Razaq wasn’t flustered in the least. He seemed accustomed to Skelly’s casual brand of disrespect, as if he would have expected no less from dogs or journalists.
“ ‘Those people,’ as you call them, share a very important interest of mine. We both wish to go home. Maybe I am more comfortable during the time of waiting, but neither of us wants to be here. And they know I am one of the few who can lead them back.”
“But why risk it now? You said yourself the bombing had made the job tougher.”
“Mr. Kelly, have you never felt the hand of fate across your brow?”
Skelly wondered for a moment if Razaq was joking, but his expression was serious.
“Can’t say that I have. What’s it feel like?”
But Razaq wasn’t succumbing to flippancy.
“As if you’ve just awakened from a dream. The answer you’ve been seeking is suddenly clear in your mind, washed clean by the rain of your sleep. It is a very real moment, and for that instant the way ahead seems clear, and unavoidable. If you let the moment pass without acting, fortune may never favor you again.”
Skelly was too busy scribbling to react. Perfect stuff, really, just the sort of mystic bullshit his readers would expect. Link it to a description of the old men out front, bowing on their tiny rugs, and he’d have the perfect scene-setter.
“So you’re certain of success?”
“That depends on what you mean by success.”
“You’re sure the people will rally to you. That you’ll be triumphant. Smash your way to Kabul.”
Razaq grabbed a handful of pistachios, prying a nut from its shell.
“I won’t be smashing my way to anyplace. My aspirations aren’t military. But I do think certain elements will find common cause. The people are weary of the last five years, and wearier still of war. With me they have a chance for something better. Otherwise all they’re doing is waiting for Masud’s men to sweep down from the north, or for the American Marines to land. And there are many who would still prefer the Taliban to either of those alternatives.”
“So you’ll leave when, then?”
“In the near future.”
“And you will be accompanied by what? A hundred men?”
“I’m sure you can understand that I don’t wish to share further details. Let’s just say that many of the rumors one hears in the city are gross exaggerations. With a hundred men I’d be seen as a war party, and inviting disaster. All the necessary people have been told what to expect, but this won’t be an invasion. There are simply some people I wish to meet with in some of the provinces. Logar, Nangarhār, Paktīā. To see if I can be of any help in the transition to a new order. Assuming that a new order is inevitable, of course.”
“And no one will harm a hair on your head?”
This time he smiled slightly, with the air of indulging a fool.
“Are you familiar with the concept of the blood feud, Mr. Kelly?”
“Kill one of ours, we kill one of yours?”
“Except that it is rarely so neat, or limited, especially when betrayal is involved. If harm should come to me, everyone knows there will be blood to avenge. Anyone who assisted my enemies will be held accountable.”
“You’re saying they won’t touch you, even if you fail.”
“Failure is not an option, Mr. Kelly.”
“Is that what the Americans have told you? Have you been promised help?” Sam Hartley hadn’t seemed to think so. Or perhaps he, too, had something to hide. Razaq lowered his gaze. Skelly doubted he’d get an answer, but the man surprised him.
“ ‘Help’ would be too strong a word, with all the wrong implications for my people. But we have been in touch. We are both aware of each other’s needs.”
The man obviously thought he’d secured some sort of promise from Uncle Sam. Skelly hoped for Razaq’s sake that Uncle Sam felt the same. Then Razaq stirred, as if about to rise and depart, alarming Skelly enough that he asked the first thing that popped into his head.
“You’ll be going on horseback, I’ve read, the same way you traveled when you fought the Russians.” He couldn’t help but wonder how massive a beast it would take to heave this load over the mountains. A Budweiser Clydesdale might do it.
“Perhaps at some point. But for a while at least we’ll travel in cars and trucks, like anyone else.”
“And what about this sword I’ve read about. Some sort of family heirloom?”
“My grandfather’s.”
“You’ll be taking it with you?”
“And why not?”
Why not indeed. “May I see it?”
Razaq again seemed amused by Skelly’s brashness. He spoke rapidly to the boy, who disappeared, and a moment later the younger brother Salim entered holding a long bundle wrapped in white cloth. Razaq stood, more gracefully than Skelly would have expected.
“It is only a symbol, of course,” he said, taking the parcel in hand. “Nothing to do with luck or superstition. A matter of mere tradition.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He withdrew the blade in a sweeping motion, deftly draping the cloth across his left arm. Skelly had expected something sleek or dashing, like a cavalry saber or a dueling sword. But if this had indeed been taken from a fallen redcoat, then it was like nothing Skelly had ever seen in depictions of British arms. This weapon looked more like an oversized cleaver—a two-foot blade, perfectly straight along the top and tapering across the bottom, from a three-inch width at the hilt— which was surprisingly delicate and stylish—to a sharp upward curve ending in a fine point. Surprisingly, it was deeply tarnished, as if Razaq hadn’t wanted to rub off the evidence of its age. But the cutting edge shone. Obviously he kept it sharpened.
“As you can see, merely symbolic. You can’t fight Kalashnikovs with it.”
Now there was a quote. Skelly quickly wrote it down.
“Your grandfather used it against the British?” Skelly asked.
Razaq shrugged, noncommittal. Thus were legends allowed to grow.
“And the design up near the hilt, is that writing? What does it say?”
“A few words added later by someone in my family,” Razaq said.
“Nothing of significance.” He slipped the blade back beneath the cloth. Skelly hoped Najeeb had gotten a look at the inscription. Salim departed with the sword.
“I trust that will be all?” Razaq said, an order more than a question.
Skelly shut his notebook to signify compliance, but there was a final piece of business.
“One last thing. More of a request, really.”
“Of course.”
“We’d like to come with you. My interpreter and I. Providing our own food and equipment, of course. And if at any point we get in your way or become a hindrance, then obviously you can send us back. But when this is all over you’ll doubtless want the world to know about it.”
“And the world will learn it best from the pages of the . . . what was the name of your publication?”
Skelly acknowledged the put-down with a grim smile. He tried unsuccessfully to mirror Razaq’s sardonic expression, but wound up with more of a sneer, a wiseass grimace that said, “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“I think you can understand why for now we prefer a lower profile. I’ve hidden my intentions from no one, of course. That is why I offer time to journalists such as yourself. I have turned away no callers and no questions, lest anyone believe me to be a tool of the Americans.”
Or of a pipeline company, Skelly thought. Or of any number of other competing moneyed interests.
“But when the time comes to get down to business, as you Americans say, then I intend to be quite on my own. So I hope you will understand. Afterward? Who knows. I’m sure in a few weeks there will be plenty of time for more conversations like this, and you will of course be welcome in my new home.”
“In Kabul?”
Razaq shrugged. “Kabul. Jalalabad. Maybe a village in Logar. But somewhere on the other side of the mountains,
inshallah.
”
“Inshallah.”
Skelly genuinely hoped the man didn’t come to a bad end. It was always unsettling hearing that someone you’d just interviewed had gotten his head blown off. You could never help feeling you’d been an instrument in his destruction, if only as a tiny wheel in the grand contraption of fate. Salim returned to show them out.
The old men out front had disappeared, but as Skelly and Najeeb neared the gate a younger man approached. He was wire thin, with an untrimmed beard and dirty nails. He said something to Najeeb, who tried to brush him off. But the man grabbed Najeeb’s sleeve, speaking into his ear in a low voice. Probably begging for a job.
“What’s he want?”
“He’s saying he can take us with him. That he can get us in.”
“Into Afghanistan?”
“Yes. But he’s a liar. A jackal.” Skelly hoped the man didn’t understand English. “All he wants is your money.”
“Probably. But how does he propose to get us invited?”
The man, noting Skelly’s interest, had let go of Najeeb’s sleeve. Skelly smelled onions on his breath.
“He claims to know the man who’s leading Razaq’s rear guard. But this man is in Katchagarhi, and that’s where we’d have to meet him.”
“Ah, so there’s the catch.”
“Yes. This one would cut our throats the minute we left the highway. I doubt he’s even supposed to be here. Probably just a charity case.”
Skelly couldn’t help but agree. The man’s eyes were red, as if he’d smoked something for breakfast.
“Tell him thanks but no thanks, and that we’re in a hurry.”
Hearing Najeeb’s answer, the man shook his head vigorously, making some unreadable gesture with his hands and raising his voice.
“Christ. He’s worse than a shopkeeper in Cairo. What’s he saying?”
“That I’m a fool not to believe him. That I’m letting you down, wasting your money.”
“Well, he’s persistent, I’ll give him that,” Skelly said, quickening his pace as they passed through the gate, finally leaving the troublesome man behind. “Nice to see our cab’s still here. Might as well start rounding up our passes for the border. Oh, and did you happen to get a look at that inscription, the one on Razaq’s sword?”
“Yes,” Najeeb said. “And I am not surprised he didn’t tell you. It was only two words, and one can only presume they’re supposed to refer to the fate of the enemy.”
“Two words?”
“ ‘No Return.’ ”
“Goodness,” Skelly said, pulling out his notebook. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Perfect.” He scribbled it down, already composing the story in his head. “Great closing line. Let’s just hope it’s not his epitaph.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS DARK by the time Najeeb returned to his apartment. He was anxious to make sure that Daliya was safe and sound. He was also exhausted. Skelly and he had spent the balance of the day tracking down travel documents, after a phone call to Muhammad Fawad quickly established that the minor player from the plains of Jalalabad would be all too happy to have them accompany his caravan.
So they had wandered a bureaucratic maze in the smog and heat in search of the proper papers. Skelly was able to secure the passes in a single day only by bribing a section officer at the Department of Home and Tribal Areas, where a pair of crisp fifties soon had them on their way, to the shocked dismay of a Dutch television crew that had been waiting for hours.
Normally they would have also needed to round up a military policeman to accompany them, with more paperwork and an additional fee. But Fawad was providing his own security, so they used the extra time to buy a week’s worth of supplies. They easily found a generator, plus a jerry can for fuel. Skelly had brought a sleeping bag from America, and Najeeb could make do with a pair of heavy blankets. Sleeping in the cold hadn’t been a problem since he was a boy. But their quest for a satellite phone came up empty. Skelly’s newspaper owned only two, and one was in the snowy wilds of northern Afghanistan while the other was marooned in Jerusalem. Fortunately, Fawad assured them that they could use his, although exactly who provided Fawad’s equipment was another matter. Perhaps Sam Hartley would be tuning in.
Twice during the day Najeeb tried without success to reach Daliya on her cell phone. Perhaps she’d turned it off to get some rest. Maybe she was still awaiting his arrival.
He and Skelly parted company well after dark at the offices of the
Frontier Report,
where they arranged to meet the following morning— “
promptly
at eight,” Skelly stressed. Najeeb pocketed his pay and climbed aboard his scooter, eager to get home. Last night had changed things for Daliya and him—for the better, he thought—but he wasn’t sure what that meant next. And now he was on the verge of a journey into Afghanistan where, aid mission or not, there was a war on. Missiles and bombs were hitting unintended targets, and practically everyone was armed and ready to shoot. All the more reason to speak with Daliya as soon as possible.
Rounding the last corner for home he saw a small crowd of men gathered in front of his building in the glow of the street lamp. It could only mean trouble. He came to a stop and slammed down the kick-stand, not bothering to lock the scooter. There were about a dozen men, with more approaching, a tightening circle with everyone gazing down at something.
“I’ve called the police,” one said as he approached. “Probably take at least twenty minutes, knowing them.” The others nodded. Najeeb eased past a downstairs neighbor to see a body curled on the ground— a man’s, thank God. He bent closer, unable to see much more in the shadow cast by the crowd. But where was Daliya? He stood, glancing toward his windows—dark, curtains drawn. Surely she would have phoned if something had gone wrong, or if she’d been frightened. Unless things had happened too quickly. He pulled out his cell phone, hemmed in as more men joined in the gawking.
“Was he shot?” someone asked. A dark liquid oozed from beneath the body. A leather satchel, still strapped to his shoulder, lay to one side.
“Do we even know he’s dead?” someone asked. Another man knelt to check for a pulse, although the gesture struck Najeeb as futile. He punched in Daliya’s number, and when the line rang he half expected to hear the melodic beep filtering down from his window. But there was nothing, and no one answered. He waited five rings and hung up. Then someone flicked a cigarette lighter, giving everyone a better look.
The first thing Najeeb noticed was the hair, a long, tangled mess. The man’s face was stained with a deep grime that one found only among the very poor or the very rural. His clothes were ragged, a patchwork garment Najeeb had seen only one other time, worn in the empty hills of home by a wandering
malang.
The realization chilled him.
Malangs
were the stuff of legend and myth—or had been when he was a boy. Mendicants and mystics, they claimed a personal relationship with God and spent their days trying to drum up followings, which sometimes grew into cults and, at still rarer times, bloomed into armed uprisings. Tribal chieftains, fearing their potential for instability, spread wild tales about them to keep their children at a distance. Najeeb had grown up believing that any
malang
would try to eat him, and even the sight of this dead one so close to home gave him the creeps.
The pressure of the growing crowd was almost unbearable now, and Najeeb decided to head indoors. But as he turned to leave, someone switched on a flashlight just as a person in the crowd jostled the dead man’s shoulder bag. The upper corner of a cream-colored envelope poked out from the bag, just like the ones delivered to his apartment.
A police jeep approached, bathing the scene in a blue strobe keeping time with Najeeb’s heartbeat. Doors slammed. An officer shouted for order. The flashlight went out, and for a moment the crowd’s attention was diverted by a bullhorn voice calling for everyone to disperse. The crowd turned to see what the police would do next, and Najeeb took advantage of the moment to squeeze past two men and kneel quickly by the body as a knee bumped his back. He groped through the shadow and plucked the envelope from the bag, barely maintaining his balance as the onlookers jockeyed to hold their positions. Bent across the body, he caught a whiff of hashish from the man’s clothes, then stood, elbowing his way back through the crowd as the first of the policemen brushed past him. He walked briskly toward his building, expecting a cry or a hand on his shoulder, certain that his theft would be unmasked. But it had apparently gone undetected, so he stuffed the envelope in his pocket. The paper felt just like the others, and he was visited by a fleeting but unshakable sense that Daliya and this messenger must somehow have crossed paths. The sensation was so vivid that he whirled around, scanning the dim ground for more blood, or further signs of struggle. Was Daliya watching from the edge of the crowd? She wouldn’t have dared. There were only men here, and emotions were running high.
A second jeep arrived with reinforcements, and officers in berets backed the crowd away, billy clubs raised as a few foolhardy souls shoved back. Najeeb glanced again toward his darkened windows, suddenly fearful of what he would find upstairs. Someone turned on a bright light, and he glanced over his shoulder a final time to make sure no one was in pursuit. This time he saw the flash of a familiar face watching from the edge of the mob. The man quickly turned away, but couldn’t resist another look, as if to see if he had been recognized. Then he nodded slightly, a sheepish hello.
It was Karim, a sight almost as astonishing as that of the dead
malang.
Najeeb shouted his name above the din, and Karim waved a hand, an emphatic gesture that seemed to plead with Najeeb not to risk attracting any further attention. They worked their way toward each other around the perimeter of the crowd as more policemen shoved toward the middle.
Karim clasped Najeeb’s hand. Then they hugged, as men always did in greeting in the village of Bagwali, no matter what their class or status. Karim then bowed slightly, showing his respect. The man was very much off his turf, and looked it—the weathered face of the countryside, crooked yellow teeth and rheumy eyes. He was in his mid-forties but looked closer to sixty, another customary mark of the Pashtun hinterlands.
It was only the third time Najeeb had seen Karim during his seven years of exile, and on both previous occasions the man had been carrying messages from Najeeb’s mother, Shereen, and also from his uncle, Azizullah Akbar Khan, who Najeeb had always known affectionately as Aziz. Uncle Aziz had dispatched Karim on those occasions, and he did so without the knowledge of Najeeb’s father, meaning that everyone involved had been risking his neck, even Najeeb’s mother.
A second envoy had also made contact over the years, a boy named Jameel. But Jameel brought messages only from Najeeb’s mother, meaning that Karim was loyal first and foremost to Uncle Aziz.
Aziz was the youngest of four brothers, of whom Najeeb’s father was the eldest and therefore the heir. The middle brothers died in their teens, ensuring plenty of rivalry between the two survivors, a rivalry that would have grown even more intense in later years if Aziz had ever fathered sons of his own. That’s how brothers most often did battle in their adult years—through their sons. But Aziz’s three wives bore him only daughters. Thus, deprived of a lineage, Aziz signaled his apparent surrender in the fraternal wars by befriending Najeeb, becoming his boyhood guide across hunting paths and caravan routes, indulging him in ways that a father never would have dared. And so, when the great breach had occurred between Najeeb and his father, Aziz had resumed his rivalry in silence by opening the channels of communication to the banished son. What better way to undermine the father than to subvert the loyalty of the son—even a son in disgrace. And if the boy’s mother also participated in this forbidden back channel, what did that say about her relationship with Aziz?
Or perhaps it had all been innocent, a pair of adults who simply believed that Najeeb’s punishment was too harsh. That’s what Najeeb preferred to think, if only because he knew that upheaval and scheming had long been the norm among his people. You only had to listen to the old songs and poems to know that, verses rife with themes of deceit.
“You are well?” Karim asked.
“Well enough. And how is my mother? And Aziz?”
“Well also. Both of them.”
Najeeb waited for more, but Karim seemed hesitant.
“Have you brought a message?”
“No.” Karim stared at the ground. “I was sent only to check on you. You weren’t supposed to know I was here.”
“Do you do this often?”
Karim seemed to consider the question for a moment, then shook his head.
“No. Not often. Only when your uncle is worried about you.”
“What do you know about the
malang
?” Najeeb asked, choosing to ignore the implied warning. “Did you know him?’
“No,” Karim said quickly, looking away. “I arrived when you did. When I saw you were okay I decided to come back later. Then you saw me.” He shrugged, as if there were nothing further to say.
“Come inside. I’ll make tea.” Najeeb had at least a dozen more questions, not least because he wasn’t buying Karim’s version of events. But even the binding tie of offered hospitality wasn’t enough to hold the edgy Karim.
“I am sorry, but I cannot stay. I have other business. And I have no message for you. I must go.”
Karim quickly clasped Najeeb’s hand, then touched his right hand to his heart.
“Wait.” Najeeb grasped the man’s arm in the nick of time. “One last question. When you arrived, did you see a woman here? Near the
malang,
or running from the building? Was there a woman?”
Karim’s face was blank, noncommittal. “No. No woman. Until the next time, then,
inshallah.
”
Najeeb released his grip, and Karim melted into the crowd.
By now a battered ambulance had pulled to the curb, and the crew was unloading a stretcher. Could Karim have killed the
malang
? If not, then what had he really been doing here, and what had triggered Uncle Aziz’s concern?
Perhaps, despite Karim’s denials, this visit was only one of many. Maybe Karim had been watching over him for years. It was a comforting thought, this idea of a guardian angel dispatched by Aziz, and it brought to mind a favorite sura from the Koran, the short one about “the nightly visitant . . . the star of piercing brightness. For every soul there is a guardian watching it.”
Or maybe Karim had told the truth: This was a rare appearance, and he’d simply come along at the wrong time, knowing nothing about either the messenger or the killing. Which raised another possibility— that Abdullah, Najeeb’s purported ISI contact, had crossed paths with the victim and had decided to get rid of one state security problem even as he kept tabs on another. No guardian angel at work, then, just a lethal government snoop. The possibilities seemed endless. Maybe the contents of the envelope would tell him more.
He turned toward his apartment, sprinting up the stairs, grateful that someone had replaced the burned-out bulb. Reaching the landing, he saw with a jolt that his door was again ajar, and he paused on the threshold, calling Daliya’s name. There was no answer, so he pushed inside and switched on the light.
The place was a shambles. Books were pulled from the shelves in a scramble of splayed covers. Every drawer of his desk was open, and his cushions were slashed. Stepping into the bedroom, he saw that his mattress had been pulled to the floor. It, too, was slashed, the batting swelling whitely from the wound. Daliya was nowhere to be seen, thank God, nor was there any blood. Either she was long gone by the time this happened or the intruder had taken her with him. Might she have killed the
malang
? he wondered. Possible. If so, she might have fled anywhere.
Then he remembered his money, the stash of dollars that represented every hope of escaping Pakistan. Robbery suddenly seemed a plausible motive for this mess, and he rushed to the bathroom where he kept the folded bills in a bandage box, in the medicine cabinet above the sink. Someone had emptied the cabinet’s contents into the sink, and he saw the box in the pile, its top open.
His heart sank, and he reached for the box, expecting the worst. But the bills were still inside, bundled tightly by a red rubber band, just as before. He leaned against the sink in relief, the only sound the dripping of the shower. Then he counted the money. It was all there, although whoever had tossed the place surely must have seen it. Not even the most diligent servant of state security could have resisted this much temptation, he thought, more puzzled than ever. A religious fanatic, he supposed, might have. But if the
malang
had made it all the way up here, then why had he still been carrying the envelope?