The First Stone

by Carsten Jensen

  Viktor is the first to break down. Then Sørensen. Sylvester leans his forehead on his shoulder and lets go. Camper’s mouth tightens; there’s a harshness in his gaze that wasn’t there before, but no tears. Hannah doesn’t cry at all. She knows why her eyes are dry. She refuses to succumb to the grief. She only has room for hate. Adam cries. Gustav, Dennis, Mathias, Sebastian, Karlsen. Andreas hides behind his camera. Shamefully, Steffensen thinks about the last time he cried—when he gave in to Atmar. He can see Karen on Skype, her newly washed hair shining in the light of the reading lamp, and the memory strengthens his tears. No one attempts to hide their face or hold back their tears.

  The chaplain mentions the Devil again. Why doesn’t he call Schrøder Judas, Steffensen asks himself. That’s what he is—a Judas who has betrayed his own. He knows the answer. It’s easy to despise Judas. Schrøder might be more difficult to hate. And that’s what they need to keep going: hatred. They could be asking so many questions. Is Schrøder a convert, a terrorist, or just insane? They need a large, overwhelming feeling to fill them with power. That’s why the chaplain has given Schrøder horns—to give them an enemy who’s totally different than themselves. So they can hate. And act.

  They need to go, but where are they going? Where is Schrøder? The man they’re hunting was also the only one of them who could speak Pashto. They thought of everything when they were packing their equipment: toilet paper, water, ammunition, helmet cams. They’re going out to kill, and they don’t need an interpreter to fill a man with lead. Nor do they need an interpreter to destroy a qalat, but they sure as hell need information. For a moment they’re paralyzed by their own lack of forethought.

  Steffensen walks over to the woman, who has been standing silently the whole time in the background, her face still uncovered. He wraps the boy in a blanket from his gear bag. He can’t do anything about the naked feet. He notices that the boy’s legs look as if they’ve been scalded; the skin is lying in unnatural folds overlapping each other.

  “My name is Sara,” says the woman.

  He looks shocked. “You speak English?”

  The woman nods. Her gaunt face with the sunken cheekbones and deep-set eyes is deeply tanned, as if she works in the fields. A black ringlet hangs down on her forehead.

  Steffensen walks back to the group. “We’ve found an interpreter,” he says.

  4

  That was a close call, thinks Steffensen. He saved the woman’s life, no doubt about it, and basically that’s huge. You take a life one day and save one the next. That’s Afghanistan. Everything is huge—and difficult.

  Sara doesn’t speak to him. Did he think she was going to thank him? Not really.

  “I know where the tall man is,” she says suddenly, not to Steffensen but to the soldiers gathered around her. “The ferengi.” The foreigner.

  Steffensen looks at Hannah. “Schrøder?”

  Hannah nods. “Who else could it be?”

  “He’s the one who killed your men.” She still hasn’t covered her face with her burka. “You must kill him. It is your duty.” Ferocity flares up in her eyes.

  They confer. Steffensen realizes that he’s no longer their leader. No one is. He’s just an older man the group has dragged along with them. He looks around; he knows very few of them. Tall Hannah is too striking for him not to have noticed her. He senses that she’s the one running the operation now. Dark, brooding Adam. Little Andreas, always with that camera in his hand. He got to know the names of some of the platoon during the hearing after that episode on Highway 1. They’re all dead now, the ones they’ve just said goodbye to, the ones lying a few meters away. No one knows why they were murdered, and he fears that the motives behind Schrøder’s behavior will remain a mystery. No one in the group is worried about an explanation right now.

  His only duty is to represent common sense, but how can common sense take the lead when they’re hunting a ghost? Hate is not his concern, yet that’s the language they’re speaking now.

  “Sangin,” says the woman. “He is in Sangin with his men.”

  “Who are his men?” asks Hannah. “How many men does he have?”

  The woman makes a vague movement with her hand. It could mean the men who were living here in the qalat, or it could mean all of Afghanistan. There’s something both concentrated and unfocused about her.

  “Sangin,” says one of the soldiers, “but isn’t that where—”

  “Exactly,” says Steffensen. “It’s one of the few cities in Helmand the Americans hold. Before that it was the Brits. They suffered some big losses there. Over a hundred men. It’s not going well for the Americans, either.”

  He turns to Sara. “Sangin? The Americans?” He speaks in simple language, as if he’s communicating with someone who’s slow.

  “Sangin,” says the woman. “Americans by day, Taliban at night.”

  “It makes no sense,” says Steffensen. “Why would Schrøder hole up in the most risky place of all, in the middle of enemy territory?”

  “He’s done it before. Actually, he’s very good at it,” says Hannah.

  The others nod in agreement.

  “Yes, but now he’s exposed himself,” objects Steffensen. “He’s gone over to the other side—and it won’t be easy for him to hide. Even in a black turban. I think this woman is talking nonsense. Look at her. Sorry, but I think she’s a little loony.”

  “And Schrøder isn’t? With him, the unlikely is the most probable. I think we should listen to her.” Hannah looks around at the others. “What do the rest of you think?”

  “If he’s really taken refuge in the Americans’ area, let them handle him,” says Viktor.

  “And you think we’ll ever see him again? You better believe we won’t. Once they have him, the Americans will never let him go again.” The rage in her voice makes all of them look at her.

  “Gone!” She snaps her fingers. “That’s exactly what he wants! And then we can spend the rest of our lives wondering if he’s rotting up in Bagram or if the CIA has turned him into a double agent. We have to catch him. He needs to look us in the eye—and we need to be the last thing the asshole sees before the curtain falls. He’s ours!”

  The soldiers mumble their approval. They’re standing in a frozen circle not far from their dead comrades, and if something doesn’t happen soon, despair will set in, along with the cold. They need a message to propel them on; Steffensen realizes that this is what he could never do. Ignite the men. But Hannah can, obviously. There’s a dangerous fire in her eyes, and her cheeks have turned red. First and foremost, though, there’s an unexpected change in her voice. It’s raw, jarring, charged with adrenaline, as if it has discovered a whole new pitch.

  Sara looks at Hannah with the same wild eyes as before—but there’s something else there, too, a kind of triumph. Even the Afghan woman might be hiding an avenger inside. Maybe she’s a woman fighting her own war.

  “Let’s get going,” yells Hannah, who’s greeted with cheers of approval. She turns around and tosses a hand grenade at the tower. As one leg breaks, the flimsy wooden structure collapses in the explosion. The sky’s purple blush heralds the break of day. As one, they move toward the gate.

  “Wait a minute!” yells Steffensen. He calls Adam over and asks for a radio so he can contact Camp Price. He looks around the circle of soldiers and points over toward the dead. “We can’t just leave them here,” he says.

  Misunderstanding the situation, the guard on duty in the camp thinks it’s an emergency call from a cornered squad and rattles off an endless string of codes.

  Steffensen interrupts him. “I don’t need helicopters. Thirteen body bags. That’s all.”

  5

  They’re driving on unknown roads now, but they can still find their location on the GPS at any time, hear a friendly voice tell them when to turn right or left, while the screen shows them how far it is to their destination and how many hours and minutes it will take to get there. Somewhere a satellite registers their pres
ence in the desert, and somewhere else a drone keeps an eye on them. Even in Camp Price and Camp Bastion, their movements are tracked, the information sent on to Army Operational Command and ending up at the Ministry of Defense. Or maybe they aren’t. Somewhere, that chain is about to be broken.

  The Danes’ area of responsibility is about the size of the island of Als, the population somewhat comparable, yet there are roads they’ve never driven, villages they’ve never visited, views they’ve never seen, and people—countless people—they’ve never spoken to, all bound together by a mentality and a history they don’t know. Even this small world they’ve been assigned to seems insurmountably large.

  Now they’re leaving it. They’re driving into other areas of responsibility where soldiers from distant countries imagine they have control, just as they believed they had control over theirs. New landscapes, other villages, faces they’ve never seen before—but they don’t notice any of it. They’re not there to provide anything, nor to change, improve, renew, or liberate. They came to kill, and the singularity of their mission exhilarates them. They can already imagine returning home with Schrøder’s body mounted on one of the APCs.

  Halfway to Sangin, they realize they’ve crossed the invisible line. They turn off the GPS. Now their mission is clandestine. They can no longer relay where they’re going. The satellites and drones will have to find them on their own. They won’t help any longer. They aren’t Special Forces who’ve gone undercover. They’re soldiers who’ve gotten a temporary reprieve from rules. They just want to bring back Schrøder. Alive, they’ve been told. But they have other plans.

  As they approach Sangin, they stop to discuss their next move. They can’t simply drive into the city. The Americans will spot them, and they’ll have to account for their presence. Every lie will immediately come to light, and then the Americans will take over the mission.

  They question Sara. Where would Schrøder be hiding in Sangin? Somewhere on the outskirts of the city, she replies. With her husband’s relatives. She knows the way.

  “I don’t believe her,” says Steffensen. He has to pull himself together to raise his voice, but someone has to speak in opposition. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It might be an ambush. Maybe that’s why they left her behind—to lure us into an ambush.”

  They look at each other. It’s a dilemma. Steffensen might be right, but Sara is their only lead. Uncertainty creeps in again. This isn’t just about killing someone. They need to think about it, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll make the right decision.

  “Are you luring us into an ambush, Sara?” Hannah asks in Danish, lifting her hand dismissively. “It was a joke.”

  Sara stares straight ahead. She senses their irresolution. Her face is contorted. When she starts to speak, it sounds as if she’s cursing, but her words are clear.

  “Why do you hesitate? Do you have no honor? If you are afraid of your enemies, then you should have stayed home. Aren’t you men?”

  “Good God. Is this how Afghan women speak to their men? Now I understand everything better.” Karlsen laughs inappropriately.

  “I believe her,” interrupts the chaplain.

  “The great expert on Afghanistan,” says Steffensen sarcastically, feeling his antipathy toward the chaplain erupting.

  “I’m not an expert on Afghanistan,” says Møller, with the humility Steffensen loathes. “But I know people. This woman is on our side. She’s sincere.”

  “Yes—sincerely nuts.” An impulse compels Steffensen to pull the boy over to him and lift his robe. The first time he saw the boy, he noticed that his feet and lower legs were scarred from scalding. The military doctors in the camp clinic told him about this: more than once they’ve encountered a child in shock, whose legs had been scalded with boiling water. The scalding always ends the same place, at midthigh. The shocked doctors had no doubts—it was no accident but a brutal attack on a defenseless child. There was no other explanation. They surmised that the assaults were committed by women who are mentally unstable for many reasons, not least the inhuman conditions under which women often live here.

  “Look!” Steffensen points at the scarred skin. “That woman did this. She lowered him into boiling water! And you don’t think she’s crazy?”

  Shocked, they stare at the boy.

  “Surely it was an accident,” says the chaplain. “You don’t know what happened.”

  Steffensen shares the evidence he got from the camp’s doctors. The soldiers look uncertainly at each other. Steffensen’s self-confidence grows. Maybe now they can end this unhappy mission.

  “I’ve heard it, too,” says Adam, looking over at Hannah. He’s on my side, Steffensen thinks.

  “Shit, man,” says Viktor. “They’re fucking sick in the head out here.”

  Sara looks back and forth at those who are speaking; she clearly knows they’re talking about her. The boy doesn’t react.

  Hannah points at his legs. “Did you do this?” she asks Sara.

  “It was his father,” the woman says.

  “Anyone could say that.” Steffensen is indignant. “Surely you don’t believe she’d confess if she’d really done it!”

  “I think we can trust her information.” Hannah gets to the point. “I’m not just thinking about the boy, but what she said about Schrøder’s hideout. I think it’s a chance we have to take.”

  “I don’t trust her.” The sergeant in Viktor has come back to life. He’s the platoon’s second-in-command who abdicated temporarily. Now he’s back. “We’re desperate, but are we that desperate?”

  They’re confused now, their indecision growing. Who is their leader? Steffensen, Hannah, or Viktor?

  “I have a suggestion.” Once again they hear an authority in Hannah’s voice that wasn’t there before. “We’re putting our lives on the line here, so we all have to be on board. I propose we vote. But under one condition—those in the minority must swear to follow the majority. Otherwise we might as well give up right now. Agreed?”

  The soldiers mumble their approval.

  “I just want to clarify,” says Viktor. “This is a vote on Sara’s credibility. It’s not about Schrøder. Of course we’ll continue hunting for him.”

  “That’s clear,” says Gustav. “We aren’t giving up now.” Sebastian and Mathias nod.

  Camper raises his hand. “Karlsen and I will stay neutral. We don’t belong in your platoon, so we’ll abstain from voting.” Surprised, Karlsen looks at his friend and then nods quickly.

  “Okay.” Hannah has no objections. “Those who think we should go on to Sangin raise your hand.”

  The chaplain is the first to show his support. Dennis raises his hand, and then Simon and Andreas. Sørensen hesitates, obviously fighting with himself. If he withholds his support, he’s one step closer to seeing Frederik and Anton but at the same time a definitive step away from his platoon. Resigned, he stares at the ground and raises his hand. Sylvester, who has been watching him, does the same. Finally Hannah joins in. “Seven for!” she says. “Any opposed?” Since thirteen of them are voting, her question is pointless. She looks at Adam, who openly displays his opposition to the majority’s decision, as do Steffensen, Viktor, and Viktor’s three boys, Gustav, Mathias, and Sebastian.

  “We go on.” Hannah shoots Steffensen a wry look, as if the commander might have objections.

  Steffensen doesn’t react.

  They walk back to the vehicles. Hannah has decided that they’ll turn off the main road a few kilometers outside of Sangin and drive into the country. They’ll leave the APCs under camouflage, along with three men to guard them. The rest will continue on to Sangin on foot. Sara will lead the way.

  Adam and Hannah still haven’t spoken. They’ve been riding in different APCs the whole time. They were on a collision course when she lost patience with Andreas and Adam wanted to take it more slowly. And he sided with the others in the vote on Sara.

  She’s grateful to him for not gloating with a
triumphant “Didn’t I tell you?” He was right about Schrøder, but why didn’t he insist? Instead, he made it sound like jealousy, a childish showdown with a rival.

  When Adam refused to go on that fatal atonement mission, which ended in the massacre, Hannah offered to go in his place, but Schrøder didn’t want her. She took that as rejection and was upset. Does love turn you into an idiot? Schrøder, the mass murderer who killed her comrades, spared her life. The very thought makes her freeze. Doubt grows within her, a seething self-hatred, as if Schrøder has infected her and they are conspirators.

  She knows Adam behaved foolishly only because he had a crush on her, a crush he’s totally over by now. She longs to reconcile with him, to recapture the confidence they once had together, but she’s too paralyzed by self-contempt to take the first step. There’s self-forgetfulness in action—and self-forgetfulness is what’s really motivating her thirst for revenge.

  “How did you learn to speak English?” She looks at Sara, who, like her, is staring at the landscape as the armored vehicles storm forth.

  “I am not from here.” Sara doesn’t turn around. “If you want to meet the world’s most unhappy creature, talk to an Afghan woman.” There’s no familiarity in her voice; Hannah gets the feeling that she’s talking out loud to herself. “We are nothing more than slaves for the men. We cannot leave them. Our whole lives are about taking care of them. If we don’t succeed, we are better off dead. They say they are protecting us while they brag about exposing themselves to all kinds of danger. I would rather go into battle three times than have to give birth even once.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Kabul. I went to the university. Then the civil war came. I ended up here. Now I am an animal. Nothing more!”