Farishta Page 8

  “Rahim, this is Miss Morgan. She’s replacing Mr. Brooks as the U.S. government representative in these parts. We haven’t had any females at this PRT permanent-like, as you know, but I’m sure you and your mates will treat Miss Morgan with all proper respect.” He seemed to say the last bit more as a warning.

  The interpreters’ room was sparsely furnished with threadbare red cushions around the walls, a prayer rug in one corner, a glowing electric space heater in the center of the room, and an ancient black-and-white TV set, which one of the interpreters had switched off as soon as we entered.

  Rahim remained standing, his empty right hand tightly clenched, as his fellow interpreters began to discuss me and tease him. Their comments tumbled out in rapid fire. They had no idea I could understand every word they said.

  “So this woman will be your master, eh, Rahim?”

  “She’s not bad looking. Could pass for a Tajik.”

  “No, her hair’s too short! ”

  “I like those big green eyes, don’t you, Rahim?”

  Rahim had not moved. His cheeks were burning with humiliation.

  “I wonder how old she is. Thirty-five maybe? Not quite old enough to be your mother, Rahim, but old enough to . . .” The others began to laugh. I forced myself not to smile at this flattering but bawdy comment.

  “Maybe you can teach her something about Afghan architecture on your long trips,” another added, pointing toward the book in Rahim’s hand, which he immediately released. It hit the floor with a thud and a rustle of pages. Both his hands were now balled into tight fists as though he were preparing for a fight.

  “Rahim, you’d better not try any funny business when you’re out on patrol with your American woman.”

  I understood that the very presence of an unaccompanied female was making the interpreters nervous and that they were diffusing their tension by teasing poor Rahim, but there was nothing I could do or say without revealing my knowledge of their language.

  Rahim glared at his companions, then stepped forward and said to me in English, “It is an honor to meet you, Miss Morgan. It will be an honor to work as your tarjoman, your interpreter.” He did not extend his hand, but as was the custom in Afghanistan, waited for me to extend mine. When we shook hands, the whispered comments of his colleagues began again.

  “At least she’s not taller than you, Rahim, but she’s dressed like a man.”

  “Maybe people won’t know she’s a woman. They’ll think she’s a shaggy-haired American boy whose beard hasn’t grown in.”

  “Look at her. No one will mistake that one for a boy.”

  They all laughed again except for Rahim, whose eyes remained fixed on the floor. I felt an overwhelming desire to defend my new interpreter and had to fight the urge not to lash out at his companions. Although he was obviously less than thrilled about being assigned to work for a woman, his refusal to join in his comrades’ jeers had earned my immediate respect.

  “Rahim,” I said, addressing him in English, “It is an honor to meet you. I look forward to working with you this year. Please call me Angela.”

  “Yes, Angela,” he replied as our eyes met briefly. My new interpreter—whom I didn’t actually need—and I—whom he was ashamed to be working for—were off to a terrific start.

  “Right,” interrupted Wickersham. “Let’s get you back to your room, Angela. Carry on, boys.” He held the door open for me and we left the interpreters still teasing Rahim about his new assignment.

  I followed Wickersham past the sad little rose garden and through another low archway festooned with multiple strands of razor wire. He stopped in front of a small patch of ground, surrounded by a low white picket fence and filled with an assortment of round and rectangular metal objects half buried in mud.

  “This is our very own land mine garden,” he announced with a flourish. “The Estonian EODs give briefings here every few days for the new arrivals, just so you’ll know what to look out for. Don’t want you tripping over one of these bastards when you’re out on patrol,” he added with a wide grin. “I’ll let you know when they have the next session.”

  When I edged cautiously back from the display of land mines, Wickersham laughed again. “They’re all duds, ma’am. No worries.”

  “Right,” I muttered between clenched teeth, as I wiped away the beads of perspiration that had appeared on my forehead despite the frigid temperature.

  “It’s getting late and you must be tired. I’ll take you back to your room. The PRT compound is, as you can see, ma’am—sorry, ‘Angela’—not too large. I’m sure you’ll be able to find your way around the rest of the camp tomorrow. There are a few exercise machines and treadmills in the hallway next to the laundry, which you are welcome to use any time of the day or night. No jogging outside the wire, of course. To get to the machines, you’ll have to walk through our little pub. It’s open every night for the officers and men—and for you, of course—from eight until ten. Beer and cider—but you should know that a two-can limit is strictly enforced. One more thing,” he added with a look of concern, “don’t forget your morphine pen. The doc will be here next week. You can stop by his office to pick one up.”

  “My what? ” I asked.

  “It’s a little spring-loaded injector the lads carry on patrol. Looks like a regular writing pen,” he explained. “Just jab it hard against your leg, and it will shoot enough morphine in to keep a smile on your face until someone can get you to a hospital. You know, just in case. When you’re up in the mountains, you’ll be a long way from any serious medical care. If you’re badly injured, that little pen makes the trip back to camp so much more pleasant.”

  A forced smile concealed my discomfiture at this new bit of information.

  “The German Army has a helicopter base across the river in Uzbekistan,” continued Wickersham. “They’re supposed to come get our boys if there’s trouble, but they won’t land anywhere that hasn’t been cleared, secured, and swept clean with a toothbrush—which pretty much eliminates any situations we might get ourselves into in Afghanistan, so don’t leave camp without your pen.”

  “I won’t,” I replied nervously as I braced for Wickersham’s next bombshell.

  “The doc has to sign the pen out to you. If you don’t use it while you’re here, you have to turn it in before you go home. It’s a controlled substance, y’know.”

  He stopped in front of my room and pressed a key into my hand with a knowing wink. “Best to keep your room locked when you’re out, Angela.”

  FOURTEEN

  January 6, 2005

  “Miss Morgan, is that you? Please do come in,” called the colonel from inside his office when he heard my chair scraping the floor under my typing table. I stepped through the doorway and a short, rosy-cheeked man with a thinning blond crew cut rose to welcome me. His greeting was warm and genuine and not what I had expected to receive from the commanding officer of the PRT. At last, a friendly face. I liked him already.

  “Harry Wilton, pleasure to meet you and welcome to our little camp,” he said with a lilting Welsh accent. As we shook hands, he lowered his voice and added, “Would you mind terribly closing the door? ”

  “Not at all,” I replied, shutting out my NATO colleagues who were watching me from behind their desks in the bullpen. “Please call me Angela.”

  “And you shall call me Harry,” he said. “As you’ll soon discover, Angela, our NATO colleagues in the outer office do not like it when my door is closed, but there isn’t much privacy at this PRT, and you and I have some issues to discuss that can’t be shared with anyone else at this point. Before we begin, may I offer you a cup of tea?” he asked, reaching for a small metal pot on a tray with two cups.

  “No thanks,” I replied, “I had my fill this morning.”

  “Excellent. It’s already gone cold in any event. So sorry I wasn’t here to greet you when you arrived. I try to get out at least once a week to one of our safe houses in the provinces. That’s where most of our six
-man Military Observation Teams—MOTS, we call them—are based. The round-trip travel alone takes more than eight hours to Sar-e Pol and several days to Maimana if the weather’s decent.

  “Have the men in ops shown you where to find all the briefing books? ”

  I inhaled deeply, wondering how to best answer Harry’s question. My first visit to the ops room on the day after I arrived at the PRT had been an awkward affair. I’d stood for thirty minutes in a chilly basement hallway next to the shredders outside a locked metal door with a large sign that said DO NOT DISTURB—MEETING IN PROGRESS.

  A cipher lock allowed only cleared personnel into the ops room where classified materials were processed and stored. While I waited, several soldiers rushed down the stairs, punched in the code, entered the ops room, and quickly latched the door behind them without even acknowledging my presence.

  I had a top-secret NATO clearance, but that didn’t seem to hold water with the men who worked in the communications and intel offices inside the vault. When the ops officer finally let me in after the meeting, he explained that it would take several weeks to validate my clearance. Until then, he could not provide me with the cipher lock codes, allow me to open a NATO e-mail account, or read the sensitive intel files where the profiles of local power brokers and warlords were kept.

  “Yes, everyone’s been very helpful,” I said to Harry without much conviction, “but there appears to be a problem about my access to classified materials. I have the required clearances, but your officers want more proof, which they say will take weeks.”

  Harry puffed his cheeks and blew out a stream of air. “I’ll get the chief of staff to sort that out for you. Do you have everything you need in your room?” he asked.

  “Everything except heat,” I said with a smile.

  There was a loud knock at the colonel’s door, and a young lieutenant barged in. His face was flushed. “Sir, the phones in the ops room are out of commission for the moment, and I wanted to warn you that the Estonians will be detonating a large cache of ammunition in . . .”

  A tremendous explosion shook the building and rattled the windows in their frames. A small photo of Harry’s wife and children crashed to the floor. I gripped the arms of my chair to keep myself from bolting out of his office and diving under the nearest desk.

  “Well, just now it appears, sir,” the lieutenant said with a grin.

  “Thank you, John, and get those phones fixed,” said Harry, bending down to pick up the photo in its unbroken plastic frame. He looked up at me with concern. “Miss Morgan—Angela, are you feeling all right? You’ve gone quite pale.”

  My hands were trembling, my heart was about to crush my ribs, and I was breathing hard. “I’m fine,” I replied in a tone that made it obvious to Harry I was not fine at all. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve heard such a loud . . . noise.”

  “I’m afraid these are a regular occurrence around here,” Harry said, still observing me closely. “We’re trying to track down all the ammunition and explosives caches in this area so our Estonian friends can blow them up.”

  As soon as the lieutenant shut the door behind him, Harry leaned forward on his elbows and cupped his round chin in his hands. My pulse was beginning to return to normal, but Harry’s office still felt painfully warm.

  He noticed my damp forehead. “Are you quite sure you’re feeling all right, Angela?”

  “I’m okay,” I repeated, although it was obvious I wasn’t. “Please continue.”

  “Right. I understand you are fluent in Dari, and have been tasked with helping us sort out whether our interpreters are giving us accurate translations especially regarding the matter of the ubiquitous poppies.”

  Harry explained that opium poppy cultivation in Balkh Province was expected to reach an all-time high in the spring despite the governor’s claims to the contrary. Although local warlords, who were also allies of the governor, were known to be major growers and traffickers, it had so far been difficult to prosecute any of those who had “connections.” He admitted it was possible that some of the PRT’s interpreters were concealing information, but he remained skeptical about the allegations despite the fact that life was cheap in Afghanistan, most of the interpreters were young and without powerful patrons, and it would have been fairly easy for the traffickers to co-opt a few of them.

  Harry despised the cultivation of opium poppies. A nephew of his in Cardiff had been addicted to heroin before committing suicide several years ago. Watching that young man’s descent into hell, said Harry, had been the most painful experience of his life, but the safety of his soldiers patrolling the northern provinces was now his paramount concern.

  He had made it quite clear to the British and American embassies in Kabul that an active poppy eradication program in the north, especially aerial spraying, would make it far too dangerous for the MOTs to safely patrol the remote sectors of our provinces. Afghan farmers, he argued, as had the American lieutenant in Kabul, would not differentiate between foreign contract eradication teams and his young soldiers.

  “I do hope that with your language skills you’ll be able to help us resolve these allegations, Angela.”

  “I’ll do my best, Harry,” I replied.

  “I was also told that no one is to know about your fluency in Dari—with a few exceptions.”

  “Exceptions?”

  “Yes, my chief of staff, of course, and our incoming intel officer, Mark Davies, who speaks Pashto. I believe you and Davies met at the Foreign Office in London.”

  “We did.”

  “He should be arriving at the end of next week.”

  “Great,” I replied with forced enthusiasm. I was in fact dreading the arrival of this man who had objected to my assignment here on all possible grounds—that I was a woman, an American, and a diplomat.

  It was difficult enough trying to fit in with this all-male group of soldiers and officers, but at least none of them seemed to be openly hostile to my presence.

  “It will be important to keep both of your foreign language skills quiet until we sort out this issue with the interpreters,” Harry continued.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, forcing myself to stay focused on our conversation. “But according to my embassy, I’m also to serve as a political advisor to you and your officers.”

  “Right. Just as your predecessor, Mr. Brooks, did.” Harry pressed his lips together before continuing. “There is one small complication, Angela. Brooks arrived when the U.S. Army was still running this PRT. Since they turned the camp over to us in 2003, Her Majesty’s government has also assigned British diplomats to serve as political advisors and reporting officers here.”

  “I know that, Harry. What is the complication you’re referring to? ”

  “Brooks was deeply involved in overseeing the many U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in this area. I’m not sure what they were exactly, because he was rather reluctant to share that information with us. It’s my understanding that after he left, your embassy assigned a contractor in Kabul to manage all U.S.-funded development work in the five northern provinces covered by this PRT.”

  It was now clear why Plawner hadn’t said anything about my role in monitoring the reconstruction under way in the north. I had no role.

  “Are you saying that I’m not needed here? ”

  “No, no. Of course, you’re needed here, Angela,” Harry continued. “I’m delighted you’ve come and I fully support your assignment. I’m sure that with your language skills you’ll bring a great deal to the PRT team.”

  Harry looked at me with a mix of sadness and relief as he continued. “My opinion matters little at this point, however, because I’ll be leaving at the end of next month. Colonel Jameson, my successor as PRT commander, and our new Foreign Office diplomatic representative, Richard Carrington, will hopefully arrive a few days before I depart.”

  My heart dropped at this news. Finally, I had met someone at the PRT who didn’t treat me as an inconvenience, who even
welcomed me, and now he was telling me he was leaving.

  Harry stood up and began pacing on his threadbare carpet. “Angela, how would you like to accompany me next week to a weapons handover ceremony? We hold these little events whenever a local warlord collects enough rifles and rockets from his men to make a credible claim that his people are disarming.”

  He returned to his desk and scribbled something into his calendar. “We’ll leave at 0630 hours sharp a week from Saturday. And let’s take Rahim since the old professor, my head interpreter, is still on medical leave in Kabul. You can listen in on the side conversations and brief me later on how accurately Rahim is telling us what’s being said. What do you say to that? ”

  “Sounds great,” I replied with little enthusiasm.

  “Excellent. You can get started on sorting through Brooks’s papers and weeding out unnecessary materials. He left several filing cabinets stuffed with old maps, brochures, UN reports, and God knows what else. I believe there may even be some State Department cables in there.

  “You might also want to get your driver to take you out to the local Afghan Army base so you can meet the American military personnel who are working as embedded trainers there. A new National Guard unit arrived from the United States just a few weeks ago. I haven’t met their commanding officer yet, and I’m sure he’ll be making a courtesy call here very soon, but it might be useful for you to meet him on his own turf.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. No one at the embassy had mentioned the fact that there were American soldiers working in this part of the country.

  “Please feel free to sit in on our various staff meetings, Angela, and, of course, the debriefing sessions with our Military Observation Teams. Ask as many questions as you wish,” added Harry, as he paused and looked at me with concern. “Oh, yes, and get plenty of rest. Many of the men seem to come down with a nasty virus a few days after arriving, so you’ll need to keep up your strength.”