‘Possibly that might have been what I was thinking.’ He wished she would stop.
‘You’ll speak to the man who shot our dear friend who is now fighting for his life in hospital, and if I don’t cause him any trouble he won’t try to kill me too. And this is the really good part.’ She gave Wasim a sweet smile. ‘If I say nothing I can stay! Tell me if I’ve got any of that wrong.’
Wasim took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his brow. He had never in all the years he’d known Dr Sofia suspected this woman of steel existed. He was good at assessing people. How had he missed that? And then he knew. Nothing had ever stood in her way before. No one had threatened her. He had to admire her for that.
‘Please, Dr Sofia, word has come to me that whoever did this is not angry with you anymore so I think this is an option that will allow you to stay. Behnaz, she doesn’t want you to go and I don’t want you to go. No one wants you to go, but we do want you to be safe. I thought you might be happy with this.’ He knew immediately his last words were a mistake.
‘That the man who tried to kill Dr Jabril will let me stay if I don’t speak out about him interfering with little boys?’
Time to back-pedal. ‘We don’t know this. We do not know Minister Massoud was behind it. Personally, I think it was the Taliban, and this idea of mine might all be for nothing.’ He could no longer read the look on Sofia’s face, which worried him more than her anger, or her hysteria, or even those moments of quiet calm from two days before.
Women would always be a mystery to Wasim. Dr Jabril used to say that women should rule the world, but Wasim knew that was not a very good idea. Women were too unpredictable, while men … well, he could understand men. They behaved as expected. Case in point: Massoud had no interest in the boys who had been taken and yet he had ordered Wasim to delay the first raid until they could be moved. Why? Because the owner of the boys would then owe Massoud. That was the way business was done by the rich and powerful – trade-offs, favours and debts. Once you understood that, you understood everything. All very predictable. Then when Wasim rang Massoud to tell him that he’d just heard where the boys were from the head of the UN and pleaded to be allowed to rescue the boys, the minister had conceded on the condition that Wasim made sure Dr Jabril stopped the publication of the article, forgot his campaign and never said anything to anyone about Massoud’s boy. While this might have seemed strange to some, this was also entirely understandable and predictable. The man who owned the boys was of lesser value to Massoud than the silencing of Jabril, so the warlord traded the lesser for the more advantageous outcome. That Massoud had not given Wasim enough time to convince Dr Jabril had been less predictable, but he guessed Massoud knew the article was about to be published and felt he had no option but to get rid of Jabril.
Deaths, threats, silences, secrets and pay-offs was how people like Massoud operated, while Wasim liked to think that his primary job was to maintain order. Unfortunately, that often meant maintaining a crooked and corrupt status quo. The job was no longer giving him the satisfaction it once had.
‘I’ll think about your offer,’ he heard Dr Sofia say.
As he went back down the stairs, Wasim hoped that Dr Sofia would see the wisdom of the offer and not cause any more trouble. A man, he knew, would understand the sense of this; a man would consider what was best for him. No hysterics would be involved. In fact, Wasim thought he could almost see a man’s thought process, but a woman’s … That was an unsolvable puzzle.
Wasim had a complicated investigation to finish in a satisfactory and timely manner and a very tricky negotiation to begin with Minister Massoud, who was not the most trustworthy of partners. He prayed to Allah that what he was about to do would not be adding tinder to the fire. Wasim sighed again. No one knew the risks he had taken to save his friends, and hopefully no one ever would. Massoud had been furious with him when he had failed to convince Dr Jabril to withdraw the article and abandon the campaign because he said he quite liked Dr Jabril and hadn’t really wanted to kill him. Massoud’s anger had only intensified with the botched assassination attempt, and now Wasim was about to walk into the lion’s den and offer his proposal to keep Dr Sofia in Shaahir Square. It could be the tipping point with Massoud, but if the warlord ever discovered that Wasim had been writing the notes to warn Dr Jabril then he was, for sure, a dead man walking.
In hindsight, there was no doubt that the notes had not been the most promising plan, but who would have thought things would escalate so fast? He couldn’t very well tell Dr Jabril about Massoud, could he? He had spoken to Dr Jabril when he first talked about his campaign, warning him of the dangers of messing with these powerful men. On a number of occasions after that he had directly asked Jabril to stop. The idea that there were shabnamah in the square had all been Omar’s fault. If only he hadn’t taken that first note off their gate. If only he didn’t drink that pain draught of his as if it were tea. What more could he, Wasim, have done? His heart
