‘Isn’t that the same thing?’ Sofia said. ‘Aren’t you asking Daniel to publicly accuse Massoud when we have no proof?’
‘Not at all, my dear. I have something much better in mind. Something that will also sort out your visa problems.’ Daniel could see Jabril was very pleased with himself. He was hatching something, but he had no idea what it was.
‘Oh god,’ she said, deflated again. ‘It was Massoud who cancelled it, wasn’t it?’
‘It looks that way to me.’
Daniel looked from one to the other. ‘I think someone needs to bring me up to speed here. Have you had your visa cancelled, Sofia?’
After she explained the situation Jabril spoke, only this time they were not the words of a man defeated or frightened by Massoud. ‘I believe, Daniel, that good men will always win out in the end. Yes, good men will win. Now,’ he said, hoisting himself out of his chair and making his way over to an old, elaborately carved wooden cabinet adorned with family photos. Taking out a half-empty bottle of twenty-year-old malt whisky and two glasses, he held them up for Daniel’s inspection. ‘We are a good Muslim family here, but when I lived in Boston I did acquire a taste for scotch. I know it is a little early, and I know Sofia doesn’t like the stuff, but would you like to join me in a celebratory drink?’
‘Are we celebrating something?’ asked Sofia.
‘We are indeed.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll see soon enough, my dear,’ Jabril said with a broad smile.
‘Perhaps you could tell us what you’re thinking?’ Daniel asked.
‘I’m afraid not quite yet, but soon you’ll see,’ Jabril said as he carried the bottle and glasses back to where they were sitting.
Daniel suspected he wasn’t going to like whatever Jabril was planning. As far as he could see, Sofia’s boss was an innocent. Either he had no idea what depths of depravity people like Massoud could go to or he no longer cared. Either way, Daniel’s gut was telling him it was not going to end well.
Placing the two crystal glasses on the coffee table between them, Jabril poured a finger of scotch into each before passing one over to Daniel. ‘To brave men,’ he said, before remembering Sofia and turning to her. ‘And women.’
Her smile didn’t last long. She looked as worried as Daniel was. Excusing himself shortly after, Daniel waited until he was in the car before he started making phone calls.
38
UNABLE TO SLEEP, Sofia lay in bed listening to the late-night sounds of people returning home until the square grew silent.
After Daniel had left that afternoon, she and Jabril had called Chief Wasim on speakerphone to learn that there was still no news of the boys. They then told the chief about Massoud. It troubled her that he didn’t sounded particularly surprised, just as his comment about little boys going missing all over Afghanistan every day had troubled her. She tried to rationalise that Chief Wasim must have seen the absolute worst that humankind had to offer and nothing much would surprise him anymore.
They all agreed that Massoud was the one who had warned the men in the house about the raid and decided that the one thing they still had going for them was that Massoud probably expected them to stop looking for the boys now. Jabril warned Chief Wasim to be particularly careful with any new information they might discover. Not only was Massoud technically his boss but the minister probably also had informants in Chief Wasim’s office. Chief Wasim reminded them that they should all be careful with whom they shared new information. Before she left, Sofia had asked Jabril what he was planning but he had refused to tell her, claiming again that she would learn soon enough.
Grabbing her pillow, Sofia tried to plump its feathery softness up into some sort of shape, but when she lay her head back down again it was as unappealing as it had been two minutes before. Climbing out of bed, she drew back her bedroom curtains to stand looking out into the square, ghostly white under the full moon.
How on earth are we going to find you?
Below her window a man walked into the square, disturbing a dog that had been sleeping outside Babur’s chaikhana. The dog stood and barked half-heartedly after the man, who walked over to the row of derelict buildings and climbed in a broken window. Sofia guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d done that. With the man disappearing, the dog turned in circles before settling back down again, while somewhere behind the square a motorbike fired up. Sofia watched its lights dance between the buildings until it too disappeared into the night.
Far away, the snow-covered peaks of the Hindu Kush were shimmering silvery white under the full moon, just as they had on the last night she had spent with Daniel.
Arriving in her hut he had brought with him the icy cold of the mountain air and, for a few brief seconds, the light from the same full moon. As he closed the door she asked if he would take the cloth off the window. ‘I want to see you,’ she had said from where she lay waiting for him on the floor.
Their lovemaking had been different that night, more intense but also gentler, as if the feverish rush of lust had given way to the deeper, slower intimacy of love.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he had said. Sofia had been watching his eyes as he moved inside her and in that moment she saw his truth: she was beautiful to him.
‘I love you,’ she had whispered, frightened of her words, not sure if he’d heard her.
Later, as he slept, she had watched her lover in the fading light from the tiny window: the barely noticeable rise and fall of his bare chest, the delicate blue veins threaded through the pale
