The Prince of Bagram Prison (30 page)

“It's one thing to say you're going to lie, another to actually do it. Suppose one or both had a sudden attack of conscience and threatened to come clean about the whole incident. Or suppose they got wind of Bagheri's reappearance and got spooked into telling the truth. A lot of people, including Morrow, would have wanted to keep that from happening. A prisoner tortured to death can make people change their minds about war in a hurry.”

“I don't know,” Kat said, trying unsuccessfully to order the facts in her mind. “Something's still not adding up.”

Harry's eyes moved to Jamal once again. “Do yourself a favor,” he told Kat, “let it go. You've got other things to worry about now, like what to do with yourself, and with Jamal. Do you have a passport?”

Kat shook her head. In her haste to leave the hotel, she'd left her passport in Kurtz's room, along with her bag.

“It's just as well. You would have needed a new one in any case. You understand that you may have to disappear for a while?”

Kat nodded, but the truth was that she hadn't given much thought to what would happen next. She certainly hadn't considered the possibility that she might not be going home. She felt as if she'd been kicked in the throat. “What about Jamal?”

Harry was silent for a moment. Aware, Kat thought, as she was, of how little their past good intentions had amounted to, how unlikely it was that this time around would be any different. “I've been thinking. You know, he might still have family somewhere,” Harry said at last. “If his mother really was a political prisoner, she would have just disappeared and her family might not have even known the child existed.”

“Jamal told you that?” Kat asked. “About his mother, I mean.”

“Not in so many words. I'm not sure he even knows. He said something about his mother being taken to the desert by the king. Almost as if it was a privilege. That's the way they did it in those days. Hassan II had special prisons built in the desert for dissenters.” Harry closed his eyes, as if trying not to remember something. “Horrible places.”

Kat winced, not at Harry's story but at her own stupidity.

“Did he tell you the same thing?”

“Yes,” Kat confessed. “I didn't understand. I thought he'd made the story up, to make it all bearable.”

“No? Well, in any case, as I said, there could very well be family out there who would take him in.” He looked toward the window, through which a thin ribbon of dawn was now visible. “I know people here who can help us. With a passport. With the boy.”

Y
OU
'
VE TOLD SO MANY LIES
, Harry could remember Irene saying to him once,
that you no longer know what the truth is.

She'd been right, of course, dead on. Though Harry, who at the time hadn't thought much of the truth, couldn't see what all the fuss was about. People lied, and in return it was neces sary to lie yourself; there was no great mystery to the fact.

But this lie had been different.

Kat wasn't the first person to suggest that the MEK had expanded its operations to include southern Afghanistan. In the years since September 11, and the subsequent fall of the Tal-iban, rumors of U.S.-MEK cooperation in the region were frequently discussed within the intelligence community. It was no secret that there were voices at the Pentagon, Morrow's chief among them, clamoring for regime change in Iran. A silent partnership with the MEK would have provided the perfect tool with which to explore destabilization efforts in the region.

Harry knew for a fact that factions in the Agency had been proposing a similar program off and on for decades, but had been shot down by concerns over the MEK's official status as a terrorist organization. Without the threat of oversight, Morrow and the others in Special Plans could have pulled such a program off. In fact, Harry would have been surprised if they hadn't at least tried. Certainly, if the MEK were in Afghanistan, they were there with the blessing of someone in the Defense Department.

But this was not what he had told Kat.
I assure you, there are no MEK camps in Afghanistan.
Not just a lie but a story to back it up. Better for her, he'd reasoned at the time, knowing that her ignorance might very well save her life, and the boy's, if he himself could not. Easier to be honest about what one doesn't know than to lie about what one does.

Could Bagheri have been working for Morrow? Harry wondered, as he and Kat made their way down the Rue Chakib Arsalane to the medina's main gate. It was early still, but the lanes were already crowded, the air rich with breakfast smells: hot grease and honey,
beghrirs
on the grill. If Morrow had struck some kind of deal with the MEK, he would not have wanted to publicize the fact. Not even to those within the dissident group. If Harry's supposition was right, it was probable that Bagheri's traveling companion hadn't known of his involvement with the Americans.

If the SBS team had unwittingly picked up Bagheri during one of their sweeps, it would have been impossible to release him without casting suspicion on him. Unless, of course, none of his comrades knew he'd been captured in the first place. This would explain the death of his companion, and the army's initial failure to make an official report of the escape.

“Which way?”

Kat's question yanked Harry from his reverie. He stopped walking and glanced up. Directly in front of them, the medina gate opened onto the busy axis of the Place des Nations Unies. Looking through the opening and out onto the traffic-clogged boulevard was like peering directly from the fourteenth century into the twenty-first, and Harry was momentarily disoriented by the powerful incongruity of the vision.

A young Moroccan man—a would-be guide—approached, offering his services.

Kat brushed him off with forceful Arabic, then turned back to Harry. “Gone but not defeated,” she remarked, watching the man move off to accost another Western couple. “We'd better go before he changes his mind and comes back.”

Harry nodded. “Don't tell me they taught you that in the army?” he asked, heading toward a taxi stand just outside the gate.

“How to get rid of hustlers?”

“No, your Arabic.”

“I went to DLI,” Kat explained.

Harry signaled to the first driver in line and got an affirmative nod in response. “But you must use it. Arabic gets rusty fast.” He opened the taxi's back door for Kat.

Perhaps it was the intimacy of the gesture, or the odd outdatedness of it—how long had it been since he'd held a door for a woman?—but Harry, watching Kat fold herself into the cab, was struck by both a sense of nostalgia and of shame, by the sudden realization of just how much he'd lost, how much of himself he had already forfeited.

“I teach,” Kat said when Harry joined her in the taxi's back seat.

“Voyageurs,” Harry told the driver, indicating the main train station on the eastern side of town. Then, to Kat. “Language?”

“Yes. And theology.”

“Islam?”

Kat nodded. “My specialty is soteriology, that's—”

“The theology of salvation.” The old spy smiled. “They don't call us intelligence men for nothing.”

Kat returned his smile.

They rode on in silence for some time. Out the window, Harry could see the massive silhouette of the Hassan II Mosque rising from the coast.

“And you?” Harry asked at last. “You believe in all of that?”

“All of what?”

“You know: a jinn on each shoulder, tallying one's works for the day of reckoning; life as a test to see who gets into heaven.”

Kat laughed. “It's more complicated than that. But, no, I don't believe in the Muslim version of the afterlife. Or in the Christian one, for that matter. If there is a God, I have to believe we're all saved.”

“And if there isn't?”

Kat shook her head. “Then there isn't, and none of it matters.”

T
WENTY YEARS
, Harry thought as they passed the train station and turned onto a side street. No, in reality it was more like twenty-five. For the first time, the obvious fact that his old friends might no longer be among the living crossed Harry's mind and he felt a twinge of panic. Then the familiar storefront slid into view, the old sign Harry remembered unchanged except by time and the elements: M
.
RAFA
,
PRINTING.

“Here?” the driver asked, pulling to the curb. Even he was reluctant.

“Yes.” Harry fished a wad of crumpled dirhams from his pants pockets and paid the man, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. “You speak any other languages besides Arabic?” he asked Kat, as they started for the shop's front door.

“High-school Spanish and the worst Pashto you've ever heard. Why?”

“Just thinking about your passport.” Harry opened the door and a string of bells sounded overhead, announcing their arrival.

A middle-aged Moroccan man in an ink-smeared printer's apron appeared from the rear of the shop. He was short and round about the middle, but powerfully built, his arms thick and muscular. His graying hair was cropped close to his skull, his beard trimmed into a neat goatee. A pair of delicate, wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose.

“Mustafa?” Harry asked, marveling at the kindness the last two decades had shown his former acquaintance.

The man stepped forward and offered an ink-blackened hand. “Mustafa the son,” he said. His grip was firm, his English nearly perfect, the accent British public school. He made a point of shaking Kat's hand as well. “You are looking for my father, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Harry said, remembering the younger man from his previous visits. “Is he in?”

Mustafa the son shook his head solemnly. “My father is no longer with us,
subhan'allah.
” He peered over his glasses at Harry. “I remember you. You are the American, yes. Mr.…?”

But Harry didn't offer his name. “I'm sorry for your loss,” he said.

Mustafa bowed just slightly. “Thank you,” he said. “But you have not come merely to offer your condolences. My father may be gone, but I assure you his business is very much intact. You need something for the lady, I think.”

“A passport,” Harry told him. “English-speaking, preferably. Something with a few miles on it: EU, Asia, nothing suspicious. With a Tangier entry stamp.”

Mustafa nodded. “It can be done.”

“How soon?”

“One week. Five thousand euros.” He wiped his palms on his apron, leaving two dark streaks behind.

“One thousand, and we'll have it by this afternoon.”

Mustafa balked. “You know that's impossible.”

“Two thousand.”

“Three, and the document is in hand by six this evening.”

“Three,” Harry agreed.

Mustafa smiled at Kat. It was a crook's smile, obsequious and leering at the same time. “We will need a picture, yes?”

J
AMAL OPENED THE FRONT DOOR
of the Hotel des Amis and scanned the narrow street before wading out into the slow-moving river of humanity. It was nearly noon, well past the time by which Kat had promised to return, and Jamal was too hungry to wait for her any longer. His belly complaining, he stepped out into the crowd and started for the food stall he'd both seen and smelled from the window of the hotel room.

Twenty meters, he told himself, remembering Mr. Harry's warning about leaving the room. And what could possibly happen to him in such a short distance? This was his home, after all, his cradle and, if fate so wished, his grave. He had already made up his mind that no matter what happened he would not be leaving again.

Zid! Zid!
From behind him came the cry of a donkey driver. The crowd jostled together, bodies moving in unison to let the creature pass. Bodies like his own, Jamal thought, marveling at the unusual sensation of belonging, at the oddness of the few European faces.

He reached the little food kiosk and stopped, momentarily stunned by the range of choices, unable to decide between the soft
sfenj
and the flaky
rghaif,
both still hot from the fryer, drenched in honey and butter, or the delicate half-moons of the gazelle's horns, with their thick layer of icing. Greedily, he chose all three, stuffing one of the crescent-shaped pastries into his mouth while the merchant packed the others into a paper bag.

His hunger dulled, he paid the man and turned to go, slipping into the crowd's upstream current and allowing himself to be carried back toward the hotel. Twenty meters or not even, he thought. Already he was halfway back. And then, moving toward him in the oncoming press of bodies, he saw a familiar face.

Mahjoub, he thought, Adil's friend from Ain Chock. Jamal ducked his head, but it was too late. As he elbowed his way forward toward the hotel's door, Jamal glanced back and saw that the man had stopped to watch him go.

F
OR THE FIRST FEW MOMENTS UPON WAKING
, the only thing Manar could think was that she was back in the prison. The inside of her throat was raw and sore, as if some object had been forced into her and then withdrawn. Her chest and abdomen were bruised and tender, her back resting uncomfortably on cold tiles.

Perhaps, she thought with relief, the last few years had not happened at all. Perhaps it had merely been some long, extended dream. Memory resolving into shape. She had never really left the desert, had not been wounded by hope and the forfeit of hope.

Then a voice came to her. “Sister? Wake up, sister!” Then a hand, a warm palm on her forehead, and she understood that she had failed.

She opened her eyes and saw Asiya kneeling beside her. The housekeeper's djellaba was damp at the chest, soiled with vomit, her hands red and shaking. Her scarf had slipped back from her forehead, and her hair was loose and disheveled.

Manar had a dim memory of the last seconds before she'd drifted off, of trying to force down the pills before sleep and paralysis overcame her. How many had she managed? Ten? Fifteen? Whatever the number, it had not been enough.

She raised herself up just slightly and grasped the house-keeper's hand. “Who knows?” she asked, suddenly wild with panic.