Clay and whoever he was working with had to keep the circle small. They needed an Afghan to negotiate with Rashidi, so Clay had coached him. Idris crossed an arm against his chest to keep the warm air inside his jacket. He called Rashidi.
The response was quick. Rashidi had been waiting. Bale …
It’s me. It’s Idris, Faisal’s friend.
Idris jan, what is it?
These people, they came to see me.
Which people?
The ones who took Faisal.
Who are they?
I don’t know. I was leaving the school tonight, going to the taxi, and they picked me up. They had guns. They told me they didn’t want any contact with you. They said I had to be the one to speak to you for them.
Silence. The sound of a TV grew distant. He heard footsteps, then the closing of a door.
Rashidi’s voice now rasped. Idris, are you part of this?
I’m not. I swear I’m not.
I don’t believe you.
They told me they know you are involved in Tarzi’s abduction.
Silence again and then a slow, uneven exhalation.
I don’t know Tarzi, Idris said. I don’t know what they’re talking about. They said I have to deliver messages to you. If you try to do anything, they’ll kill Faisal. If Tarzi never comes back, Faisal will be killed. They said that if you or I call the NDS, they’ll strangle Faisal.
Idris felt the steadiness of his hand, his fingers numb but the cell not shaking at his ear. The worst thought for him was the NDS, the National Directorate of Security, who were rumored to torture people.
Okay, Rashidi said, his voice quiet and raw. It’s okay. I believe you. Tell me what they want. Maybe we’ve been fortunate after all.
They told me that when Tarzi is released, Faisal will be let go. I don’t know their names. They said they’d call me. They didn’t say when.
So far, the plan didn’t belong to Idris. He was still a pawn, but there would be a moment when that could change. Until now, his own plan was to study, to itemize what he could use, to find opportunities.
The situation is complicated, Rashidi said. It wasn’t my choice. There are others involved in this who find Tarzi difficult. Please believe that.
I believe you.
We just had to make him disappear during the bidding on a government construction contract, for a very short time. He would never have been hurt.
Idris believed none of this. Rashidi’s earlier admission that they were fortunate — a statement as involuntary as an exclamation, as giving thanks — suggested Tarzi was alive but shouldn’t be.
Here’s the problem, Rashidi told him. Tarzi is in a village whose mullah won’t let him leave. Tarzi is an Islamic scholar. He studied in Saudi Arabia, and this mullah found out and is making Tarzi give him lessons. The kidnappers told me that Tarzi is no longer in their control.
Idris said nothing, not surprised to hear a situation almost comical — a barely literate village mullah wanting to expand his knowledge of the Qu’ran and finding himself with a kidnapped man who could give him daily lessons. The story said much about Afghanistan — its faith and desperation and disparity.
But this mullah, Rashidi continued, he works between the true Taliban who come in from Pakistan and the criminals here we sometimes call Taliban, the men who hire themselves out for profit. They were paid to do this job, but the mullah’s friends from Pakistan know what Tarzi is worth. They’ve told us they will keep him until they are properly compensated. They’ll approach the family for the ransom only once the mullah is satisfied with his lessons.
Rashidi told Idris to wait a moment while he called them.
The line disconnected, and Idris began walking quickly back to the school. He’d always been thin — putting on weight was difficult — and the cold gouged at his body. He hurried across the lot, breathing into his collar.
He did a lap around the block, heat building at his ribs, his knees sliding against his jeans, their fabric stiffening as it froze. He was nearing the edge of the lot when his cell vibrated.
Rashidi was so hoarse he could hardly speak. They said no. They won’t return him.
Why? Idris was commanding himself to think, to find some way to take control.
That idiot mullah refuses.
What did he say?
He asked why he should have mercy on me. He told me I’m a man who betrays Islam and gets fat from American money. Why should he care about my son when the true believers are starving? But it’s the fault of those idiots. They can’t change their ways and benefit. Why are they blaming me?
Idris was thinking quickly, methodically. Human currency was spent daily here — probably everywhere — and always had been.
Sir, Idris said, testing phrases in his mind and hearing how precarious his proposition would be. Sir, Faisal is my friend. One does not have many friends in Afghanistan now.
Yes. I know. Faisal would agree.
Please, then, let me help. I have an idea. It’s extreme, but it may work.
Tell me. It will be okay, Idris. We must consider all possibilities for Faisal.
What if we exchange foreigners for Tarzi?
Why would they want foreigners?
We will give them knowledge to strike the occupiers and bring victory to the Taliban.
Rashidi didn’t speak. Idris’s heart moved like a flame inside his chest.
Idris jan, explain to me very carefully what you mean. What would we be giving?
I know the foreigners’ lives, where they go and when they’re unprotected. Let’s give the Taliban an easy strike. Idris drove anger into his voice. I can send the mullah’s people to a place where they can eliminate the infidels who come here to drink and sleep with Afghan girls.
A long silence. Rashidi was himself a maker of plans. He would see this proposition from every angle and try to fathom who else Idris might be serving.
So we offer foreigners in exchange for Tarzi. And you’ll help?
I’ll do it for Faisal.
Then I’ll make sure you’re safe.
But we must go to them. We have to make them realize we’re on their side.
Rashidi again hesitated. You’re a valuable young man. After this, after Faisal is back, you’ll work for me. Come here tonight. Early tomorrow, we’ll go and do this negotiation. Tonight we’ll plan.
The line cut off. Idris pressed the back of the cell until it clicked. He removed the rear cover and slid the SIM card out with his thumb. He inserted his old SIM and called Clay.
Yes, Clay murmured, sounding sleepy. What’s the news?
Idris told him the story, about the mullah, Tarzi giving lessons.
Clay laughed. Fucking Afghanistan. He cleared his throat. So that’s why they never asked for a ransom.
I will know more tomorrow. Rashidi is the one who had him kidnapped, but now he must pay a ransom to get him back.
My God, Clay said, that’s unbelievable. What a story.
After they hung up, Idris switched the cards again. He slipped the SIM into the pocket of his jeans. Then he just stood, the cold against his eyelids. Rashidi, Tarzi — all great men — they planned. They did not live day to day waiting to be helped. This knowledge grew inside Idris, and he let it, so that when he opened his eyes, he would see the world in its light.
CLAY
After the attack on the safe room, Clay rode home to meet with Alexandra, his mind silent the way it had been his first years as a soldier, when he reacted in battle before he fully grasped the threat. He hadn’t needed the constant coffee and energy drinks others depended on. But by his third tour, his reactions were unstable, like an alarm system that triggers for no reason.
He didn’t understand why he gave himself over to a course of action — a feeling of being caught in a river, rushed forward — when
he knew it would end poorly. The sky seemed wider when he gave himself over. He was closer to nature, free of the delusion of a reasoning self. He’d seen a rifle lifted, the shot that took out a distant man. He’d become a sacrifice, another soldier thrown into the media’s volcano as requital for the wars’ endless mistakes.
After leaving Iraq in 2008, he traveled America with his savings, only twenty-four, not sure who his people were. In cafés and bars, he eavesdropped, disgusted by the empty talk. These self-absorbed idiots weren’t capable of what he’d done. They should look at him with admiration and fear.
He ate and drank his savings, stayed in hotels, took buses and trains, or walked, everything he owned in a small backpack. Sometimes, in the afternoon, when the sky was empty, the sun at a late angle, the air cooling and leaves falling, he heard the truck pulling up, its tires against the asphalt, the knocking in its engine, and he turned, seeing the blunt, caring face of his father.
His only release from anger was sex. He went home with women he barely knew, going at them so hard he didn’t remember pleasure, only the sound of his pelvis hitting theirs — until one day something burned out in him. He’d seduce a woman, get her in his hands, and then he’d start to go soft. The chase was already over, and he was staring into the time in between.
A quiet set in. He lived in hotels and ate out and read all day. He spent a year in Lafayette, down the highway from Lake Charles, and never told his mother he was there.
He ran out of money and stayed in a flophouse, clipping his beard and hair with rusty scissors he found in a drawer next to a burnt spoon he used for meals. He took a job caretaking for an old man, Mr. Dupre, going each day to his third-floor apartment of mismatched furniture, where bottles lined the windowsills and the fridge was empty except for grape jam and Wonder Bread. Clay carried him onto the landing so Dupre could get air. The old man sat, wearing a straw hat as he read a World Book encyclopedia with a cover like a worn-out saddle. Clay reread the novels of Jack London that he’d loved as a boy.
Often, Mr. Dupre told stories, his head copper in the late light as he described his first visits to brothels in the oil towns of Beaumont and Port Arthur, or the way his elementary teacher had made the boys lie under the schoolhouse for speaking French.
We could hear the lessons well enough through the floor, he said, but these are swamplands and there’s reasons houses don’t sit on the ground. When you couldn’t speak the language no more, there was only one French thing left to do and that was wander. It’s in the blood. Every Englishman who discovered something had a Frenchman to paddle him there.
Then he laughed, a strung-out cackle that ended in a smoker’s cough.
Terrestrial shelf life is limited, and only Jesus knows your expiration date. That’s what my preacher used to say. Something popped in his brain and he dropped dead with a hot dog in his hand. You never know if you’ve got a thing on the brain.
Mr. Dupre told stories of the war in the Pacific, VD and whores, Great Depression America. His skin was like paper from the trash, so crumpled he had to point out his mended harelip.
One morning Dupre said, I’m blind. It happened in my sleep. Just like that.
Clay carried him down the zigzagging stairs like a princess, the old man’s breath reeking of tobacco, his bony shoulders folded to his chin, as fragile as a bird’s wings.
Don’t cry, Dupre said.
I’m not, Clay told him as tears flooded his beard.
I don’t want to depart the earth wearing diapers, Dupre said. Good Lord, I do not.
Clay kept working his throat to make himself swallow.
Stop, Dupre told him. I just remembered I hate hospitals.
Clay stood on the fractured sidewalk, the old man insubstantial in his arms.
How about we drink one last good time, Dupre said. I have a few stories left. Then I’ll go in my sleep like a civilized man.
They sat up all night, Dupre’s eyes half-lidded or wide and aimed at nothing as he described the phases of a life that shone before Clay more briefly than the sun flashing between clouds: a stint as a boxer, a manager of a sporting goods store, a UPS driver, a forklift driver, an inventory manager, a tire salesman, a quality checker for extension cords. Dawn came up over the swamps, and in the hazy, humid air it ballooned into an immense pearl before the light released and washed into the sky. Dupre was asleep. Clay carried him to his bed.
Late that afternoon, hangover like a wind in the back of his head, he got up off the couch and went into the bedroom and drew the sheet up over Dupre’s head.
Baptism by firefight, one of his friends had said. What can we go back to after that?
Clay sat alone in the house and cried harder than he had in years.
After the funeral, he found himself a job as a security contractor in Kabul. He was promoted from guarding to training and managing other men, but he grew restless. He’d be almost asleep and become aware of the beating of his heart. Repeated thuds. Like footsteps in an empty house. Had he heard or thought something, or just slipped past thought into the systolic rhythm of his blood? Nothing calmed him, not drink or masturbation or reading.
At first, Alexandra had seemed like a much-needed adventure, but in the safe room, she’d become more than a long-overdue fuck or a means of revenge. She neither cried nor withdrew into herself, and her eyes didn’t become empty. She gazed at the screen like someone who’d been broken and needed to face destruction again — if not to master it, then to master herself in its place.
Justin’s expression could have been mistaken for hers, but his was the delusion of a mystic: the refusal to realize that only men killing each other — and nothing divine — would save him. After 9/11, in Lake Charles, Justin and his parents had changed, their faith and militancy fused. On Clay’s only visit to their church, the pastor described their battle against the devil and lowered his voice to incite them to redeem their country through spiritual warfare. But Alexandra had come here aware of the reality, and now that something had happened, she was determined not to turn away.
Clay had been tense but confident. He knew that if the door was blasted open and the insurgents fired, he would be among the survivors. Other foreigners might die, but he wouldn’t. He felt the uplift of adrenaline, the familiar bracing; that was all.
Only after the last attacker fell and the trembling expats drank their gin did desire flood his body. They all filed out, blood and burnt flesh squelching under their shoes, some of them gagging, until they were outside, walking in the frozen mud. Alexandra was leaving with her friends, and there was no way to talk to her alone.
The street blazed, a circus of army and police trucks, milling with soldiers, neighbors, photojournalists, cameramen, and the rabble of expat war tourists who’d yet to find a regular gig that legitimized voyeurism. Afghan Special Forces led Idris outside. Clay had eventually noticed his absence in the safe room. He hurried over to say Idris was his employee.
Justin joined them. Idris was soaked in sweat. He’d hidden in the bedroom, too terrified to come out after the blast.
The NDS agent who spoke with him seemed doubtful, but that was his job. Justin vouched for Idris. The agent took Idris’s cell, searched him, and left.
As Idris was leaving with Justin, he looked back at Clay, pale and terrified, as if the danger hadn’t ended. Clay’s gut clenched. Kidnapping Rashidi’s son — Steve had him in the basement, its entrance hidden, virtually impossible for the police to find — and the negotiations had gone too well. He wondered if the attack was more than a random targeting of foreigners.
He texted Alexandra.
Meet me at my place.
He scanned the crowd. His phone buzzed.
Why?
I want you.
He put the cell in his pocket and was climbing onto his motorcycle when it buzzed again.
I’ll text when I’m in the taxi. In abo
ut an hour. What’s your address?
He sent it and rode home. Involuntarily, he considered Idris’s fear. He’d been cautious and obedient during the negotiations, and he’d been good under pressure. He should have known better than to hide in the bedroom.
Clay climbed his stairs. He stopped on his terrace, too impatient to go inside. The clouds had blown past and to the north a military surveillance blimp glinted in its usual place.
The night before he’d shot Justin, his mother had gotten the news from her family in Maine that his father was dead. Clem had fallen asleep in the hoop garage with his truck running. He and his mother kept quiet, alone with their thoughts. The next day Clay bought the air rifles and the Christmas tree bulbs, spending everything he had. He hardly remembered making the plan. He wasn’t even sure he’d carry it out.
When the police arrived, Clay claimed he’d blinded Justin by accident. The officers were so busy rounding up drunk, underage kids and getting them home that they accepted his answer. Justin’s father said he wouldn’t press charges but gave Clay and his mother until dawn to be out of the carriage house.
They packed and moved into Demetrie’s. The power was off and the rooms were musty. Later, unable to sleep, he went outside, through the weeds and bladelike grass and vines of the jungle. He walked to Justin’s house, where he climbed the pecan tree.
The aquarium illuminated the bedroom. Justin lay bundled, his shoulders and head on pillows. A bandage covered his eye, artfully arranged, the way doctors and nurses did it, and this, too, seemed a mark of privilege — a beret jauntily worn, or a blazon. The uncovered part of his face appeared waxy in the blue light. Clay felt that if Justin opened his eye, everything from that night would be erased.
The next day Clay enlisted. It was the beginning he’d been attempting for so long.
A car passed somewhere, sounding too decrepit to be bringing Alexandra, its muffler’s heat shield rattling.
Into the Sun Page 28