by Mike Bond
“I might ask you the same. Aren’t you supposed to be in the desert?”
“Why aren’t you on the torture run to Kuwait?” Jack stepped past him, heading for the back. “Isn’t that more your style?”
Timothy smiled. “That plane was full.”
Jack thought of Samarra. “Maybe you’re going where you’re supposed to be.”
FEARING CAR BOMBS Isabelle walked fast through the streets in a long black robe and headscarf, her wicker shopping bag on her arm. She passed a café, wanting to sit there like you could in the old days before the invasion.
But now every parked car was death, every busy market and café, every man in a burly jacket that could hide explosives. Before Jack had come back from the dead she would not have cared, might have sat there anyway, for she’d had nothing to lose, had already lost it all, the hope that this man she barely knew but wanted so much would ever return from the desert. She’d bit down on her pain and told herself no matter what just keep going, life isn’t supposed to be happy... you’re just here to take back what you’ve lost.
Now vengeance seemed alien. Of course it matters, she told herself, you can’t let Colin’s murder go unavenged. Sophie’s and Leo’s and Sarah’s too. Strange how she was thinking of them now as her family too... But as she’d told Jack last night you also can’t let it keep you from living.
She thought of the café. How sad the invasion had stolen from these people the right to sit happy in the morning sun, to be safe, to raise their children in peace. But she didn’t have to die here, Jack didn’t. That didn’t help these people. And there were cafés in Paris and London and Prague and Sydney. She and Jack hadn’t started this war. They didn’t have to pay. Not any longer.
She stopped at a butcher’s to buy two mutton hocks, thinking Jack likes lamb. Now that they had their own kitchen she could cook whatever they wanted. She’d buy the lamb now, while it was here; he’d be right back from Kabul, they’d have it then.
In a vegetable stall she made a quick purchase of greens and cabbage from a quiet sad little man with bad teeth. I’m sorry, she wanted to say, it’s not my fault but I’m sorry. But in the new Iraq it was not a woman’s place to speak out, to take such a chance.
The sudden riot of bougainvillea and hibiscus over a concrete wall shocked her with its purple and orange magnificence. She thought of Jack again. Already familiar as her own skin. He’d promised he’d be careful in Kabul. The thought of making love made her shiver, this man filling her, wanting to give him joy and love.
WAHID’S PALACE spread along a slope overlooking the ruins of Kabul. The perimeter was a ten-foot wall of new concrete blocks, some stamped in red, “USAID School Reconstruction Fund”, and above that rolls of concertina wire glistening in the sun. The main gate was guarded by two men with new American M-4s and by a Soviet PKS tripod-mounted machine gun dug in thirty yards back on the right.
Inside was a large main villa surrounded by dried lawns and dead hedges now being replanted. Several smaller buildings along the upslope edge appeared inhabited by the families of guards and servants. In the distance at the rear was what seemed a madrasah, with ranks of boys facing a teacher who paced before them.
In his Afghani clothes Jack waited in line with the others wanting to see the Eagle of the Hindu Kush.
“Why do you wish to see him?” the guard said.
“I have a debt to pay,” Jack said.
“What’s your name?” the guard said, using the diminutive for children and fools.
“Tell him Ahmad al-Din.”
“What debt?”
“The first stone.”
“WHEN THIS ALL STARTED,” Wahid smiled down at Timothy, “who could have thought it would turn out so well?”
“You’ve done a good job bringing back the old ways.” Timothy tipped ash on the floor. “You’ve done well too: the Hummers, the palace –”
“House,” Wahid said.
Wahid had a cobra-shaped scar on his right cheek, Timothy noticed. Snakes, a symbol of forbidden knowledge. “Yes,” Timothy added. “The house. The servants. The bank accounts, the boys, the new madrasahs...”
Wahid watched him. “It’s a mistake to look too deeply into things.”
“But things mustn’t seem too, how can I say, wrong on the surface.”
“Every country needs religion, to keep it together.”
“Wasn’t it religion that got you into all this?”
“You got us into all this. And now with Afghanistan and Iraq you have what you’ve always wanted: much oil, and military bases on both sides of Iran, which has much oil of its own. Oil’s a dying thing, no? We have to grab what we can... So what matters a few million lives? A million people die a year in traffic accidents... Two million from malaria. As I used to tell your friend Jack, no one’s ever innocent.”
“I came to tell you, your shipments are far too big –”
“That was our deal. You agreed no limits on opium, on religious teaching... and I gave you Bin Laden at Tora Bora. It’s not my fault you decided not to take him.”
“As you say, let’s not look too deeply into things.”
Wahid settled himself more comfortably. “We continue, then, to comprehend each other.”
“Long ago,” Timothy said, “before Osama attacked New York, it is said there were people who warned us. People from here –”
Wahid caught a breath, waited. “We’d like to know,” Timothy continued, “who they were. So we can thank them.”
Wahid kept his voice steady. “I have no knowledge of this.”
“Other Taliban, it’s said. We would pay well, to find out.”
Wahid smiled. “I am happy to ask people. To help in any way I can –”
Timothy shook his head. “We need to know, but not ask. It must not be known that we do not know.” He raised his eyebrows. “But it would make it easier for us to overlook the increase in opium shipments, if we could have these names.”
“In Afghanistan there are many ways of knowing. I will do my best.”
“I wouldn’t want our friend Jack to hear. He might misunderstand.”
“He often does.”
Timothy sat back. “He might have a different memory, too, of what happened at Tora Bora.”
“That would be sad.”
“He’s here. Did you know?”
Wahid inclined his head. “No.”
“Perhaps hunting Osama in Pakistan.”
“I wish him luck.”
“Or looking for you?”
“A shame. We’re blood brothers, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Happened years ago. As I said, no one’s ever innocent.”
“He came alone. He’s staying in the usual place... Perhaps before he finds you, you should find him?”
Wahid smiled, the cobra scar contracting. “War is strange, isn’t it? Sometimes our worst enemies are on our side.”
Timothy stood. “Jack has enemies on all sides. We’d never even know who it was, if one of them should kill him.”
The Secret
JACK WAITEDTILL TIMOTHY’S armored Humvee drove away from Wahid’s palace toward Bagram airport. He tried to think of reasons for Timothy’s visit and found none he liked. He stepped out of the line of men waiting to see Wahid and left the palace compound.
Women in burkhas and men in bulky clothing thronged the street, a few cars, trucks and buses weaving through them. Diesel exhaust and the stench of burning garbage filled the air. He thought of Isabelle at dawn washing herself with a sponge from the cold water basin.
He ate dinner in a teashop and took a cheap hotel, a bed with a blanket stretched over flat springs. When the bedbugs in the blanket began to bite he lay on the floor with his coat over him, and when the bedbugs moved across the floor to him he sat in a wooden chair by the window, watching the dim lights of Kabul and thinking of the war.
What revenge would Ahmad want? Would he sorrow if his brother died? The brother who had ston
ed him to death in the Soccer Stadium, him and the woman he loved?
Who was she? Jack imagined her beautiful and kind, the sort of woman Ahmad would love. Could it have been that girl Jack had seen, the night Sophie had taken him to Ahmad’s?
The night so long ago in Edeni when he and Ahmad had clasped bloody palms: a blood brother always avenges his blood brother.
An officer always looks out for his men.
In the hills below glimmered the few lights of Ebnecina Hospital, where Sophie had brought him back from death.
Isabelle had come here too, like all death’s pilgrims, hunting the men who’d killed her husband.
Waking beside her at dawn in her lumpy bed on the rumpled sheets he’d pulled her close again and when they made love there was nothing else on earth. It’s war that does this, he’d thought, no longer two but one.
We were just a man and woman. Fucking to preserve the peace.
But the vision of her stayed with him, her in-toed quick step, her form so slim and strong that every motion seemed to spring from a steely central core.
How can someone so quickly become so much more important than you?
Do this, and he could be with her.
Don’t kill him, she’d said. Find some other way to punish him.
There was no other way.
At 02:45 he left the hotel, moving in the shadows toward Wahid’s palace. In a field where new walls were going up he found a two-by-two plywood sheet and two two-by-fours stamped with a Plum Creek Lumber logo. At the end of the compound he leaned the two-by-fours against the wall and climbed them, laid the plywood over the concertina wire, pulled up the two-by-fours and slid down them inside the wall, bringing the plywood down with him.
For fifteen minutes he watched the compound lit only by the city’s dim reflection on the clouds. No one moved except one guard sleepily trudging the new gravel walks.
When the guard reached the far end Jack moved to the madrasah and hid the plywood and two-by-fours in the gap between the compound wall and the back wall of the madrasah. He waited ten minutes then crossed to the patio of Wahid’s villa, and along it to the open doors of a bedroom, the sound of wet nasal snoring within. Against the inside wall to his left was a fireplace from which came the glow of coals and the odor of lemon smoke.
He drew the Makarov, stepped into the room across silky rugs to a wooden hutch against the inside wall, and waited for his vision to clear.
He saw a wide white bed and in it a small person, and a larger dark-haired man, long-bearded. The small person was not a woman, for he had short hair. The man half-turned and mumbled in his sleep. Wahid.
Silently Jack locked the patio doors, lit a candle from the coals and set it by the bed.
The boy opened his eyes, watched Jack a moment. “You’re going to kill us?”
Jack nodded at Wahid. “Wake him.”
The boy rolled over to Wahid. “Master! Master!”
Wahid woke blubbering and spitting, slapped the boy. “I told you never wake me!”
“Master!” the boy pointed at Jack. “He’s here!”
Wahid stared in horror at Jack. “I’ll have you killed –”
“Take that scarf, there, on the floor,” Jack told the boy. “Tie his hands tight. If he pulls loose I’ll kill you both.”
With trembling hands the boy did as he was told. “Take that other scarf, there,” Jack said, “and bind his eyes.” He cut a curtain sash and had the boy tie Wahid’s ankles and wrists to the bedposts, then motioned the boy aside. “Go sit by the fire. If you move I’ll shoot you.”
The boy hissed in a breath. “What are you doing?”
“This man killed his own brother, a teacher who tried to make the world a better place. Wahid is evil. Do you love evil?”
“I’m an orphan. We all are. We can’t leave. He makes me do this.”
“I’ve just seen Timothay,” Wahid whimpered. “If you hurt me he’ll kill you.”
Keeping his gun on the boy, Jack went to the fireplace and laid an andiron on the coals. He bent over Wahid. “I want to know why.”
“Why?” Wahid trembled. “Why what?”
Jack took the andiron from the fire. It glowed in the darkness, sending out a wall of heat. He brought it close to Wahid’s cheek. “Why you cast the first stone.”
“I didn’t! What stone? They made me, the mullahs, would’ve killed me –”
“Once already I was going to kill you. Up in Kowkcheh canyon. The other American soldiers saved you.”
“Please let me go. I’ll be your friend...”
“I’ve tried to understand what Ahmad would want, what his woman would want.”
“She was a lovely girl. It was such a shame.”
Jack put down the andiron. It hissed against the stone floor. “Tell me about her.”
“They were in love. She helped him at the orphanage. I sent what money I could...” He sniffed. “I tried to warn them. To save them.”
“No!” the boy said, from the fire. “I was there, the orphanage. I heard Ahmad tell her that his brother would never send money!”
Jack turned. “You knew her?”
The boy nodded. “She saved me, when I was sick.” He said nothing, getting control. “She loved me. She loved us all. She and Ahmad. They loved us.” He brushed angrily at his eyes. “Then the Taliban took us.”
“And Ahmad?” Jack said quietly. “Do you know how it happened?”
The boy shook his head. “Many people were stoned in the Soccer Stadium. In the madrasah they told us we would be too, if we didn’t do what they said –”
“None of this is true,” Wahid said. “He hates me.”
Jack turned to him. “I was going to let you go. But in this world it’s not enough to do good. We must also banish evil –” He thought of killing Hassan Husseini in the Sahara, of shooting Hamid in the Beqaa, of all the others. Of Leo.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Wahid spluttered. “A very bad secret. About your country.”
“You have no secrets.” I have to do this. “And you know nothing of my country.”
“A secret Timothay wants to know –”
Find another way to punish him, Isabelle said. ”Timothy won’t save you.”
“Just today he asked me. He wants very badly to know. I will tell you what I didn’t tell him. If you’ll let me go... Please, please don’t kill me. I’ll change, become a better man.”
There is no other way to punish him. “You killed Ahmad.”
“Timothay is asking who warned your country before Osama attacked your two towers.” Wahid swallowed. “I said I didn’t know. But I do.”
“Warned us?”
“The Taliban warned you. Through the Saudis. They told the man who lives in the big white house. They said Osama’s going to attack you –”
“You’re lying again. The Taliban would never warn us.”
“We’re not all lunatics – we knew if Osama attacked New York that we would pay. That the Taliban could be destroyed. Osama didn’t care; he was using us, just like you Americans do –” Wahid swallowed, trying to say it all. “We told the Saudis and they warned their friend Bush who lives in the big white house. Why did he still let it happen?”
Jack saw Sophie and the children inside the falling tower. “Why is Timothy asking?”
“He wants their names. The ones who warned you. Because he wants to kill them.”
Jack laughed. “Timothy never killed anyone.”
“Others do his killing for him. Didn’t you?”
Jack put the andiron by the fire. “What are you doing, Master?” the boy whispered to him.
“Where’s your village?”
“Near Herat.”
“If I give you money, will you go there, find a way to live?”
“How much money?”
Jack smiled. “Enough.” He took the blindfold from Wahid’s eyes and tied his mouth. “In the morning your men will untie you. Then you will leave Kabul and everything you o
wn and return to Edeni. You will live in the cave in the hills and come down to the village only to beg for food. You will live alone in that cave for the rest of your life. If you don’t do this I will tell Timothy that you were the one who warned us, and he will have you killed.”
Wahid nodded, eyes wide with fear and relief.
“Come,” Jack said to the boy. He stopped at the edge of the patio, then by the far villa wall till the guard had crunched away on his rounds. ”How many kids in here?” he asked when they got to the madrasah.
“Twelve, Master.”
“Don’t call me that. Do they want to be there?”
“No, Lord.”
When the guard returned Jack slipped from behind a tree, knocked him down and tied him while the boy woke the others. He laid one two-by-four on each side of the wall, climbed it, laid down the plywood as before and one by one brought the boys over. He pulled a roll of fifty-dollar bills from inside his belt and gave one to each boy. “Go to Doctors Without Borders,” he said. “Tell them you come from the husband of Sophie Dassault. If you forget that name they will not help you.”
He made them repeat it till he was sure some would remember, and watched them trail away in the darkness. He went down to the American compound, stepped into the bright lights beyond the guard gate, raised his hands and identified himself.
“Come in slowly,” one guard called from beyond the bright lights.
“Slowly my ass. You saw me leave here yesterday morning.”
“Come in slowly anyway Sir. I want to make sure it’s you.”
Twenty minutes later Jack slipped from his room, took a ride to Bagram in a Humvee from the motor pool and caught the first transport back to Baghdad.
SADDAM HUSSEIN had been found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang. “For Bush, isn’t that’s setting a bad precedent?” an Iraqi journalist asked Jack. “For in his life, it’s true, Saddam has killed several thousand Iraqis. But Bush and Cheney, they’ve killed several hundred thousand – shouldn’t they be worried?”
“But remember, Jahmir, it’s the winners who decide what is a war crime. It’s the winners who write history.”
Jahmir nodded, suddenly serious. “And that’s why Bush and Cheney, they should worry.”