Veiled Freedom (58 page)

“No, I can't promise that,” Amy said quietly. “I certainly hope to be here awhile and that if I go, someone will take my place. But I can't promise that tomorrow a suicide bomb won't go off at our gate. Or that all foreigners won't be ordered out of your country. Only God knows what tomorrow holds, as your faith and mine teaches.

“What I can promise is that you and your family can use that suite as a refuge so you have time to look around for something better. And if something does happen to New Hope, I will do everything in my power to make sure you and your family are taken care of and the other women and children as well. That is my personal commitment—not New Hope's or my country's but mine.”

Amy wasn't sure she even wanted to look at Soraya to see her reaction. But when she did, her housemate's expression had softened. Getting up from her chair, she came over and hugged Amy in the first expression of affection Amy had experienced from Soraya.

“You are a good person, Miss Ameera,” she said, smiling. “I will go down now to inform my husband we have a wonderful new place to live.”

“Don't be too optimistic,” Jason Hamilton told Steve as they watched a blue gray uniform at a computer screen. “We've got a match between this bomb and those earlier fingerprints from that suicide vest. But unless the perp's in the system, that's not much. Those other prints never got a hit. And unless this guy was dumb enough to hang around his crime scene, he's not going to be in today's bunch.”

The DynCorp manager had barely spoken when the Afghan police officer threw up his hands with voluble excitement. A printer spit out paper.

Jason shook his head as he handed it to Steve. “Unbelievable! Someone really is dumb.”

Steve was staring at the readout, stunned. This was impossible. And yet the evidence was as incontrovertible as it was damning.

At least one mystery's solved.

Amy emerged from her bedroom to an empty apartment. Fatima must have accompanied Soraya down to look for Ibrahim. That her housemate's deception involved nothing more than trying to protect family and husband was one good thing that had come out of this day. Maybe even a new understanding between Amy and the Afghan woman.

Now if the remaining mystery could be resolved, so that invasion force would leave and New Hope be restored to its tranquility.
I've still got to call Mr. Korallis to let him know what's happened. He's going to freak out. Especially since we'll end up paying repairs.

Which, like the injuries, could be worse. In the office, Amy had found her laptop case knocked over under her desk, Soraya's keyboard dangling from its cord. But farther from the blast, Amy's quarters had been hardly touched, a few books off their shelf, pictures on the living room wall now crooked.

Amy stepped over cushions to straighten a framed photo of her family. Her parents' two-dimensional faces smiled at her, and Amy found herself fiercely envying Fatima, who could retreat to lay an aching head on her mother's shoulder, surrender herself to loving arms soothing and fussing away this day's grief and fear. A wave of homesickness swept over Amy such as she hadn't felt since blithely setting off on her first overseas adventure.

I'll go home for Christmas. Even if it's just for a few days. Even if New Hope hasn't found me a deputy yet. I need to go home.

Then Amy caught her reflection in the mirror above the TV. Electricity had been down since the explosion, so she'd done her best with a cold sponge bath and changed into fresh clothing. But the black eye Steve had pointed out was in full bloom, her forehead mottled purple and green above it. Amy's grimace hurt as she rubbed at a lingering rust streak along her jaw.
But not until that's improved or they'll never let me come back.

“The mirror does not tell the truth, Ameera-jan.”

Amy's spin was so hasty she knocked into the TV. She grabbed to keep it from falling to the floor. “Jamil, what are you doing here?”

Amy would never expect her assistant, like Soraya's husband, to step into her private quarters, and she found herself taking a step backward, snatching her scarf over her head with a haste that snagged at her bandage. She took another step back as Jamil closed the door behind him, not latching it but leaving no more than a slit to maintain propriety.

“Please. I did not mean to startle you.” Something in his voice halted Amy in her tracks as Jamil crossed the living room. Setting a large sack on the table, he pulled out an antiseptic wipe and tore open the packaging. Then he'd been to the bazaar. Amy had been so preoccupied with Soraya, she'd forgotten his earlier request. Her eye fell on the bundle she'd left just inside the door. Of course, he'd come to retrieve his belongings.

Amy stood stock-still as deft fingers dabbed the dried blood from her jaw. “There. Does it hurt? Did Miss Becky leave you medication for the pain?”

“I took ibuprofen.” Amy's voice was shaky as he dropped his hand. “But I'm not sure it's kicked in because I feel like I've been run over by a truck.” Her mouth crooked ruefully. “And despite your kind words, I'm afraid I look like it too.”

“What you look is hurt. Here—please sit.” Pulling a chair out for Amy, Jamil crouched on sandaled heels so that his head was tilted up to hers.

Amy suddenly realized what was missing in him. The diffidence and quiet aloofness of a subordinate. And her assistant hadn't called her by his usual punctilious Miss Ameera, but the familiar and affectionate Ameera-jan by which the children and women of New Hope addressed Amy.

“But hurts will heal, and you will never be less than beautiful, Ameera-jan, because your beauty is inside. A gentle and quiet spirit—is that not what your holy book calls beautiful? That is what I see when I look at you.”

“I—thank you.” Amy looked down at Jamil's uptilted face. He had bathed today, his beard freshly trimmed, dark curls under a cap shining with a health that hadn't been there when they'd first met. His hunkered-down posture held coiled tension, but the wide-spaced dark gaze was free of shadow as Amy had never seen it in these weeks, a tenderness that had been there when Jamil swabbed her cheek still curving his mouth. Had he any idea, Amy wondered with confusion, how much he looked like so many artists' renditions of the Isa Masih who interested him so?

She made a sudden movement to get up. “Let me get your pack. I brought it up because I was afraid someone might carry it off. And I owe you money for those supplies.”

Jamil's hand went out to stop her. “No, please, don't move. I knew you would have brought my things here. But that is not why I came. I-I did not wish to leave without saying good-bye and thanking you for all you have done.”

“Leave?” Amy repeated blankly. “To the bazaar again?”

“No, I am leaving New Hope—and Kabul. I . . . I should have gone before. But when I saw what had happened, I could not leave without being certain that you and the children and others would be well. Only now I must go quickly. I sought to speak with you before, to tell you this. But it has been difficult to encounter you alone.”

Because Steve Wilson had turned up. And at the sound of his voice through the paneling, Amy remembered now, Jamil had turned the conversation to his bazaar trip. “But I don't understand. Why would you leave? If it's Steve, the American soldiers, the fingerprints—no, wait, you said you were planning to leave even before the explosion. Haven't you been happy working here?”

“I have been happier these weeks here than for as long as my memory can reach.” The flat statement held reassuring conviction. “Than I ever thought to be again.”

“Then why are you leaving?”

It had to be exhaustion that brought tears springing to Amy's eyes. Only now was Amy recognizing just how much she'd come to lean on Jamil's steady, quiet, uncomplaining support. No, not just his support. Somewhere in these last weeks of working companionably side by side, Amy had come to think of the man before her not as a hireling unexpectedly competent to help her make a success of her project but as a friend.

A friend such as Amy had once envisioned—perhaps because she'd been so lonely, and they shared a citizenship and culture, and the security contractor had been kind in his own brusque fashion—that Steve Wilson might be. Amy's hand across her eyes was not only to press away the weariness. “I . . . I don't want to see you go. I don't know what I'd do without you, especially after today. This job is too big for me. If it isn't the fingerprints, is it finances? Would a raise help? You've earned it a hundred times over. Just tell me what it would take to make you stay.”

“Oh, Ameera-jan.” Jamil's rare smile lit thin features to sweetness. “Do you not think I would stay if I could? that my heart cries out to say yes? But you do not truly need me anymore. You have Rasheed and Wajid and Soraya and Fatima and little Farah. And you no longer need my voice to speak for you to my people.”

Amy could hear his determination as clearly as the regret. “And it is for your well-being and the others too that I must go. There are things I have not been free to tell you. Things that may perhaps cause you to think ill of me. I pray only when I am gone that you will believe, whatever others may say, I would do nothing to cause harm to you nor anyone under your charge.”

“Going somewhere?”

There'd been no warning of Steve entering the living room, the apartment door hitting the wall behind it with enough force to send a chip of plaster flying. A hard gaze swept the apartment, and Amy took in with disbelief the pistol in the security contractor's hand. Only this time it was not aimed toward the sky.

Behind him, blue gray uniforms poured into the room, weapons unslung and aimed.

Jamil had not so much as straightened up from his stooped position, but Amy was on her feet, taking an indignant step past her assistant. “Steve Wilson, what do you think you're doing?”

Instead of lowering his weapon, Steve snaked out a free arm and yanked Amy to his side. “On your feet, Jamil!”

The soft, hard command was as deadly as the Glock in the security contractor's hand, his other arm a barrier of steel holding Amy back. Jamil straightened slowly, hands in the air.

“Now lose the blanket.”

The patu slid to the floor. Ian moved forward to run his hands over the prisoner.

“I am not armed,” Jamil told him quietly.

“Excuse me if I don't take your word for it.” Ian gingerly nudged Jamil's pack out of reach with his boot, then looked over at Steve. “All clear.”

Amy found voice again. “Why are you doing this? How dare you come barging into my apartment!”

Steve didn't look at Amy. The narrowed eyes he'd fastened on Jamil were two chips of gray steel. “Your pal here knows why. Oh yes, we've already processed those fingerprints. Maybe you've never heard of a database scanner, or I'm betting you'd have hit the road by now. Downstairs with the others!”

A police uniform yanked Jamil's hands behind his back and twisted nylon flexicuffs around them. Amy stepped out of the way as gun barrels prodded him to the door. But now Steve had turned those steel-gray chips on Amy, his hard mouth twisting. “Oh no, this time you're coming too.”

Ian straightened up from Jamil's pack. “Nothing here, boss, but personal items and a few books.”

“Leave it.” Steve's grip on Amy's elbow was no longer supportive but a shackle as he propelled her down the stairwell.

When Amy entered the schoolroom, she could see it had now become a tribunal. Like judges, an older, blond expat contractor and an Afghan police officer sat behind Fatima's desk near the rear wall. The blond contractor was one who'd arrived with the Afghan police force. Jason, Steve had called the man. Around the room, expat contractors and police uniforms held unslung weapons. Amy was relieved to see Steve's friend Phil among them, but the medic didn't return her uncertain smile, his expression holding cold disbelief as he stared at the man he'd worked beside all afternoon.