They reached the first stopping point at the pool above the waterfall just as dawn reached the upper peaks. Hash and Farid, who had taken the lead, had talked in soft tones during the all night trek, but Mohammed in the rear had not uttered a single word. McGarvey had watched for an opening, but it was useless. In order to get to his phone he would have to kill all three of them. But he had needed their help to get this far. Looking around now at the somewhat familiar surroundings he was sure for the first time that he could find his way back to the Rover, and then down to Kabul from here.
They had stopped a couple of times to eat some nan and drink cold tea, but they’d been anxious to get down from the snow and cold in the high passes, so they hadn’t lingered long.
They had made good progress, and providing that the chip was still working, McGarvey figured they might even make it into Kabul before the twenty-four hours were up. He’d been counting on that up until now, because there was no other choice. Nothing would give him more satisfaction than going head-to-head with Mohammed, but he didn’t want to hurt the other two. There was no reason for it. Despite the operation and his lack of sleep he felt surprisingly good, and with the morning sun his spirits were somehow buoyed up. It might be possible after all to avert the worst disaster the U.S. ever had to face.
“We’ll rest here for one hour,” Hash said, and Farid nodded his approval.
“Sounds good to me,” McGarvey agreed.
Mohammed laid down his pack and went down to the river to fill the canteens as Hash and Farid gathered some wood and started a small campfire. They worked together with a quiet efficiency at something they had done many many times before. Wherever bin Laden had recruited them from they were truly Afghani mountain men now; a fiercely proud, self-sufficient people whose strength seemed nearly boundless. They were as comfortable here as an American teenager would be at a mall back home. The cultural gap was almost beyond bridging. Yet, sitting on a rock and smoking a cigarette as he watched them work, he was struck again by the contradictions Sarah was facing, which somehow made her seem fragile. She was as tough as a woman in this culture had to be, and yet there was a tender side to her that was painful to observe. He’d seen it in her eyes when he was telling her about food and fashions in the West, and especially about his own daughter, Elizabeth. And in the way her father had so peremptorily dismissed her at the cave entrance after her ordeal. No love there, or at least no outward signs of it, and her eyes had dropped in disappointment and resignation. If it had been Liz in the same situation, McGarvey knew that he would have given her a hug, told her that she had done a terrific job, and would have taken Mohammed apart piece by piece.
Another line from Voltaire came to him: He who is merely just is severe. Was that part of bin Laden’s ethic up here in the mountains? Was he looking so hard for a Muslim justice that he couldn’t allow himself the tender emotions of a father?
For a time he had considered the idea that the incident at the upper pool had been staged. But he decided against it. The look of self-righteous anger on Mohammed’s face, and Sarah’s fear and shame had been genuine. No acting there. Mohammed had been trying to rape her. So why the hell hadn’t bin Laden done something about it? The cultural gap was vast, but goddammit, being a father was the same everywhere, wasn’t it?
“How are you feeling now, mista Hash asked. The climb down to the valley wouldn’t be easy, but after that it’d get better. McGarvey had thought about that last climb all the way back from the camp. The wound in his side ached, and his left shoulder continued to give him trouble, but his legs were still fine. Fencing did that for him.
“If we get something to eat first, I’ll be okay,” McGarvey said. “Unless you’re planning to starve me to death.”
Mohammed, who had come back from the river, laughed uproariously. It reminded McGarvey of the wildlife films he’d see in which hyenas laughed as they circled in for the kill. Mohammed was waiting for the excuse, any excuse to go head-to-head with him.
“We’ve got plenty of food, you’ll see,” Hash said. He gave Mohammed a nervous look. “Pretty soon you’ll be home and everything will be AA-okay.”
Farid put two tin pots of water on the fire to boil. Into one he threw a handful of black tea, and into the other a couple of handfuls of brown rice and bits of something that might have been dried lamb or maybe fish. Almost immediately it began to smell good, and McGarvey decided that he had been gone from home way too long. Then the dark thought came to him that Alien Trumble had probably felt the same thing when he got back to Washington with his family.
“It’s time for prayers,” Mohammed told them. He and the other two went down to the pool to wash up, and this time he took the bundle containing McGarvey’s gun with him.
McGarvey watched them for a couple of minutes, looking for an opening, some way to separate Mohammed from the others and kill him. But at least for now that was not possible.
He sat down on the soft sand, his back against a rock and started to put together exactly what he was going to tell Murphy to stop the attack. That came first, but when he got back to Washington he would be facing an even tougher challenge; convincing the President and his National Security Council, and especially Dennis Berndt that bin Laden did not want to use the bomb, but would if he was pushed.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and he saw the bloody GPS chip falling from the doctor’s hand. He could hear the metallic clink as it hit the edge of the bucket. Until he was back in Kabul and his telephone was returned to him, the chip was his only link with the CIA. He hoped that it hadn’t been damaged. If it had malfunctioned God only knew how the President was reacting.
Bin Laden’s Camp Talking with McGarvey had been in some way more disturbing to Sarah than Mohammed’s nearly successful attempt to rape her. Had he succeeded he would have been sent back to Kabul, but she would have borne the brunt of her father’s rage, and that of all the mujahedeen. She should not have insisted on going to Kabul in the first place. She had no business out in the mountain wilderness alone with four men — one of them an infidel. And she should not have bared her body so wantonly. She had no modesty. She could hear the words coming from her father’s lips. It was a sentiment that would be shared by her mother and especially her younger brothers. She’d brought dishonor to the House of bin Laden, and no deed of hers could ever erase the stigma.
It hadn’t been like this in Switzerland. She’d been watched very closely of course, but she’d been allowed to read books, attend classes with the other girls, watch television. It was wonderful. Free. Easy. Happy. Relaxed. And yet if she had known then what she would have to come back to, she wondered if she would have gone to Switzerland in the first place. Or, once she was there, if she wouldn’t have run away, to London or Paris or Rome, somewhere they could not find her. Where she could have started a new life.
Topping the last rise above the camp at the same moment the sun appeared between a pair of snow- covered peaks far to the east, she pulled up. The return trip had taken longer because she had been lost in thought, struggling with a host of new emotions and new ideas. She’d also been delayed for a few minutes when she’d spotted someone coming up the trail toward her. She’d hidden herself in the rocks until she got a good look at the man as he passed, recognizing him as one of Ali Bahmad’s special soldiers. She had debated following him to find out what he was up to. But in the end she decided that she’d done as much as she could, and it was time to get back.
McGarvey’s presence had been so disturbing to her because he had given life to her most secret dreams about someday leaving the mountains for good. He was the first American man she had ever met, and certainly the first Western man she’d ever spent any length of time with. He was older than her own father, and she had no romantic illusions about him, or at least not many — he had seen her naked — but he had turned her head with his easy attitude and relaxed self-confidence as completely as the most ardent suitor could ever do.
The camp below was dark, and it struck her all at once that it was horribly dreary and isolated. Despite her strong will, and her deep faith in her religion and in her father, she began to cry. She didn’t close her eyes, nor did she wipe away her tears, she simply stood looking down into the camp and wept, her shoulders unmoving, her back ramrod straight. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried, but it must have been when she was a little girl in Khartoum. Nor could she remember what it had felt like. But now a great sadness came over her like a thick blanket of fog falling into a deep valley, obscuring everything. She didn’t know what she was thinking at that moment; she was just feeling sad, lost, depressed, melancholic. She wanted her mother. She wanted someone to have tea with, someone to brush out her hair and braid it, someone to listen with a sympathetic ear. But her mother had returned to Khartoum in secret two months ago and there’d been no mention of when or if she was coming back.
McGarvey had been ready to kill Mohammed. She had seen it in his eyes, and in his deep anger. He wasn’t ashamed of her, nor had he blamed her for the attack. He had simply been a father protecting a girl. Squeezing her
