The Warlord's Son (34 page)

As they came around the rocky bend he saw about twenty men seated around a cookfire, surrounded by darkness. Their apparent leader stood a few feet away from them with his back to Skelly, barely illuminated as he consulted with two others. A white turban topped his head, neat as a layer cake. As Skelly approached he saw that a pair of binoculars hung from the man’s neck. In one hand he held a radio, in the other a gnawed bone of whatever they’d cooked for dinner.

Several faces around the campfire turned to watch Skelly. The encampment stank of sweat and wood smoke, and of overcooked meat. Skelly thought he heard the spin of tires on gravel. Just Pierce positioning the car for an easy exit, he supposed.

The leader turned to face him, and Skelly recognized him right away, although the last time the man’s turban had been black. It was Haji Kudrat. Was he really the source, or was this some awful practical joke?

“So which one of you speaks English?” Skelly said, his voice sounding too high.

No one answered.

“English?” he offered again. This time Kudrat replied in a raspy burst of Pashto, pocketing the radio and nibbling the bone a final time before dropping it to the ground. He stepped closer, inspecting Skelly from head to toe as the rest of the men watched. Then he asked something in Pashto.

“I don’t understand,” Skelly said, wondering what the hell Pierce had gotten him into. Kudrat spoke again, only a few words, but several of his men laughed roughly, heads bobbing around the fire.

“I’ll get Pierce,” Skelly said. “He speaks Pashto.”

“Pee-erce,” Kudrat said with a nod, having finally heard a word he could understand. But when Skelly turned to go, two hands seized his shoulders from behind and shoved him back toward Kudrat, who was reaching to his waist, right hand gripping the hilt of a sword. And not just any sword. It was Razaq’s. Kudrat raised it aloft. Skelly couldn’t move, still held firmly in place by the hands on his shoulders. Watching the sword rise he could faintly make out the inscription on the blade, remembering Najeeb’s translation. “No Return.”

The sword wavered, catching a glint of firelight. Then, to Skelly’s horror and astonishment, Kudrat swept the blade downward in one great motion that seemed to last forever. Skelly raised his hands in defense, but far too slowly, the blade whisking away a finger like a shaft of celery, then still coming, now slicing into his cotton shirtfront and the butterfat of his skin as it began a diagonal trace, furrowing his chest from neck to waist, screaming through him in a wide deep valley, a red canyon opening across his torso. If he was making a sound he did not hear it, for it was shouted down by the sudden agonies of his nervous system, all systems in retreat and disarray. He felt his legs sag but still couldn’t bear to look as he landed on his knees, then flopped to the side, feeling the warmth that now covered him like a slick of burning oil as a sort of dreaminess overtook him, everything in his field of vision gone gummy and indistinct. Then darkness, and all was still, clarity at last emerging in a long moment in which he saw them all, everyone who had ever been important to him—his children, his wives, his editors and colleagues, and yes, Najeeb too, all of them clean and sensibly dressed, and peering down at him from a high surrounding circle, as if from the rim of a well, every face frowning with worry and concern. But most disheartening of all was that no one spoke a word. His oldest daughter, Carol, over there to the left, moved forward, the only one to do so, almost reaching him now as she extended a hand in care and in sorrow. But her hand never found him, for he was falling, below them all into a shaft without end. Good-bye, he’d wanted to say. But he never got the chance, and now, in his last flickering instant of awareness, he knew it was too late. Too late.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Regional Briefs

By Our Correspondent

FOUR KILLED:
Three men were killed and seven others injured in a clash between Afridi and Shinwari factions in the village of Alzara this week in the Khyber Tribal Agency, in an apparent dispute over timber rights and motor lorry transport. The warring groups attacked each other with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Three men were taken to hospital for treatment. Police rushed to the fighting and controlled the situation.

WOMAN MURDERED:
A married woman was axed to death yesterday by her cousin, allegedly due to an old family feud in the village of Manduri in the Kurram Tribal Agency. Mustafa Zahoori barged into the house of his cousin Shamayla and killed her with repeated blows of the axe. The deceased was the mother of four children.

BODY IDENTIFIED:
A man killed during a robbery in the Khyber Tribal Agency has been identified as missing American journalist Stanford J. Kelly. Mr. Kelly had not been heard from since entering Afghanistan the previous week. Identifying the body was industrialist Sam Hartley, a friend of the deceased. The remains will be transported to the United States under arrangement of the American consulate. Mr. Kelly’s colleagues plan a memorial service for 3 p.m. today at the Pearl Continental Hotel.

NAJEEB AND DALIYA took seats near the back. Hotel employees had set up folding chairs in a small conference room with a coffee urn on a side table, and if not for a huge floral arrangement near the podium it would have looked as if a business seminar was about to begin.

About thirty people showed up, not a bad turnout, Najeeb thought, although it was a slow news day in Peshawar. All the action now was in Afghanistan, where after weeks of stalemate the Northern Alliance had finally broken through and the Taliban seemed to be on the run. Already there was a rising clamor among the foreign journalists for travel passes to Torkham, in case the border should open up. The moment Kabul fell there would doubtless be a headlong rush, whether the authorities were ready or not. But for now there was still the sense of a calm before the storm, so in a way it was the perfect time for Skelly’s colleagues to pay their respects.

Najeeb recognized several faces from the earlier bus ride to Torkham, including the woman Skelly had called Chatty Lucy. Her face was already blotchy, and she was dabbing her cheeks with a handkerchief before the first speaker opened his mouth. She was one of the few journalists accompanied by her fixer, and Najeeb was pleased to see she’d hired a new one. Skelly would have liked it, too, he thought.

None of this had prevented the Clerk from showing up, who in an extreme show of bad taste sat by himself in the back row, furtively taking notes in a small brown pad that he slipped beneath his thigh.

Neither Sam Hartley nor Arlen Pierce came. Nor had they returned Najeeb’s phone calls during the past several days. He doubted he would see either of them again.

For three days running Najeeb had tried to write his own version of events for the
Frontier Report,
only to have each attempt spiked by his usually inattentive editor, who argued with uncharacteristic zeal that the account of Razaq’s hanging was old news, even if the apparent details regarding the men who’d betrayed him weren’t.

Najeeb had at first attributed the sudden timidity to the stresses of wartime, figuring he might get a more favorable reception once the Taliban was defeated. But he’d changed his opinion earlier in the day, when he’d again been plucked from traffic on his scooter and escorted in an unmarked jeep to the battered gray door in the alley off Saddar Bazaar.

He arrived once again at Tariq’s desk, where he found the man reading a printout of his latest stillborn dispatch.

“Interesting stuff,” Tariq said. Najeeb kept his feet. “But how much of it is true?”

Najeeb didn’t want to tell him a damn thing, of course. He had purposely avoided reporting back to Tariq since his return, especially once Skelly failed to appear. When his worst fears were confirmed, he continued his silence, out of grief, anger and, to be frank, out of fear of further meddling in his life.

Tariq, seated before a half-finished dinner, seemed relaxed in the extreme.

“Well, are you going to answer my question or not? And sit down.”

Najeeb sat, but maintained his silence. Tariq reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a few sheets of official-looking paper with the letterhead of the Peshawar police.

“Here’s some reading material that might loosen your lips.”

It was a charging document, citing Najeeb for murder. He was alarmed, certain that he was about to be framed for Skelly’s death, which he supposed would be easy enough since no one had yet come up with any details, other than a half-baked story about a robbery by rogue elements of some warlord, who wasn’t named in the dispatch.

Skelly’s American friends themselves had supposedly only barely escaped, but Najeeb was skeptical, and when neither Pierce nor Hartley returned his calls he took that as confirmation of their complicity.

But as he scanned the document now before him he realized from the dates and other particulars that it concerned the
malang
killed outside his apartment.

“The girl turning up safe helped you,” Tariq said, “but it didn’t clear the decks. There’s still this little matter.”

Najeeb opened his mouth to protest, to tell him about Karim, but Tariq stilled him with an upraised hand.

“I couldn’t care less what really happened that night. All that matters to me is what happened afterward. In Afghanistan and beyond. Everything you saw, right up until now. I want a full debriefing, whatever you can remember, including what you saw of the Arabs
and
of the Americans.”

“And what about this?” Najeeb said, holding up the police papers.

“We have a suspect in custody. A drug runner and timber smuggler.”

“Name?”

“Does it matter? It’s not Karim, if that’s what you’re thinking. And, yes, I know about him. I know about some other things as well. But not everything. Which is why you had better start talking. And if I can’t interest you in saving your own skin, you can be sure there are still some things we can charge your little friend Daliya with. Flight from a murder scene, for starters.”

Najeeb scowled, but did as he was told. He spent the next three hours going over what had happened. Tariq didn’t take a single note, probably because somewhere in the room there was a microphone recording it for him. Afterward he placed a phone call to the police while Najeeb sat and listened.

After a few introductory remarks, Tariq said little other than an occasional “yes” or “no.” Then he hung up.

“There,” Tariq said. “Nothing more for you to worry about. Provided, of course, that you cease in your attempt to publish this.” He dropped the printout of Najeeb’s story into the trash.

“But what about Skelly’s death?” Najeeb protested. “Do you really think it was a robbery?”

Tariq held up his hands.

“That’s above my pay grade. Although I would imagine there will eventually be arrests.”

“More drug runners and timber smugglers?”

“It’s out of my hands. Apparently there is some question whether the death even occurred in Pakistani territory, so the Americans are taking it over. This Mr. Pierce you’ve spoken of, I believe it is now his affair.”

Which didn’t surprise Najeeb a bit.

“So what were they doing there?” he asked.

“The two Americans?” Tariq shrugged. “They were in over their heads. I think someone had convinced them that they were about to corner the market on both pipeline routes and stray Arabs, with the help of a few warlord friends. But you know how it goes out there. No one corners the market on anything in the Khyber except the tribesmen. People like your father. And even their fortunes change with the wind. The bad part for me, of course, is that now the Americans will expect me to do something about it. Maybe even to go and find their Arabs for them, including the one they covet most. But you’ve seen how much influence we have there. So I will give them a copy of my report and hope that they will feel better for a while. And when someone else comes along in some other country who interests them more, I expect they’ll forget all about me.”

But in trying to sort out recent events, Najeeb had an advantage that Tariq didn’t. It was a lengthy and well-conceived summary including all the players, with everyone’s role sketched out on a yellow legal pad. At first the handwriting had been difficult to read, but once he’d gotten the hang of it Najeeb had concluded that Skelly really knew how to tell a story, and it made him oddly proud.

At the moment of their parting in the hills of Khyber, Najeeb had taken the man’s notebook instead of his money, less for its value than to ensure its preservation. And earlier this morning, just before he’d been rounded up off the streets, Najeeb had sealed the notebook in a large envelope and passed it along to another foreign journalist at the Pearl, who promised to make sure it got back to Skelly’s editors in America.

Would they publish his final dispatch? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Najeeb knew little about the workings of American newspapers. But he had done all he could for the man, and for the moment that was enough.

“So I’m free to go, then?” he asked Tariq, rising to take his leave.

“There is one other thing. Something I still owe you.”

For a brief, heady moment Najeeb was sure Tariq was about to slide open a drawer and produce two visas to the United States. All he got instead was an explanation.

“I tried,” Tariq said, “but the U.S. is out of the question. They’re in total shutdown—even the usual unofficial channels—especially for fellows like you. But Britain’s another matter. Apparently the door’s still ajar, so I’m working on it.”

Najeeb nodded. Better than no hope at all, he supposed.

“One word of advice,” Tariq continued, standing now to escort him from the office. “Things would probably move faster if you and your friend were . . . more legally connected?”

“We’re working on it,” Najeeb said.

And they were.

Daliya was back on her own, sort of. She’d enjoyed a tearful reunion with her family, all transgressions momentarily forgiven in the glow of her miraculous reappearance. Once they calmed down, they of course wanted to lock her up in a Punjabi version of purdah. Her father even made noises about resuming the search for a suitable husband, his clumsy stab at a conciliatory gesture.

But she insisted on returning to Peshawar, where Professor Bhatti had promised to help her find lodgings with female students from the local university, and for the moment none of her relatives felt strong enough to object. She had returned to them as a strange and unreadable creature, like some exotic bird blown in on a freak storm, and no one yet had the nerve to cage her.

So now there they sat, side by side at Skelly’s memorial service, two strange birds in tandem, paying respects to their fallen friend.

Three speakers were scheduled—a Frenchman, a Brit and an American—and between them they seemed to have traveled alongside Skelly at every one of the world’s wars during the past twenty years. Each was a gifted storyteller, both poignant and irreverent, and after one particularly nice moment Daliya glanced at Najeeb and almost gasped to see tears rolling down the cheek of her stern Pashtun lover.

She reached up to brush them away, but Najeeb stopped her with a calm but firm gesture.

“Leave them,” he whispered, his brown eyes dry even as his face was shining. “I want to feel them for a while.”

Daliya nodded. Having been to the Khyber, she understood.