too.”
She unzipped the suitcase and took out half a dozen plastic bottles filled with various dark liquids. Next came a hairbrush, a vanity bag, and several tubes that might have contained toothpaste. The rest of the bag was packed with clothes that looked—and smelled—as if they had come out of a trash can.
“The clothes are all from the thrift store,” she explained. “Donated in England and picked up in the market in Mazar-i-Sharif. I’ll give you two sets each,
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which is all you’ll need . . . you’ll wear them day and night. Ash—go and run a bath.” She unscrewed one of the bottles. The smell—seaweed and mineral spirits—
reached Alex even on the other side of the room. “Cold water!” she added sharply.
In the end, she let Alex take a bath on his own. She had mixed two bottles of brown dye with half a bath of cold water. Alex was instructed to lie in it for ten minutes, submerging both his face and his hair. He was shivering by the time he was allowed out and he didn’t dare look in the mirror as he dried himself—but he noticed that the hotel towels now looked as if they’d been dragged through a sewer. He pulled on a pair of ragged, shapeless boxers and came out.
“That’s better,” Mrs. Webber muttered. She noticed the scar just above his heart. It was where Alex had been shot and nearly killed by a sniper following his first encounter with Scorpia. “That might be useful too,” she added. “A lot of Afghan boys have bullet wounds. Together, the two of you make quite a pair.” Alex didn’t know what she meant. He glanced at Ash—and then he understood. Ash was just pulling on a shapeless, short-sleeved shirt, and for a moment his chest and stomach were exposed. He too had a scar—but it was much worse than Alex’s, a distinct line of white, dead skin that snaked across his belly and down below the waistline of his trousers. Ash turned away, buttoning up
the shirt, but he was too late. Alex had seen the terrible injury. It was a stab wound. He was sure of that. He wondered who had been holding the knife.
“Come and sit down, Alex,” Mrs. Webber said. She had produced a tarp, which she had spread underneath a chair. “Let me deal with your hair.”
Alex did as he was told, and for next few minutes he heard only the click of scissors and watched as uneven clumps of his hair tumbled to the ground. From the way she worked, he doubted that Mrs. Webber had received her training in a London salon. A sheep-shearing farm was more likely. When she had finished cutting, she opened one of the tubes and smeared a thick, greasy ointment over his head. Finally, she stepped back.
“He looks great,” Ash said.
“The teeth still need work. They’d give him away in a minute.”
There was another tube of paste for his teeth. She rubbed it in, using her own finger. Then she produced two small plastic caps. They were both the size of a tooth, but one was gray and one was black.
“I’m going to glue these in,” Mrs. Webber warned him.
Alex opened his mouth and allowed her to fix the fake teeth into place. He grimaced. His mouth no longer felt like his own.
“You’ll notice them for a day or two, but then you’ll
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forget them,” she said. She stepped back. “There! I’m all done. Why don’t you get dressed and take a look at yourself?”
“Cloudy, you’re damn good,” Ash muttered.
Alex pulled on a faded red T-shirt and a pair of jeans—
both of them dirty and full of holes. Then he went back into the bathroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror. He gasped. The boy he was looking at certainly wasn’t him. He was olive-skinned, with hair that was short, dark brown, and matted in thick strands. Somehow the clothes made him look thinner than he really was. He opened his mouth and saw that two of his teeth seemed to have rotted and the rest were ugly and discolored.
Mrs. Webber came in behind him. “You won’t need to worry about the skin color for two weeks,” she said. “Not unless you bathe . . . and I don’t think you’ll be doing that.
You’ll have to check on the hair and teeth every five or six days. I’ll make sure Ash has plenty of supplies.”
“It’s amazing,” Ash muttered. He was standing at the door.
“I’ve got some sneakers for you,” Mrs. Webber added.
“You won’t need socks. I doubt a refugee boy would wear socks.”
She went back into the hotel room and produced a pair of sneakers that were stained and torn. Alex slipped them on.
“They’re too small,” he said.
Mrs. Webber frowned. “I can cut a hole for your toes.”
“No. I can’t wear them.”
She scowled at him, but even she could see that the sneakers were far too small. “All right.” She nodded. “You can hang on to your own. Just give me a minute.” She dug back into the suitcase and produced a razor, some old paint, and another bottle of some sort of chemical. Two minutes later, Alex’s own sneakers looked like they’d been thrown away ten years before. As he slipped them on, she set to work on Ash. He too had completely changed. He didn’t need to dye his skin, and his beard would have suited a Hazara tribesman. But his hair had to be hacked around, and he needed a completely new set of clothes. It was strange, but by the time she had finished, Alex and
