was a Taliban spy, Sarah’s talking so openly to McGarvey, let alone that she had spent time in the West, thought women should have rights, and wore no veil to cover her face, was a major insult to his religious, and therefore political, beliefs. If they’d been in Kabul now she would have been arrested and very possibly put to death, bin Laden’s daughter or not.
Sarah flipped her left hand at him, another Islamic insult, and he reacted as if he had been slapped, but he said nothing.
“It is time to get some rest now,” she said. “We’ll leave at dusk if the sky is clear of the enemy.”
“I’ll take the first watch,” Mohammed said, and he turned and walked off.
McGarvey slept fitfully until noon on the rough wool blanket they provided for him. Instead of warming up, the fog persisted and the day remained chilly and damp. When he opened his eyes Sarah and the others were leaving the shelter of the overhang with their Kalashnikovs.
He sat up. “Is there trouble?”
“It’s time for our prayers, Mr. McGarvey,” Sarah answered softly. “Go back to sleep.”
When they were gone, he got up and went to the entrance where he could just make out the misty figures of the three men by the pool. Sarah had already gone upstream.
Watching them rinse their bodies in the Islamic ritual he was once again struck by the contradictions of their religion and their war of terrorism. When they knelt down to face Mecca and began their prayers he wondered what they were thinking about, or if, as the Qoran instructed, they were giving themselves completely to the moment and to their God.
When they were finished Farid and Hash came back up to the campsite, but Mohammed remained behind. They passed McGarvey without a word, and curled up in their blankets.
Mohammed turned and looked up river in the direction Sarah had gone. McGarvey stepped a little farther back into the relative darkness of the overhang so that the mujahed would have to come halfway up the hill in order to see him standing there. But Mohammed never looked up, instead he unslung his rifle and started up stream.
McGarvey checked Farid and Hash. They were already dead to the world, their blankets drawn over their heads so that only their noses poked out. Taking care not to wake them he crept out of the campsite and went down to the water’s edge. He hadn’t noticed on the way up, but now he could see that the stream had been partially dammed to form the pool, meaning this was a regular stopping place. From the air it would look natural; only from up close could you see that someone had piled rocks across the stream. A narrow but well-used path skirted the edge of the river.
He followed the path for about thirty or forty yards until it angled away from the stream and disappeared into a thick tangle of brush and tall grasses. He stopped to listen, but the day was silent except for the soft gurgle of the creek off to his left.
Pulling out his pistol he headed slowly into the thicket, careful to make as little noise as possible, stopping every few yards to listen.
The path took an abrupt turn back to the left, and plunged down into a water-filled hole about twenty feet across. He could see footprints in the mud on the high side of the depression, and he followed these, coming again to the river’s edge in another thirty yards. Trees and even thicker, taller brush and grasses hung over the water so that McGarvey had to duck low to make his way through.
Somewhere just a few yards farther upstream, a man said something low, and urgent in Persian, which was followed almost immediately by Sarah’s equally low and urgent reply. McGarvey could not understand the language, but he knew from the tone of their-voices that something was wrong. He pushed his way through the last few feet of tangled brush until the path opened to a narrow beach along another, much smaller pool than the one below at their campsite.
Mohammed, his back to McGarvey, stood at the water’s edge. He was a few feet away from Sarah who’d been bathing in the pool. She was completely naked, crouching in a defensive posture in ankle-deep water. Mohammed’s rifle was leaning against a rock along with her rifle and clothing, fifteen feet away. He must have sneaked up on her when she was swimming.
He suddenly lunged, and she couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. He caught her arm and yanked her roughly onto the beach where he pawed her breasts.
She didn’t scream, but she snarled something at him in Persian. He pulled back a hand to hit her, and she raised her slender bare arm to ward off the blow.
The angle and the light were bad, but McGarvey raised his pistol and fired one shot, hitting Mohammed in the back of the hand, the wound erupting in a splash of blood. The shot echoed sharply off the wall of the cliff across the stream, and Mohammed bellowed in shock and pain. He let go of Sarah’s arm and pawed inside his vest for his pistol as he swung around like an angry bull.
“I’ll put the next one between your eyes,” McGarvey shouted.
Mohammed’s hand hesitated. Sarah said something to him in Persian, and he turned his head slightly so that he could see her and still keep an eye on McGarvey. Blood dripped from his wounded hand, but no artery had been hit. He was shaking with a barely suppressed frenzy.
“It was a mistake,” Sarah told McGarvey. She edged farther away from Mohammed, then straightened up, her slight figure almost boyish. “I should not have been here like this,” she said. Mustering up as much dignity as she could she turned her back on them, walked back to her clothes and started to get dressed.
“Are you okay?” McGarvey asked. Since the airport checkpoint he had a feeling that something like this might happen.
“Please go now.”
“What about him?”
Sarah put on her baggy trousers, and pulled her shirt over her head. She turned and McGarvey could see that she was crying. “It was my fault,” she said in a very small voice. “But Mohammed has respect for my father so nothing will be said.”
McGarvey’s heart went out to her. She was tough on the outside, but she was younger than Liz, still just a baby girl in a very wild and difficult world.
“Harlot,” Mohammed said in English, and McGarvey’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Sarah turned away in shame without replying.
“Take the gun out of your pocket and throw it on the ground,” McGarvey said in a measured voice. “Very carefully now, or I’ll kill you.”
Mohammed didn’t hesitate. He got the pistol out of his vest and tossed it up on the beach. McGarvey walked over, picked it up and put it in his pocket. He released the hammer on his own gun, switched the safety on and stuffed it in his belt at the small of his back.
“You will have to sleep sometime, Mista CIA,” Mohammed warned. His eyes were like a feral animal’s.
“How would you explain it to my father?” Sarah demanded, turning back once again. She had gotten her emotions in control. She picked up Mohammed’s rifle and brought it over to him. “We have a long way to travel. This is very important.”
Mohammed snatched the gun from her, and for a second it seemed as if he was going to hit her with it, but then he slung the rifle over his shoulder. “He shot me, how are you going to explain his weapon?”
“Did you expect him to come here unarmed?” Sarah demanded.
“It’s Hashmatullah’s fault for not searching him better at the hotel.”
“Mr. McGarvey will hand over his gun to me before I take him to my father. Your wound is a stupid accident.”
“What about mine?”
McGarvey took the pistol out of his pocket and tossed it to Mohammed who had to scramble to catch it with his good hand. “Like I told you before. If you pull it on me I’ll take it away from you, shove it up your ass and empty the magazine.”
Farid and Hash came crashing out of the bushes in a dead run, their rifles at the ready. They pulled up short in confusion, not sure what the situation was.
“Everything is okay,” Sarah told them.
“We heard a shot,” Farid said, eyeing McGarvey suspiciously. Then he noticed Mohammed’s wounded hand, and he raised his rifle at McGarvey.
“It was an accident,” Sarah said. “I want you to take Mohammed back and bandage his hand. Then we’re
