The Prisoner's Wife (29 page)

Shawn's notion of these places was formed by the gun shops of Alabama: little roadside stores selling handguns and hunting rifles, bait worms, and NRA decals (
KEEP HONKING, I'M RELOADING
), along with eye-catching jackets, so your buddies don't take you for deer.

Peshawar Army Supplies was different. It offered rocket-propelled grenades, missiles, land mines, machine guns, cannon, fragmentation bombs, rocket launchers, Kalashnikovs, and artillery shells. A young man in a skullcap brought Shawn a cup of cardamom-spiced tea. A notice on a wall announced the availability, to order, of American-made Stingers—maybe the same heat-seeking missiles Shawn once shipped across the border into Afghanistan. He pointed at a short-barreled, nine-mil double-action Russian-made Makarov in a dusty glass case. He was giving up on Glocks. Disappointed that this was all his customer needed, the old man briefly checked the weapon, found a brick of shells, and passed the pistol over the counter. Calculating what money remained, Shawn paid cash.

The storekeeper indicated a battered RPG launcher. “You are wanting nothing else?”

“The minute I need missiles,” Shawn said, “I will let you know.”

The old man laughed politely and ushered his customer from the shop. “Sir,” he said, “go carefully. This is not a safe town for American spies.”

“I'm not a spy,” Shawn said. He turned right out of the store. “If I was, I'm not now.”

*   *   *

Walking toward Khyber Bazaar, Shawn had the feeling, the sense, that he was being followed. He stopped suddenly, backed into a café doorway, put a hand on his new purchase—he hoped to hell the pistol worked—and faced the way he'd come. Avoiding a group of young Pashtuns, along came a thickset man last seen in Fes: the lethal handyman, Alfred Burke.

His right hand in his windbreaker pocket, Shawn leveled the Makarov. “Alfred,” he said.

Without changing pace, Alfred came toward him.

“Not too close,” Shawn said.

Alfred pulled out one of the café's plastic chairs, seated himself, and waved Shawn to another. “Don't be that way, matey,” said Alfred. “I want to talk with you. Take your hand out your damn pocket. If I was on a hit, you think you would've seen me?”

Shawn, seating himself, shook his head.

“Well, then,” Alfred said. He sat a while in silence, staring into space. “You know I been working for Mr. Abbasi,” he said finally. “You remember that.”

“You told me in Fes. When you took me to the cellar.”

“Jesus,” said Alfred, “don't you hate them underground places? Give me the creeps, personally speaking. Mr. Abbasi used to say they make him feel safe. Not me, they don't. Make me feel like I been buried. Before I was dead, know what I mean?”

“Which reminds me,” Shawn said. “Something I want to ask you.”

Alfred waited.

“A man in Fes tried to kill me.”

Alfred clicked his tongue. “Weren't me, squire. Principle I work on, someone's trying to take you out, they don't appreciate what you're doing. Which, in your case, it's chasing that schwartzer they keep shifting around.” He paused, then said, “Same with Mr. Abbasi, Lord love him.”

“Are you telling me,” Shawn said, “Abbasi's dead?”

“Dead as they get,” Alfred said. “Garroted. Pity. He was Paki, okay, but I liked him.”

“Me, too.”

“They banged him up in jail, some bullshit charge.” Alfred pointed northward. “One of them hajjis had a wire, got to him. Or, another story, hajjis blow up the jail wall, they go in, find our guy”—Alfred made a pistol gesture with his right hand—“they whack him.” He put a calloused hand around his throat. “Then, this.”

Shawn thought back to his meeting with Abbasi in the peace of his Sussex garden. He thought of shots at a pear tree, a woman in a Lexus, a kitten on a lawn. He shook his head. “Not true.”

“Which bit?” asked Alfred.

“Both. Either.”

Alfred shook his head. “Ye of little faith. You don't believe this, because why?”

“Because it never happened,” Shawn said. “If Abbasi's dead—”

“—which, trust me, mate, he is—”

“—he wasn't killed by his own people.”

“Well,” Alfred said, “I don't know. It's what I heard. These days, who d'you believe? The stories you hear.” He considered Shawn. “Heard one or two about you, come to that.”

“Tell me,” Shawn said. “I like stories.”

“Might not like this one,” Alfred said. “Mr. McCord's planning to pick up your girlfriend.”

“You're working for him?”

“Am now,” Alfred said. “Something I noticed, people stop paying you, once they're dead.”

Shawn swung his chair so that he was fully facing the thickset man. “So. McCord's paying. Walking-around money, that's called. What do you do for him?”

“Now, now,” Alfred said. “I don't ask you what you're doing with Miss Baptist.”

“Baptiste.”

“Whatever,” Alfred said. “I don't ask. But when I say pick up, apropos Mr. McCord and Miss Baptist, I mean not in the sense he's asking the lady out on a date.”

“I know what you mean,” Shawn said. “Hasn't happened yet.”

Alfred pressed large hands together: an isometric exercise. “You know why that is? I'll tell you. Because Mr. McCord has a little job for you, which he wants it done first.” He turned away, then paused. “You know something?” he asked. “If I was you, which I'm glad I'm not, I wouldn't stay around this town.”

“You said you hadn't been hired for a hit.”

“I haven't,” Alfred said. “Don't know if I'd do it, even if I was. We're getting too old for this game, you and me. You specially. Comes a time, right, when you say, okay, enough of this shit. Or your body says so. If I was you, though, and like I say, I'm glad I'm not, there's other bodies I'd be watching.”

“Anyone in particular?”

Alfred bent to toss coins to an orange-robed and legless beggar scooting past them on a skateboard.

“What about the one you're living with? The bird? The one the boss wants a chat with.”

Hands clasped in blessing, the beggar scooted off.

Shawn said, “You've been listening to McCord.”

Alfred shrugged. “At this moment, it's my job.” He reached beneath his jacket. Shawn stood and stepped back, his hand going to his own pocket.

“Relax,” Alfred said. He produced an envelope and passed it over. “Last payment from Mr. Abbasi.” He watched Shawn open the packet. “It's not what you settled for. Man was running short of cash. Plus, I took myself a little commission.”

“You could have taken it all,” Shawn said.

Alfred bared tombstone teeth. “You know what he says, whatsisface. Live outside the law, you best be honest.”

Listening to the handyman, Shawn reflected on honesty, on lives cut short, on the people he knew who'd died violent deaths, at his own hand or others'. One of those others, he believed, was Alfred—who lifted one liver-spotted finger in farewell, then paused.

“Last word,” he said. “I got myself a armpit of a place”—he pointed to where a gold-leafed onion dome reared above the rooftops—“right next that mosque thing there. Bitch, trying to sleep. Five in the morning, what do they do, the bastards?” He held his hands apart. “Prayer call over speakers, this near my fucking head.” He yawned. “Anyway, son. You want to find me, that's where I'll be.”

Shawn told him thanks for the heads-up. “No offense,” he said, “but why the hell would I want to find you?”

The handyman was walking away, rolling his head to ease the muscles of his neck. “Who knows?” he asked. “This place. Fulla surprises.”

 

34

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, 3 JUNE 2004

When Shawn arrived back at the Grand Comfort Hotel, Bobby Walters was there, waiting in a veranda in a pool of shade, escaping the crowd and heat of the afternoon. Putting an arm around Shawn's shoulders, he said, “Good to see you, boy. Been a while.”

“In an army chopper,” Shawn said, “did you not drop into my village, two weeks back?”

“Lot goes down in two weeks,” Bobby said. “Stuff happens. I came here. You came here. I want a word where no one's listening. Get your ass in the jeep.”

Given orders, Shawn's instinct was to do otherwise. He'd been that way since schooldays in Turkey Forge.

Seeing this, Bobby said, “You don't do it, be a mistake. Trust me. Got a job for you.”

Two buses edged past, flying the campaign flags of both political parties, together with a hundred small mirrors, hand-colored posters of Nashida Noon, and, for some reason, an image of a young and fully dressed Madonna Ciccone. Bearded men hung on the running boards and stood waving, semaphore-style, on roofs. Someone in a bus played what sounded like an off-key trumpet.

“Do I get to know where we're going?”

“The hills. Observation.” Bobby—in charge of what Shawn guessed to be a hired vehicle of a certain age—peered underneath, for bombs, then sat a while adjusting the driver's seat, putting the jeep in gear; checking gas, oil, and temperature levels. He was thorough about these things. “Plus, I want a chat, where no one's listening.”

Shawn thought it over, then climbed into the jeep's shotgun seat. On the edge of town, they were waved through a Pakistan army checkpoint, manned by a single nervous soldier with a submachine gun. Shawn watched until he was out of sight. A sign on the side of the road, beyond the checkpoint, read, in English and Urdu,
WASH HAND BEFORE YOU PRAY.

“Is there something I should know? Some other reason for this trip?”

“Like I told you,” Bobby said, “we need a chat. Plus, I want to overlook Wana and Miranshah. Get an idea of the territory. Locate ACM camps. We plan to bomb the bastards.”

They were leaving Peshawar now, through the Karkhano market. The market stalls led up to the arched gate that separated Peshawar from the lawless tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line. In one direction, the highway led through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Bobby took the other fork, onto an unpaved road—a dusty track, which Shawn, in his Peshawar days, had never seen.

Gazing upward, into the mountains, he recalled the Pashtun wedding his comrades had bombed. He wondered how Danielle would judge these latest attack plans.

To Shawn's left, along a deep defile, stood a cluster of mud-brick Pashtun dwellings, hedged with flowering ashoka trees like those under which—so his Muslim lover said—the Buddha was born.

In ascending waves of sound, a U.S. fighter-bomber passed low overhead, banked, turned, and was gone, to bring down God's wrath on southern Afghanistan. Higher and slower, an unmanned Predator circled hawklike over the mountains, seeking prey. Shawn pointed a thumb. “Still kids in Nevada flying those things?”

Bobby nodded.

“Drones based where? Helmand?”

“Here,” Bobby said. “Baluchistan.”

Shawn considered his colleague. “We're bombing Pakis with drones based here? In their own country? Islamabad knows?”

“Would we know if the hajjis put bombers in Iowa?” Bobby asked. “Of course they fucking know. What do they do? Throw hissy fits. Bitch about cross-border bombing. Then they name a price.”

“Well,” Shawn said, “some things still surprise me. Should I know what it means? ACM?”

“New jargon,” Bobby said. “ACM, basically, that's ragheads. Latest designation. Pentagon's not happy, calling them insurgents.” Bobby was looking to left and right, edgy now. “Insurgent, it's a term gives the wrong impression, you know what I mean.” He was driving too fast for the road, swinging from side to side of the track, hurling Shawn against the door of the jeep. “Anticoalition militants. Currently approved designation.” He pointed upward and eastward. “Word is, that's where they train. Someplace up there.” He grinned and raised his voice, shouting at the empty land. “Wake up, guys. Smell the coffee.”

The jeep was climbing through steep planes of mica schist. In declivities to right and left stood shivering windbreaks of gray-leafed poplar. Some of the trees had died; of drought, Shawn guessed.

In the distance, men led strings of hollow-ribbed camels toward flat land below.

The jeep was still climbing. As the gradient grew steeper, Bobby kicked down one gear, then another. Shawn tried to watch both sides of the track. Rafe Ramirez's killers came from these mountain villages. The only humans he saw were two men, old men, sitting motionless on the mountainside, knees drawn up to their chins. They wore thin shawls and woolen caps; their music was the belling of fat-tailed sheep. They gazed into the far distance, not turning their heads as the jeep went by.

“What's the prime minister say? She may have an opinion on what you guys plan.”

“Pakistan doesn't have a prime minister. You should know that. It's election time.”

Shawn thought of Danielle, reading the local Urdu news sheet. “That's not what I hear. I mean, election's over. We have a result.”

“Okay,” Bobby said. “Okay. As of this week, technically, yes, Pakistan has a prime minister. Nashida Noon. But come on, she's not in charge. How could she be? Transition time. She's out here in the boonies—Quetta, someplace like that.” He pointed back toward the town below them. “She's coming this way. That's one of the things we need to talk about.”

Shawn shook his head. “You lost me. Why would we need to do that?”

“We'll get there,” Bobby said. “Tell me about your woman.”

They were on the crest of the mountain, looking down on a rock-strewn plain. Glancing to his right, Shawn saw, high among the rocks, three men watching him. They carried Lee-Enfield rifles: old-fashioned, single shot, but, he knew, remarkably accurate. In Alabama, he'd trained on Lee-Enfields.