Veiled Freedom

by Jeanette Windle

  Tears poured hot and furious down Amy’s cheeks again. “I do see. It’s just . . . oh, Jamil—”

  This time the door slammed back into the wall. All three of the contractors were marching into the room as Jamil and Amy scrambled to their feet.

  Stooping for his pack, Jamil said quietly to Amy, “Forgive me. I have lingered much too long. I must go now.”

  Amy made no further protest. She snatched up Jamil’s pack and set it on the table. “Just one minute.” Fumbling to open the knot that bound it, she swept all the remaining first aid supplies on the table on top of his scant clothing. “You may need these along the way.”

  The cash box was in the office, but Amy always kept an emergency stash of afghanis in her shoulder bag. Digging out the entire wad, she dropped it on top of the pile. “Your severance pay.”

  Then Jamil was moving away.

  Dropping into the chair, Amy drew her shawl back over her face, lowered her eyes to the hands knotted in her lap.

  “Get him down to the gate and off the property.”

  There was a shuffle of boots. A door closing. Silence reigned over the room. Amy knew she wasn’t alone only because of boot tips intruding into her peripheral vision.

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  The demand was so unexpected, Amy’s head jerked up.

  Then through gritted teeth, Steve burst out, “Didn’t I warn you these people would break your heart?”

  Amy didn’t try to explain. Why should the former soldier believe a story too like tales fabricated by any number of real terrorists to talk their way past American interrogators? Her gesture was a helpless one. “You don’t understand.”

  “Understand?” Steve paced a tight circle around Amy’s rug before swinging about to face her again. A muscle bunched at his jawline. Then Amy saw impassivity fall like a mask over his face, heard formal courtesy take over his tone. “What I understand is that my men and I have intruded on you long enough. Especially since it would appear our interference was neither needed nor wanted after all. If you’ll excuse me, we’ll be off the premises just as soon as I can get everyone rounded up.”

  “Wait!” Amy leaped to her feet as Steve turned away. “I just remembered, my landlord down there, Khalid, your client—he said something about you remembering the day Jamil was captured. You were part of the Special Forces fighting with the mujahedeen. Were you here that day?”

  He turned, and the grim blankness of his expression gave the answer even before he said curtly, “It was war. The battle to liberate Kabul. That piece isn’t one I’ve cared to remember.”

  It was war. Just what Khalid had said. Then Jamil was right. There was no going back to the past, only forward to the future. But there was one other thing Amy had to know. “I sent a New Testament with that letter. Jamil told me one of the American soldiers was kind to him, even wrote a note in a New Testament to give to the interrogators so he wouldn’t go to prison.”

  “One more piece of well-meaning interference that made no difference. Would you believe I even trotted up to Bagram on my next leave to make sure the kid was okay? But intel geeks don’t talk to grunts like me. I always assumed the kid had been let go.”

  So there hadn’t been a broken promise. “And now? Are you really going to let Jamil go, like Khalid promised he could?”

  “Didn’t I say so?” Steve took a long stride toward her. “Did you think I was lying down there? Or that I’m not capable of keeping my word?”

  Something in the harsh demand hurt in Amy’s chest as much as Jamil’s own pain. “I didn’t mean it like that. Please, you can’t possibly be blaming yourself for all this. Like you said, it was war, and you were doing what you were trained to do. I’m sure a lot of things happened we’d all give anything to change. But at least you did what you could. Today, too. About Jamil, do you think I don’t understand you did what you had to here? Or that I wouldn’t rather know the truth—no matter how it’s turned out?”

  Amy broke off. How could she possibly speak to what was going on behind those stony features any more than she could sympathize with the horror of Jamil’s narrative? “I’m sorry. I’m in no place to be handing out platitudes. I just—I don’t want you to go without knowing how much I appreciate all you’ve done today. And all your men out there, too. If nothing else, at least we know someone’s not targeting New Hope.”

  Swallowing, Amy lowered her head to wipe a corner of her scarf surreptitiously across her damp face before lifting her chin to manage an unsteady smile. “I hope you’ll pass on my gratitude to your associates. And that I didn’t totally embarrass your men by coming unglued like this. I guess I’m just not as brave as I hoped I’d prove in a crisis like this.”

  “Are you kidding? No Special Ops I’ve ever worked with could have kept their head and looked out for their troops under fire better than I saw this afternoon.” His expression softened slightly. “In fact, Ian tells me he’ll take you at his back in a firefight any day. You did just fine, Ms. Amy Mallory.”

  This time Amy’s smile lit her whole face. But what she would have said, what he might have answered, Amy had no idea because just then the door opened. “Miss Ameera.”

  It was Soraya, an arm around her daughter, her husband hovering behind. The police below must have finished releasing the detainees.

  Steve straightened, his body language withdrawing even before he stepped toward the door. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll let you get your world back to normal.”

  Then he was gone.

  “Can you believe the perp turned out to be that kid we detained here on liberation day? I’d totally forgotten that little piece of action.”

  The CS emergency response team was pulling away from the curb, the last green pickup belonging to Jason Hamilton’s police trainees just disappearing around a corner. Khalid and his convoy had left before Steve was ever downstairs again.

  “What’s really chilling,” Phil went on, limping beside Steve down the sidewalk to where they’d left the SUV, “is that all our safeguards weren’t enough. Like you always say, there’s no way to rule out the traitor within. We’re alive only because Jamil changed his mind. And for that alone, I can’t believe Khalid let the guy walk out the gate. After all, we still don’t have whatever MOI accomplice let him on the grounds. A few Pul-e-Charki tactics were bound to squeeze something more out of the guy.”

  Phil raised an eyebrow at Steve. “You think Khalid had an attack of conscience for what happened all those years ago?”

  “Sure, maybe. Or maybe he’s smarter than we’re giving him credit. Look what he gets out of this. He’s got it on record in front of Jason Hamilton, who has Waters’s detail and his ear, that Khalid’s not only a genuine target, but there’s still unknown perps out there after his neck.”

  Steve held up his cell phone. “Cougar just called that as soon as Waters heard about our little adventure, he gave an immediate green light to extend Khalid’s detail another three months. On the flip side, with Jamil out of the picture, Khalid doesn’t have to worry about any embarrassing public testimony that might paint him negatively just when he’s making himself very popular inside and outside of Afghanistan.”

  “You’re right.” Phil stopped abruptly on the sidewalk. “I can’t believe I never caught that. Why that wily, devious—”

  Steve dug out his keys to unlock the SUV. “Though maybe Khalid really does feel he owes the guy something, some sort of redressing the scales of justice, like they believe. You know, earn back some merit by showing himself merciful.”

  Phil shook his head as he got into the passenger’s side. “I’ll admit I don’t understand how our principal’s brain works. Or any of these people. They don’t think like we do, not about what’s right or wrong or anything else. And that’s a problem. Because if we don’t get what makes these people tick, even why this guy would change his mind today, we’re fooling ourselves we can turn things around here.”

  Change his mind. Sl
iding into the driver’s seat, Steve started the engine. He’d asked himself once what could make a suicide bomber change his—or her—mind. Was the answer so simple as it appeared?

  Unlike Amy, Steve had no intention of so easily forgiving today’s events. Whatever the justification—and too many terrorists had their own tale of tragedy—he despised everything Jamil stood for, every thought process, every decision that could turn a human being into a cold-blooded, calculating instrument of death.

  And yet one thing Steve could admire about the man who’d been Amy’s assistant. He’d at least been committed to a mission, a cause, enough to be willing to give his own life for it.

  The passion Steve understood because he’d once shared it himself. As he’d witnessed such passion in Amy Mallory, who despite all evidence, insisted not just on considering these people worth saving but in offering her own self on their behalf.

  And like Steve, when Jamil had deemed his cause no longer worth the sacrifice, he’d abandoned the mission. What would the other man do now with the new lease life had granted him?

  And Steve himself?

  Phil was still talking. “So with the contract extension, I guess we’ll be in town a few more months.”

  Steve’s reply was impulsive, but the decision had been months in the making. “You may. I’m out of here as soon as I can find a replacement.”

  Phil swiveled around to stare in disbelief. “Hey, just drop a bombshell, will you? So you’ve decided to listen to me, after all. Where are you going to go?”

  Steve considered as he gunned the SUV down the street. “I don’t know. Maybe in search of something to believe in.”

  Jamil had not expected to walk out a free man. So he wasn’t surprised when his liberty lasted less than two blocks. This time the meeting place was not the ruined building but the police headquarters of the local precinct whose uniforms had shown up at New Hope the night of the break-in. The man training a weapon on Jamil’s breastbone had co-opted the precinct commander’s office. He wore the suit and Army parka in which he’d greeted Jamil that morning. But no longer was he making any attempt to conceal aquiline, hawk-nosed features.

  As Jamil no longer had to pretend not to know the name that went with that tall, powerful frame. Ismail, deputy minister of interior.

  “You did not complete your mission.” The deputy’s tone was flat, his calm deadly. “You betrayed your people and your oath. Why should I not shoot you like the lying dog you are, that you may offer excuses to Allah himself before you are banished to the farthest reaches of hell?”

  Jamil’s bundle was once again open and in disarray. Picking out a folded paper, he dropped it onto the desk behind which Ismail sat, his own voice no less flat and calm. “This is why I did not carry out my mission. You are the liar who will answer to Allah.”

  Surprise broke Ismail’s cold composure. He unfolded the 8½ by 11 sheet. It was one of the photos he’d handed over the day before. Two women, one in a burqa, Jamil’s female replica staring expressionlessly into the camera. “This? What is the difficulty?”

  Jamil’s casual relaxing against the doorframe didn’t betray that he needed its firmness so that he did not tremble. “There are things it seems you have not bothered to find out about my family. My mother’s tribe is Pashtun. It is said I look like her. My father was Tajik, a northerner much in appearance like the disguise you gave me.”

  The stillness that settled over the room told Jamil the implications of that conversational statement had sunk in. “Yes, my sister will have changed much over the years. But only Allah can change eyes the lapis lazuli of a Band-e Amir lake to black.”

  Ismail finally broke the silence. “You will not walk out of here alive.”

  Beyond the closed office door could be heard the precinct commander giving orders, the movements and voices of a dozen armed men.

  Jamil shook his head as he straightened up from the doorframe, keeping his hands in sight as a trigger finger tightened across the desk. “I will—because of these.”

  He tossed two more photos onto the desk, close-ups of a man’s bent head, one wrapped in a turban, the other not, but unmistakably alike. As Ismail’s expression changed, Jamil took one more item from his pack. The portable DVD player he’d purchased with his Eid bonus for this very occasion. Opening the small screen, he set it to play. Before the recording finished, a gun butt had smashed the machine to silence.

  “Then you did see me in the lightning. I feared so.”

  “I did not know who you were until you came by night to the place of employment you had arranged for me. My employer requested I take pictures of the men you arrested. When I saw your face among them, I thought to hide the camera among the fallen walls on our next meeting. Until you lied to me, I did not know to what use I might put it. But though your face cannot be seen there, your voice and movements are the same as the other taping, so that none will mistake the cameraman taping a testimony of shaheed or giving instructions to create a bomb. And believe me, I am not so foolish as to make only the one copy you have destroyed. If I do not leave here untouched, that recording will be on YouTube by nightfall, on your employer’s TV screen tomorrow.”

  Jamil saw no disbelief as he gathered up his belongings, leaving only the smashed DVD player and photos. “I am not your adversary. If I will no longer be part of your mission, I will do nothing to aid your enemy and mine. But I have chosen another path, another mission. I ask only to walk away, to be left in peace to carry it out.”

  “But why?” His one-time mentor looked genuinely bewildered. “Your heart was set. To strike this blow for the freedom of our people was your vision more than mine. This—” he pushed away the photo of the two women—“was only a bonus. What has changed you so?”

  Jamil shook his head. “That was your error. You compelled me to wait. And you told me as I waited to go forth and live. So I did. I went forth. I lived. And in so doing, I discovered that triumph lies not in death but in life. That freedom is not won through lies but in truth.”

  He braced for the bullets as he turned and walked out.

  But they never came.

  “There is plywood up on the broken windows, and I have hired two guards to watch with Wajid. The big doors can be repaired. The workers are making new hinges now. No, no, you must not offer payment. The bomb was against our landlord, and he will restore all damages.”

  Rasheed was being obsequiously helpful, his relief patent that the bomb wasn’t on his conscience. That other confession, neither the chowkidar nor Amy had chosen to bring up. If he’s really learned his lesson, fine. If not, I’ve got my eyes open.

  Heading upstairs, Amy paused in the doorway of the extra suite that had been locked until now. Soraya, Fatima, and Ibrahim were moving around the empty space, discussing placement of belongings.

  Catching sight of Amy, Soraya rushed over to kiss her on both cheeks. “We are leaving now. But we will be back tomorrow, and then you will meet my son.” A glance at Ibrahim. “My husband’s son, Fariq.”

  Amy walked past her own quarters to the office. Her conference call with Mr. Korallis was long overdue. Soraya said Ibrahim’s an engineer with the city water. We’ve been wanting to start a water project up the hill in that new neighborhood. I wonder if he’d consider working for New Hope.

  The electricity was still off, the only illumination in the hall a dwindling twilight coming through the office window as Amy opened the door, so it was a soft whine that alerted her to a silent figure rising from a huddle against the wall.

  Farah raised a troubled face from the puppy she was clutching tight as though for comfort. “Is it true what they say—that Jamil-jan is gone? Who then will tell your stories or care for the children’s hurts? Some even say it was he who tried to hurt us today. But that isn’t true, is it?”

  Amy sighed at the shimmer of tears in Farah’s long-lashed, blue green eyes. Maybe it hadn’t been wise or kind to introduce a young, undeniably good-looking man into the Welayat women’s t
ightly proscribed world. Was this one reason the teenager had always been so eager to follow on Amy’s heels? Jamil had never spoken to the women nor hardly looked at them. But to a young girl once sold off to a sixty-year-old, how could a man like Jamil seem anything less than an Afghan Prince Charming?

  “No, Jamil would never hurt us,” Amy reassured gently. “But it is true he is gone. Are you going to miss him?”

  “I don’t know.” Farah’s fair-skinned, young face looked as bewildered as unhappy. “I have always been afraid of men. My uncle was cruel, like the man he chose as my husband. But Jamil-jan, he made me feel safe. Like my father and brothers when I was small, though I remember them little.”

  Another life story Amy had not yet learned.

  “We’ll figure out what to do about story time tomorrow. You did such a good job the other day, maybe you’d like to tell some of the stories for me. As to the bandages and medicine Miss Becky left, how would you like to help me? Maybe even learn to do it yourself, like Jamil.”

  “You think I could?” Farah’s face lit up. “Maybe I can become a doctor like Miss Becky.” Then her smile faded. “And Jamil-jan? Do you think he will ever return?”

  “I don’t know. But we can hope and pray so.”

  As Farah disappeared with the puppy out onto the balcony, Amy entered the office. She was lifting the sat phone from its charger when she noticed a stack scattered by the explosion. Amy hadn’t yet looked over the printouts and DVD Jamil had put together last night. One last service he’d left for New Hope. Picking up a thin package, Amy felt the shape of a DVD through duct-taped plastic. She’d started to rip it open when she saw the note taped to it in Jamil’s neat printing.