Eden in Winter (21 page)

There were four of them: Hamid, who drove; Philip Rotner, a saturnine and burly special forces medic; and Steve Branch, the Navy Seal who would go with Adam into Pakistan. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Adam had not known that Rotner or Branch existed, or that the fate of the P.O.W. would implicate his own. Now he thought of Benjamin Blaine. ‘All of us,’ he had told Adam, ‘live five seconds, or five feet, from tragedy. But most people never learn that.’

Ben had meant this to contrast the obliviousness with which normal men meandered through existence – dodging random chance while never perceiving that tragedy lay in ambush – with his own venturesome and often dangerous life: combat heroism in Vietnam; covering wars and savagery for his novels. He savoured each day more, Ben had argued, because he never forgot its perils. Ten years ago, Adam, too,
had assumed these risks and, with them, a certain fatalism. But now, thinking of Carla, he envied the ‘sheep’ – as Ben had called them – the heedlessness they thought to be security.

He wondered if his companions entertained such thoughts. When they had met the afternoon before, his clearest impression had been of competence and resolve. Gathering their weapons, supplies, and strike rations, they had reviewed their plans with a phlegmatic air that, in the case of Branch, did not quite conceal his adrenalized anticipation of a mission that was his reason for being. Now, Branch sat in the rear with Adam, a lean, sandy-haired man with sculpted features and narrow blue-grey eyes that were sharp at their edges, as if a youth spent hunting in rural Alabama – scanning bushes for deer, or the sky for birds – had changed their shape and function.

Adam, too, had grown up outdoors. But when he refused to join his father in, as Adam had put it, ‘murdering Bambi’s mother’, Ben had rejoined that Adam was too much like his
own
mother. Like his real father, Adam supposed Ben had meant. Jack had despised hunting – to Adam’s knowledge, the only life Jack had ever taken was his brother’s.

Enough
, Adam rebuked himself. The past or future had no place here. He willed himself to feel the blank resolve he read on Branch’s face.

Laconically, the two men talked about their recent past. Branch related his regrets about missing out on the bin Laden raid, remarking, ‘I hear Osama’s porn collection re-defined the term “double-standard”.’ In turn, Adam gave an account of his role as dispenser of Viagra to a tribal chief. ‘A true hearts-and-minds operation,’ Branch observed. Neither man
ceased his careful survey of the rugged foothills outside. Under Adam’s shirt was a Glock 19 with a threaded barrel and flash suppressor; on the belt that secured its holster was a straight blade knife. Beneath the seat was an A.K.-47.

The S.U.V. was ordinary civilian gear – special features like blackout windows would only draw attention. In the glove compartment, cards bearing the C.B.S. logo – of which the network was wholly unaware – identified them as ‘logistics producers’ for C.B.S. News. If they were stopped, Hamid would speak for them, concealing that the others were fluent in the two major regional dialects. Their first order of business, by no means assured, was to position themselves near the border.

Angling toward the south-east, they began the climb up and through the difficult mountain passes. In late fall, the lower areas still had temperate weather, but, as the S.U.V. laboured ever higher, there was snow on the ground. Soon they stopped to put on snow tyres; as the road grew narrower the strain showed on Hamid’s neck and shoulders. The closest comparison, Adam thought, was driving through Colorado at twelve thousand feet on a single-lane road. But the greater threat was Pasha Khan, a casually vicious warlord whose minions ran drugs, guns, and whatever contraband they could smuggle through these passes. They did not like strangers, much less Americans.

On the left, the ravine became sheer. Grunting, Hamid strained to negotiate a vertiginous curve. With barely a foot between the tyres and a hundred-yard drop, he braked so abruptly that Adam tensed in anticipation of a free fall.

The car crunched to a stop inches from the cliff. Filling their windshield were three bearded Afghans with rifles at
their hips. Adam saw no vehicle – it was as if they had dropped from the moon. As though he were at a tollbooth, Hamid rolled down the window and greeted them in Pashto. The men did not explain themselves; they did not need to. Adam felt certain that they belonged to Pasha Khan.

Calmly, Hamid told them that he was the guide and translator for an American news crew, requesting passage through the mountains. Adopting an air of mystified concern, Adam kept his gun hand free. Branch did the same. If the men tried to search the S.U.V., Adam would kill the Afghan closest to the window. Jumping out with the car door for cover, Branch would take the man beside him. Rotner would shoot the third man through the windshield. Silent, Adam’s target regarded Hamid with a deep displeasure.

‘If these foreigners are newsmen,’ he said at length, ‘where are their cameras and transmitters?’

‘They are not newsmen,’ Hamid responded irritably. ‘Their job is to find quarters and vehicles for a crew who is coming. Let me show you their credentials.’

Left hand raised in a plea for trust, he opened the glove compartment. Gingerly, he pinched a phony C.B.S. card between his thumb and forefinger, tendering it to his interrogator as though it were a missive from God. Pointing out the trademark eye on the card, Hamid explained that this was the symbol of American television. ‘They know nothing,’ the translator said of his passengers in a scornful tone. ‘So I am driving them to Khost and helping find what they need. Without me they are children – only with beards, which they believe makes them more acceptable. But I have real children to feed.’

Their antagonist cocked his head, looking past Hamid at
Adam. Miming fear, Adam mustered a nervous, ingratiating smile. He could feel Branch’s stillness. As the Afghan studied him, Adam allowed his smile to fade, exposing the naked terror of a civilian.

With a disdainful air, the Afghan gestured them forward.

Thanking him, Hamid inched their S.U.V. around the cliff as the Afghans backed against the sheer rock on the right. No one else looked back.

‘Nice performance,’ Branch murmured to Adam. ‘You were the scaredest-looking guy I’ve ever seen.’

Adam felt the tension seep from inside him. ‘Some days it’s easier than others.’

*

Shortly, they began their slow, laborious descent. Skirting Gardiz, they avoided Camp Chapman, the site of a C.I.A. installation ringed by Afghan guards and American troops. Though the presence of the C.I.A. was not a secret, these four men, and their mission, could not be associated with the agency. They were on their own.

In twilight, they reached the town of Khost. Its location near the Pakistan border was convenient to their mission; its character was not. The city was marbled with Taliban and Al Qaeda; its roads, laid out on a grid, centred on an enormous mosque financed by Osama bin Laden. Near this was the bunker-like headquarters of the Afghan police; across from that, a ruined building blown up by a suicide bomber who, intending to destroy the headquarters, had taken fire that caused his truck to veer off course. The few Afghans on the street no doubt included people who – a decade before – had supported the Taliban in harbouring the attackers of 9/11.

By prearrangement, Hamid drove them in to the police compound, where a mustached Afghan colonel greeted them as honoured American aid workers – their cover for this purpose – and offered them a dinner of stewed lamb. Hamid left to secure a room, insulating the Americans from inspection by a potentially hostile landlord. In Khost, the Taliban network had tentacles everywhere.

After dinner, the colonel took them to a quiet room with chairs and oversized Afghan pillows. Against his better judgment, Adam distracted himself by taking out his laptop – innocuous civilian equipment – and rereading Carla’s email, as though he were an aid worker away from home. Carla’s description of her career told him a good deal he had not known. But he suspected that in its margins, unspoken, was more pain and dislocation than she felt safe describing. Still, he appreciated her honesty, and the effort this no doubt required. He imagined her bent over the computer, her lovely face intent and serious, her body swollen with the child growing inside her.

What would become of him?
he wondered.
And of her? Who would nurture the boy, and share this woman’s love?
He had always told himself that his lack of attachments was a virtue. There was no one to distract him, and his death – should it happen – would not distort the life of a wife or child, left only with the imaginings of a father. His return to Martha’s Vineyard had ripped the scab off his past, exposing the gap between the archetype of a family and the reality of his own life. But some irreducible part of him, which he had thought dead, had stirred with the fleeting vision of a future different than his past.

Closing the computer, he focused on the danger outside
their walls. ‘It’s good we’re moving out at night,’ he observed to Branch.

The Seal nodded. ‘I took that crater across the street as a negative indicator. Just like the demographic trends of the last two centuries. Makes you wonder why our British friends signed up for a second go.’

‘That’s easy,’ Adam answered carelessly. ‘We promised them that this time would be different.’

*

Deep in the night, Hamid led them to the room he had secured.

He had gotten a key to the building – they did not require the assistance of a landlord who would know them as Americans, or wonder what equipment they carried in their heavy suitcases. As Adam had requested, the room was on the second floor and had a balcony that overlooked the street below. Once inside, they drove wedges beneath the door. Duplicating a common practice of Afghans who were cleaning their rug, Rotner draped a carpet over the railing of the balcony, blocking the view from the street. Adam took out the satellite telephone receiver and placed it behind the rug, assuring optimal reception for text messages. In appearance, the phone was standard N.G.O. equipment. The giveaway to any intruder would be the body armour, guns, and ammunition concealed within the room.

So as not to be associated with them further, Hamid left. Before the others slept, Branch placed a wooden chair against the door. They lay on top of the beds, keeping their hands free, trying to rest as best they could. Before commencing his own broken sleep, Adam emailed Carla. ‘I’m on a road trip,’ he tapped out swiftly, ‘and tied up for a while. As soon
as I can, I’ll send you something longer.’ The words underscored the chasm between Adam’s life and what he could tell her. But in a day or two this might not matter at all.

Shutting off his computer, he mentally rehearsed each move in the darkness as he approached the building where – his superiors hoped – al Qaeda held the P.O.W.

*

As dawn broke – a thin ribbon of light peering over the mountains to materialize the tan, low-slung city – Hamid returned to the room.

Overnight, he had switched out their S.U.V. for a Mitsubishi to confuse anyone who had seen the Toyota. But his face was graver than normal. Handing Adam a piece of paper, he said, ‘Night letter. The Taliban left it on doorsteps around the city.’

As Branch and Rotner sat on the edges of their beds, Adam read the letter aloud. There were Americans in the city, it said baldly – the Taliban would kill any Afghan who helped them. But a person whose information allowed a spy to be taken alive would receive $10,000; a man who killed one would receive a lesser bounty of $5,000. The difference, Adam did not need to add, was a measure of how merciful it was to be killed instead of captured.

‘Think they know we’re here?’ Rotner enquired in the tone of a man seeking information about the weather.

‘No way of telling,’ Adam responded. ‘Because there’s a C.I.A. station nearby, they do this pretty often. We came in at night, dressed like locals. So maybe it’s coincidence.’

This did not sound satisfactory to him or, from their expressions, the others. Hoping for more information, he crept on to the porch behind the cover of the rug.

There was a text message on the satellite receiver. But it contained nothing about the Taliban. Instead, cryptically, it said that their timeline had been accelerated. Branch and Adam were needed at the forward operations base before nightfall.

Swiftly, Adam reflected. Unless his superiors had learned that it was too risky to stay here, the likely reason for this change was information that al Qaeda would move the P.O.W. in the next twenty-four hours. But it was far more dangerous for Branch and Adam to strike out for Pakistan in daylight. Everything about this order narrowed their chances of survival.

Telling Branch, Adam said none of this. He did not need to. Taking in their new orders, Branch was quiet for a moment. Then he shrugged, saying only, ‘Good thing we look so much like Afghans,’ as he fingered his blond, sandy hair.

When Carla emerged from the doctor’s office, Teddy Blaine was waiting.

As he looked up at her, concerned, Carla saw a young, obviously pregnant woman glance from her to Teddy in frank surprise. For an instant, the incongruity of any relationship between herself and a man still suspected in Ben’s death penetrated Carla’s shock. Then what she had just learned overcame her. All that she could manage was to give Teddy the briefest of nods, a signal to leave, then walk slowly out the door and down the long hallway toward the parking lot.

A few people were coming the other way – visitors or patients, a nurse pushing an older man in a wheelchair. Carla barely saw them. With Teddy at her side, she looked straight ahead at the swinging glass doors until he pushed them open. She walked a few more steps and then, noting the cheerlessness of a dark, lowering sky, stopped to draw chill air into her lungs.

‘What happened?’ Teddy asked with quiet urgency.

Staring at the pavement, Carla could only shake her head. Like an automaton, she followed Teddy to his vintage Mercedes sedan, once Ben’s, and slipped through the door he opened into the passenger seat, her stomach heavy, her heart leaden.