The Warlord's Son

by Dan Fesperman

  “And also this one,” Bashir said, producing a second card as his words poured from Najeeb’s mouth.

  “Arlen Pierce, cultural attaché, U.S. Department of State,” Skelly read. There was no embassy listed, no address or phone number. Hartley had said Pierce was in Cairo, but maybe Hartley hadn’t known better, or the story had been some sort of cover. And what had he called Pierce? The Dark Lord—yes, like he was some sort of conjurer. Well, he’d certainly achieved a kind of alchemy here, a transmutation of Skelly into a media heavyweight, at least in the eyes of the formidable Bashir. Nice to have one’s contacts finally paying off.

  “You know this man?” Bashir asked, nodding toward Pierce’s card.

  “Yes. I know him well,” Skelly lied, because no journalist knew Pierce well, even the occasional female pursued by him. He was always the sort of fellow you only saw for a moment or two, in some bar or some briefing, smiling faintly at your jokes, then announcing there was some other place he had to be. Then his name would turn up a few days later in some other source’s off-the-record conversation, or in the wreckage of some event the locals were still trying to puzzle out. He was reputed to be some sort of diplomatic repairman, one of Uncle Sam’s fixer-uppers in the Islamic world.

  “Mr. Pierce is helping you? And he is helping Mahmood Razaq?” Skelly asked. “And Mr. Hartley, too?”

  But when Bashir’s answer emerged from Najeeb’s mouth, it was clear he had chosen to ignore all three questions.

  “The decision is now yours,” was all he said. “You will come with us, or you will stay behind. But I must have your decision now, because we leave in only five hours.”

  “What do you think, then?” Skelly asked Najeeb, turning his gaze from Bashir, feeling as if he had been gazing for too long at a very bright light, his eyes almost aching with relief.

  “I cannot make this decision for you. I can only advise that I think it is very dangerous. But that will be true of any journey into Afghanistan.”

  Bashir spoke, sounding irritated.

  “He says,” Najeeb began, then corrected himself, adjusting to the preferred form of delivery while Skelly dutifully turned to face Bashir. “There is no need to consult with him.” Meaning Najeeb, of course.

  “You will either come or not come. It is your decision. And if your answer is no, then do not expect to remain in this country indefinitely. We cannot have these kinds of secrets loose in the streets of Peshawar in our wake.”

  Was he actually threatening to have Skelly expelled? Or worse? Bashir was either audacious or frighteningly well connected, and the two business cards certainly suggested the latter. But for a moment the idea seemed to offer a fleeting possibility of escape. Expulsion offered a certain glamour, too, especially for a journalist who wondered deep in his heart if he still had the necessary stuff for taking such risks. For a few seconds Skelly glimpsed green grass and clean skies, a welcoming wife and, yes, also a boulevard of malls and fast-food restaurants, late nights of nodding off before a TV screen with the den gone dark, while fall leaves rustled on the lawn, young Brian asleep at his ankles. Then the vision darkened, and he looked up at Bashir, supposing he was still up to it, after all, if only because it was one last adventure, one last chance to find the big secrets that had always eluded him and wound up in the stories of others.

  He swallowed hard.

  “All right, then.” Steady now. “We’ll go.”

  Bashir nodded.

  “You are wise. And courageous.”

  Bashir as a flatterer somehow didn’t work. Or maybe it was that Najeeb’s voice had gone shaky. And Skelly supposed that Bashir might even be mocking him.

  “Wise? Doubtful. And certainly not courageous. Foolhardy is more like it.”

  When Najeeb relayed the comment, Bashir nodded, as if Skelly had just spoken words of great wisdom. Perhaps something had been lost in translation. Then he spoke again, more solemn than ever.

  “He says . . .” Najeeb began before righting himself. “You will be rewarded for this. A great tale for your newspaper, with great figures of renown.”

  “Razaq, he means?”

  Bashir shook his head, eyes gleaming with either mischief or relish.

  “The man who your countrymen seek,” came the answer, as if Bashir had suddenly become the teller of riddles from an old book of legends. “The one with the wispy beard. The one who rides a horse and speaks to the world. His path will cross ours. Or so we believe, from what our friends tell us.” Najeeb’s voice was rushing now to keep pace, almost breathless. “He and his men, all of his Arab guests. It is the real reason for our journey, as you will see for yourself.”

  “Bin Laden?” Skelly asked, no translation needed for that name. But Bashir acted as if he had uttered a blasphemy, recoiling slightly.

  “No names, please,” Najeeb relayed. “And no further speaking on this topic, to anyone. But you can be certain that your friends know as well.” And with those words Bashir tapped the two business cards— Hartley and Pierce.

  Skelly didn’t know what to think. His inclination was to dismiss it altogether as empty boasting. He caught Najeeb’s eye, and in the glance that passed between them he could tell that the fixer felt the same. Bashir was bullshitting them, dropping hints of a nonexistent grandeur.

  Nonetheless, Skelly suddenly felt more alert now, more attuned to the night, and he knew that when they reached the taxi he would be able to scribble down this entire conversation verbatim. He noticed smells that he hadn’t noticed a moment before—a hint of cinnamon, a whiff of cardamom. He spied a lizard crawling on a far wall. And in some part of his brain he was already working out the odds, already building a case for plausibility atop a slender hope that whispered low, “What if it’s true?”

  But Bashir had moved on to practicalities.

  “You will meet us by the highway, where your taxi is now, at three a.m. We’ll provide food and water, so don’t worry about those.” Skelly blanched, making a note to be sure to bring his antibiotics, an entire bottle of Cipro, the same thing Americans were now gulping for anthrax.

  “How will we be traveling?” Skelly asked.

  “By truck, he says,” said Najeeb, finally dropping all pretense of channeling. “Then by horse and mule. Maybe also on foot.”

  “What’s our route?”

  “Through the mountains.”

  “Well, yes. But can he show me where? I have a map.”

  Bashir seemed to consider this a moment, then nodded slowly. Skelly bent over, rummaging through his satchel before pulling out a large-scale map of Afghanistan and unfolding it on the floor in the dim light.

  Bashir snorted, then stood, disappearing into the back.

  “He says your map is no good. I guess he must have something better.”

  Bashir reappeared, already unfolding a white map, large and detailed, with topo lines and spidery dotted routes across tracts where Skelly knew there were no paved roads. Even UN maps weren’t usually this good.

  “Where did you get this?”

  Bashir ignored the question, jabbing a finger at a brown blob marked Katchagarhi. Even on the map it seemed benighted and forlorn. Skelly followed as Bashir traced a path up the main highway for a few inches, then left on a side track that quickly turned to dotted lines, a west-by-southwest bearing roughly parallel to the Afghan border for several miles along the foot of mountains labeled as the Safed Range. Bashir spoke quickly.

  “First, we pass through the Tribal Areas,” Najeeb translated. “He says the route has been cleared with the chieftains along the way.”

  Najeeb again sounded a little quavery. Maybe the territory was familiar to him.

  The route skirted several possible border crossings—the Sulaiman Pass, the Oghaz Pass, all of them were probably ancient smuggling routes—before joining a larger dirt road near a Pakistani village called Parachinar. It then climbed into the Spin Ghar Range—the White Mountains—before crossing the Afghan border at the Paiwar Pass, just south of a 15,000
-foot peak called Sikaram. The topo lines made it all look steep and forbidding, the middle of nowhere, with the route then switching back and forth down the mountain into a small Afghan village, where Bashir now poked his finger.

  “Jaji,” he pronounced, reading the name.

  “That is our first stop.” Najeeb said, now looking as if he’d seen a ghost. “Then we travel to Azro, our base of operations, before going onward to Heserak, then all the way to Jalalabad. Where presumably Razaq will be crowned some sort of local king.”

  “Your words, I suppose.”

  Najeeb nodded, and this time Bashir didn’t object to their conversation. He seemed lost in the map, gazing possessively at the little dots and shadings, finger still lightly touching the smudge marking the outskirts of Jalalabad. When he spoke next, it was with a steady calm, tapping his finger against the smudge.

  “He says that is where we are likeliest to meet up with him.”

  “Razaq?”

  “No. The other one. The one he calls ‘the Sheik.’ ”

  “Oh,” Skelly said. “Him.” Too intimidated to utter the name a second time. It was like being promised a glimpse of Sasquatch, or the Loch Ness monster, a personage so heavily freighted with mythology that he seemed to have almost become immortal, a wandering spirit who would never be captured.

  “How does he know?” Skelly asked. “How does he know we might see him?”

  Najeeb paused.

  “Do you really want me to ask that? It’s only likely to make him angry. The less said about that, the better, probably.”

  This time Bashir interrupted, wagging a finger and raising his voice.

  “What’s he saying now?”

  “He wants to know why I wasn’t translating what you said. I told him you were worried about having enough to eat, somewhere to sleep. I don’t think he believed it. But he assures that you will be well taken care of.”

  “Yes,” Skelly said. “Taken care of. Whatever that means.”

  Bashir spoke again.

  “We must go now,” Najeeb translated. “He has to prepare, and he has already told us too much. Be here by three thirty. And if you’re not, then he’ll have you found and brought here.”

  “Maybe that’s what he meant by ‘taking care of me.’ ”

  Najeeb said nothing.

  Bashir clapped his hands once, and the boy who had escorted them from the teahouse materialized, this time to lead them back to the taxi at the highway. As Skelly rose to follow, he realized the enormity of the commitment he had just made, and he nearly stumbled. Najeeb supported him from behind with a hand to the small of his back. Heart pounding and legs heavy, Skelly nodded, urging the boy forward.

  Skelly turned to say good-bye, but Bashir had already disappeared into the back room, gone without a further word.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  NAJEEB EXPERIENCED a sort of stage fright as he rode his scooter home, wondering what new drama might await him at the apartment. Two nights ago: a shaken and slashed Daliya. The night before: a dead body, with Karim lurking in the crowd and a trashed apartment upstairs.

  Tonight everything at least looked quiet as he rounded the last corner. Windows dark. Shades drawn. No one around.

  His mailbox was empty. No messages posted by the entrance. Climbing the empty, fully lit stairwell he began to relax, and to his great relief his door was not only shut but bolted, just as he’d left it.

  Perhaps now the war would move on without him. Or so he felt, having decided on a somewhat drastic course of action after the meeting with Bashir. He had come to the decision during the taxi ride back from Katchagarhi.

  Skelly had been edgy and elated, talking rapidly:

  “I guess if he were just a brigand he would have already cut our throats,” sounding as if he was trying to convince himself. “But we’ll find out soon enough. I’ll need to store my excess gear at the Pearl, which means another cab. Wouldn’t trust the Grand to keep it. Christ, and we still don’t have a sat phone. Too late now. We’ll have to borrow Razaq’s.”

  “Assuming you’ll even see him,” Najeeb said, breaking a long silence. He wanted to slow down the Skelly express, needing the right opening to break the news of his decision.

  “Oh, these things have a way of working out. I’ve never been anywhere yet where I wasn’t able to file. And you heard Bashir. It isn’t like Razaq doesn’t want the publicity. He just doesn’t want the aggravation. He’ll keep us out of his hair until he thinks we’re needed. Might take a while, but we’ll see him.”

  Now, Najeeb thought.

  “You will, maybe. Not me.”

  Skelly did a predictable double take. “Come again? What do you mean?”

  Najeeb employed the old Pashtun stoniness, working to keep his face unreadable.

  “I will not be going with you. I will find you someone else. But do not worry, it will not be a problem. I know many good candidates, and they will be happy for the opportunity.”

  “Don’t worry? In less than five hours we’re crossing into Afghanistan in the dark and you’re going to find me somebody new? Not a problem? It’s a huge problem. And why the hell are you doing this?”

  Why, indeed?

  The main reason was Daliya. Still no word. He had to find out what had become of her, or he might regret it forever. And for all he knew the police were searching for him as well. Disappearing overnight would only arouse further suspicion.

  Then there was the matter of the route Bashir had traced on the map. Crossing his father’s lands on the Grand Trunk Road, as they had done this afternoon, was one thing. On the highway the government at least maintained a semblance of control. Passage via lesser roads—and at night, no less—was something else altogether. So that was the excuse he offered Skelly first.

  “Look,” Skelly said, “I’m still not sure what your problem is with going home—you’ve never really told me. But do you think these guys would be traveling that way if they hadn’t cleared it, with your father or whoever? No way Razaq or Bashir would risk not even making it to the border.”

  A fair point, so Najeeb reluctantly told Skelly about Daliya, her disappearance, and the disturbing silence of her cell phone throughout the day. He left out the part about the messages and the dead body. This, at least, slowed down the Skelly express.

  Skelly frowned, grumbling, obviously not wanting to seem cold or insensitive.

  “You should call the police,” he said curtly. “Let them handle it.”

  “It’s been reported.”

  Skelly frowned and patted him on the shoulder, an awkward yet affecting gesture of support. Then he sighed. Was he giving in this easily?

  “Look, you should do whatever you think you need to do. Get your affairs in order.” He sighed again. “Just find me somebody worthy. And soon. Somebody who won’t mind roughing it. The next few days aren’t going to be easy. Tell you the truth, I’m a little scared. It’s a big unknown, what we’re getting into. What I’m getting into. But this might be my last real shot at a story this big, dumb as it sounds. And if they really are going after who Bashir says they are, well, it might be the one quest worth making.” Skelly shrugged, taking his hand off Najeeb’s shoulder, then fiddling with his notebook, the taxi suddenly silent except for the thrumming of the tires.

  And that was how they left things, Najeeb surprising himself with a stab of regret, as if he might actually begin to miss this man. Or was it the prospect of an adventure he would miss? No. He’d had enough of adventure for a while. Adventure, he decided, was just another word for chaos, for letting runaway events take over your life.

  He must have felt guilty, too, because he then insisted that Skelly not pay him for the day, even after at least twenty hours aboard buses and taxis, and trips to the Khyber and into the dark labyrinth of Katchagarhi.

  “Nonsense,” Skelly said, handing him three fifties, then a fourth. “Just get me somebody good.” So that’s what Najeeb would do now that he was home. He knew at least four English sp
eakers who would leap at the chance, even on short notice, with only a half hour remaining until midnight. He would brew a pot of tea and give them a call. Then, finally, he would begin to sort out the jumble of his life. And if Bashir decided to have him tracked down when he failed to show up for tonight’s expedition, then it was a risk he had to take on Daliya’s behalf. Their destinies were now linked, and somehow he was certain she believed that, too. He refused to consider the possibility that she might simply be gone.

  He turned the key, pleased to hear the bolt sliding back. Inside it was dark and still, and he set down his satchel with a long, full sigh. Then he flipped on the light, his skin jumping as he saw Tariq seated on the cushions, exactly where Daliya had been two nights earlier. The man smiled primly, hands folded calmly in his lap.

  Najeeb bounded forward, reaching for the smirking face. Then a click and a heavy footstep drew his attention to the bedroom doorway, where a bodyguard emerged.

  “Why don’t you sit, calm yourself,” Tariq said. “Usman here was just going to make some tea, if you’re interested. Nice place.”

  Someone had tidied the mess from the day before. The tossed papers were back on his desk, every book reshelved. Even the floors were spotless, as if Tariq and Usman had spent the evening pushing mops and brooms.

  “Who cleaned up the mess?” he asked, anger giving way to bewilderment. He wondered if he could ever feel at home here again.

  “The mess?”

  “The one your men made yesterday, searching the place.”

  Tariq shook his head, brow furrowed.

  “Not our style. I won’t deny we’ve been in your apartment recently. Nor will I confirm it, of course. But we don’t make messes. We keep our comings and goings discreet. I doubt even your nosiest neighbor would have noticed. They might see a phone repairman, or some kind of delivery. But a mess? Not in our manual. Maybe you should check with the religious fanatic, the one you claimed was leaving notes for you.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Tariq raised an eyebrow.

  “The body last night?”

  Najeeb nodded.