“What has happened?” asked the man.
Elam Badar forced a smile. He knew all too well how quickly gossip spread, and he didn’t want Mullah Massoud or his halfwit brother to have time to concoct a story to explain away the attack. He wanted to take them completely by surprise, and so said, “Nothing of great importance. I have a small matter that concerns both of our villages that I need to discuss.”
He was shown to a small room off to the side where the village elders had just finished a meeting with a handful of men on another subject. After the greetings, the village elders ushered the other men out and invited Elam Badar to take tea with them.
As he had done with the villager at the door, Elam Badar kept his anger in check and adhered to Pashtun etiquette. They talked about several different subjects of mutual interest before arriving at the true reason Elam Badar had come.
“I understand you have an American visitor,” he said. “A woman.”
Of the four elders in the room, it was customary for only one to speak. The man who did was in his sixties with an ash-colored beard and a stern disposition. He had a thick scar that began at the bridge of his nose and traveled downward across the left side of his face to just beneath his ear. Elam Badar knew that the scar was a souvenir from one of the many battles the elder had fought against the Soviets. His name was Baseer.
“Our village is often blessed with visitors,” replied the chief elder with a motion of his hand that indicated he considered Elam Badar’s visit a blessing.
Elam Badar nodded politely and kept going. “She must be very important if she is being kept guarded.”
An uncomfortable silence descended upon the small room. Elam Badar allowed it to linger for several seconds before continuing. “Are you aware that while he was guarding her, Zwak assaulted my son?”
It was obvious from the look on Baseer’s face that this piece of information took him by surprise. Elam Badar allowed his eyes to shift to the faces of the other three elders and he saw that they were equally shocked. Feeling the wind at his back, he removed from his pocket the paperwork that the young doctor at the hospital in Jalalabad had given him. Carefully unfolding them, he handed the pages to the elder. “With the butt of his rifle,” Elam Badar, asserted, “Zwak broke my son’s jaw.”
The elder studied the paperwork and then handed it to his colleagues to read. “You have four boys, correct?”
“Yes,” replied Elam Badar.
“Which one are we talking about?”
“My oldest. Asadoulah.”
“I am sorry for his jaw being broken and for your family’s trouble in this matter,” said Baseer.
“Thank you,” Elam Badar responded.
The elder stroked his beard as his mind processed what he had heard. “Zwak is a simple man, we all know this, but he has never before been violent.”
Elam Badar’s eyes widened. “He accuses everyone who enters your village of being a spy and prevents those he doesn’t recognize or cannot remember from walking anywhere near your well.”
Baseer shrugged and raised his palms. “Yet still, he has never harmed anyone. Let me ask you. Your son can speak?”
Elam Badar nodded.
“What did he tell you happened?”
“He said that he had come to your village to visit friends. They told him about the American woman and asked if he wanted to see her. He agreed and they took him to where she was being held. While he was trying to see her through a crack in the door, Zwak came from the other side of the building and struck him in the jaw with the butt of his rifle.”
Once again the elder was silent. Elam Badar watched him as he stroked his beard and wondered if they truly grasped the seriousness of the situation. The Pashtun code was on his side in such a matter. No longer able to contain his anger over this situation having even been allowed to develop in the first place, Elam Badar opened his mouth and his ill-chosen words burst forth. “I know the American woman is not a guest in your village. She is a hostage, and you know it too. Have you any idea how dangerous this is for us? It’s not just your village that will suffer repercussions for this. If word gets out, we’ll all suffer because of what Mullah Massoud has done.”
Baseer held up his hand. This man was getting away from himself very quickly. The other village was nearly five kilometers away. Whatever Mullah Massoud had done, it wouldn’t affect them.
That said, Baseer was not happy that word had spread about the American woman. He had warned Massoud against bringing her back to the village. He had suggested they find someplace else to keep her, but Massoud had insisted. No doubt his decision came in part at the behest of the Russian, the one they called Bakht Rawan.
The Russians had never had the Afghans’ best interests at heart, and the elder doubted that much had changed since their “departure” from Afghanistan. The elder had seen far too many of them in recent years to believe they had given up wanting a stake in his country.
But as much as the elder didn’t trust Bakht Rawan and the rest of his countrymen, the matter before him had to do with Mullah Massoud.
It sounded as if the Taliban commander had placed too much confidence in his brother and though the elder had not yet heard Zwak’s side of the story, so far it was a very unpleasant situation that had the potential to get much worse. Elam Badar’s son had had more than his pride wounded. Something needed to be done. Villages had gone to war against each other over less, and while Massoud could summon hundreds of battle-hardened soldiers, Elam Badar’s village possessed guns and experienced mujahideen as well.
“We will speak with Mullah Massoud,” said Baseer.
“But he was not there to see what happened to my son,” protested Elam Badar.
The elder held his hand up again. “We will also speak with Zwak,” he added.
Once more, Elam Badar’s passion flared. “There can be no excuse for what happened to my son.”
Smiling, Baseer signaled that the meeting was over. As Elam Badar embraced him, the elder held on for a little longer than normal. “We will make this right. I promise you. Your family and your village are important to us.”
Elam Badar felt indignant, but he tried to push the emotion back down into the pit of his stomach where it had begun. “Thank you,” he replied.
The other elders embraced Elam Badar and summoned the villager he was friendly with to walk with him back to his truck.
When they stepped outside, the sun was already slipping behind the mountain peaks that surrounded the village and the temperature had begun to drop.
Baseer watched Elam Badar descend the wooden stairs and disappear from sight beyond the copse of trees. Beneath his breath, he silently cursed Mullah Massoud. He and all of his Taliban brothers were going to be the death of Afghanistan.
CHAPTER 18
KABUL
When Mei began sending out buckets of beer and enormous plates of food from the kitchen, Gallagher turned off the TV and rang the dinner bell.
As people selected seats around the table, Mei ditched her husband and grabbed the chair next to Harvath. Flirtatiously, she tucked her arm through his and glancing heavenward said, “Finally, a real man. My prayers have been answered.”
“Mine too,” replied Hoyt as he grabbed a large bowl of fried rice and scooped a portion onto his plate. “I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months.”
Everyone laughed. In addition to Harvath, Mei, Hoyt, and Gallagher, there were three of Mei’s Chinese girlfriends and two of ISS’s other employees seated at the table for dinner. Mark Midland was a twenty-six-year- old American communications expert who functioned as Tom Hoyt’s right-hand man and helped run the ISS ops
