Burnt Shadows Part 22

'Who is this?' Raza said again, walking quickly away from the Americans and Afghans.

'Ismail. Abdullah's brother. Do you still have the pattusi I gave you twenty years ago at the camp?'

Raza leaned his weight against the trunk of the broad-leafed tree which grew in the compound.

'Is Abdullah alive?'

'Yes.'

Raza put one arm around the trunk and rested his head against it.

'He said to tell you first that he's sorry.'

For nearly twenty years Raza had imagined Abdullah felt betrayed by him he had never returned to Sohrab Goth, never attempted to contact Abdullah through Afridi or any of the other Afghans he knew there. And it seemed inevitable that, when the reality of war made itself known to him, Abdullah would have seen that Raza's greatest betrayal was in pus.h.i.+ng him towards the camp instead of agreeing he should stay in Karachi. But here was Abdullah's brother saying, 'He knows that, whether or not you had a connection to the CIA, you came to the camp with him as a brother; and for twenty years he's lived with the shame of knowing that in a moment of anger he told the Commander you were an American spy and had you sent away.'

Raza shook his head, hardly believing.

'Why are you calling me? Why isn't Abdullah calling?'

'The Commander told me you had called, looking for Abdullah. He had your number. Raza Hazara, is it true? Did you work with the CIA?'

'Why would any Afghan today admit having worked with the CIA?' Something was wrong, he knew, but he didn't know what answer he should be giving, how much of the truth he should reveal.

'It was a different time before,' Ismail said. 'We believed they were helping us.' Raza made a noise that could have meant agreement. 'Please, I need to know. Do you have friends in America?'

'Why are you calling me? Where's Abdullah?'

There was a long pause. Neither man wanted to give anything away before seeing the other one's hand but Raza knew he had the advantage.

'I'll tell you,' Ismail said. 'Because my brother said I should. He said you would help.'

A few minutes later, Raza was sitting beneath the tree, satphone by his side. This country, this country This country, this country. He looked up into the distant hills already darkened into silhouettes in the early part of the long winter night memory rather than sight providing him with images of coloured strips of cloth tied to the ends of long poles. Some bleached to whiteness, some bright as fresh blood, each marking the burial place of those who had died in some version of the war which had rolled across Afghanistan for over twenty years. Raza had thought he was one of the hundreds of thousands of people from around the world whose conscience had been buried in Afghanistan his reaction had been to decide if he was numbered among the d.a.m.ned he might as well get paid for it. But here was his conscience, tapping him on the shoulder, offering him one more chance.

Seized with resolution, he sprang up and ran into the room he shared with Harry, plucked Harry's satphone off his bed, and dialled a number stored in its memory.

'Dad!' Kim Burton answered.

It might have been all those times he'd heard her voice on the answering machine in Harry's apartment; it might have been something else. But her voice was so familiar there was no question of addressing her as he would a stranger.

'Hey, Kim. It's Raza.'

'Has something happened to my father?'

'No, no, Harry's fine,' Raza said, stepping out of the room and looking towards Harry embracing the Urdu-speaking Afghan and the tribal chief just before escorting America's new allies to the front gate of the compound.

He could hear her exhale in relief.

'You guys really need another line of work.'

He smiled at the familiarity of the 'you guys'.

'How's my mother?'

'You should call and ask her that yourself.' She walked away from the construction site, removing her hard hat so she could hear him better. There were traces of both Harry and Hiroko in his unplaceable accent. She'd always a.s.sumed he'd sound arrogant instead there was something in his voice which said please like me!

'I will. How's the cohabiting going?'

'We have a b.u.mp or two now and again. But it smoothes itself over.' Between her and Hiroko 'I don't want your hot chocolate' had become a line to laugh hysterically about within just a few hours of Hiroko throwing the glove at Kim. As if I was challenging you to a duel! As if I was challenging you to a duel! Hiroko had said that evening over the dinner Kim had cooked as a peace offering. 'I'm moving out into my own place next month, but it's close to her.' Hiroko had said that evening over the dinner Kim had cooked as a peace offering. 'I'm moving out into my own place next month, but it's close to her.'

'Uh huh.' She could tell he wasn't really interested.

'I need to ask you a favour,' he said. 'It's about an Afghan I used to know. A boy called Abdullah.'

'Abdullah?' Kim repeated. 'That boy you went to the training camps with? Where exactly in Afghanistan are you?' She looked around her at the tall buildings, the woman walking past in miniskirt and thigh-high boots, the men with yarmulkes stopped in front of a hot-dog stand with a HALAL HALAL sign painted across it, and thought he might as well be calling from another planet. sign painted across it, and thought he might as well be calling from another planet.

'You know I can't tell you that. Listen, Kim. You have to help Abdullah. He's in America. In New York.'

'What's he doing in New York?' Kim said, looking around sharply.

'Cab driver.'

'Of course.'

'He's illegal there.'

'Again, of course.'

'Some FBI guys came around to his apartment building a couple of days ago. He jumped out of the window when they knocked on the door.' Across the compound a game of night cricket was about to commence on a makes.h.i.+ft pitch lit up with the headlights from the Humvees. Harry the only non-TCN involved, though some of the contractors were standing by, watching in bemus.e.m.e.nt as Harry called out to the other players in Urdu as he dragged over the wooden chair which served as wicket.

'How do you know all this?' She crouched to see into the driver's-side window of the cab that had stopped across the street, as if it would be possible to recognise Abdullah the Afghan.

Raza had long ago learnt from Harry to reveal as little as necessary in any operation. As with Harry, the lesson had spilled over into his private life.

'That's beside the point. The point is, he's terrified. He's an Afghan who ran from the FBI. These days that's the kind of thing your paranoid nation thinks is evidence of terrorism.'

She stood up straight, moved the phone from her ear and held it in front of her eyes, face scrunched in disappointment and outrage. Paranoid? The whole country was jangling with fear, and all the Raza Ashrafs of the world could do was sneer about it. And how did it become 'your nation' after he'd lived in Miami for a decade and was a green-card holder in the process of applying for citizens.h.i.+p?

'Why did the idiot run? The FBI isn't the INS. They don't care if he's legal or not. Tell him to just turn himself in and say he's sorry he panicked.'

'Say he's sorry?' He mimicked her tone and accent with disconcerting accuracy. 'Did you really just say that? Have you read the Patriot Act? Of course they care if he's legal or not. They can indefinitely detain someone with just minor visa violations if they have even the vaguest suspicions about them.' In the pause that followed he said quietly, 'OK, you haven't read the Patriot Act.'

'Why are we even having this conversation?'

'He can't stay in America now. And there is a way for him to get back to Afghanistan from Canada. So you need to get him across the border. They'll never search a car driven by someone who looks like you. None of his friends in New York look like you.'

'This is where I hang up.' She ended the call, and then switched off the phone to prevent further conversational insanity before hurrying back to work. She was made uneasy about the idea of an Afghan who ran from the FBI, and made more uneasy to know she found such a thing suspicious. d.a.m.n Raza Ashraf. What right did he have to call her up and make her feel . . . caught out. Yes, he was just like Harry. Pa.s.sing the buck and making you feel guilty for noticing it was counterfeit.

Part-way across the world, Raza was disappointed but unsurprised. Plan B then, he thought, as he watched the lazy shuffle that was Harry's bowling run-up. He knew exactly what would happen when he told Harry he had to leave for New York right away to get Abdullah out. Harry would say he was being sentimental and idiotic. He'd also curse the ineffectiveness of the FBI, the inept.i.tude of politicians, the stupidity of stupid laws but follow up by pointing out that Abdullah's innocence would do nothing to help Raza's case if he was found attempting to help a suspected terrorist. And then, when Raza refused to back down, he would say fine, he was going along, too Raza didn't look nearly all-American enough to cross the border without being stopped. Raza smiled, and stretched contentedly. It would be good to be back in America, no matter how briefly. He thought longingly of a high-pressure shower, and wondered if he owed Kim Burton some kind of apology.

Harry bowled an off-break, short of a length, followed by an exaggerated cry of pain when the batsman hit him for a four. Steve stepped out of his room to see what the noise was about. The ball landed near Raza, who held up a hand to the fielders to signal he'd retrieve it.

He was bending down to pick up the ball when he saw the movement up in the guard tower.

Harry was turned towards Raza, holding his hands out for the ball with a smile that anyone who had been loved by Konrad Weiss would have recognised, when the stranger in the guard tower swept his Kalashnikov from right to left as though it was his partner in a dance, and Harry fell in synchronised response, his s.h.i.+rt incarnadine in the bright lights of the Humvee.

34.

Raza watched the mud lift off the ground in concentric circles, earth flattening around it. He was huddled in a crouch, arms raised against the rush of air, refusing to look any higher than the walls of mud rising an inch or so before collapsing back down as the chopper pulled itself away from earth, carrying two wounded contractors and the body of Harry Burton.

As the noise of the chopper muted in the distance, Raza heard the sound of a revving engine. The jeep carrying the bodies of three Pakistani Third Country Nationals was about to leave the compound, unescorted, headed for the border; the other jeep, with the unwashed corpse of the Afghan gunman tied to its b.u.mper by his feet, would wait until sunrise before departing to drive around the surrounding terrain as a warning. The corpses of the two Banglades.h.i.+ TCNs were in a storage room, awaiting a decision on what was to be done with them in the absence of an emba.s.sy in Kabul to which they could be sent. And somewhere out of sight two men were digging a grave Raza could hear the flump! of earth being turned over by shovels for the Sri Lankan man without ident.i.ty papers.

Raza stood, his clothes so stiff with dried blood they were resistant to the unfurling of his body. He made his way slowly to the jeep which had the Afghan tied to it, and raised his foot to feel the satisfaction of bone snapping beneath his heavy boots. But instead, he pirouetted to retch on the ground.

No one recalled seeing the Afghan before. In all likelihood he was part of the group of men who had come to pledge their allegiance to the Americans. He must have slipped away from the group and made his way to the watchtower where he garrotted the Sri Lankan guard. The tribal chief who had led the group of men into the compound insisted he had never seen the man but he would say that, wouldn't he, Steve had pointed out.

Raza unzipped his bloodied jacket and let it fall to the ground as he made his way to the room he shared with Harry. Had shared with Harry. The gunman seemed most intent on killing Americans the TCNs who died were simply in the way as the bullets sprayed an arc from Harry to the other two contractors in the yard. But the other two had survived because of their body armour. Harry should have been wearing it, too A and G's policy specifically stated that all its employees who were provided with body armour should keep it on at all times. But it wasn't cost-effective to provide body armour for the TCNs, so they had none and Raza said he felt ridiculous sitting down with them for dinner around their firelit campsite if he was the only one bent over under the weight of protection, so he refused to wear it. And Harry said if Raza wasn't wearing it, he wasn't wearing it either.

Indoors, Raza sat on Harry's camp bed, and picked up the book Harry had been reading. Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes. He'd said it was the only thing that could keep a man sane. Raza closed his eyes and leaned back into the scent of Harry Burton. He wanted to be home. Not in Miami but in a Karachi of twenty years ago, which had long since disappeared as civic violence turned n.a.z.im abad into a battleground and all Raza's closest friends moved to other parts of the city or away to the Gulf or Canada or America. The house which Sajjad and Hiroko had bought with Ilse Weiss's necklace had been torn down to make room for a more 'modern' construction.

'You should change out of those clothes. They reek.'

Raza looked up at Steve, who had stepped inside, flinging Raza's jacket on to the bed.

'What's the quickest way for me to get to New York?' Raza asked. 'Kim said they'd delay the funeral until I get there.' Kim hadn't said it he had phoned his mother instead and told her what happened.

But why are you in Afghanistan? Ma, I'm sorry. I'll tell you everything when I get there. Raza, are you involved with this war? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Shh, stop crying. No, cry. Cry all you need to. And come quickly. We'll wait for you, of course. It's what Harry would want. Oh Raza, how can he be dead? How will I tell Kim?

'Don't be ridiculous. You're not going anywhere. We're going to interrogate every Afghan who entered this compound in the last twenty-four hours to find out who helped Harry Burton's killer and you're going to sit there and translate every word that comes out of their diseased mouths.'

'I'm an employee of A and G,' Raza said, carefully placing Mother Goose Mother Goose on the bedside, next to Harry's reading gla.s.ses. 'You can't tell me what to do. Come to think of it, I may be in charge of operations here now. I'm the seniormost employee.' on the bedside, next to Harry's reading gla.s.ses. 'You can't tell me what to do. Come to think of it, I may be in charge of operations here now. I'm the seniormost employee.'

'You may want to reconsider your att.i.tude.' Steve sat down on Raza's bed. 'I employ your employers. I've just been on the phone with them, in fact. They've given me operational control until they fly in a replacement. It's really a dry run for them and me if things work out well I'll be taking over Harry Burton's office soon. Next door to yours, I understand?'

'I'll draft my letter of resignation right away.'

'That's nice. But don't forget the ninety-day waiting period before it comes into effect. If Kim Burton is putting Harry on ice until you get to New York, check she has enough ice to make it through to April.'

Raza closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.

'Please. You have other people here who can translate. Just let me go for the funeral. Harry was . . .' His voice refused to continue.

Steve stretched himself out on Raza's bed, adjusting the flame on the lantern in the s.p.a.ce between them so that shadows flung themselves across the walls and on to the ceiling.

'Harry was the man I admired above all men,' he said. 'He never knew that. A visionary. And now what is he? A piece of rotting meat.'

'Please let me go for Harry's funeral.'

'But the one thing he wasn't a visionary about was the TCNs. I tried telling him. Sure, they're cheap. And no one in their own countries cares what's being done with them. But what do you do about the question of allegiance?' He played with the flame control, shadows alternating between lurking and leaping. Raza could feel the sweat spread under his armpits, wetting the blood on his s.h.i.+rt into pungency. Steve turned to look at Raza. 'That's not a rhetorical question. I'm asking your opinion.'

'They're desperate for money,' Raza said, pulling his legs up against his chest. What was Steve trying to suggest? That one of the TCNs had smuggled in an Afghan? 'Their allegiance comes from their need to keep getting the pay-cheque. And their sense of brotherhood to each other.' He closed his eyes. He could see himself behind the till of one of Hussein and Altamash's supermarkets scanning the barcode on a packet of milk, opening the cash register, answering customers' queries about where to find the flour. It was an image of peace. He knew then he wasn't just going to quit A and G; he was going to walk away from this whole life. It was nothing without Harry.

'But you don't need the pay-cheque, Raza Ashraf of Karachi and Hazara. You're not one of the grunts who know their positions can be filled by a million other desperate rats if they mis-step even slightly. You're the ageing boy wonder the translation genius. You can name your salary in corporations around the world. And you certainly have no sense of brotherhood with anyone.'

'My allegiance was to Harry. His family and mine-' Again his voice cut out. When he had told Hiroko she had to break the news of Harry's death to his daughter he thought of the American woman he had never met as his family, closer in some ways than Hussein and Altamash of Ashraf Stores, Dubai.

'I was there, Raza. In Pakistan, nearly twenty years ago. When you sent Harry Burton from your house accusing him of being the cause of your father's death.'

'I loved Harry.' He said it quietly, simply, the stark truth of it never evident to him until that moment.

'Is that why you signalled the gunman to fire?'

'I . . . what?'

Steve reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out Raza's satphone.

'And is that why you made a call a few days ago to a known supporter of the Taliban in Kabul?'

Blood and shadows everywhere. The Commander?

'I didn't know . . .'

'And am I really going to have to track down whoever called you from that PCO in Kandahar Taliban HQ just a few minutes before Harry died, or are you going to spare us some time and just tell me, Raza Hazara?'

'I haven't used that name in twenty years. I was a boy then.'

'I was standing next to you, you lying filth. Just a few hours ago when the call came. I could hear the man on the other end of the phone. Raza Hazara. That's what he said.' Steve stood up, picking up the copy of Mother Goose Mother Goose as he did so, along with Harry's satphone and the handgun from the bedside-table drawer. 'Humpty Dumpty,' he said conversationally and walked towards the door, book in hand. Opening the door, he pointed to the two contractors standing guard outside they were the ones Raza had dismissed as 'hired help' just a few days earlier. as he did so, along with Harry's satphone and the handgun from the bedside-table drawer. 'Humpty Dumpty,' he said conversationally and walked towards the door, book in hand. Opening the door, he pointed to the two contractors standing guard outside they were the ones Raza had dismissed as 'hired help' just a few days earlier.

'Could you give me my phone,' Raza said, holding out a hand and then quickly withdrawing it as he noticed its tremble. 'I need to call A and G their lawyers should probably know you seem to be accusing me of something.'

Steve shut the door and walked back to Raza, vastly amused.

'Do you really think A and G is going to get into a legal tussle with the CIA just when they've finally got what they've wanted for the last decade a slice of government action? And over you?'

'You have no evidence. I can explain the phone calls.'

'Oh, you can explain anything, I'm sure. But here's the bad news for you: I saw you signal the gunman and I saw you duck just before he opened fire. That's sufficient evidence in my world.' He put a hand on Raza's shoulder. 'I know what you're all about. And I'm counting on your cowardice tell me who else was involved before this gets unpleasant.' He stepped back. 'I'll give you time to think it over. You'll see sense.'

He left, quietly closing the door behind him.

There was a place in Raza's mind where nothing existed but the practical application of selected facts it was the part of his brain he used when reading reports or sitting in on A and G meetings in which it was manifest that his company was in business with murderers and thugs. That part of his brain had once allowed him to sit through a meeting in which a new client of A and G's extolled the effectiveness of rape as a tool of war. Raza impa.s.sively translated every word he said. Afterwards, Harry had found him in the A and G Olympic-sized pool, swimming furious laps, and said, 'I've made it clear I'm not getting involved with this contract.' Raza replied, 'Even so, I'm really quitting this time. Don't think a raise will change my mind.' Harry crouched by the side of the pool and placed his hand on Raza's slicked-down hair. 'I don't know what I'd do without you, son,' he said, and Raza stayed.

As Raza changed into a shalwar kameez, first wiping blood methodically off his body with a wash cloth and the water from Harry's bedside flask, he retreated to that purely practical section of his mind. Harry had chosen this structure for himself and Raza rather than any of the more s.p.a.cious ones for a very particular reason Raza moved his camp bed away from the wall and tapped on the floor until he heard the hollow sound which had confirmed to Harry the theory he'd constructed around the locals' tales of the vanis.h.i.+ng family who had lived here. ('What about the dead boy?' Raza had asked. 'He was just a dead boy,' Harry replied.) Raza made his way around the room, picking up whichever items would be of use a large knapsack, a bottle of mineral water, a torch, granola bars, a key, his Pakistani pa.s.sport and US green card. What considerable s.p.a.ce was left in the knapsack he filled with the vast sums of money Harry kept on hand to buy Afghan loyalty. He hesitated a moment over the photograph of Hiroko, Ilse and Kim in New York, and then decided against it. He wanted nothing on him which would tie him to anyone else. But he took Harry's bomber jacket his own was too stained, and the smell might attract wild animals.