But Jamil’s phone number went straight to voice mail, and when Amy walked out to the guard shack, Wajid ambled out to say with a yawn, “He went to the bazaar, but he returned long ago. Perhaps he has returned to his quarters to sleep. He left very early.”
“Well, if you can take a minute to check, please let him know we need his help in the clinic.”
Jamil’s phone might be dead. With no power in his quarters, he could only charge it when there was electricity to do so in the office. Looking around, Amy noted another absence. “Where’s Gorg?”
The German shepherd puppy had been immediately and unanimously designated Wolf by the New Hope residents. Keeping the puppy from being loved to death had been the biggest challenge, and since she wasn’t housebroken, there’d been a certain amount of cleanup. But seeing even Aryana’s somber expression break into delight at Gorg’s antics was worth any mess. Had Steve any idea how therapeutic the cuddly animal might prove to these women and children? Or was perimeter defense the only thought on the security contractor’s mind?
And speaking of perimeter defense, Amy had forgotten to turn off the fiber-optic fencing in the rush of setting up the clinic. Not that there was any real urgency until the children finished morning classes. Digging Frisbees out of the barbed wire and off the roof tiles had become a sport in itself.
Amy thrust away an unwelcome pang as she glanced around the yard. She hadn’t seen or heard from Steve since Thanksgiving. Had she irretrievably offended him? Or now that he’d satisfied his curiosity that Amy was indeed the teenager in that old photo, had he decided Amy—and New Hope—held no further interest for him?
Did Amy even want to see Steve again? I can’t change who I am nor can he, so what’s the point?
“The child took the gorg.” Wajid yawned again. By his listlessness, last night had involved opium again. Amy was going to have to talk to Rasheed about an assistant, if not a replacement. We need a night guard who’s actually awake.
“What child?” But even as Amy made the sharp demand, her survey landed on a slight figure stepping out from behind the jungle gym, a wriggly bundle clutched close to a thin chest. Tamana’s older brother.
“Fahim, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in classes? And why aren’t you wearing your sweatshirt?” The blue material identified a winter pullover all the children had received for Eid.
Then Amy took in fever-bright eyes and flushed cheeks. Fahim bent to cough into his squirming burden before he explained. “The teacher said I was making too much noise. Farah said I should go upstairs to see the doctor. I just wanted to see the gorg first.”
“Well, you’re going up right now.” Unraveling the puppy, Amy sent her scampering into the guard shack as Fahim tugged the sweatshirt over his head. “Now come.”
Fahim obeyed, sliding a hot, small hand into Amy’s as they walked back up the cobblestone path. He doubled over to cough when they reached the marble steps. But as they stepped into the hall, his fever-bright eyes held joy as he lifted them to Amy. “The gorg—she is so beautiful! And though her teeth are sharp, she does not bite. Is this how the first man and woman played in the garden with the animals? Do you think when the savior comes, we will truly be able to play so with the snow leopards and tigers and lions like Simba?”
“There is no savior!”
Amy’s heart jumped as a door slammed shut behind Rasheed’s burly frame. The chowkidar had walked out of the storage depot in time to hear Fahim. A large hand came down on the boy’s shoulder as he said sternly, “Such stories are infidel teaching, not Muslim. Miss Ameera will not tell such a story again. Illaha illa Allah. Muhammad rasul Allah. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”
As Fahim obediently repeated the shahada, Rasheed stared at Amy with a coldness that sent a chill through her. “Now go back to class!”
As the boy turned toward the schoolroom doors, Amy roused herself to interfere. “No, he’s sick. He needs to see the doctor. Go on up, Fahim. I’ll be right there.”
Rasheed slammed the door behind him, then explained curtly, “As you requested, I have looked for more shelves to hold the supplies the foreigners brought. But there are no more. We will have to purchase new from the bazaar.” Turning a key in the lock behind him, he strode away.
Amy looked after him with dismay. Despite the chowkidar’s recent sullenness, this was the first time he or anyone else had directly challenged one of the stories Amy had told the children, and she didn’t know whether to be more worried or angry at his blanket interdiction.
He may manage the property, but he has no authority over my project. What does he think he can do—call the cops on me?
That this was not, in fact, out of the realm of possibility fanned Amy’s anger higher. She’d thought little about Islam before coming to this place. Like Buddhism or Hinduism or atheistic Communism, it was simply one of many belief systems that happened not to be her own, all jostling for human hearts and power and position.
But Amy was fast coming to hate this one with a passion that dismayed her. Not as she’d seen it operate in her own homeland, where its followers were at least free to choose its tenets. Free because Christian values guarantee their right to worship as they choose.
Ironically such fundamentalist regimes that would never even allow someone like her to operate on their soil inflamed Amy less than her current circumstances. But this was a country inundated with an international community giving time and funds to help at every level, much of it coming from those Christian nations Rasheed dismissed as infidel. The very government of this place was propped precariously in place only because of the efforts and weapons and money of those same infidels.
Steve is so right.
How much so was suddenly clear. All that Amy had come to admire about these people’s resilience, hospitality, and deep spirituality could not weigh against the grim reality that any Afghan could be condemned to prison or death if they followed their own conscience in matters of faith or even their own reading material. That women could still be possessed and dispossessed as chattel. That dress, food, learning, and even the smallest actions within the privacy of one’s own living space had to conform to some rigid code. And all because Islam and the sharia law that gave it teeth dominated every waking and sleeping breath its subjects took.
It seemed so vastly unfair Amy wanted to scream out in rebellion, rail her fists in frustration against that solid wall behind which a billion of the planet’s population were locked away in the greatest totalitarian regime humanity had ever known. The more so as Amy had come to know and love individuals bound beneath its powerful grip and blinded by its mockery of the truth. To share, however vicariously, in their suffering and their despair.
When Amy went up the stairs, she found Fahim beside Najeeda’s son, the two boys’ heads together in whispered conversation and a duet of coughing.
There is a Savior, Fahim. There is hope and beauty and love. A God who is not distant and angry but who loves you enough to come himself to walk this earth. If only I could tell you about him.
Reentering the infirmary, Amy demanded stormily, “How can you stand it?”
Becky looked up in surprise. She’d finished laying out the contents of her medical bag and was shrugging on the white jacket that turned her from guest into physician. “Stand what?”
“All of this. You’ve been here years now helping these people. And the local authorities are happy to let you do their responsibility for them. They take and take and take. Yet you can’t share with your patients what matters most—how much God loves them, that Jesus died for their sins, that there’s hope for their lives.”
Amy caught interested eyes from the hallway and closed the door to a crack. It was just as well none of them spoke English. “How can you keep it in? I just want to shout out to them what I feel and believe.”
“It isn’t easy.” Becky looked at Amy serenely. “But it’s a choice we’ve all had to make before coming over here. Maybe you’
re having such a hard time because this was something sprung on you and not something you had time to weigh for yourself. Those of us allowed into this country in a humanitarian capacity are required to come to an agreement we won’t use that concession to proselytize. That doesn’t mean we can’t answer questions about our personal faith when people ask, but we can’t openly encourage people to become followers of Jesus Christ. Especially children, which would be so easy because we’re working directly with so many and have built relationships of authority as well as affection.”
“But isn’t that—” Cowardly? Amy didn’t finish aloud. Jamil’s challenge was still burning in her ears. “I mean, Peter and Paul and the other disciples and early Christians didn’t wait until they had the blessing of the local authorities, or they’d never have talked about Jesus.”
“Do you think that isn’t a question we all grapple with? Countless followers of Jesus Christ have taken their lives in their hands to carry that good news into hostile territory. And they continue to do so. But they go in openly with their faith. The difference here is that as Western foreigners, we’ve only been allowed into Afghanistan through a specific contract with their government. The choice isn’t whether to speak or not to speak but whether to come here under certain restrictions—or not to come at all.”
Becky finished buttoning her white coat, but she showed no impatience as she went on mildly, “We come here believing that showing God’s love through meeting these people’s survival needs—as Jesus did so often—is better than nothing. And obeying the conditions we agreed to before coming isn’t just a matter of honesty and integrity. Breaking those conditions puts every other Christian expat here in a humanitarian or any other capacity in jeopardy. Meanwhile we keep praying that one day conditions will change and the doors will swing completely open.”
And if for these women, these precious children, that comes too late? Aloud, Amy said bitterly, “You mean, like we all thought was happening when the Taliban were overthrown.”
“That was a hope that never materialized,” Becky admitted. “God’s ways aren’t always ours. Or his timing. I believe that God can work even through restrictions to show his love. But if you aren’t willing to do your work here under the conditions we all face, you may want to consider whether you should be here at all. Or whether maybe you need to turn this project over to someone else before you place yourself and others around you at risk.”
It was an admonition Amy might have expected from Steve. But from the American nurse who’d become her friend, it stung even as Amy recognized its justice. Amy might not have asked for this situation. But she’d accepted the conditions even if she hadn’t been completely aware of what it would entail.
“I know the issues. I know what’s required of me. It’s just—never mind, we need to get started.” Amy took a step toward the door. “We’ll have to wait for Jamil to examine the boys. But I’d like to take Najeeda first. She’s been getting worse. And now some of the others are showing the same symptoms. Do you think we need to set up a quarantine?”
The handle was still under Amy’s fingers when the shock wave blew the door open. The thunderclap of sound bursting against her eardrums followed so close Amy could not have told which it was that picked her up and threw her across the room.
So far, so good.
The opening ceremony had ended earlier than Steve anticipated, the cold dampening any inclination for speakers to ramble. Jim Waters and his congressional delegation had listened with deadpan courtesy to passionate pledges to turn the new Counternarcotics Justice Center into an all-out weapon on opium production. The Afghans had listened with equally straight faces to Waters’s ambitious strategy of eradication, alternative economy, security, and brotherly love.
Now a solid phalanx of counternarcotics police and a Gurkha unit steered a much smaller group to the council room where Afghan leadership and the Waters deputation would dialogue directly. Another security team channeled the entourages to the center’s new cafeteria, where they’d be corralled until the loya jirga was over. The news crews thrust microphones and cameras at anyone in their path as they were herded out the gate.
Meanwhile, the DynCorp PSD had whisked their principals through the cut ribbon as soon as the last speech was over. Only the CS detail remained on alert in the front courtyard. Though the event had been shifted from the MOI compound, Khalid was technically still the host, and he embraced and kissed every VIP before they moved indoors. A display for lingering news crews, Steve wondered sourly, or buttering up potential collaborators?
The reception line was dwindling, so Steve headed down the hall for a final check of the loya jirga setup. At least two-thirds of the Afghan VIPs were already seated on the cushions and tushaks. Waters, with his embassy handlers, DCM Carl Bolton and DEA chief Ramon Placido, was chatting with the ministers of agriculture and counternarcotics. A translator stood behind a lectern. Scattered around the rugs were trays of honey pastries and bazaar-bought Oreos and other imported cookies and crackers, offered to honor their American guests. Servants were handing around cups of red chai.
Police uniforms along the walls eyed the refreshments covetously. Steve’s glance was caught by one uniform directly across from the door. Light hair and eyes of a Tajik or Uzbek northerner under a jammed-down cap rang no bells. But something in that slight frame hunched against the cold in a too-big parka tugged at Steve in vague recognition.
Then he placed that nagging familiarity, and tension eased. The uniform who’d jumped to the snap of Ismail’s fingers during that fracas at the gate earlier. Satisfied, Steve went back down the hall. When he stepped outside, the front gate was shut. Only Khalid still stood between the marble columns of the entrance portico, his CS detail hovering watchfully close.
Khalid looked pleased, and his broad smile held neither guile nor any consciousness of guilt as he turned to Steve. “It goes well, does it not? Why do you frown so?”
“Forgive me, Minister,” Steve said even as he thought, I don’t get this guy. He was itching to propel his principal after Waters and team. Too many rooftops and windows had line of sight on the marble-columned entrance portico, and Steve had no intention of offering anyone even the smallest odds of completing what that sugar factory bomber had failed to achieve. “Your guests have been served tea,” he hinted delicately. “Would you care for something?”
Just then Ismail hurried out of the entrance behind them. “Minister, all is ready. They wait only for their host.”
“Then let us go.” But Khalid didn’t move immediately. He turned to survey his surroundings, his broad smile even more complacent as a satisfied gaze ran across freshly painted buildings, tiled courtyards, walkways, and high walls. And with reason. The multimillion-dollar facility was one more massive jewel in the Ministry of Interior crown.
One eye on his watch, the other on the skyline, Steve let another sixty seconds tick off before he debated a suggestive clearing of the throat.
Ismail saved him the trouble. “Minister—”
The shrilling of a cell phone inside his parka interrupted Ismail. Steve discreetly edged his principal inside the cover of the entryway as Khalid’s deputy answered. Steve’s antenna sprang to high alert at Ismail’s expression. “What is it?” Steve asked.
Slowly, even shakily, Ismail lowered the phone. “There has been a bombing.”
“A bombing? Here at the summit?” Surely, even with the size of the Justice Center, they’d have heard the blast if there’d been an explosion anywhere.
“Not here. On the minister’s own property.”
If Steve had suspected Khalid’s wily maneuverings in that remote-control suicide bomb, he did so no longer. There was no faking the shock and fury that were shaking Khalid, the draining of blood under the skin that left his lips chalk white.
“My property! Sherpur? Baghlan? But why would anyone try to kill me there?”
“No, no, not your personal residence. Only a rental property,” Ismail reassured.
>
“Which means you probably weren’t the target,” Steve consoled automatically. Then as his brain continued to process, he demanded, “Which property?”
Before Ismail could answer, Steve’s phone rang. “Yes?”
The incoming call was the same Aussie operative who’d installed the spy-cam system, on monitor duty this morning at the Sherpur command center. “Wilson, that fiber-optic extension over in Wazir just went haywire for a second. It’s back online now. I’d guess a power surge except there’s no electricity involved. Maybe a malfunction?”
“No, not a malfunction.” Steve no longer had any doubt to which property Ismail was referring. Licking dryness from his lips, he hung up and turned to Khalid. “Our command center confirms a situation at your Wazir property.”
“Then it was not after all an attempt on my life.” The minister had brought himself under control because the fury and shock on his face were now tight-lipped annoyance as he threw Ismail an irritated glance. “Perhaps not even a bomb. Accidental explosions are common enough in winter when people are careless with their heaters. Come, we waste time. Our guests are waiting.”
“But there may be casualties.”
“The chowkidar will report any damages to my aide.” Khalid indicated Ismail. “In any case it is not of great concern. I am informed the current tenants are only female criminals an American charity has chosen to shelter.” The minister spoke over his shoulder as he walked, his detail and Ismail hurrying to close up. “Perhaps this is Allah’s judgment for their sins.”
At that moment Steve hated Khalid. He swung around to his shift leader, Jamie McDuff, bringing up the rear behind Khalid’s diamond. “He’s all yours. Let Hamilton know I’ve got an off-site emergency. I’ll be in touch.”
Steve had taken two steps when his strides became a trot. I told you your security was lousy! That a female expat living alone in unsecured quarters was begging to be made a target! But would you listen to me? Steve brought his Aussie shift supervisor back on the line. “I need you to rustle up an emergency response team and get them over to Wazir. Call the team house. They’re closer.”
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