The Prince of Bagram Prison (16 page)

Jamal nodded enthusiastically. “It's very good here.”

Kat had managed to find a spot for him on the upper deck of the prison facility, in one of the makeshift cells the interrogators had created and set aside for prisoners who were deemed either too fragile or too important to be mixed in with the others. With its pallet bed and bare overhead bulb it was the most basic of accommodations, but it was paradise compared with the cages. Jamal had been made well aware of how lucky he was.

“I want you to tell me about your parents,” Kat said.

Jamal set down the Pringles and picked up the Pop-Tarts, examining the box carefully. “It is sweet?” he asked.

“Yes.” Kat pressed on. “Your parents, Jamal. Your mother died when you were a baby?”

He looked up from the box. “I told you already. She is not dead.”

“Of course. She lives with the king.”

“It's true,” Jamal insisted, reading her skepticism. “The cook told me.”

Kat nodded benignly. “And your father?”

The boy set down the unopened Pop-Tarts box and picked up a Snickers bar instead. “I think this is better.”

“Sweeter,” Kat observed.

“It's chocolate, yes?”

“Yes.”

Jamal smiled. “I like chocolate. Do you like chocolate, Mrs. Kat?”

“Yes,” Kat told him. “Very much. And it's just Kat, okay? Not Mrs.”

“Why not?” It was a scholarly question.

“Because Mrs. is only for married women.”

“And you are not married?”

“No.”

“Your husband is dead?”

Kat shook her head. “I don't have a husband.”

“Oh.” Jamal said, his eyes widening in a look of sudden comprehension. “You are a soldier, yes? Like the women at the camp. Mr. Hamid told me about the women soldiers.”

“Yes,” Kat agreed. “We are all soldiers here.”

“And at the camp in Herat as well. Mr. Hamid said so.”

Kat was puzzled. “Herat? Was that where you were heading?”

Jamal nodded. “He said the women were in charge there, that I would have to get used to it being this way.”

“In charge, how?” Kat asked, thinking surely this was Bagheri's version of a joke, his comment on the men there.

“In charge of everything,” the boy answered. “He said they were soldiers, like you are, that they carried weapons and even killed people.”

“American women?” Kat asked.

“No,” Jamal told her. “Muslim women.”

Kat shook her head, smiling at the boy's gullibility. “No, Jamal. I don't think so. Not Muslim women.”

Jamal shrugged, unwrapped the candy bar, and took a bite.

“Jamal?” she asked cautiously, watching him eat. “What would you think about helping us?” There, she had said it.

The boy stopped chewing and looked at her. “You mean like a spy?”

So he knew the word. “No. Like a friend. You could help us, and we could help you.”

“How?”

“I don't know yet.” She stopped, choosing her words carefully. “There are people who want to do bad things to other people.”

“Like the towers?”

He was smart, Kat thought. Perhaps too smart for Kurtz's purposes. “Yes, exactly. Like the towers. You could listen for us, and if you heard something, someone planning something bad, you could let us know.”

He took another bite of the Snickers bar and contemplated Kat's proposal. “And you would help me?”

“Yes. We would give you money. And other things. Chocolate.” God, she couldn't believe she was saying this. Would they give him money? she wondered. Surely they would. They would have to. She thought back to those two brief days in Tangier, the urchins at the ferry dock. Yes, she told herself, it was all for the best. “You would be taken care of.”

“And where would I live?” Jamal asked, already starting to come around to the idea.

“I'm not sure. You might go back to Spain, I suppose.”

His eyes lit up. “Or to America?”

“I don't know.” It was possible, wasn't it? “Maybe.”

And, just like that, the worst was done.

The blanket that served as the cell's door opened then and Hariri ducked his head inside. “There's a man here to see you,” he said. “In the ICE.”

Kurtz, Kat thought. Like a shark to the kill.

“I'll be back later,” she told Jamal, rising from her chair and following Hariri out into the corridor.

“How's the prince?” Hariri asked.

“Who?”

“The prince,” Hariri repeated, motioning toward Jamal's cell. “That's what the MPs are calling your boy.”

Kat shrugged, smiling slightly at the nickname. “As good as can be expected. He just told me some crazy story about a camp in Herat with Muslim women soldiers. He claims that's where he and his buddies were headed.”

“MEK?” Hariri suggested.

Kat shook her head. She was hardly an expert on the MEK, but she knew Afghanistan was well outside its territory. The group had traditionally conducted its military operations from within Iraq.

Originally founded by students at Tehran University, the Mojahedin-e Khalq had been serious players in the Iranian revolution years earlier, but they had since transformed themselves into a kind of bizarre military cult, combining Marxist ideology and Islamic theology with strident feminism.

Not long after the overthrow of the shah, the ayatollahs, threatened by the MEK's burgeoning power, had turned on the group, waging a fierce and bloody campaign against it. Its leadership all but obliterated, the few remaining members of the MEK had fled into exile in France, where, under the influence of a charismatic leader and his iron-willed wife, and with the help of friends with extremely deep pockets, they had refashioned themselves entirely.

“In Herat?” Kat asked skeptically.

“I guess not,” Hariri agreed.

“It sounds to me like his friends were having him on.”

They had reached the ICE, and Hariri stepped hurriedly forward, opening the door.

She had done it, Kat thought, steeling herself for the imminent encounter with Kurtz. She had done what he asked, and she did not feel good about it.

But when she stepped into the ICE she saw that it wasn't Kurtz who was waiting for her but Colin. He was filthy, his face and clothes covered with grease and dirt. There was dried blood beneath his right eye and the beginning of a bad bruise.

“I heard you were over at Camp Gibraltar,” he said. “I came straightaway.”

“M
ITCHELL
!
” It was Stuart who woke them the next morning, his voice penetrating the darkness of the cargo container where they'd slept. The giant box was one of four that had been joined together to make the British interrogation facility. From what Kat could see, there was no indication that the structure had ever held prisoners. There was, however, ample evidence that Kat and Colin were not the first couple to have sought refuge there. “Hey, Mitchell, your friend's got a visitor at the gate. An American civilian named Kurtz.”

Colin rolled over and switched on the camp lantern he'd brought, then glanced at his watch.

“What time is it?” Kat asked.

“Six-thirty.”

“Shit!” They'd been asleep for nearly twelve hours, longer, it seemed, than the total number of hours Kat had slept since coming to Afghanistan. She sat up, scrambling to find her boots, feeling groggy and disoriented.

“Don't worry,” Colin said. “The MPs won't let him into camp.”

Colin leaned back on the makeshift bed he'd fashioned for them out of camp blankets and pulled Kat down toward him. “You'll come back tonight?”

Kat felt suddenly awkward. They had both been too exhausted for anything but sleep the night before, but the intimacy of it, here in this place where such unremarkable acts were taboo, seemed almost obscene, more so than if they had had sex. “If I can get away,” she said, pulling back, finally locating her boots.

Colin touched her arm. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” She slipped on her boots and pulled the laces tight, trying not to look at him.

He twisted around until he was in her line of sight. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Really. It's just this place, everything. Aren't you afraid?” She had not meant to say it, but now that she had there was no going back.

Colin shook his head. “Afraid of what?” he asked, as if he hadn't even considered the idea until now.

What wasn't there to be afraid of in this place, Kat thought. Death. Pain. The loss of all those things that kept one human. And now, despite her best attempts to hold her feelings for Colin to a minimum, there would be him to fear for as well. Kat stood up without answering him.

“I should go,” she said. “He'll be wondering what's keeping me.” She looked back at Colin. “Ten,” she told him, softening just slightly. “I'll be here at ten if I can.” Then she made her way out into the chill morning.

Kurtz was waiting for her outside the front gate with a look of stern impatience on his face.

“I hope you know what you're getting yourself into,” he said as they started down Disney Drive together.

What a father would tell a child, Kat thought. “I can take care of myself,” she snapped.

“D
ON
'
T EVER DO THAT
to me again,” Kat said, tossing her bag aside and sloughing her jacket.

The hotel Kurtz had chosen was a dingy establishment, with tiny beds and claustrophobic rooms, greasy windows that looked out onto an industrial view of the Algeciras waterfront, and a shared cold-water shower down the hall. One star, Kat thought, only by the grace and muscle of a well-placed fifty-euro note. It was not unlike the hotel where she'd spent the night before making the crossing to Morocco three years earlier, only that establishment had been farther inland, in the squalid backpackers' quarter near the outdoor market.

“Do what?” Kurtz asked, feigning ignorance.

“I'm serious,” Kat warned him. “Orders or no, you undermine me like that again and I'm on the first flight home. Understand?”

She stepped over to the window and looked across the ferry docks, from which the day's last boat to Tangier had departed some time earlier. Down on the pier's concrete apron, several dozen trucks were already massed for the morning crossing, their cabs dark. Across the bay, Gibraltar rose magnificently from the darkness, its scarred cliff face lit from below, solemn and intimidating.

A reckless choice, Kat told herself, thinking of Jamal, wondering just how much it would take to get her into one of those containers. Fear and desperation, degrees of which she could not even pretend to imagine. She knew for a fact that more died than lived on the trip across, many more. And to go this way, in the opposite direction of hope, back to the place from which one had run, from which one had already risked one's life to escape. To know how it would end even, in the untempered darkness, falling to final sleep.

Kurtz laughed mirthlessly. “How many people know you're here, Kat?”

Kat wheeled to face him. His eyes in the room's bald light were dull and impassive. “Is that a threat?”

“Just making an observation.”

Despite everything, Kat had never feared Kurtz before. From the beginning, she had taken his anger as an expression of powerlessness. She had been alternately pitying and repulsed, but never afraid. Now, suddenly, she understood and she was.

It was well into spring before Harry saw Susan again, nearly eight months since their meeting at the Hotel Duc, a stifling winter of interminable cocktail parties and elaborate dinners, of deflecting the none too discreet advances of languishing consular wives.

For the first few weeks after their indiscretion, Harry had worried that Morrow would find out. Saigon was not a city known for keeping its secrets, and Harry thought it more than possible that Susan would choose to tell Morrow herself. After all, revenge was effective only when both parties were aware of what had happened. But if Morrow did know he showed no indication of it, and eventually Harry gave the whole thing less and less thought. He even managed a sporadic affair with one of the wives from the Hungarian delegation, an unnatural blonde named Marta with a Teutonic ferocity in bed.

When Morrow called in April to say he'd be coming up to Nha Trang, Harry's first thought was that Susan had finally played her hand. He had not known quite what to expect—affairs like his and Susan's were not uncommon in the world in which they revolved, and these types of indiscretions were generally forgiven—but he prepared himself for the worst nonetheless, putting aside enough alcohol to dull himself against whatever pain—mental or physical—he might have to endure.

Harry wasn't sure whether to be relieved or not to see a figure in the passenger seat as he watched Morrow's Mercedes pull in through the gate from his second-floor office. He'd known people to bring backup to confrontations like this, either as witnesses or as extra muscle, though he couldn't see Morrow as someone who resolved his problems through physical means. Perhaps, he thought, the other person was there to make sure Harry went peacefully.

But when the door swung open it wasn't Janson or Robinson or any of the others from the Saigon station who stepped out onto the drive but Susan. She was wearing a lavender shirtwaist dress with a patterned chiffon scarf knotted at her throat, and she looked both ridiculously out of place and strikingly at ease against the tattered colonial backdrop of the villa.