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  Mark put his hand on my shoulder. I was trembling. “Someday soon, Angela, you’ll be able to explain this all to Rahim. I’m sure of it.”

  I shook my head mutely and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Listen, a few of us are gathering in the colonel’s conference room this evening to try out his new projector. We’ll be showing The Beast.”

  Noting the quizzical look on my face, he smiled and continued, “No, it’s not a movie about that rattletrap Toyota Land Cruiser of yours, it’s an American film made in the late 1980s—the story of a Soviet tank crew trapped in a remote Afghan valley and pursued by a group of angry villagers. It’s become quite a cult classic among war film buffs.”

  “A guy movie,” I said, laughing.

  “Yes, but you might enjoy it. Why don’t you join us? The Swedes are bringing the beer, and the room is air-conditioned. What do you say? ”

  “I’d like that. Thank you, Mark,” I replied, mopping my brow and resuming my shredding.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  July 10, 2005

  Cup after cup of green tea, which turned icy during frigid winter meetings in unheated rooms and tepid as spring moved into summer, had lost its novelty after seven months in Afghanistan. Our endless and often fruitless meetings with Afghan officials were beginning to wear me down.

  I looked forward to Sunday lunch at the PRT as a much-anticipated respite each week. Say what you will about British cuisine, but the food prepared by our Nepalese Gurkha military cooks was superb. While their daily fare often had curry powder or hot sauce worked into most recipes, Sunday lunch was always British comfort food at its best. Every Sunday afternoon, they carved up steaming slabs of traditional English roast beef and lamb, accompanied by crisp roasted potatoes, mint sauce, and Yorkshire pudding. Even the boiled cabbage and broad beans were cooked and seasoned to perfection in the PRT’s cramped field kitchen.

  Jeef had sent a message that he was coming north to visit his dig in Balkh and I invited him to join me for lunch since he would be passing through Mazār on a Sunday.

  The previous year, his team of archaeologists had uncovered a jumble of Hellenistic columns and their delicately carved capitals. Their trenches were more than six meters deep, but his Afghan crew had reburied the site for the winter to protect it from looters. Now that it was uncovered, Jeef had promised to show me “something remarkable” his men had discovered only a few days before.

  “Angela, what a delight to see you,” cried Jeef with his characteristic enthusiasm as he bounded from his vehicle and took both of my hands into his.

  He had let his hair grow longer since we last met at the museum in Kabul. His one visible eccentricity, a snowy white braid held in place by a knotted red cord, now reached below his collar. He seemed much younger than his sixty-five years, and radiated the infectious energy of a man who loved his work with a passion.

  “Will my young protégé be joining us for lunch?” he asked. “I do hope so. I want to quiz him on some of the books I have assigned him to read. Rahim told me he has a friend at the university who is checking them out of the library for him.”

  “Yes,” I replied, worrying silently about Rahim’s deepening relationship with Nilofar. I knew she was continuing to provide him with books on archaeology and architecture from the university during their brief meetings in town and sometimes at the PRT. I also suspected that neither of their families knew about it or would approve if they did.

  Rahim was waiting for us in the dining room. His tray was piled high with this foreign food, which he ate in enormous quantities because it was free—but admitted he didn’t really like.

  Mark, who usually took his meals in the officers’ mess, approached our table. “May I join you?” he asked, addressing the colonel. “I’ve heard a great deal about Professor Mongibeaux’s excavations near Balkh from Angela. I was hoping to learn more about what his workers have found there.”

  “Of course, Mark, please sit down,” said the colonel, motioning to an empty seat next to me and making the formal introductions.

  Mark and I had finally developed a real friendship. He still thought I was rash and impetuous, and I sometimes found his formality stifling, but more and more, when his fellow officers had drifted away after dinner, we would linger over coffee to talk shop. Our discussions were never personal, but we genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. I was glad he’d decided to join us for lunch with Jeef.

  “Colonel, as a Frenchman, I don’t normally have many positive things to say about your English food, but this meal is really quite good,” Jeef said, scraping the last bits of Yorkshire pudding off his plate. He had regaled us over lunch with tales of the ferocity of his Afghan crew of former antiquity thieves who now zealously guarded his dig year-round.

  As promised, he also quizzed Rahim on assorted details of the Hellenistic and Kushan civilizations that lay buried beneath the soil of northern Afghanistan. Mark and the colonel were both impressed with Rahim’s newly acquired, encyclopedic grasp of his country’s ancient past.

  “You must all come to Balkh to see what we have found,” said Jeef, his eyes sparkling. “I have promised to show Angela something quite amazing which my men have just uncovered.”

  “I have no appointments this afternoon and neither does Mark, I believe,” said the colonel. “How about now?”

  “With pleasure,” said Jeef.

  An hour later, Mark, Rahim, the colonel, and I were peering over the edge of Jeef’s terraced excavation just outside the ancient walls of Balkh City. Below us a parade of perspiring Afghan men in ragged turbans and soiled trousers were passing buckets of earth up rough-hewn ladders.

  Jeef waved his hand in the direction of the towering ochre walls that had completely surrounded the city of Balkh two millennia ago when it was known as The Mother of All Cities and had served as a transit point on the great Silk Road. He explained that this city, one of the world’s oldest, had been a major commercial center as early as the third century B.C., when traders from Mesopotamia traveled here to purchase lapis lazuli mined in the Hindu Kush.

  “It is generally accepted that Zoroastrianism originated and flourished in Balkh between 1000 and 600 B.C.,” he said.

  “We also have definite proof that Alexander the Great established a colony here around 328 B.C., but we’re still sorting out the precise progression of the cultures that supplanted his armies and colonists.”

  Jeef stepped onto a narrow wooden ladder and began his descent into the multilayered pit. “Follow me, everyone. I want to show you our latest find,” he said, vanishing over the edge.

  “If I had the money to steal you away from the PRT, I’d have you stay here and work with me,” Jeef said as he winked at my strapping but shy interpreter, who had followed behind him down the first ladder.

  This well-intentioned comment made Rahim extremely nervous. He loudly assured the colonel that as fascinating as he found Jeef’s work, he had no intention of giving up his job at the PRT.

  “Of course, we know you won’t leave us, Rahim,” replied Colonel Jameson, who had sensed the young man’s need for reassurance. “I’m certain even Professor Mongibeaux knows that we have the more pressing need for your skills.”

  The PRT’s aging senior interpreter, Professor Sayeed, had returned from Kabul the previous week after his long illness and had resumed his position as the colonel’s personal interpreter. Since Colonel Jameson no longer needed Rahim, he would now be expected to accompany the MOTS on their patrols when he wasn’t traveling with me. But Rahim was a skilled linguist, and I knew the colonel wanted to keep him at the PRT.

  Mark had descended the third ladder ahead of me and was standing at the bottom when one of the wooden rungs snapped under my boot and I tumbled backward. He caught me under both arms to break my fall. I braced for a mini-lecture on the proper way to climb down a ladder.

  “Are you all right, Angela?” was all he said.

  “I’m fine. Thank you, Mark,” I muttered,
hoping that no one else had seen me fall.

  At the bottom of the pit, we gathered in a tight circle as Jeef knelt in the dirt before an elaborately carved Indo-Corinthian capital still half embedded in thick red clay.

  “The skill of the carving and the realistic design of the foliage has most of us convinced that this work was done by Greek craftsmen, but look at what is in the center! ”

  Sculpted into the granite capital and still crusted with bits of rust-colored earth was a rotund seated Buddha. “This is the first of these we have found so far north,” Jeef exclaimed.

  Rahim bent down and ran his fingers over the tiny figure. “Khuda-hafiz,” he murmured. “God be with you.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  July 13, 2005 ✦ HAIRATAN, BALKH PROVINCE

  A message from the U.S. Embassy had arrived informing me that Afghan customs officials in the northern border city of Hairatan were reportedly skimming off a portion of the U.S. jet fuel destined for Bagram Air Base as soon as it came across the bridge from Uzbekistan. Afghan women who bought the stolen fuel on the black market thinking it was kerosene were suffering terrible burns. I remembered seeing one of those women at the prison in Mazār. The embassy wanted me to do something about it.

  “Angela, I’m delighted that your government is taking action on the missing jet fuel,” said Colonel Jameson when I told him about the request and the documents I had received from my embassy.

  “I’d like you to take the professor instead of Rahim with you to Hairatan tomorrow for your meeting with the customs officials.”

  “Good idea. He’s the only terp I haven’t observed in action.”

  “I want Mark to go with you as well.”

  “Mark? Why? This is a U.S. issue,” I said, sounding more upset than I had intended. As much as I had grown to like Major Davies, he still made me nervous. I didn’t want him hovering in the background while I undertook this awkward negotiation on behalf of my government.

  “Because, Angela,” the colonel replied, peering at me over the top of his glasses, “some of the new police officials being sent to Hairatan are Pashtun. You have monitored every one of our terps since you arrived in January, and they have all passed with flying colors. As you noted, the professor is the only one you have not observed, but since he speaks both Dari and Pashto, I want Mark to be with you listening in as well.”

  “Of course, Colonel,” I replied, surprised and embarrassed at my outburst. “It makes perfect sense.”

  The formerly bustling port city of Hairatan was a major smuggling center in northern Afghanistan. Although its riverside loading docks sat silent and abandoned next to the lumbering Amu Darya, rail and truck traffic flowed in a steady stream across the Soviet-built Friendship Bridge, where three months earlier, I had made my frantic after-dark dash back into Afghanistan with the ailing agricultural specialist curled up and moaning on the backseat of the Beast. This border crossing was a cash cow for corrupt government officials and for the Afghan warlords who controlled the surrounding districts in Balkh Province.

  Professor Sayeed accompanied me in the lead vehicle the following morning. He tugged nervously at his clipped gray beard and spoke little until after we left the Mazār city limits. The old man was clearly not thrilled about having to ride with “the woman” instead of with Major Davies in the follow car, but he knew I represented the U.S. government, which made me almost the major’s equal in his eyes. He started to relax after our first hour on the road when I inquired about his time in Kabul. My efforts succeeded.

  By the time we reached Hairatan, we were both laughing at his stories about the antics of his grandchildren during the long months he’d been recuperating at his son’s home in Kabul. He seemed like a nice guy, and after today’s meeting I looked forward to finally being able to check the last PRT interpreter off my list of suspects.

  The meeting dragged on well into the afternoon. The first hour was routine. I made my points in English about how the jet fuel should be accounted for, and the professor translated my words into Dari with great precision. I handed over the documents from the minister of the interior, which the three customs officials and the Pashtun-speaking police chief read carefully, assuring me they would do their best to comply. Mark and I, on our fourth or was it our fifth cup of tea, began exchanging silent glances of desperation—would this meeting never end?

  Well into the third hour, the conversation took a stunning turn. The meeting seemed to be winding down, when Mark and I watched in astonishment as the professor, having no idea we understood both of his languages, began to negotiate a deal with the four men to help them conceal their continued theft of fuel if they would give him a cut. The professor explained to us in English that he was telling the men how important the jet fuel was for fighting the Taliban in the south.

  Confident that local warlords would protect them, the men plotted to continue sharing in the profits and completely ignore the documents I had just handed over to them.

  The crafty old interpreter’s belief that we ignorant “foreigners” had not a clue what he was doing was about to come crashing down. It was clear that this was not the first “deal” struck by the professor during his years at the PRT, even though we had no proof he’d ever been involved in drug trafficking. The colonel sent him packing as soon as Mark and I returned and made our report in the afternoon.

  Mark joined me upstairs for a cup of tea after the ops room briefing the following morning. “Angela, your draft memo on yesterday’s meeting in Hairatan is excellent, but you’re looking quite exhausted this morning. Did you stay up all night writing it? ” he asked.

  “No. I called the embassy when we got back yesterday and gave them the unclassified version, then typed up the first draft as soon as I got off the phone. They’ve finally authorized me to start speaking Dari,” I added with little enthusiasm.

  “You don’t sound very pleased,” he said. “I thought you’d be over the moon about it. The colonel has also authorized me to start using my Pashto.”

  “That’s great, Mark, and I am thrilled that the mystery of the unreliable interpreter has finally been solved, but I’m worried about the terps’ reaction when they find out how we’ve been concealing our language skills.”

  My voice cracked, betraying the exhaustion I felt after having lain awake most of the previous night wondering how I would explain these months of deception to my young friend without losing the trust I had worked so hard to build.

  “I’m sure Rahim will understand,” Mark assured me. He knew exactly which terp I was referring to.

  “The colonel seemed quite relieved at our morning briefing when he announced that the good professor was already on his way back to Kabul,” Mark added as he poured milk into his tea.

  “Yes,” I replied wearily, “I think he was right to get him out of here immediately and leave him to the mercy of the Afghan authorities.”

  Mark took a deep breath before continuing. “Angela, you know that the Friendship Bridge may someday soon become a much more strategic choke point for NATO supplies coming into Afghanistan.”

  I nodded.

  “I know that yesterday’s meeting was at the request of your embassy, but I do hope you won’t mind if I insert a few points on military security into your report before comms sends the classified version to Kabul.”

  I had no reason to object and was too exhausted to discuss the matter further. “Put in whatever you want and send it off. Leave a copy in my READ file. I have to go up to my room and lie down.”

  “Right,” he said, looking concerned.

  “Thanks for coming with me yesterday, Mark. I’m glad you were there.”

  “Anytime, Angela.”

  FORTY

  July 14, 2005 ✦ MAZĀR-I-SHARĪF

  Colonel Jameson saved me the trouble of explaining my sudden fluency in Dari to Rahim by summoning him to his office and offering him the position of head interpreter. The colonel left his door ajar so those of us in the bullpen could listen in on th
eir conversation.

  “Sir, I am most grateful for your generous offer,” said Rahim. “We were all saddened and ashamed to learn about Professor Sayeed’s deception, but, sir, I have always interpreted for the Americans, and I have been working with Miss Morgan for more than six months. It will be very difficult for her to start again with another interpreter.”

  I was stunned to hear Rahim turning down this promotion so he could continue working with me. His incredible loyalty was about to be rewarded with the news that I had been deceiving him all these months. My heart sank.

  “Rahim, Miss Morgan doesn’t need an interpreter.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”

  “She speaks Dari almost as well as you,” the colonel replied.

  “Oh, no, sir. I know she took lessons in America, but she still needs me with her to translate when she goes to meetings.”

  He was defending me while still insisting that I needed him. What a wonderful kid. I cringed at what the colonel was about to tell him.

  “Rahim, Miss Morgan has been under strict orders since she arrived at this PRT to conceal her knowledge of your language. Before anyone could know this, we had to make sure that none of our interpreters was providing inaccurate translations,” explained the colonel as gently as possible to the stunned Rahim.

  “She gave all of you glowing reports months ago, but until she and the major discovered the professor’s deception yesterday, she was forbidden by her embassy from revealing her fluency in Dari. It’s been difficult for her, but our long efforts have paid off and we have been able to rid the PRT of the one interpreter who was deceiving us.”

  Rahim was silent.

  “So what do you say to my offer? ” asked the colonel.

  “Thank you, sir. This is a great honor and I accept.”