Authors: Christopher Reich
Jonathan Ransom was an American.
The patients were lined up outside the clinic when Jonathan arrived. He counted fifteen in all, including several children in the company of their fathers. Some had visible infirmities: badly healed burns, gliomas, cleft palates. Several were amputees, the victims of the land mines and bomblets left behind by the Russians. Others simply looked wan and tired, and were most likely suffering from the flu. Jonathan greeted them with respect, taking care to shake every man’s hand while ushering them inside and explaining that they must wait an hour until he could see them.
One father stood apart from the others. His daughter leaned against him, a scarf covering the lower half of her face. Seeing the tall foreign doctor, she turned away. Jonathan knelt in front of her. “I’m happy to see you,” he said softly. “We’re going to make you better. You won’t have to wear this scarf anymore. You’ll be able to play with the other children again.”
“You are really going to do this?” the girl’s father asked in halting English. “Today?”
Jonathan stood. “Yes.”
He entered the building, lowering his head so that he didn’t strike the lintel. He had divided the clinic into five rooms: a waiting room, two consultation rooms, an office, and an operating theater. The conditions were dismal, even by local standards. Hard-packed dirt floors. Low ceilings. No electricity. No running water.
Upon arriving, he had discovered a battered wooden desk inside with the words “Médecins Sans Frontières: où les autres ne vont pas” carved into it. Roughly translated, it said, “Doctors Without Borders: Where Others Dare Not Venture.” And below it, also in French, “The Doctor Is Always Right,” and the year “1988.” His colleagues had preceded
him to this remote village more than twenty years earlier. To Jonathan, it was confirmation that he had made the right decision in coming.
He walked into his office and dropped the duffel onto the ground. Inside was everything he needed. Scalpel, forceps, and Metzenbaum scissors for surgery. Cipro and Ancef for antibiotics, Pepcid for ulcers, iron supplements for the women, and multivitamins for the children. Lidocaine in 30cc bottles for use as a local anesthetic and Ketamine for putting a patient under. There was prednisone, Zyrtec, norepinephrine, and a host of pharmaceuticals to treat a gamut of ailments beyond most doctors’ imagination. And sutures, syringes, Band-Aids, ace bandages, and lots and lots of alcohol swabs.
Jonathan spent an hour equipping the clinic for the coming day. He started a fire, boiled water, and sterilized his instruments. He swept the floor of the operating room and laid a clean plastic sheet over it. He arranged his supplies and inventoried his medicines.
At seven a.m. he saw his first patient, a boy of ten missing the lower half of his right leg and walking with the help of an ungainly wooden prosthesis. Three years earlier he’d stepped on a Russian mine while playing in the fields. The amputation had been badly done. Over time the flesh had withered because of a lack of circulation and become infected. The skin needed to be debrided and cleansed and the boy put on a course of antibiotics.
“You’ll just feel a little pinch,” said Jonathan, preparing a syringe of lidocaine. “It won’t hurt at—”
Hamid burst into the room. “We have to go,” he said, gasping for breath.
Jonathan regarded him impassively. “You’re late.”
“Did you hear me?” Hamid was short and skinny, twenty pounds underweight, with narrow shoulders and an eager, bobbing head. Jonathan had found him outside the offices of a medical aid organization in Kabul shortly after his arrival. Or rather, Hamid had found Jonathan. A second-year medical student, he’d offered his services as a translator, guide, and doctor’s assistant for $50 U.S. a week. Jonathan offered him $40 if Hamid would find him a decent four-by-four and
accompany him into the Red Zone. Hamid agreed, and a deal was struck.
“Yeah, I heard you,” said Jonathan.
“They’re coming.”
“They” meant the Taliban, the orthodox Islamic fighters locked in a struggle with the American and Afghan forces to retake control of the government and the country and reassert Islamic law over its population.
“It’s Sultan Haq. He took a town sixty-five kilometers from here yesterday and massacred the village elders.”
Jonathan considered this. He’d heard of Haq, a particularly vicious Taliban drug lord who captained his own militia in Lashkar to the south, but he was confused by his presence. Khos-al-Fari was a poor village far from the poppy belt, with no apparent strategic value. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know,” answered Hamid wildly. “Does it matter?”
The father took his son by the shoulder and hurried him out of the room.
“Tell the others to come back tomorrow,” said Jonathan. “All except Amina. She can’t wait. Set out a standard tray in the operating room. Make sure I have some extra anesthetic.”
Hamid eyed Jonathan as if he were mad. “You’re going to operate on her?”
“It’s her turn.”
“That’s a four-hour procedure.”
“Longer. You never know with reconstruction.”
“Just give her medicine for the infection. You can come back and take care of her another time.”
“She’s waited long enough.”
The blast of a distant explosion caused the room to tremble.
“Mortars,” said Hamid, rushing to the window. “Sultan Haq’s men killed eighteen people yesterday. He executed ten of them himself. An American will be at the top of his list.”
“What about Pashtunwali?” asked Jonathan. “The villagers will watch out for us.”
“Pashtunwali” referred to the Afghans’ code of honor and hospitality, which demanded that they protect a visitor taken into their home or village.
“It doesn’t stand up very long in the face of superior firepower. We have to get out of here.”
“Set up the tray, Hamid.”
Hamid retreated from the window and came closer to Jonathan. “Leave, or you will die.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“And me?”
“You said you wanted to learn. I respected that. Now’s your chance. You’ve never seen me perform this procedure. Think of it as an opportunity.”
There was another explosion, closer this time. An exchange of automatic-weapons fire, then silence.
“They’ll kill me, too,” said Hamid. “I helped you. Besides, I’m Hazara.”
Jonathan dug in his pockets for the keys to the truck and tossed them to Hamid. “Go. I understand. You’ve been a great help. I owe you.”
“But you won’t be able to operate on Amina without me.”
“It’ll be harder, but not impossible.”
Hamid studied the keys in his palm, then put his head against the wall and moaned. “Damn you,” he said after a minute.
“Set up the tray,” said Jonathan.
It was snowing in the
resort of Les Grandes Alpes. Large, fluffy flakes tumbled from a curiously clear sky onto the mountainside. Translated, the resort’s name meant “the Big Alps,” but the slope was nowhere near Switzerland, nor any other mountain range in Europe, and its runs were anything but grand. The entire skiing area consisted of a single well-groomed piste that descended in three sections, like flights of a staircase, steep, then flat, and finally a gentle decline to the bottom.
The woman named Lara Antonova attacked the hill expertly, skis pressed together, hands at her waist. It was just past three and the slope was crowded with skiers. Most were novices. The snowplow was the rule, and the majority had difficulty mastering even that. Dressed in white stretch pants and a turquoise down parka, her auburn hair pulled into a ponytail that hung past her shoulder, she carved a sleek line among the other skiers, her eyes casting about for a familiar face.
Lara Antonova had not come to Les Grandes Alpes for the skiing. Born in Siberia and raised a ward of the state, she was a highly ranked operative assigned to Directorate S of the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service. Directorate S was responsible for foreign clandestine operations: intelligence-gathering, blackmail, extortion, and in the rare case assassination. Lara Antonova had come to Les Grandes Alpes on assignment to meet the most powerful arms dealer in southwestern Asia.
Reaching the halfway point, she came to a crisp parallel stop. She removed her goggles and surveyed the slope. Despite their lack of skill, most of the skiers were dressed as if they were habitués of the
finest alpine resorts. A survey of equipment turned up nothing but the latest Kastle skis, Rossignol boots, and Bogner ensembles. Still, even among the raft of colorful attire, she had no difficulty spotting her mark. He stood fifty meters down the hill, a trim, diminutive man clad in a conservative navy ski suit, skiing slowly and with great caution down the center of the slope. Surrounding him, arrayed like a battle fleet protecting the prized carrier at its center, were six very large men in black-and-gray parkas. It was a retinue worthy of a head of state. Then again, her mark was royalty. Lord Balfour, by name if not lineage.
“I’ve got him,” said Lara as she bent to check her bindings. “He’s got six crushers with him.”
“Six?” Her controller’s gravelly voice spoke to her from the miniature receiver planted deep in her ear canal. “That’s up two from the last time. He must be in trouble.”
The person in question was named Ashok Balfour Armitraj, a.k.a. Lord Balfour. Hair: black (dyed); height: 5′5″; weight: 160 lbs.; age: 52. Bastard son of a Muslim mother and a British father, brought up in Dharavi, Mumbai’s worst slum. A childhood on the streets. An early bent toward criminality, or, his word, “entrepreneurship.” Member of a gang at age eight. A chieftain at fifteen. Then, at twenty, the big move to start his own crew.
Balfour dabbled in everything, black and white. On the legitimate side, there were real estate and raw materials and even online brokerage. Less legitimately, there were drugs, white slavery, and counterfeit merchandise. But in the end it always came back to arms. Guns, artillery, helicopters, even jets. If there was mention of it in Jane’s Defence Archive, Lord Balfour could get it for you.
Down the hill, Balfour had come to a halt. His men gathered around him, forming a two-layer defensive perimeter. Judging by the heft of his jacket and the way he kept his zipper undone to his breastbone, the bodyguard closest to Lara was carrying an Uzi. And if there was one machine gun, there would be others. Balfour wasn’t one for half-measures.
“Where’s the merchandise?” Lara asked her controller.
“On the ground at Tehran International. Three-hour transit time inbound to you.”
“All there?”
“Down to the last bullet.”
She had negotiated the transaction herself and knew the packing list by heart. Fifteen hundred Kalashnikov assault rifles, 1,000 grenades, 200 antipersonnel mines, 2 million rounds of ammunition, 100 Advanced Night Vision goggles, 500 kilos of Semtex plastic explosive. There was big stuff, too. Twenty shoulder-held ground-to-air missiles, 10 fifty-caliber machine guns, 100 antitank weapons, and an ample supply of munitions. A grand total of $10 million worth of arms and matériel. Enough to supply a reinforced infantry battalion of Taliban insurgents.
“Sounds good,” she said. “We’re a go.”
“Just get us our money.”
Lara slid her phone from her pocket and hit speed-dial. A cultured British voice answered. “Hello, darling.”
“I’m just up the hill.” She raised a pole and the man below glanced at her.
“Aren’t we dashing?” said Lord Balfour.
“Tell your boys to let me through.” Lara pushed off and skied down the hill, cutting past the phalanx of bodyguards without a glance and coming to a dramatic halt next to Balfour.
“You don’t ski like a Russian,” he said with admiration.
Lara considered this. “Unfortunately,
you
ski like a Maratha.”
Balfour threw his head back and laughed richly.
Everything he does, he does in spades, Lara remembered. He laughs too much, talks too loudly, and kills too freely. Looking at the small Indian, his hair slicked back with pomade, his Mississippi gambler’s mustache just so, his eyes warm and friendly, she forced herself to remember that he was a volatile and dangerous man.
“But really, where did you learn to ski like that?” Balfour’s smile was stretched to breaking.
“Switzerland, mostly.”
“Gstaad?” He pronounced it perfectly.
Sshttaad
.
“Why, yes.” In fact she’d never set foot in the Swiss resort, but she knew better than to embarrass him twice. “How did you know?”
“I have a friend who lives there. A doctor. He says the Russians have positively overrun it. Is that where you went while on your sabbatical?”
Lara sensed something amiss. “Excuse me?”
“I mean when you left the FSB. I understand you stopped working for Moscow for a number of years. Isn’t that correct?”
“You tell me.”
“Rumor is that the FSB dumped you when they ran out of money back in the nineties. You jumped to the other side of the Atlantic and went to work for American intelligence as some kind of freelancer. They chucked you out a few months ago and you went running back to Daddy.”
Lara smiled casually, but inside, her alarm bells were sounding. This wasn’t a rumor. It was a full-fledged leak. “I wouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
But Balfour wasn’t so easily put off. “I couldn’t care less,” he explained with exaggerated earnestness. “I built my first house with money from the CIA. Even today the director has me on his speed-dial. ‘Balfour,’ he says, ‘Congress won’t allow us to arm the Waziris. You do it for us. Here’s a check for twenty million from the black fund. You can double your commission if you buy American.’ Frankly, I consider myself an honorary agent. No, it’s not me who’s concerned about whether or not you worked for the Americans.”
“Then who is it?”
“My client. I don’t need to tell you that there is no love lost between the prince and Uncle Sam. In fact, he’s convinced they’re trying to kill him.”
The prince was Crown Prince Rashid al-Zayed, youngest member of the Zayed clan, rulers of the United Arab Emirates, and secret financier of all causes Islamic.