the mountain toward the distant town. “Taliban could take over Peshawar, and you want to talk about a woman I’m traveling with? Tell me something. Whose idea was it to bomb this piece of Pakistan?”

  Bobby braked the jeep in a cloud of dust. He was staring into the distance, at the snow-covered peaks of the Hindu Kush. “Calvin’s.”

  “Calvin McCord? It’s his idea? The guy does get around. How’d the generals take it?”

  “Pentagon?” Bobby asked. “Generals? What the fuck do they know? PR flacks. Pussies. Good war, high morale, high tech, boys home by Christmas. Afghanistan, main export, whatever the hell you want, nothing poppy related. Like some advice?”

  “If it relates to women,” Shawn said, “then no.”

  Part of the mountain road had fallen away. Bobby started driving again, hugging the cliff. Shawn leaned sideways, watching the closing gap between the jeep’s wheels and what looked like a half-mile drop.

  Bobby glanced across at his passenger. “I forgot. You don’t like heights.”

  Shawn still watched the jeep’s front wheels. “I’m okay with heights. It’s falling off of them I don’t like.”

  They edged past the landslip. Bobby parked at what seemed to be the mountain’s highest point. He unpacked army-issue binoculars and sat silent for a time, surveying the mountains, then the desert below. “My advice, Shawn,” he said finally, “do something for Uncle. We have a job for you. I’m doing this because we go back a long way, you and me.” With one hand on the wheel, he put an arm around Shawn’s shoulders. “Your life’s gone to shit, I know that. Do this one thing, son, then get your ass out of here.”

  “Do what?” Shawn asked.

  Bobby continued peering through glasses, seeing something, or nothing. “You’re through. You know that, I know that. Screwed. Your French chick’s going out the door. Forget her. Do this one thing, Shawn, we could take you back in the trade.”

  “Back to Langley? Back in the Company?”

  Bobby nodded yes.

  Before he could speak there was a distant explosion, then a high-pitched sound Shawn hadn’t heard in a while. He opened the offside door and rolled out of the jeep and underneath as a shell exploded on the gradient to the east. The ground shook like a wet dog; stones flew down the slope, hitting the vehicle side with a noise like small-arms fire. Looking across the underside of the jeep, Shawn saw that Bobby, too, lay flat in the dust.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” Bobby asked, speaking under the jeep. He was out of breath. “Who’s shelling us?”

  “Take your pick,” Shawn said. “Your anti-coalition militants up ahead, Taliban over there, friendly fire from our guys. Here’s a suggestion. Whoever it was, let’s get the fuck out of Dodge, before they whack us again.”

  The two men rolled out from under the jeep. A faint echo bounced around the mountains; then there was silence, without sign of human
or animal life.

  Bobby reached for his army-issue glasses.

  “Let’s not do this,” Shawn said. “Jesus. Let’s not stay parked on top of a goddamn mountain. That was a sighting shot. Next time, for Christ’s sake, the bastards could nail us.”

  Bobby got himself behind the wheel, started the jeep, and turned it around. In the shotgun seat, Shawn was looking backward at a distant flash among the rocks.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Go! Roll it.”

  Bobby accelerated, changing gear as the jeep gathered speed. Again the ground shook as a shell landed behind them, throwing up clouds of sand and rock and fragments of schist.

  “Whoever he is,” Shawn said, looking back through the dust, “he’s got range. We hadn’t moved, that would’ve been good night and good luck.”

  “We should nuke the whole fucking country,” Bobby said, driving, shaking his head. “Ungrateful sons of bitches. You come in, you help them, what do they do? Try and kill you.” He glanced across at Shawn. “Talking of which, this little job we have.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Shawn said. “You give me a pass to see Darius Osmani, I’ll be on a plane out of here.”

  Bobby drove awhile in silence. After a time, he said, “I get you into the jail, you come with me to the office. We’ll brief you there.”

  “Brief me for what?”

  Bobby, driving faster now, said, “We’ll get to that.”

  35

  PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, 3 JUNE 2004

  Bobby Walters brought the Jeep to a halt on the outskirts of Peshawar and waited for the following dust to dissipate. Back on the plain, shock set in. He sat there, trembling, checking his pulse.

  Shawn, breathing hard, searched for words. “Close,” he said finally. “Just fucking close. Two shells. Are you okay? You don’t look—”

  “Heart,” Bobby said. His normally flushed face was a whiter shade of pale. “I never told you—that’s my problem. Dodgy heart. Arrhythmia.”

  “Which is what?”

  “What it sounds like.” His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. “Did I tell you? I go in for checkups last year—this is D.C.—they take one look at me, throw me on a gurney, cut me open, give me a pacemaker. Keeps your heart running, theory is. You’re kept alive by a damn machine. How’d you like that? You know, I know, what machines do. They go on the fucking fritz. It’s like they give your dishwasher the power of life and death. Washer blows a fuse, damn thing dies, you die, too.” He looked back at the mountain. “That second shell hit, sweet Jesus, my heart starts jumping around my chest like a Mexican bean. I keep thinking, what if the pacemaker goes out of whack? What if it starts running like hyperspeed? How long have I got then?”

  Shawn leaned across to hug his buddy. “Oh, man,” he said, “that don’t sound good.”

  “You think?” Bobby turned to look at Shawn. “How many years have you got?”

  “More’n you,” Shawn said, “if that’s how your heart is.” He was watching the massing crowd in the streets below. “What exactly’s going down here?”

  Bobby unbuttoned his shirt to lay an exploratory hand on the left side of his chest. Shawn saw his lips move as he counted heartbeats. Finally Bobby sat back in his seat, looking out over the crowded square below.

  “It’s those moments in your life,” he said, “you know—you must have had ’em—could’ve gone either way. Like, you know, forks in the road. That’s what I think about these days. I mean, listen, I could have been in my old man’s law firm, but would I? Would I hell. Told Daddy I’m not sitting behind some damn desk. I’m going off, fight for my country. Like Calvin says, God with us.”

  “Seeing a lot of movies, were you?”

  “Bet your life.” Bobby put the jeep back in gear. “Everything John Wayne ever made. What happens? I go in the navy, my sorry-ass brother goes to work for Daddy. As of now, let me tell you, Jason’s got a house in Turkey Forge, you could fit my whole damn apartment, pretty much, in the downstairs john. Got his own Gulfstream, flies to Fiji, and Jason’s going to Fiji because why? Because he has his own little island, with what he calls his beach house, which, I have to tell you, it’s about the same size as the spread he has in Turkey Forge. Plus, he works five months a year—doing divorce—in case his tax bill gets too big. He says to me, Bobby, bro, time to retire. Be nice to yourself. Put your feet up. I tell him, Jason, I hear you. I’d love it. Just wait while I work out what the food stamps are worth.”

  They sat without speaking for a couple of minutes, watching men in robes and caps pour out of tour buses, heading for the center of town.

  “Okay,” Shawn said. “That fork in the road thing, I understand that. I missed one or two off-ramps myself. Now, tell me what’s on offer here. As background, Bobby, I’m broke. Flat broke. Chronically short of cash.”

  Bobby pointed at the crowd streaming down the slope. “Wait a minute. What the hell is that? We were here before, did we ever see this kind of thing?”

  “You know perfectly well,” Shawn said. “Nashida Noon. Victory tour.”

  “Sure I know,” Bobby said. “How do you?”

  “In the local paper.”

  “How d’you read that?”

  “I don’t,” Shawn said. “I told you, I have a friend who does. This afternoon, Nashida’s in town. Then she flies to whatever’s the next stop. Which is, you might know where.”

  “I do. Classified.”

  “Okay,” Shawn said. “What about the jail?”

  “What about what jail?”

  “We made a deal, remember? You’ve got Osmani locked up wherever it is you squeeze their balls. I have half an hour with him, I come to your office, for what I don’t know, then I get the hell out of town. Out of your life.”

  “With the woman?”

  “Danielle? She’s a grown-up girl, but I’ll ask her if she wants to come.”

  “We might discuss that,” Bobby said. He looked at Shawn for what seemed a while. Then he nodded and revved up the jeep. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hit the jail.”

  Shawn pointed. “I’ve been here before, remember? Time of the fire? We nearly died? Best of my memory, jail’s over there.”

  Bobby pulled onto what would have been a sidewalk if the road had had one. He let a crowded tour bus edge down the track. On the sides of the bus were pasted full-color posters of Nashida Noon and of Imran Khan in spotless cricket gear. There was also a large close-up of a vest-clad Bruce Willis, back in the days when he still had hair.

  Inside the bus, brass bands were playing.

  Bobby said, “War on terror, son. Money flows. We have ourselves two jails. Like, his and hers.” He pointed. “Security budget. We built our own little place, right that way. Behind the wall.”

  Shawn had noticed this building before, when he was out buying his pistol. He’d seen armed men at the gate and wondered just what they were guarding. Now he took in the five outsourced Pakistani guards. Three were staring up the hill behind them. Turning in their direction, Shawn saw they were watching an auto-rickshaw barreling down the hill, trailing smoke.

  Then, as one man, all three ran from the jail, leaving their weapons.

  Shawn leaned over, opened the driver’s door of the jeep, and, lowering his shoulder, shoved his companion out. Taken by surprise, Bobby landed faceup in the dust, like an overturned turtle. Grabbing the wheel of the jeep, Shawn swung the vehicle around. He changed gear, accelerated, and hit the side of the moving, smoking, now-driverless rickshaw, shoving it into long grass and trees at the side of the track. Then he, too, was out of the jeep, underneath it, as the rickshaw exploded. Fragments fell around him as he slid out from under the vehicle. Passengers from the bus were yelling. Above the medley of sound came Bobby’s voice, high and strained.

  “Shawn,” he shouted. “Fuck it—there’s another one—”

  Shawn backed to the far side of the jeep as a second auto-rickshaw came down the hill, faster than the first, threatening to run out of control, this one still
with a driver. Pouring black smoke, it slowed and came to a halt against the wall of the new jail. The driver—a small man wearing aviator shades and a gray salwar kameez—climbed out and ran down the hill.

  Sheltering behind the jeep, Shawn called. “Bobby, down. Keep down.”

  Bobby, crawling across the track, called, “What the fuck’s happening here?”

  “Watch.”

  Moments later, the rickshaw exploded. Shawn heard Bobby say “Oh, shit,” saw him clutch at his heart as the second blast blew away part of the jail’s brick wall. A car lifted in the air and fell, stranded, on its side. Someone screamed. One of the two remaining guards, the one nearest the bomb, was gone, red-white morsels of his body scattered warm and soft about the street where Nashida Noon’s followers, caught in the press of bodies, struggled away from the jail. Crowds ebbed. Bobby, hampered by being on the ground and by the size of his paunch, struggled to draw an army-issue handgun, to aim at who knew what. From the back of the parked tour bus, farther down the hill, came six robed men, moving at an easy run.

  Bobby, now with Shawn, peered from behind the damaged jeep. “Shouldn’t we do something?”

  “Like what?” asked Shawn. He nodded at the muj squad. “Six guys, packing Uzis. You feel like John Wayne?”

  The last remaining prison guard—the one who’d failed to run—still lived. He lifted himself from the dust and reached out for his Uzi, a yard away. He was shot twice through his upper body before his groping hand could touch the weapon. The man shook his head, shuddered, subsided back to the earth. Dust to dust, Shawn thought. The raiders, in a close group, entered the jail through the gap in the wall. Unaware of what was happening, or wishing to distance themselves, Nashida Noon’s supporters still poured down the lower roads, toward the city square.

  From inside the jail came three shots in rapid succession, then silence.