by Alex Carr
TWO HOURS, Manar thought as she climbed down from the back of the bus and watched the housekeeper cross the street. That's how long it had taken to get from her mother's house in the leafy northern suburbs to this rambling slum on the southern edge of the city. Two hours each way and another eight scrubbing shit from their toilets. And for what? Manar didn't know exactly what her mother paid these women, but she was certain it wasn't enough.
She paused and glanced over her shoulder before trailing Asiya down into the sewer of the bidonville. The chances of her having been followed were slim; she'd been careful leaving the house. But still, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to know she had come. She had not yet invented a story to explain her disappearance, but there would be time for that on the ride home. For now, all her energy was focused on keeping track of Asiya's saffron-colored djellaba and matching scarf.
The sun had just set, turning the smog-choked sky a wild magenta. From the crest of the hill there was an unearthly beauty to the slum, the tin roofs flashing like pink sails across the hillside.
Two decades earlier, during her student days, Manar had frequented the city's bidonvilles, working with Yusuf and the others to organize strikes and protests, spreading the gospel of revolution, and she was struck now by just how little had changed. Except for the satellite dishes, which rose like so many alien moons from the tops of the more prosperous shanties, the slum was exactly as Manar remembered all slums to be.
Down in the narrow alleyways it was night already, the sun long since vanished behind the quarter's shanty walls, the sky, where it was visible, crisscrossed by a chaotic web of pirated electrical wires. Cooking smells wafted from makeshift kitchens, the odors of rancid oil and spices mingling with those of the open sewer. And, here and there, the unmistakable stench of death. The smell of poverty, Manar thought, stumbling after Asiya, and of prison.
It's not your fight, she could hear her father say that last afternoon before her arrest. She had sneaked out then as well, after he had forbidden her to go to the strike. And the last thing she'd said to him, the last thing she would ever say to him: It's everybody's fight.
Such arrogance, she thought now, such utter naïveté. She was embarrassed by who she had been, by the shamefulness with which she had forced herself into these people's homes, the hubris with which she had assumed their suffering.
A group of pale figures appeared out of the darkness, four boys huddled hungrily around a can of butane, eyes wide from the fumes. Manar paused briefly to examine their faces, half hoping for a glimpse of the familiar and half dreading the possibility.
One of the first things Manar had learned in prison was that the least of her hopes—for her child, for a blanket in the winter, for a cell in which she could stand without crouching or a voice on the other side of the wall—were her worst enemies. If she was to continue to live, she had realized early on, she would have to do so entirely without expectation. To live, in essence, as if she were dead, and as if the child were dead as well. Anything else was too painful to bear.
This was the first time in many years that Manar had allowed herself such thoughts, that she had even dared to imagine that the boy might be alive, and she felt oddly fearless, even determined.
Asiya stopped at the door to one of the shanties and turned to look back at Manar. Waiting for her, Manar thought. And how long had the housekeeper known that she was being followed? Or had she guessed from the beginning, from their exchange in the hall that morning, that Manar would come?
“My home,” she said, swinging the door open and gesturing for Manar to enter.
Manar moved forward and peered hesitantly inside. The house was just one small room. Dirt floor, four walls, and a roof. A curtain, for privacy, hung in one corner, and a few scavenged furnishings. An old woman squatted over a gas burner, stirring a large pot of stewed peas, her attention fixed on a small television.
“Come.” Asiya nodded her encouragement, and Manar stepped slowly across the threshold.
“My mother,” the housekeeper said, pointing to the old woman. “You have come to ask her about Ain Chock, yes?”
“Yes.” There was an Egyptian soap opera on the television, the same one Manar's mother followed; she would be watching it now. Like most soap operas, it was the story of two families, one rich and one poor, and the intersections of their lives over the course of many years.
“You will eat with us,” Asiya informed Manar. “And then she will tell you what you want to know.”
The old woman ladled a helping of stew into a dish, and Manar squatted to receive it, offering her thanks. But when she lifted the bowl to her lips she felt suddenly sick. It wasn't the food; there were many years when she would have been grateful for such a feast. It was shame that stopped her.
She choked the meal down, forcing herself to finish, then accepted a second helping and finished that as well. The women would likely go hungry the next day because of their generosity. Manar knew this, but she also knew that to deny their hospitality would have been the worst insult; that they would rather starve than have their visitor leave with an empty stomach.
When they had finished eating, Asiya cleared their plates and put a kettle of water on the gas, then set out three chipped glasses for mint tea.
Yet another ritual, Manar thought, impatiently watching the housekeeper spoon dried mint and precious sugar into a pot.
Asiya finished serving the tea, then turned to her mother. “This is the one I told you about,” she said, speaking loudly. “She has come to ask you about the child.”
The old crone turned from the television and looked at Manar. “A boy or a girl?” she asked, revealing a mouthful of black teeth.
“A boy,” Manar answered. “He would be nineteen now.” She did a quick calculation in her mind. Yes, nineteen was right.
A cockroach crawled across the lip of the stew pot and the old woman flicked it away. Her fingernails were cracked and yellow. “There were boys like this at Ain Chock. I could have known him. What was his name?”
Manar opened her mouth to answer, then stopped herself. Yusuf, she thought, had always thought, for this was what they had agreed on—that if the child was a boy it would have his fa-ther's name. “I don't know,” she admitted.
The old woman nodded, then reached out and took Manar's hand in her own. “It is for the best, sister, I assure you,” she said. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her bony fingers clutching Manar's. “If your son was at Ain Chock, it is better not to know.”
Barely three hours now, Kat had told herself as she started across Camp Viper, conscious of the fast-dwindling time left to her before she had to be back at the facility. If she hurried, she could still squeeze in a shower before heading to the British camp. After a night in intake and a day in the booths, she would have to.
In the real world, Kat was someone who took pride in the careful detachment with which she approached her relationships with men. When she'd slept with Colin in Oman, she'd told herself it would just be the one time, that the hazards here were too real and too many, the risk of her succumbing to her own vulnerability too high. She'd been right, she thought, and now she could not help herself.
As she turned down the narrow, rock-strewn alley that led to her tent, Kat saw her roommate, a nurse at the Combat Support Hospital, coming toward her. Sleep was as scarce a commodity for the nurses as it was for the interrogators, and the woman looked as if she'd just been roused prematurely from a much-needed nap.
“You've got company,” she called out as she passed, her expression and tone showing no small amount of irritation.
Colin, Kat thought, hurrying the last few yards to the tent. But when she pulled the canvas flap aside and ducked through the low doorway she saw Kurtz sitting in the camp chair next to her cot, his bulky frame spread out over a large portion of her few square feet of precious private space.
“Expecting someone else?” he asked.
“I haven't slept in two days,” Kat warned him,
stopping just inside the door. “And I have to be back in the booths tonight. So whatever you have to say, say it fast and get out.”
Kurtz reached down and produced two frosty bottles of beer from the floor beside him. It was Murree, not the usual Uzbek swill, and Kat was tempted, but she shook her head. “What do you want?”
Kurtz shrugged, popped the cap off one of the bottles, and took a long swig. “I heard you spent the whole day in with the boy.”
“His name is Jamal,” Kat corrected him.
“You learn anything?”
“Only that he prefers chicken tetrazzini to grilled beefsteak. But then, doesn't everyone?” Kat said, referring to the notoriously bad selection of MREs. “And he's a Yankees fan. But who isn't?”
“He was friendly, then?”
“Scared shitless is more like it. He's a smart kid. He knows exactly what we want to hear, and so far he's saying it.”
Kurtz drained the remainder of his beer in one long swallow, tossed the empty bottle onto Kat's bunk, and opened the second Murree. “I've been talking to some of the Agency guys. They think they might be able to use him.”
They, Kat thought, taking note of Kurtz's choice of words. When she'd first seen him in intake she'd assumed he was still with the Agency. Apparently, he wasn't.
“He's fifteen,” she balked. “He's not even legal. We can't keep him once his PUC status runs out. You know that.”
“Right,” Kurtz said contemptuously. “So what, you're going to send him back where you found him? I read his file. He's got nowhere to go.” Kurtz stood up.
It was a simple point and he had made it, but Kat couldn't help wondering what Kurtz's stake in the boy's future was.
He set the barely touched second beer on the wooden crate that served as Kat's bedside table. It was a calculated gesture of excess, a reminder of the resources that were available to him, and of what little regard he gave to wasting them. “They could help him, Kat,” he said. “Get him a small stipend and a place to live. He could go back to Europe, or even to the U.S., if he works out.”
Kat shook her head. “You saw him last night. He's just a kid.”
“They're not talking about James Bond stuff. He'd just be part of the community. Best case, they'd never even need to use him. Worst case, he hears something interesting, he shares it.”
“He won't do it,” Kat insisted, though she knew that he would, and gladly.
“Bullshit.” Kurtz called her bluff. “You said it yourself: he's a smart kid, he knows his odds.”
“I won't do it.”
“Sure you will.”
“Get out of my tent,” Kat snapped, motioning to the empty beer bottle on her cot. “And take your garbage with you.”
Kurt stood up and stepped past her, blatantly ignoring her last request. “You don't have to give me an answer now,” he sneered. “Go talk it over with your boyfriend, if you want. I'll see you back at the facility.” Then he lifted the flap and disappeared into the afternoon glare.
ANYONE, KAT THOUGHT, as she watched Kurtz cross the sunny expanse of the Atocha Station's atrium and disappear behind the lush indoor forest of palm and banana trees. If it could have been anyone other than Kurtz. But it wasn't, and here they were.
Kat glanced around the terminal, trying to get her bearings. She'd told Kurtz that she needed to use the restroom while he saw about tickets to Algeciras. Technically, this was true, but she also wanted to check her answering machine in case Stuart had called again. She could have told the truth, but that would have meant explaining herself, and she didn't want to have to tell Kurtz about Colin.
Spotting a newspaper kiosk at the far end of the terminal and a bank of pay phones just beyond it, Kat started across the crowded hall. She had no small change on her, only the euros Morrow had given her at the airport, which meant she'd need a phone card, or at least some coins.
A group of backpackers had arrived at the kiosk before Kat and were stocking up on cigarettes and candy. Twenty-year-olds who'd been everywhere and seen everything, Kat thought, remembering how painfully naïve she'd felt on that earlier trip, how limited her own experiences had seemed to her.
Trying to mask her self-consciousness, she glanced down at the rows of newspapers on display. The selection was typical of a big-city train station: a preponderance of sports-related publications with a handful of highbrow selections thrown in, including the more popular foreign-language papers. A small headline at the very bottom of the front page of the London Times caught Kat's eye.
“Another Glitch in Prisoner Death Court-Martial,” Kat read, reaching quickly for a copy. On the heels of the revelations of detainee abuse in Iraq, Stuart's case had gotten a fair amount of attention in the press, in the United States as well as in Britain, and Kat was not particularly surprised to see that Colin's death was news.
Unfolding the paper, she quickly skimmed the article:
Sources in Portsmouth confirm that the trial of a sailor accused of murdering a detainee in his custody in Afghanistan in the early summer of 2002 will take place as scheduled, despite the recent death of a key prosecution witness.
Former Special Boat Service member Colin Mitchell was found dead in London three days ago from an apparent intentional overdose. Mitchell's death is the second major setback for the prosecution in recent months.
It was revealed earlier this year that another potential witness had escaped while in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base and was unavailable to testify. The witness in question, Hamid Bagheri, who is known to have ties to several terrorist organizations, is still at large.
“Anything interesting?”
Kat spun around to see Kurtz behind her. “Just catching up on the news,” she said hastily, refolding the paper and setting it back on the rack so as to conceal the headline. Her hands were shaking. “You get the tickets?”
Kurtz glanced at the discarded newspaper. “You don't want to bring it along? We've got a long trip ahead of us.”
Goading her, Kat thought, though she couldn't be sure. She shook her head. “I thought I'd try and get some sleep.”
Kurtz smiled. It was an expression Kat had seen before, a mixture of condescension and contempt. “Suit yourself,” he said.
And Kat thought, He knows.
THE LIGHT WAS FAST FADING by the time Kat finally left her tent and headed up Disney Drive, Bagram's main drag, toward the British camp at the far end of the airstrip. On the eastern side of the valley the moon was rising, while out in the west the sun cast its last rays up over the mountains. The sky was a deep and lucid blue that is possible only at very high altitudes, the mountains clear in the thin air, the winter's snows still lingering on the otherwise barren peaks.
Unlike most of the other soldiers at Bagram, Kat felt strangely at home in the lunar landscape of the Shomali Plains. The emptiness of it reminded her of the land along the Rocky Mountain Front, and of her childhood, which came back to her mostly as one long drive across the American West.
The Norwegian mine clearers had finished sweeping space for a playing field in the no-man's-land along the runway, and a few shirtless marines were playing a game of touch football in the fading twilight. Out on the airstrip, helicopters perched, menacing silhouettes, massive Chinooks and Black Hawks, and smaller and more agile Apaches, with their banks of Hellfire missiles cradled under each wing. In the distance, the listing corpses of abandoned MIGs and Hinds served as grim reminders of the Soviets' ignominious defeat.
In war there is little concern for housekeeping. This was especially true in Afghanistan, where the inhospitable terrain made it impractical for retreating armies to take any more than their own skins with them. Relics of the previous conflict, and of the base's original occupants, were everywhere at Bagram. The main prison floor, where the cages now stood, had once been a vast aircraft shop. Abandoned Soviet machinery lined the walls, the pieces formless and hulking beneath black tarps. Virtually every surface was marked with Russian graffiti. Reminders of a grand and bloody
failure, Kat thought, the voices of young men who had not made it home. But more than that: warnings of what could go wrong this time around.
Kat passed the Special Forces camp, with its barbed-wire fence and mammoth barbecue pit, then turned into the front gate of the British compound. The British camp, or Camp Gibraltar, as it was commonly known, was the subject of constant speculation and no small amount of jealousy among the base's non-British personnel. In the brief time Kat had been at Bagram, she'd heard all sorts of rumors about the superiority of the British compound, ranging from the cleanliness of the showers to the quality of the food.
From the outside, at least, the rumors appeared to be true. The camp was stereotypical in its orderliness, more like a Hollywood version of a military base than the reality Kat was used to. The tents were laid out in strict rows, the ground leveled and cleared. Bright Union Jacks and Scottish Saltires fluttered in the evening breeze.
An MP stopped Kat at the front gate and asked to see her credentials. Understandably, the Brits were fiercely protective of the small patch of colonial comforts they had managed to scrape out of the arid Afghan earth, and the compound was normally off limits to Americans. Kat was hoping her civilian clothes would provide the illusion of clout necessary to talk her way inside.
“I'm here to see the soldiers from C Squadron,” she said confidently, providing as little information as possible. If the MP was going to take her for a civilian OGA, he would have to be properly confused. “We've got some questions about the prisoners they brought into the facility last night.”
The man eyed Kat warily, but she could tell it was all show, that he already knew he had to let her in. “They're in the mess,” he grumbled, indicating a large tent toward the rear of the compound.
Fear and its perks, Kat thought as she headed back along the dirt drive, feeling good about her new role. And suddenly she understood the allure of the Agency, the benefits of being able to go wherever, whenever.
Inside the mess it was fish-and-chips night, the air rich with the smells of real food and real cooking. Unlike the Americans' meals, which were flown in from Germany and then reheated, the food here was prepared by actual human beings.
