Rules of Betrayal

by Christopher Reich

  With ceremony she opened the box, revealing the Vychlop sniper’s rifle embedded in maroon velvet. Directly beneath the rifle, each in its own compartment, were three five-inch-long bullets with the circumference of a Cohiba cigar. Each bore the prince’s name and family crest engraved on its brass jacket. More important, each was capable of penetrating an armored Humvee at a thousand yards.

  Prince Rashid put the rifle to his shoulder. It weighed twenty-two pounds, but he clasped it as if it were a Daisy Repeater.

  “I hope it meets your satisfaction,” said Emma.

  “What kind of question is that?” asked the prince, lowering the rifle and passing a well-manicured hand along its barrel. “It is a thing of beauty. An instrument of death rendered elegant.”

  “I’m glad you like it.” She checked her watch. “Excuse me, but I have a three a.m. flight to Zurich. I’m sorry to leave so soon—”

  “Nonsense,” said Prince Rashid. “I’ll call the airport and see that it’s delayed. You must stay and try General Ivanov’s gift with me.”

  Emma sensed an insistence that had not been there before. A false, predatory insistence. “Really,” she continued, a voice within her ordering her to run. “It’s late and I must be going. General Ivanov is expecting me.”

  Prince Rashid flashed his movie star’s smile. “But I spoke with Igor Ivanovich earlier. He’s more than happy for you to stay. He called you his country’s finest ambassador. Now that we’ve met, I see that he spoke the truth.”

  Emma’s eyes went to the roof of the hangar. The snipers had taken up position. Each was curled over his weapon. She had little doubt that her head was centered in the crosshairs of their scopes. She decided that Rashid had been expecting the rifle and that it was not a surprise. She looked at Balfour, who knew nothing about the gift. It was Connor’s play and Connor’s play alone.

  “Surely you can stay,” added Balfour, his eyes sterner than his voice.

  “But of course,” Emma consented, if only to buy time.

  The prince rattled off a command, and a patch of scrub adjacent to the hangar was suddenly illuminated as bright as midday. At the far end was a wing-back chair. On it sat a mannequin dressed in the uniform of a United States Marine. Emma had her proof. Rashid had been expecting the weapon.

  The prince handed her the rifle. “Please. I would be honored if you took the first shot.” He selected a bullet from the case. “I insist.”

  Emma cleared the breech and slipped the shell into the chamber, slamming home the bolt with authority. Her odds were one in three. She’d faced worse, she told herself as anger replaced apprehension. She’d been betrayed. She knew too much, and knowledge was a double-edged sword. It was that simple. Whatever the case, she would proceed in style.

  “Come,” she said, motioning to the prince to come closer. “Let me show you how to shoot it. The rifle is heavy in the barrel. It’s necessary to put weight on your back foot. To aim, you have to lay your cheek flat against the stock. Step closer. You can’t see from there.”

  “I can see perfectly,” said Prince Rashid.

  “As you wish.” Emma sighted the rifle on the mannequin’s chest, positioning the butt against her shoulder. “The trigger is surprisingly light. Squeeze gently and get ready for the biggest goddamn kick of your life.”

  One in three.

  She pressed her cheek to the stock, drew a breath, and tightened her finger.

  The explosion was deafening.

  The prince cowered, raising an arm to protect his head. Downrange, the mannequin sat in his chair just as before, but his head and half of his left shoulder were gone.

  “A little high.” Emma shrugged, not entirely dissatisfied, and handed the prince his rifle. “I’m sure you’ll do better.”

  Weapon in hand, the prince walked to the lacquered case, selected a bullet, and slid it into the chamber. Without a word, he returned to the firing line, drove home the bolt, raised the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired.

  The shot was wide and low, loosing a cloud of dust.

  “A devil of a kick,” said Prince Rashid, rubbing his shoulder. “My wife will wish to know how I received such a bruise.”

  One bullet remained in its velvet cradle. Rashid thrust the rifle toward Balfour. “What about you, Ashok? Game?”

  Balfour raised his hands. “I just sell the bloody things. Look at it. The damned thing is nearly as big as I am.”

  “That’s two excuses,” said Prince Rashid. With a glance at Emma, he plucked the final bullet from its case and slid it into the carriage. “Perhaps you can help me this time,” he said to her. “How should I sight it?”

  Emma stepped behind the prince and placed an arm around his shoulder, guiding his head so that his cheek lay in the proper position against the rifle stock. With her left hand, she helped raise the weapon so that it was aimed at the mannequin. “Don’t touch the trigger until you have the bead centered on the target. I suggest aiming a half-meter low to compensate for the kick. Press your front foot into the ground. Harder. Now tense your stomach.”

  Emma stood just to the side of the prince, watching his finger caress the trigger. “Softly,” she said. “Take a breath and squeeze.”

  The prince looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Softly,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  Suddenly the prince stood tall, lowering the rifle. “Dammit,” he said, striding away.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Balfour, rushing to his side.

  “I just can’t do it to my shoulder,” said Prince Rashid. “It will ruin my golf game for a month.”

  The gathering went silent; then a few of his underlings laughed and the laugh became contagious. Prince Rashid handed the rifle to a short, corpulent man in a captain’s uniform. “Let’s see if Captain Hussein can hit the target. As I recall, he used to be a shooting instructor at the academy.”

  Hussein walked to the firing line. With care, he raised the weapon and sighted it on the mannequin. He would not disappoint his ruler.

  “Softly,” said the prince, staring at Emma.

  An instant later, the rifle backfired as the bullet exploded inside the barrel, blowing apart the bolt and chamber.

  The police captain lay writhing on the ground, his face ripped clean off his skull, eyeballs, cartilage, and teeth mashed together to resemble nothing more than a crushed pomegranate. The police officers ran to the horrifically wounded man. Balfour shouted for an ambulance. “On the double!”

  But Prince Rashid remained where he was.

  “You,” he said to Emma, grasping her by the arm. “You will come with me.”

  7

  The trek led upward, hugging the contours of the mountain. The truck surged and slowed, rocking like a lifeboat on a stormy sea. The foothills had disappeared hours ago, replaced first by sparse pine forest, then the featureless, ever-steepening slopes of scree. Now even that was gone, cloaked by gray cloud. It was just a patch of hardscrabble in front, a precipitous drop to the side, and the incessant grinding of the motor struggling at altitude.

  “I would do anything for my father,” said Haq. “Wouldn’t you do the same?”

  Jonathan sat between Haq and his driver, too uncomfortable to be scared. “My father’s dead.”

  “This is fate,” said Haq with conviction. “When I was a boy, I was struck by shrapnel from a Russian grenade. My father carried me on his back for three days to reach an aid station. He had pneumonia at the time. It was winter. He nearly died to save me. I promised myself that one day I would repay him.”

  Jonathan looked at Haq. “You destroyed a village to help your father?”

  Haq considered this, his eyes indicating that he was not unaware of the moral complexity. “The village was of strategic value,” he said finally.

  Jonathan looked straight ahead.

  “What brought you here?” asked Haq. “You’re not a missionary?”

  “No,” said Jonathan.

  “But on a crusade no
netheless.”

  “What about you?” asked Jonathan. “Where did you learn your English?”

  “I was a guest of your country for several years.”

  “You were in the States?”

  “Not exactly. Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo Bay. I was captured in November of 2001. I surrendered, I’ll admit it. It was the bombs. Every day the planes would come. They flew high, so you could not hear them. The bombs would arrive without warning. We were dug in, but a mound of earth is no protection against a five-hundred-pound bomb, let alone hundreds of them. The fury. You have no idea.” Haq looked away, his eyes staring in horror at a point far beyond the windshield. And then he snapped back. “I’m glad you find my English acceptable. We learned from the movies.”

  “You had movies there?” Jonathan’s surprise was evident.

  “Not at first. No, at first there were no movies. At first we lived in dog cages outdoors. At first we had interrogation, not movies, but after a while, when the CIA decided we had told them as much as we knew, we were allowed books, and a few months after that, movies. By the time I left, the library had over seven thousand volumes and four hundred films.”

  “What did you watch?”

  “War movies mostly. Apocalypse Now. Platoon. Patton. These are very fine films. But my favorite was a musical.”

  “A musical?”

  “You find that amusing?”

  “No.”

  “On the Town, with Gene Kelly. You know it? ‘The Bronx is up and the Battery down.’” Haq hummed a few bars. “For me, that is America. Three sailors happily singing and dancing while their country oppresses the rest of the world. Mindless tyranny. I tell myself, if I ever go to America, I must see this city. Have you been?”

  “Yes. It’s impressive.”

  “Six years I was in prison. One day they decided I could go free.”

  “Why?” asked Jonathan.

  “I lied to them,” said Haq, fixing him with kohl-smeared eyes. “The secret is to believe your lies no matter what they do to you.”

  The Toyota rounded a curve, the trail flattened, and the truck accelerated drunkenly. They were no longer climbing the mountain; they were in it, hemmed in by vertical slabs that climbed all the way to heaven.

  “Tell me about your father,” said Jonathan. “How old is he?”

  “I would guess seventy. It is his stomach. It gives him much pain. He has not eaten in a week.”

  “When did the pain begin?”

  “Several months ago,” said Haq, “but it has worsened in the last week.”

  “Has he suffered any blows or injuries?”

  “We are warriors. Nothing more than the usual.”

  “Does he speak English?” asked Jonathan.

  “He thinks I’m a traitor for saying hello,” said Haq, laughing suddenly.

  The driver laughed too, and Haq was quiet.

  Jonathan asked a few more questions, but Haq had lost interest. The fighter fired off a series of commands to his driver, then without warning leaned across Jonathan and cuffed the man on the head. Jonathan said nothing. It was not the first time he had witnessed a violent and unprovoked exchange. He guessed that Haq had warned his driver against discussing any of what he had witnessed.

  The steep cliffs fell away and the road fed into a narrow clearing. One hundred meters ahead, Jonathan spotted a number of vehicles parked beneath a camouflaged canopy. A group of men ran toward them, crying “Allahu akhbar.” God is great. It was the Afghans’ all-purpose expression, used to signify victory and defeat, happiness and heartbreak.

  The truck halted. Haq climbed out and Jonathan followed, asking, “Where’s Hamid?”

  Haq scratched his cheek with a long nail, as if reconsidering his promise, then walked to the last truck in line and hauled Hamid out of the flatbed. “Here’s your assistant,” he said, shoving Hamid to the ground. “A Hazara. Weak.”

  Jonathan helped him to his feet. “You okay?”

  Hamid brushed the dirt off his pants. “Thanks for looking out for me.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Jonathan, “I got you into this.”

  Haq walked away, and Hamid fished in his pocket for his phone.

  “Put that thing away,” said Jonathan. “He’ll kill you if he sees that.”

  “No reception,” said Hamid, thumbing a few keys angrily. “Crap.”

  “What did you expect? Now put it away.”

  Hamid stuffed the phone into his pants and looked at the sky, shaking his head.

  A dozen men crowded the area beneath the canopy. Several wandered close to peer at Jonathan, one or two rushing forward to touch his sleeve as if he were some kind of talisman.

  “Where are these guys coming from?” Jonathan asked.

  “Over there.” Hamid pointed to a hole cut into the mountainside. A crude door fashioned from worn floorboards hung open. “We’re in Tora Bora. There are caves all over the place.”

  Tilting his head, Jonathan gazed up through the netting. A narrow band of sky was visible between the towering granite aeries. From high above, the clearing was just one more inaccessible ravine among thousands. He swallowed. It would be impossible to find them.

  Sultan Haq cut a swath through the men. “My father,” he said, gesturing for Jonathan and Hamid to follow. “If you please.”

  The warlord pressed toward the cave, ducking his head as he passed through the door, and disappeared into a murky twilight. Jonathan walked close behind him, his shoulder bag of medical equipment feeling heavier than its weight. Inside the cave he slowed to allow his eyes to get accustomed to the dark. The dark, however, was only temporary, an anteroom walled with heavy curtains. Haq parted the curtains and stepped into a large, dimly lit chamber the size of a school auditorium. “This way.”

  Jonathan noticed at once that a great deal of work had been done to make the cave habitable. The walls had been smoothed and the ceiling raised to a height of five meters. Somewhere there was a generator, because a track of lightbulbs had been drilled into the rock overhead. The air was bitterly cold. Supplies were stacked neatly against the walls, food in one corner, ammunition in another. Here and there men slept on the floor, wrapped in woolen blankets.

  Haq walked across the chamber and advanced down a short passage. The ceiling was lower here, the walls uneven, rock jutting out at sharp angles. Every few meters a room opened up to their right or left. The first held sacks of rice marked with a NATO stencil. In the second, several men were sleeping on the dirt floor. Something caught Jonathan’s eye. He was looking at a pair of muddy combat boots sticking out of a pair of desert fatigues. Squinting, he made out not one but three soldiers, lying side by side. He couldn’t miss the American flag stitched on the shoulders of their uniforms. A guard sat in the corner, an AK-47 propped against his knee.

  Haq peered over his shoulder. “Prisoners,” he said. “None of your concern.”

  Hamid shoved Jonathan from behind, and Jonathan turned to see if he was all right. “Move,” said Hamid, in an unfamiliar and threatening voice.

  Jonathan hurried to catch up to Haq.

  The Afghan’s father lay on a bed of colorful blankets in the next room. Haq had said he was seventy, but his beard was black throughout and his eyes were alive and vital. Only the papery texture of his pale skin testified to his years. Sultan Haq dropped to his knees, and it was apparent that he was pleading with the old man to allow the American doctor to examine him.

  “It’s Abdul Haq,” whispered Hamid to Jonathan. “Once he was minister of defense with the Taliban government. During the war he captured a brigade of his own soldiers crossing the lines to fight for the Northern Alliance. Eight hundred men. To set an example, he beheaded them all. Today he’s commander of all Taliban forces in the north and chief of their intelligence network.”

  “How do you know all this?” asked Jonathan.

  “Everyone knows,” answered Hamid, dark eyes flashing.

  “Dr. Ransom, you will come,” said Sultan Haq, waving hi
m close. “My father agrees to let you treat him. I will be watching.”

  Jonathan looked at the armed guards to his left and right. He set his medical bag on the ground and kneeled to the right of Abdul Haq.

  “You have pain in your stomach?” asked Jonathan. “Show me where, please.”

  Sultan Haq translated and his father pointed to a spot a few inches below the rib cage. Jonathan unbuttoned the man’s shirt. The abdomen was visibly distended, the flesh a purplish pink. He ran two fingers over the discolored area. The old man tensed. His eyes widened, but he uttered not a sound.

  “It’s all right to tell me if it hurts,” said Jonathan.

  “A man does not howl,” said Sultan Haq.

  “It will help me localize the problem.”

  “Surely you can discover the problem yourself.”

  Jonathan took the old man’s blood pressure, temperature, and pulse. All readings were well above normal.

  “What is the matter with my father?” asked Sultan Haq.

  “Without an X-ray, it’s impossible to be sure. My guess is that he’s suffering from an acute abdomen caused by a peritoneal abscess. That means there’s a tear in his colon or stomach that has allowed bacteria to escape into the abdominal cavity. Normally, if it goes untreated this long, it kills you. Since he isn’t dead, it means that his system has walled off the infection.”

  “He is a strong man.”

  “Yes, he is. But he has a big pocket of pus in there that needs to get out. And I mean now.” Jonathan looked at Abdul Haq and did his best to offer a comforting smile. The old warrior scowled in return, his eyes wishing Jonathan a long and painful death.

  “What can you do?” asked Haq.

  “We need to take him to a hospital in Kabul. The sooner, the better.”

  “That’s not a possibility,” responded Haq. “I ask you again, what can you do?”

  Jonathan sat back on his haunches, running a hand over his mouth. “I don’t have the equipment to perform that kind of surgery. Look around you. These aren’t exactly sanitary conditions.”

  “I didn’t bring you up the mountain to do nothing.”