Farishta Page 4

  Smythe thrummed his fingers on his secretary’s desk as we watched the major exit his office. “Miss Morgan, please let me apologize for this unpleasantness. I deliberately left my door open, because I realized when Major Davies arrived that this was the best way for you to understand what you’ll be facing when you get to Mazār.

  “I . . . we have the greatest respect for our military forces and their contributions to our national security, but we struggle at times seeing eye-to-eye on matters of diplomacy. Major Davies is one of the finest intelligence officers I have ever met, but he is very much of the old school, like many of his fellow Gurkhas.”

  “Who are the Gurkhas?”

  “They are a unique regiment composed of Nepalese soldiers and multilingual British officers—in my opinion the finest regiment in the British Army and perhaps the most feared fighters in the world.”

  As annoyed as I was by the major’s dismissive attitude, I couldn’t help but add, “Do you know where he’s from?”

  “He has some northern Indian blood. I was at Oxford with a first cousin of his. There’s a Kashmiri princess on the mother’s side. Of course, the whole family’s been in the UK since partition.” Smythe’s secretary returned while we were talking, and he suggested we step out for a cup of tea. As soon as we got outside, he lit his pipe and continued our conversation with it clenched it between his teeth.

  Over a pot of Earl Grey and a tray of scones, I asked for more details about the British military personnel I would be working with at the PRT. Smythe’s response was not encouraging.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Morgan, I don’t have many details on the UK military personnel currently assigned to Mazār. I do know that there’s an infantry company and an operations team—more than a hundred officers and men in total. No women, mainly for privacy concerns. It’s a very small compound, mind you. There are also a number of six-man Military Observation Teams—MOTs, they call them—staffed with UK, Romanian, and Scandinavian Army personnel. Some of them work from safe houses in other provinces. Our new diplomatic representative at the PRT, Richard Carrington, is still on holiday. He’ll be arriving in Mazār a few weeks after you. I’m sorry there’s so much ambiguity about your role there. I don’t envy you this assignment,” he said with a sigh.

  FIVE

  December 22, 2004 ✦ DUBAI

  To reach Afghanistan from London, I had to overnight in Dubai, where I’d been told to pick up an onward UN Humanitarian Air Service flight that carried aid workers and embassy personnel the last seven hundred miles into Kabul.

  Dubai from the air took my breath away. Massive hotels and office buildings resembling cut-crystal perfume bottles were scattered across a swathe of green that stretched from the desert to the edge of the lapis blue Persian Gulf.

  The U.S. Consulate in Dubai had made my reservation, assuring me that the perks of being a diplomat in the United Arab Emirates were impressive. My government per diem plus a diplomatic discount would allow me to stay at one of Dubai’s finer hotels.

  My destination, the Emirates Towers, was one of a pair of identical thin, angular, smoked-glass buildings. A smiling Filipino bellman took my bags from the taxi driver and led me into a soaring ten-story atrium. Glass elevators slid silently between the floors. Elaborate fountains splashed next to clusters of well-dressed men sipping tiny cups of coffee and conducting their business in discreet murmurs.

  My clothes were wrinkled, I was tired and sweaty, and I felt totally out of place in the presence of these manicured customers being attended to by a very solicitous hotel staff.

  I was taken to my room on the “women’s floor”—where the hotel put females traveling alone. It was a suite, really, offering a spectacular view of the sea and a basket of fresh fruit on the coffee table. With nothing to keep me occupied until my nine A.M. flight to Kabul the following day, I decided to head down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. Going out at night on my own was something I generally avoided after my decade of debauchery following Tom’s death, but tonight would probably be my last chance for a gin and tonic in the next twelve months and the restaurant had a bar—so what the hell.

  Certain that my rumpled khakis wouldn’t cut it at this hotel, I changed into a short black linen dress, the only knee-length item I had packed for my year in Afghanistan—perhaps to wear to an embassy party if I were ever invited.

  Because air-conditioning kept the hotel’s restaurants and lobby chilled to subarctic temperatures, I threw a light jacket over my shoulders and pinned on the brooch Tom had given me for my twenty-seventh birthday. It was a gold-plated replica of an ancient piece of Scythian jewelry depicting the goddess Artemis on a leaping gazelle. Except for my wedding ring, which I had stopped wearing years ago, it was my favorite piece of jewelry.

  It had been many years since I’d entered a bar alone. I pulled myself up on a stool, briefly noting that I was the only unaccompanied female in the room, and asked the bartender for a menu.

  “So what brings you to the emerald city? ”

  I turned my head and saw a tall blond man in tan slacks and an open-collared shirt sitting a few chairs down from me.

  “Stefan Illyich Borosky, first secretary, Russian Embassy, Kabul,” he said with a friendly smile.

  Russian. I should have guessed from his accent. I had met a lot of men like him during my two years in Leningrad, but in the Cold War years, it would have been dangerous to respond to anyone who approached me like this out of the blue.

  “Angela Morgan.” I extended my hand. “I’m with the Department of State—on my way to a year at PRT Mazār-i-Sharīf. It looks like we’re going to be neighbors,” I said with a smile and the realization that I was engaging in a mild flirtation with a former Cold War enemy.

  “I’m headed home for a few weeks of R and R in Moscow,” he said, “but I’ve spent some time in Mazār.”

  “Maybe you can fill me in on some details I might not have picked up in my formal briefings.”

  “With pleasure,” he replied with a broad grin.

  With the instant camaraderie that often develops between travelers, we took our drinks and moved to a table in the restaurant. The conversation and wine flowed easily over dinner, although I was aware that we were both holding back, revealing only as much information as two strangers, who represented governments that were former and possibly future competitors for world domination, felt comfortable sharing—which was not much.

  Stefan was fifty-three and divorced with three grown children in Moscow. He was planning to retire after one more overseas tour.

  I was fairly vague about my professional background, leaving out my knowledge of Russian and the two years in the mid-1980s I’d served at the U.S. Consulate in Leningrad. I said nothing about Tom’s death in Beirut, only revealing that I had been a widow for a long time.

  We shared an interest in horses, although neither of us rode anymore. Stefan had taken a nasty fall years ago when his horse stumbled and put him in a body cast for six months.

  After losing Tom, I had lost all desire to ride, but I invented a story for Stefan about being thrown off a horse in New Mexico when a truck backfired. Ever the gentleman, he did not probe for details when I began avoiding his questions.

  “So what is Mother Russia doing in Afghanistan these days? ” I asked as I fingered the stem of a glass of mellow Shiraz, which Stefan had ordered.

  “We’re watching you attempt what we failed to do thirty years ago,” he said with a smile. “When you get up north, you’ll see the rusting detritus of our futile and very expensive efforts to civilize Afghanistan.” He took a puff of the Gauloises he was smoking and blew a thin stream of smoke into the air.

  “Let’s begin with the sad procession of derelict fifty-meter transmission towers, looming like lonely sentinels across the northern desert. They once carried reliable electric power from the USSR to Mazār-i-Sharīf and over the Hindu Kush into Kabul.”

  Stefan took a long swig of wine and closed his eyes. He was just getting st
arted.

  “If you have the good fortune to attend a buzkashi game in Mazār, you’ll see just south of the field an abandoned multistoried structure. Locals call it the silo. It used to be a bread factory—built by us, of course. It produced thousands of loaves a day and provided hundreds of jobs.”

  Stefan raised his glass to the USSR’s many development projects in Afghanistan, then continued with his litany. “We prepared women for professional careers, sent them to study in Moscow with the men, and told them they didn’t have to leave their houses hidden under burkas. That did not go over at all well with the mullahs.” He laughed.

  After three shots of vodka and several glasses of wine, Stefan’s voice began to lose its edge. I was intrigued by his frank assessment of Mother Russia’s long and failed involvement in Afghanistan, and I wanted to hear more, but my eyelids and my brain were rapidly succumbing to the thick fog of jet lag.

  “Am I boring you, Angela?” Stefan asked as I tried to stifle a yawn.

  “No, not at all,” I said forcing my eyes to stay open. “I hadn’t realized the extent of your development work in Afghanistan.”

  “Yes, indeed,” he continued after another long sip of wine, “but we didn’t understand their culture. I’m not sure any outsiders ever will. The Afghans didn’t take to our godless communism any more than I think they’re going to accept your so-called egalitarian, democratic capitalism.”

  He leaned back into the jumble of multicolored cushions, closed his eyes, and took another drag on his cigarette. “So what are we doing? Watching and waiting, as your country repeats our mistakes one by one.”

  Stefan reached across the table with the wine bottle, and I held my hand, fingers outstretched, over the lip of my glass. He pulled back, offended that I had refused his offer of more wine.

  “Are you afraid I’m trying to get you drunk?” he asked with a petulant frown.

  I ignored his question. “So, Stefan, what would you advise the world’s only remaining superpower to do in Afghanistan? ”

  He shook the last drops of wine into his own glass and rested his elbows on the table. “You can give up and leave with your tail between your legs like we did, and like the once mighty British Army did twice more than a century ago. Or your generals could adopt Alexander the Great’s tactic of establishing permanent settlements. Marry your officers off to the daughters of the warlords, and leave them behind with a few thousand soldiers to breed with the locals for a few decades.”

  He chuckled to himself at that improbable image.

  Stefan reached over and patted my hand in a gesture of sympathy. “I fear, my dear, that your country may be digging itself into a twenty-first-century version of Vietnam.”

  He called for the check, then chastised the waiter when he brought us the separate tabs I had requested.

  “I must insist on paying for my own meal, Stefan,” I said, handing my credit card to the waiter.

  Stefan grumbled, but we concluded the evening amicably, agreeing to meet in Kabul for another dinner at an undetermined date. We parted in the lobby with a handshake. I had enjoyed his company far more than I should have. He was handsome, very handsome. Maybe this year wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Although our initial encounter appeared to have been completely coincidental, I assumed that even with my inconsequential and ill-defined assignment to Mazār-i-Sharīf, Stefan would go back to his hotel room, dutifully write up an account of our conversation, and send it off to some office in Moscow.

  I wasn’t too concerned, but my guard was up, a remnant of my years in Leningrad when even a minor brush with an eastern bloc official had required a detailed memo to diplomatic security. I would definitely be reporting this encounter when I got to Kabul.

  Despite my exhaustion, I had trouble falling asleep, but I was afraid to take one of my few remaining sleeping pills after all that wine. At three thirty A.M., I gave up and called room service for an early breakfast.

  CNN was broadcasting grainy videos of a suicide bombing in Iraq from earlier in the evening. It was narrated by a distressed reporter, who explained that twenty-two of our soldiers dining in an Army mess tent in Mosul had been killed and sixty injured by a man in an Iraqi Army uniform. He had walked unchallenged into the tent and pulled his explosives cord. I switched off the TV.

  After a five-hour wait at the airport the following morning, those of us taking the UN flight to Kabul were informed that it was snowing in southern Afghanistan. The UN plane was grounded until the following day. Exiting the air-conditioned airport into Dubai’s eighty-degree weather, we shed our coats and sweaters and lined up for taxis. I was welcomed back like an old friend at the Emirates Towers reception desk. After a discreet inquiry, I was informed that Stefan had checked out. He was on his way to Moscow.

  SIX

  December 24, 2004 ✦ KABUL

  I am that rare grown-up who still gets a thrill from peering down at the earth from thirty thousand feet. I always ask for a window seat. The two-hour UN flight from Dubai to Kabul did not disappoint.

  We traveled northeast through Iranian airspace under a cloudless sky. As we approached the Afghan border, I pressed my nose to the window.

  The flat, dusky landscape of Iran’s eastern desert began to rise and buckle under the pressure of the Indian subcontinental plate, which was pushing slowly northward as it rammed into and slid under the much larger Asian plate. Massive sheets of sedimentary rock sliced jagged gashes in the desert floor as these two colossal tectonic masses experienced the geologic equivalent of a slow-motion car crash, which had been under way for fifty million years. Further north, these slabs of what was once a seabed had been squeezed, shattered, and thrust skyward to create the massive Himalayan mountain chain.

  The pilot took us higher, cresting the jagged white peaks of the Hindu Kush—an extension of the Himalayan range that stretches across western Pakistan and central Afghanistan. He circled once over Kabul before banking into a steep dive toward the airport. We touched down just before noon under an ice-blue sky.

  Kabul’s mud houses and gray government buildings were still coated with yesterday’s snow. There were few trees left in or near this city, which had once been famed for its lush gardens and long shaded avenues but was now draped with rubble-filled barricades and tangled strands of razor wire. The snow-covered mountains surrounding Kabul like a pearl necklace provided the ruined capital with its only touch of elegance.

  According to the Afghan solar calendar, which I had copied down under Doc’s guidance with its Gregorian equivalents, it was the third of Capricorn 1383.

  It was also Christmas Eve.

  As our plane taxied down the runway, those of us arriving in Afghanistan for the first time stared silently out our windows at clusters of turbaned men huddled around fifty-gallon drums. Orange flames lapped over their rims into the dry winter air. Behind the men, dark skeletons of rusting airplanes lay half buried under the grimy layer of day-old snow.

  Another group of men wrapped in thin gray blankets and wearing plastic face guards, walked shoulder to shoulder along barren patches of earth between the runways, swinging long-handled metal detectors back and forth in an endless search for stray land mines.

  Unsmiling Afghan employees from the American Embassy collected our passports, loaded our bags into a truck, and herded us like a flock of confused sheep through perfunctory immigration and customs formalities in a bare wooden building far from the main terminal. We climbed into bulletproof vans and were instructed by our armed American driver to strap ourselves in “for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” to the embassy in downtown Kabul.

  As we sped along the narrow highway into the city, I had my first glimpse of Afghanistan’s female population, gliding down the sidewalks in their burkas like silent blue ghosts.

  Twenty minutes later, as we pulled up in front of the barricaded embassy on Great Massoud Road, our driver barked out more instructions. “Get out of the vehicle here, walk through that door single file, go through t
he security checkpoint inside, and show the guards your passports. We’ll unload your bags in front of the adm in trailer inside the compound. Someone will meet you there and take you to your hooch.”

  “Hiya, I’m Carl Edgerton,” said a pale middle-aged man with a thinning comb-over. He walked up to where I stood next to my suitcases. “Are you Angela Morgan?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Hope your flight was okay. Bet you’re tired, huh?” He inhaled quickly before continuing. “You won’t have any trouble finding your way around here. The dining hall is right behind us, and there’s a workout room next to the dispensary.”

  Waving expansively toward the white shipping containers laid end to end in long rows, he announced with an oddly proud flourish, “Welcome to Containerville, Angela! Follow me, and I’ll show you to your hooch.”

  He turned to me as we approached container number thirty-six. “Each shipping container is divided into two sections, or hooches as we like to call them. Here’s your key. If you’re lucky, you might have this hooch to yourself until after New Year’s. Generally, you transients have to share. Sorry about that.” He paused for my reaction to this bit of bad news and seemed vaguely disappointed when my face remained blank.

  “Any idea what you’ll be doing up in Mazār?” he asked as I struggled with the lock.

  “Not really,” I said, pulling my door open and gazing into the sterile interior of my temporary residence.

  A plane overhead drowned out Carl’s chatter. He handed me an information packet and left me standing alone in front of my hooch.

  The walls, floor, and ceiling of my room were of molded white plastic. The furniture—two single beds, two metal lockers, and one desk—was bolted to the floor. The whole place resembled a minimum-security prison.