Chaos in Kabul (13 page)

“Go get the guy in the farmhouse,” ordered Berry. “We’re taking him with us.”

Then he dialed Warren Michaelis and held the phone out to Malko.

“Talk to him!”

When Michaelis saw Berry’s number on-screen he figured he finally might get some news. He answered the phone.

“Hello, Warren?” said Malko. “It’s me. I’m okay.”

“Good God, Malko! Where are you?”

“In Nelson Berry’s car. He rescued me.”

“All right. Come to the Ariana. I’ll alert the checkpoints. Give me the car’s license number. Do you need a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Everything will be ready when you get here. Are you far away?”

“I don’t know.”

Michaelis hung up with a huge feeling of relief.

And quite a few unanswered questions.

When Malko opened his eyes, it took him a few seconds
to realize he was in a hospital. Nelson Berry had driven him directly to the Ariana, where Warren Michaelis was waiting. Berry then delivered the man they found in the Tara Khel farm to NDS headquarters.

Meanwhile, the station chief drove Malko to the American embassy and checked him into the infirmary reserved for sick or wounded embassy staffers. Everything there was American: doctors, drugs, and nurses. Also, it was in the Green Zone, and safe.

Glancing down, Malko saw an IV plugged into his left arm; glucose, probably. He was having what felt like an out-of-body experience: he was very weak, but his mind was completely clear. The room was so warm that the cold that had been part of his every waking hour in captivity had dissipated.

The door opened and a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck came in.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Perkins,” he said, extending a hand. “You weren’t looking too great when they brought you in. You must’ve had quite an ordeal. Tell me what happened.”

Malko managed a smile.

“For four days I was only given water and rice to eat,” he said. “I wasn’t mistreated, but I was very, very cold.”

“We’ll have the test results tomorrow,” said the doctor, “and see if you picked up any bugs from the water. It looks to me as if you lost a couple of pounds a day, which you should be able to gain back pretty easily. What mainly weakened you was the cold. You need a week’s rest and a lot of steaks. Tomorrow we’ll do a full body scan. Until then, just take it easy and get as much sleep as you can.”

That advice was hardly necessary. Malko’s eyelids were already drooping.

He was nearly asleep when the door opened again.

“Feeling better?” asked Michaelis.

“I’m fine,” mumbled Malko. “I just need a few days’ rest.”

“Forget it. Perkins isn’t letting you out of here for a week. Anyway, there’s nothing you have to do right now. I called the Serena and told them you were traveling.

“And I’ve got good news: my friend Walid Varang at the NDS just called. The man Nelson Berry turned over to the police has confessed. To get enough money to finish his farmhouse, he would rent his well to kidnappers to hold their victims. The NDS asked the Interior Ministry that he be transferred to their custody.”

“What about the five hundred thousand dollars?”

“Vanished, for the time being. But that’s not what matters. The main thing is, you’re alive.”

“I wouldn’t expect too much from that interrogation,” said Malko. “It was an ordinary kidnapping. They wanted money.”

“Well, we’ll see,” said Michaelis. “By the way, here’s your cell phone. We found it in a trash can. Here’s a charger, too.”

He set the Nokia on the bed.

“Thanks,” mumbled Malko, already drifting off.

Soft daylight filtered through the frosted-glass windows. Malko looked at his watch and couldn’t believe what he saw: it was 1:45 p.m. He’d been asleep for fourteen hours!

Moments later, the door opened and a nurse entered with a cart bearing his lunch. Malko realized that he was starving. He practically shed tears of joy to see a rare New York steak with French fries. He could have eaten the plate. Too bad the coffee that accompanied this feast tasted like old socks.

Now feeling much better, Malko checked his phone’s in-box and found a series of increasingly anxious messages from Maureen Kieffer.

He immediately called her.

“Malko? What happened to you?”

“I had a very strange adventure,” he said. “I was kidnapped.”

“You were damned lucky,” she said after hearing the story. “Usually they kill the people even after the ransom is paid. Where are you now?”

“At the American embassy, in the infirmary.”

“I hope you remember that you owe me a dinner,” she said teasingly.

Malko suddenly perked up. “Want to come share mine this evening? They aren’t discharging me anytime soon.”

“They’ll never let me in.”

“I’ll arrange it,” he promised. “Come whenever you like. They bring me dinner around eight o’clock.”

Down in an NDS basement, Mossein Ravash regretted renting out his well. For hours, he had been beaten with fists and metal bars. Then they stretched him out on a bloodstained wooden table, tied his arms and legs down, and pounded his belly and groin.

Yet he had already told them everything he knew, which wasn’t
very much. He’d only been providing a service. His Pashtun interrogator now picked up a knife, came over, and breathed stale onions in his face.

“Brother,” he said sarcastically, “if you don’t tell us everything you know, I’m going to slit you from here”—he put his finger on Ravash’s navel—“all the way down. And believe me, it’s going to hurt.”

From the man’s expression, Ravash knew this was no idle threat. He desperately racked his brains for something to tell him. The police had already identified all the culprits, so there wasn’t much left.

Suddenly he recalled a conversation he had overheard between two of the kidnappers.

It might just save his life.

As he repeated the conversation between the two thugs, he knew he’d caught his interrogator’s attention. The Pashtun flashed an evil smile and went upstairs to report.

Maureen showed up five minutes after Malko’s dinner arrived: spare ribs and broccoli and a bottle of California wine.

Shrugging off an enormous down coat that made her look like a blimp, the young woman stood revealed in all her glory. She was wearing a tight black sweater whose buttons down the front looked ready to pop off, and tailored black leather pants stuffed into fur boots.

She came over to Malko and pressed cold lips to his.

“You’ll have to forgive me for not wearing stockings!” she said. “Winter isn’t quite over yet, and it’s cold in the evenings. When you come to the house, it’ll be different.”

“I’m too weak to do anything,” Malko assured her. “I just wanted to see you.”

“Me too,” she said. “I was really worried, you know. In Kabul, when people don’t pick up the phone, it usually means they’re dead.”

They arranged the dinner plates in front of them, and Maureen opened the wine.

“To us!” she said.

The California wine was fine. They were both hungry and ate quickly. Then Maureen sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand gently over Malko’s cheek.

“You look nice with a beard.”

“I feel scruffy,” he protested. “As soon as I get out of here I’m going to make myself look human again.”

Maureen leaned closer and brushed her lips against his. She prolonged the kiss, finally darting a tongue into his mouth that tasted of California wine. Malko felt something like a shock of static electricity. The young woman’s breasts were pressed against the sheets. He first stroked around them through the cashmere sweater. When he brushed a nipple, it immediately hardened under his fingers.

She started. “Cold weather makes me very sensitive,” she murmured.

Malko was already undoing the tiny buttons, and the sweater parted to reveal a generously filled black bra.

They had stopped talking. He conscientiously encircled her beautiful breasts, gradually shifting the bra aside.

Though seemingly content, the young woman suddenly jumped up. “Wait!” she said.

Her breasts swinging, she marched over to the door to lock it but unexpectedly bumped into a fat black nurse who had come to retrieve the dinner cart. At the sight of the bosom yearning to breathe free, the nurse rolled her eyes.

Maureen didn’t turn a hair.

“I was about to call you,” she said smoothly. “We’re finished.”

Taken aback, the nurse grabbed the cart and fled from the room as if she had Beelzebub nipping at her heels.

Maureen calmly locked the door, came back to the bed, and leaned over Malko.

“Are you feeling any better now?”

She finished unbuttoning the sweater and offered her breasts to Malko, who playfully squeezed them and brushed their nipples. Smiling, Maureen slipped her hand under the sheet and touched his chest.

“You lost some weight,” she said.

Her hand wandered over Malko’s body. But when it reached his belly, he flinched.

“I’m still sore all over,” he explained. “I was lying huddled up twenty-four hours a day.”

She gently began to massage him with a circular movement. Very gradually, her hand drifted lower. When the tips of her fingers reached Malko’s groin, she asked, “Do you still hurt there?”

He was starting to get an erection. The young woman’s fingers now wrapped around the base of his cock and moved up the shaft a little.

Maureen gently pushed the sheet aside and let out a little cry. “It’s true, you’re really skinny!”

Her mouth moved down to Malko’s left nipple. When she teased it with her tongue, he again felt that little electric shock.

By now, she had taken his prick in her hand and was gently stroking it.

“I’d say you’re on the road to recovery,” she said. “You seem even stiffer than before.”

With Maureen gripping its base, Malko’s prick was now standing at rigid attention.

“You’ll have to be satisfied with my mouth tonight,” she said. “I don’t have the energy to get undressed.”

Malko didn’t speak.

Maureen bent her head and very gently took his cock in her mouth. He lay back with his eyes closed, savoring every second of delicate pleasure. While he played with her breasts, Maureen sucked him in her special way. Each time he twisted her nipples, her tongue got more active, until the moment she finished him off. As if he were being drained by a succubus, he grunted briefly and exploded in her mouth.

Feeling exhausted and happy, he took Maureen’s hand and squeezed it.

“You could make a dead man come!” he said.

“Don’t say things like that!” she exclaimed, making a funny face. “Talk about death, and you’ll make it happen.”

She’d gotten up and was putting on her bra. She calmly buttoned her sweater and leaned close to Malko.

“Next time we’ll go to the Boccaccio, and I’ll hose you down afterward.”

Still strapped to the wooden table, Mossein Ravash was shivering with cold, unable to sleep. But he was feeling pleased with himself at having stopped the interrogation. Afghan cops were quick to use torture, but when the “customer” talked, he usually pulled through.

He heard footsteps and turned his head to see his interrogator, who had left nearly two hours earlier. The Pashtun was carrying a kind of black bag and approached Ravash from behind. Standing above him, he unfolded the thing he was holding: a hood with a drawstring. He quickly slipped it over the prisoner’s head and tightened the drawstring around his neck.

Jerking against his restraints, Ravash shouted, “What are you doing, brother?”

The Pashtun didn’t answer. He took a cord with a slipknot from
his pocket and wrapped it around the prisoner’s neck. Then, using all his strength, he strangled him.

Ravash didn’t even have time to be afraid. He tried to tense his muscles, but the cord dug into his flesh, crushing his larynx and carotid artery. With his lungs starved of air and his brain of blood, he struggled for a few moments more, then gave a final shudder and went limp.

The interrogator waited a while longer to be sure Ravash had stopped breathing, then untied the cord and removed the hood. The strangulation marks were barely visible.

Leaving the way he’d come, he went up to his office to draft his final report. It stated that the prisoner had suffered a heart attack during enhanced interrogation. It happened all the time.

A half hour earlier, the interrogator’s supervisor had listened to his account of the confession and consulted his own superiors, then decided that Mossein Ravash had to die. His secret was too explosive for him to be allowed to live.