The Prince of Bagram Prison (10 page)

Morrow was silent for a moment, contemplating Harry's unabashed incompetence. “You'll call me personally if you remember anything,” he said. “You still have my number, don't you?”

“Yes,” Harry said. And then, before Morrow had time to hang up, “How's Susan?”

It was a stupid thing to ask, suicidally so, and Harry detested himself immediately. But the question was out there now and couldn't be taken back.

“She's sick,” Morrow said flatly. “Thyroid cancer. She's going to die soon.”

“Oh,” Harry blurted.

“Goodbye, Harry.”

Harry set the phone down on the arm of his deck chair and looked up at the sky, searching for Uranus again. He felt as if he'd been knocked suddenly off balance, as if the sky had been thrown from its axis and into the dark smear of the sea. But the green planet was still there, like an anchor among the million scattered stars.

The glass door slid open and Harry heard Char step out onto the lanai, her bare feet rough against the wooden planks.

“I was beginning to think you didn't have any,” she said, putting her hands on Harry's shoulders, bending down so that her breasts lay against his back.

“Any what?” Harry asked.

“Friends,” she answered.

“You were right,” he said, feeling suddenly old. “I don't.”

She slid her arm around his neck and climbed into his lap, and Harry felt his groin stir with a kind of desperation he hadn't known in decades. He shifted slightly so that his hips were under hers, then set his hands on her waist and pulled her toward him. Her hair, long and thick, smelled of marijuana smoke, and of the faint jasmine perfume of her shampoo.

She leaned over and kissed him, then pulled back, a bemused smile on her face. “Perhaps your Mr. Morrow should call more often,” she said playfully.

“Lies!” The voice in the corridor outside Manar's room was loud and indignant, the words punctuated by the rhythmic shushing of a scrub brush on the terra-cotta floor. “All lies. How can he possibly claim he didn't know?”

Then a second voice, that of the family's elder housekeeper, Jamila. “He is our king. May God protect him.” Whispered, as Manar knew her mother had instructed, as all conversation in the house was to be. As if Manar were sick and noise was the cause.

When she'd first come home, Manar had been grateful for the quiet. In the silence of the prison, her hearing had become as acute as that of a blind person, her ears attuned to the slightest variation. She had learned to recognize the shift in tone of the desert sand caressing her cell's single airshaft when the wind changed direction, or the subtle difference in the sound of another prisoner's voice through the wall when she was close to death.

During those first months at home, the barrage upon her senses—the colors, smells, tastes, and sounds—had been almost unbearable, and the indifference of those around her to the sensory bounty had enraged Manar. But now it was the whispering that bothered her more than anything, the hushed tones of her mother's staff a constant reminder of Manar's years in the desert and of everything she had lost.

“He is no better than his father.” It was the first voice again.

The speaker, Manar guessed, was the woman she had seen earlier that morning in the courtyard with her mother, the newest member of the household staff. No one else would have been so brazen in her condemnation of the monarch.

The two women were talking about the recent scandal at the Ain Chock Charity House, and the king's professed ignorance. Though Manar purposefully avoided both the newspaper and the television, the story had not escaped her attention. She had overheard a similar conversation among the kitchen staff earlier that week, in which they had recounted the suffering of the orphans at the home, and the greed of the managers, who for years had been pocketing the home's operating budget.

The story hadn't surprised Manar: corruption never did. It shouldn't have surprised anyone, but there was something about the gruesome details of what had transpired, the squalid conditions in which the children had been living, and the humiliations they had been forced to endure, that had captured the imaginations of everyone in the city, especially the poor, who were barely one step removed from Ain Chock and places like it.

“My mother worked at Ain Chock during the years of lead,” the younger woman said, using the popular term for the decades of brutal repression that characterized the reign of Hassan II, the father of the current king. “That's where they took the children of the disappeared, you know.”

The women had progressed down the hallway, taking the sound of their brushes with them, but Manar heard Jamila click her tongue reproachfully, and the rustle of her scarf as she moved her head to look at the door of Manar's room. “The madame,” she warned, her voice barely audible. “We musn't talk about these things.”

Manar crept quietly to the door and pressed her ear against the wood, hoping to hear the younger woman's response, but none came. She had a sudden desire to see the woman; she had glimpsed her only briefly that morning, and she was curious now to put a face to the voice. But there was something besides mere curiosity behind Manar's urge, a need to be seen and acknowledged, for both women to know that she had heard them. Putting her hand on the knob, she pushed the door open and stepped out into the hallway.

Jamila looked up at the sound of the door opening. Her eyes caught Manar's briefly, long enough for Manar to read the look of absolute terror in them, then she returned hastily to her work, her arms moving frantically across the floor.

The younger woman looked up as well, and kept looking. She had just drawn her brush from the bucket of soapy water at her side, and her dark and muscular forearms were covered in a film of fine bubbles. She was Manar's age, though like Manar she looked a good deal older. Her face was that of a peasant, rough and unapologetic, her teeth broken and black.

“Good afternoon, Madame,” she said.

“Good afternoon,” Manar answered. “Jamila is looking after you?”

The woman nodded.

“I believe you know my name,” Manar said. “And yours is…?”

“Asiya.”

The healer,
Manar thought.

“I was sorry to hear about your child, Madame,” Asiya offered.

It was the first time since her return from the desert that anyone had mentioned the child to Manar, and she had not been prepared for it. She felt her knees buckle under her, and struggled to stay upright.

“It was a boy or a girl?”

“A boy,” Manar answered.

“I lost a son as well. To typhus. He was three.”

Manar nodded. What was she to say? “He is in a better place now,
insh'Allah.
” What people offered at times like this.

“Yes,” Asiya replied. “
Insh'Allah.
”

But it was clear from the tone of her voice that she put as little stock in God's will as Manar did.

“I
'
M FINISHED
,” Abdullah declared, licking the last of the chocolate from his fingers and motioning lazily to the breakfast tray beside him on the bed. “You can take it now.”

There was plenty of food left—yogurt and dates and churros enough to feed Jamal and at least a half dozen of the other boys, who, Jamal knew from past experience, lived in a state of constant hunger. But Jamal knew better than to ask.

He took the tray and backed away, gesticulating slightly, ingratiating himself, like a weaker dog confronting a stronger one.

Abdullah watched him go. “You may take a churro for yourself, if you'd like.”

Jamal nodded, trying to convey a child's guileless gratitude. “Thank you, Papa.”

But once he was out in the hall, with the door closed behind him, he could no longer control himself. Ravenous and shaking, he stuffed the pastries into his mouth one after another. He finished the churros, then moved on to the dates and the yogurt, licking the bowl clean before returning the tray to the kitchen.

Abdullah was still in bed when Jamal got back to the room. He had not bothered to dress, and appeared to have no intention of doing so. His fleshy body was fully on display, his genitals dwarfed by the enormous roll of fat that hung down from his abdomen. He patted the sheets beside him, and Jamal forced himself forward.

“You will talk to the captain today?” Jamal asked gingerly, not wanting to ruin all he'd accomplished the night before but needing to know.

Abdullah snorted. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow I will see the captain. In any case, you wouldn't want to go tonight. There are storms predicted.”

Jamal glanced out the window at the flawlessly blue sky. What harm would it do the man to ask? he wondered, suddenly angry at being so blatantly lied to. Not money, for no one made the crossing heading south, and Jamal was certain that someone would take him on in exchange for labor and the company. If not, he still had the remnants of the American's hundred euros.

No, he thought, Abdullah was determined to punish him for leaving the first time. He had no intention of helping him find passage across the strait.

“I must leave as soon as possible,” Jamal pleaded. And then, hoping to appeal to Abdullah's love of power. “I am in trouble, Papa. I need your help.”

Abdullah smiled. The expression was not one of sympathy but one of self-interest, the look of someone suddenly recognizing his opportunities. “Of course I will help you,” he crooned. “But you must give me time. These things are not easy to arrange.”

“Yes,” Jamal agreed. “Of course.”

“How does a fifteen-year-old Moroccan boy end up on the Afghan jihadi circuit?” the provost marshal had wondered aloud, leaning back in his chair, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. Like Kat and everyone else, he'd been up for nearly two days, and the exhaustion was plain on his face.

On the wall behind his desk was a poster of the World Trade Center in flames, with the words nyfd: we will never forget. The same poster was on the door of Kat's tent, and there was another one at the entrance to the mess hall. They were for sale in the PX, along with Operation Enduring Freedom key chains, Special Forces T-shirts, and handmade Afghan carpets. Along with Soldier of Fortune video games, shelves of American junk food and diaper wipes.

“We're still trying to figure that out, sir,” Kat confessed. “He was traveling with two older men. He claims he met up with them at a guesthouse in Islamabad. He didn't come right out and say it, sir, but it sounds like he was a having a”—Kat stopped herself, searching for the right word—“a relationship with the owner. When these two offered to take him with them, he jumped at the chance.”

The provost marshal looked down at Kat's leg. She realized that the heel of her boot was tapping impatiently on the linoleum floor.

“You in a hurry to get somewhere, Sergeant?”

“Just my bunk, sir,” Kat lied. “I've got four hours before I have to be back in the booths.”

The truth was that she'd already made up her mind that she wouldn't be getting any sleep. She hadn't had a chance to talk to Colin at the facility, but she'd heard from one of the other interrogators that his SBS team would be sticking around the base for the next two days. She was planning to head back to her tent in Viper City for a quick shower and a change of clothes, then over to the British compound.

“Have you gotten anything out of his traveling companions?”

“No, sir. They've been appropriated, sir.”

The provost marshal nodded sympathetically. There was nothing to be done once civilian intelligence decided a prisoner was of interest. The men had disappeared from intake early that morning and most likely would not be coming back. “And before Pakistan?”

“He claims he left Morocco on his own about a year ago, stowed away in a container truck making the crossing from Tangier to Spain. It's quite a dangerous trip, sir.” Kat paused, remembering her own trip across the strait and her brief stay in Tangier.

“He was in Algeciras for a couple of months. Another relationship. Same situation as the one in Islamabad. He eventually hooked up with some older Moroccans there. Pseudo-jihadis, from the sound of it. They're the ones who brought him to Pakistan in the first place.”