by Alex Carr
By the time she showered and dressed and left her room, it was early afternoon on the eleventh of September, the world she was about to enter and her relation to it already utterly and irrevocably changed.
Downstairs, a small group of guests were huddled around the lobby television watching the first disturbing images of the attack on the World Trade Center. The second plane had not yet hit, and the early consensus was that there had been a terrible accident. But even in those first confusing moments Kat had known otherwise, had understood that she would be going home. And despite herself, despite the horror of what had happened, she had been relieved that this was the case, that she would not have to venture any further.
She had not known about Max then, had not even imagined that her brother might be there in the towers. It was almost three weeks before she called her mother and learned that he was among the missing.
A week later, while Kat was still in New York sorting through the detritus of Max's unfinished life, the official notification came through, informing Kat that she had three days to pack her bags and close up her own life before reporting for duty. Two months after that, she found herself on the frigid tarmac in Karshi-Khanabad, waiting for the C-130 that would take her and the rest of the interrogation team to Kandahar.
KAT KICKED HER FRONT DOOR CLOSED behind her and lunged for the phone, slamming the receiver to her ear without bothering to look at the caller ID.
“Hello?”
Stuart's voice was so much like Colin's, their lowland accents so closely matched, that for a moment Kat was fooled into thinking everything was fine.
“Colin?”
He hesitated before correcting her. “No, it's Stu.”
“What's wrong?” she asked immediately.
“It's Colin. I'm so sorry, Katy.”
She knew without asking that she had been right. “What happened?”
Stuart paused, struggling audibly to keep his voice together. “Overdose,” he said. “Morphine sulfate. The stuff he'd been taking for his arm. They found him two days ago in a pub bathroom in King's Cross.”
“So it was an accident, then?” Kat heard herself say.“No, Katy. I don't know all the details, but evidently his prescription was time-release. He'd sped up the dosage somehow. Mixed it in with his drink.” Another pause, and that struggle again.
Kat said nothing. She'd known Colin was unhappy. Losing his arm had been hard for him—beyond hard—but it had been three years now, and she had sensed from their last few conversations that he was finally moving on.
There was Stuart's trial coming up, of course. He'd been charged in the death of one of the Bagram detainees. Colin had been the only other member of their team to witness the man's death, and his testimony at the court-martial would weigh heavily in the case against his friend. But they all knew that the proceedings were merely a formality. The man had been asthmatic, something Stuart could not possibly have known, and had died under interrogation as a result of his illness. If anything, Colin's testimony would mitigate Stuart's responsibility.
“Are they sure?” Kat asked.
She felt numb, removed from herself. An accident she had been prepared for. A fall while climbing in the Cuillins or a wreck on his old Triumph. Trying to prove to himself that he was still the same person he'd been before al-Amir. But this, this she could not have imagined. It was a choice she would have thought utterly foreign to the person she had known and loved.
Stuart cleared his throat. “He knew what he was doing, Kat.”
Neither of them spoke then, and for a moment Kat thought Stuart was crying. She wouldn't have been surprised, had seen more than her share of tough-as-nails Special Forces guys break down at makeshift funerals at Kandahar and Bagram.
“There will be a service of some sort,” he offered at last. “I expect his parents will be arranging it. I can let you know.…”
“Yes,” Kat told him, grateful for something concrete to focus on. The requisite motions of mourning. “Of course.”
“I'm sorry,” he said again. “I'm so sorry.”
Then there was nothing more to say.
IT WAS THE SPRING OF 2002, and the Guantánamo facility had finally opened, bringing a merciful end to the operation at Kandahar. After four inhuman months at the southern base, defecating into barrels and subsisting on MREs and dust, Kat and the other interrogators had happily welcomed news of an impending transfer north to Bagram.
Kat was one of the last of her team to go, and one of the few not leaving Afghanistan. “That's what we get for being part-timers,” one of her fellow reservists had complained when the orders came down. “Stuck here full-time.” But Kat had thought, At least it'll keep us out of Iraq.
Kat had four days of R&R coming to her, and she'd chosen to head to Oman before settling in at Bagram. Kandahar was a virtual ghost town by then, and Kat found herself the sole passenger as she hustled her gear onto the C-130 that would take her north to K-2.
“Bet you've never flown on a private jet before.” The air-force crewman winked as he secured Kat's gear for the flight. He was younger in looks than in years, with a wily Texas smile and oversized ears. “It's the milk run today. We've got to stop at Bagram and drop off some supplies.” Another wink. “Give you a chance to check out your new digs.”
Reports of a virtual Club Med in the desert had been trickling south for weeks. Hot showers and real meals. Uzbek beer and sunbathing on the roof of the interrogation facility. But as the C-130 finally dipped low for landing, skimming the jagged terrain, Kat's first view of Bagram through the plane's right portal was of a sprawling city of war.
Dirt revetments branched off the airfield like suburban cul-de-sacs; jet-size bunkers burrowed into the rocky, upchurned earth. A bleak neighborhood of tents blanketed the land along the main runway, the makeshift military structures mingling with the larger, Soviet-era buildings. All of it hunkered in the footprint of some two thousand years of bloodshed and defeat.
As the plane braked to a stop on the runway, a handful of scraggly soldiers appeared, as if from nowhere, and scrambled up the massive cargo ramp. Like most of the Special Forces soldiers Kat had encountered in Afghanistan, the men were not in uniform, at least not in the traditional sense. Their clothes were an improvised mix of standard Afghan attire and Western military wear. Mushroomy pakols and knee-length chapans paired with army-issue camouflage. The men's faces were shoe-leather tan, their beards long and unkempt.
At first, seeing their Colt M-16s, Kat mistook them for Americans, but when the Alfred E. Neuman staff sergeant hustled back to greet them Kat saw one of the men raise a small Velcro flap on the arm of his jacket and flash a Union Jack.
Not asking permission, Kat had thought at the time, for the fact that these men didn't need permission was something she had come to understand early on during her tenure in this strange place. That in a world where a pair of new socks required the signature of a senior officer, these men could hop a plane without answering a single question.
Kat didn't pay much attention to the soldiers on the flight up. The deafening roar of the C-130's engines made conversation impossible, and most of the men had taken the opportunity to sleep. But as the plane banked toward the landing strip at K-2, Kat looked up and saw one of the men watching her.
It was Colin.
David Kurtz turned off Whitechapel Road and headed north along Brick Lane, letting his ears bathe in the cacophony of languages. Friday prayers at the Jamme Masjid had let out not long before and there was a preponderance of Arabic on the street, along with the usual mix of Bengali and Urdu and Hindi, and the odd remaining snippet of cockney English or Hebrew.
Women in full hijab ducked past him on the sidewalk, some in groups of three or four, some walking just behind their husbands with small children in tow. Little boys in suits and preadolescent girls in ruffled dresses. The newest arrivals, Kurtz thought, watching the shrouded figures navigate the sea of Westernized flesh, skirting second-generation Bengali girls in hip-
huggers and high heels, Hindu women in midriff-baring saris.
From the front window of one shop, racy Bollywood film posters looked out on the passing crowd, offering glimpses of dark-skinned women in suggestive poses. In the neighboring storefront, dour abayas and chadors hung crookedly behind the glass. And farther along the street the old Jewish bakery perfumed the air with the smell of freshly baked bagels, sustenance for the cabbies and clubgoers who would make their way to the East End much later in the evening.
Even in the mismatched crowd, Kurtz was glaringly conspicuous, his physical stature and blond hair marking him indelibly as the other. And yet there was nowhere else in London, and very few places in the Western world, where he felt so comfortably at home. Moving with the gait of someone who knew exactly where he was going, Kurtz crossed Han-bury Street and ducked into a doorway marked Kensington Court.
Not to be confused with the Kensington on Cromwell Road, I assume, Peter Janson had joked when Kurtz first gave him the name of the hotel. And Kurtz had thought, No, not in a million years, thank God.
“Message, sir.” The Bengali proprietor flagged Kurtz down as he entered the postage-stamp reception area. “Your brother, sir. He would like you to call him as soon as possible.”
Not a hint that the man thought otherwise, and yet Kurtz couldn't help wondering. Four years he'd kept a room here, since he'd first left the Agency and gone to work for Janson and Morrow. Four years of odd hours and midnight departures, and always that same jester's grin to greet him. As if the presence of a beefy blond American selling funeral supplies out of a Brick Street hovel was the most natural thing in the world.
Hello, Mr. Kurtz. Welcome back, Mr. Kurtz. Business again, Mr. Kurtz? That's the way it is with the dead: there are more of them every day.
“Thank you, Hamidur.” Kurtz nodded, then started up the impossibly narrow stairs to his room.
The funerary salesman was an old cliché from the Farm, a guaranteed conversation stopper for use in waiting rooms or on long flights, anywhere questions were best kept to a minimum. By the time Kurtz joined the Agency it was more joke than anything, a good laugh for the new recruits, but Kurtz hadn't forgotten about it, and before leaving for his first posting he'd ordered an Edison Funeral Supply catalog to take with him.
He'd used it immediately, on his flight from Dulles to Amsterdam, leafing through the pages of cavity fluid and Eterna-Cribs, until the nervously talkative Dutch woman beside him fled to an empty seat.
What the creaky old OSS retiree at the Farm had failed to tell them, and most likely had not known, was that the farther east one traveled the less effective the ruse became. Once you breached the boundaries and safety of the Western world, death became less remarkable, and the accoutrements of death nothing more than a curiosity. This was something Kurtz had discovered on his own, though by the time he did, he'd been playing his part too long to give it up.
Kurtz slipped off his shoes and set them just outside the door, then undid the lock and let himself into his room. There was a smell to the space that he found immediately comforting. Dust and cheap disinfectant, the slivers of sandalwood-scented soap the maid left each week. And the sharp odor of cooking that lingered in the linens and drapes. Old grease and heavy spices from the kitchen two floors below.
On the desk was the newest version of the Edison catalog and Kurtz's black sample case. On the luggage stand sat a single small suitcase, neatly packed. Four years in this room, and this was all Kurtz had brought of himself. Even his Dopp kit was zippered and stowed.
He sat down on the bed and picked up the phone, glancing at his watch as he did so, noting the time back in the States before dialing Janson's number.
“Yes?” Janson answered on the second ring.
“You wanted me to call?” Kurtz asked.
“Yes. I need you to take a trip.”
“You've found our Iranian friend?”
“No. It's the boy. He's gone.”
Kurtz thought for a moment, letting the implications of the boy's disappearance sink in. “I thought we had a team in Madrid.”
Janson didn't answer.
“Gone on his own or taken?” Kurtz asked finally.
“On his own, I presume.”
“Any guesses where he's heading?”
“My money's on Casablanca. It's where he came from.”
“And where he ran from once already,” Kurtz reminded the man.
“Still,” Janson countered. “It's home.”
“Where do you want me first?” Kurtz asked.
“There's an overnight train that will get you to Madrid in the morning.”
“And from there?”
Janson cleared his throat—a sign, Kurtz had learned long before, that the news to come was something he would doubtless prefer not to hear. “There's someone from army intel meeting you there.”
Kurtz was silent.
“Special circumstances,” Janson said, sensing Kurtz's unease. “It's the interrogator from Bagram. She's the one who turned the boy in the end. They were quite close, as I understand it. It will help to have someone he trusts.”
She, Kurtz thought, Kat, but he didn't say anything.
“Any reason this is going to be a problem?” Janson asked.
He already knows how this is going to end, Kurtz thought, hearing the hesitation in the other man's voice, the gravity of the question.
“No,” he said. “No problem at all.”
“MAJOR?”
Kat looked up from the papers she was grading to see the dean of faculty at her office door.
“General,” she answered, rising from her chair.
Still playing army? she could hear Colin say, and suddenly she was embarrassed by the pretensions of the place. Her rank a lie, even. The rank of an officer.
The man shifted from one foot to the other, glanced down at his fingers. Nervous, Kat had always thought, uncomfortable with his own authority.
“How's the new crop of cadets treating you?” he asked, with the forced joviality of someone who's about to break a particularly bad bit of news.
“Fine,” Kat answered.
“There's someone coming to see you this afternoon,” the dean said. “From Arlington.”
Kat motioned to the papers on her desk. “I have class.”
“It's been taken care of.”
No explanation other than this.
Out in the hall a pair of cadets passed, walking with the strained posture that was required of all first-year students: chins up, backs straight, hands at sides.
Arlington, Kat thought. The Pentagon. “Am I being called up, sir?”
The General hesitated. “I don't know,” he said guiltily.
But Kat could tell that he did, and that she was.
“You don't like us very much, do you?” Colin had asked.
It was Kat's last night in Oman, and she'd taken a taxi to the sprawling, American-style mall in Muscat. She'd been hoping for a change of scenery, a respite from the constant sea of army drab, but the mall's one bar, an American chain, was packed with coalition soldiers.
She didn't recognize Colin at first. He was wearing real civilian clothes. Without his M-16 and his entourage, he looked like any other off-duty soldier or civilian contractor.
“Bagram to K-2,” he reminded Kat, climbing onto the empty stool beside her. “I was the green-looking one sitting across from you, trying not to sick-up my last MRE.”
Kat took a long pull off her Budweiser, then set the bottle down on the bar. A group of marines had commandeered the jukebox, and it was belting out “Sweet Home Alabama” for the third time in a row. “I thought you SAS guys weren't afraid of anything.”
“SBS.” Colin grinned. “Special Boat Service. No mention of airplanes.”
He'd shaved since she'd seen him on the C-130, and the skin on his jaw was pale where his beard had been. He was slight of build, not much taller than she was, with the body of an acrobat, all finesse.
“And you?” he
asked. “What brings you to our little corner of paradise?”
“Army intel,” Kat said. “I've been at Kandahar.” She didn't mention her transfer to Bagram. She had already made up her mind to sleep with him if things worked out that way, and she didn't want to complicate the situation with the possibility that they might see each other again.
Colin laughed. “No wonder you hate us so much. I'd be jealous, too, with the leash they keep you on.”
“It's called the law,” Kat countered defensively. “Without it we're no better than they are.”
“Don't tell me you actually believe that bullshit.”
“Don't tell me you don't.”
Colin tilted his beer to his lips and finished off the bottle. “As far as I can tell,” he said, “we're already no better than they are.”
She half expected him to leave then, and was relieved when he signaled the bartender for another drink.
“So why are you here?” she asked.
He shrugged. “My friends are here, my team. We watch out for each other—it's what we do. And you? God and country, I suppose, setting the score straight like your compatriots over there?” He nodded at the marines.
“My brother died on September eleventh,” Kat said.
Colin colored slightly. “I'm sorry.”
There was nothing trite about the remark, no expectation of anything in return, just the truth of it, and Kat immediately regretted having said anything, as if she'd hit him below the belt.
“I didn't love him,” she said after a moment, surprising herself with the confession. “I didn't even like him.” It was the first time she had admitted this to anyone, but it seemed necessary, a reciprocation of his honesty.
THE KIND OF TOWN Susan had always wanted them to end up in, Morrow thought as he surveyed the hilltop campus and the neighborhood beyond. He had been here before, not this town, exactly, but ones just like it. Green hills and narrow streets, brick colonials looming importantly over garden club lawns. Carriage rides for the weekenders from D.C. Main Street storefronts selling overpriced antiques and useless knickknacks. The reek of history and horse shit. The past and all its idols like a cudgel.
