Authors: Christopher Reich
“The papers reported that his private jet lost an engine,” said Lara. “That’s common enough.”
“Granted. But last week a Predator drone missed him by five minutes when he was visiting friends in the tribal areas near Peshawar. Killed ten of his closest friends. Nothing accidental about that.”
“He may be right, then,” said Lara. “He’s arming their enemies, after all. Taliban, Hezbollah, FARC.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Rumors,” said Lara. “My boss, General Ivanov, is well informed, too. Last I checked, he wasn’t too keen on the Americans either. I am correct in assuming that it was you who initiated contact with our organization on the prince’s behalf?”
Balfour stared into Lara’s eyes for several seconds. The smile was gone, as was any indication of warmth. He was a hardened criminal sizing up a contact and deciding whether or not she was to be trusted. “And so?” he said finally, with his usual vigor. “Is the shipment complete? The prince is adamant that he receive everything.”
“One hundred percent fulfillment. All sitting on the tarmac in Tehran waiting for the prince’s go-ahead.”
Balfour raised an eyebrow, impressed. Turning his head, he placed a call and spoke in rapid Arabic. “The prince asks if midnight would be all right,” he said after hanging up.
Both of them knew it was not a request.
“Midnight will be fine.” Lara gazed casually up the slope. Her eyes landed on two men dressed in decidedly inferior gray ski suits. “Tell me, Ash, is everything all right between you and your client?”
“Never better,” replied Ashok Balfour Armitraj. “We are as close as brothers.”
“Then why does your brother have two of his hoods watching you?”
Balfour followed Lara’s eyes to the two men. “Them?” he chuckled, his humor firmly back in place. “They’re not His Highness’s men. They’re ISI. Pakistani intelligence. I consider them my backup protection.”
“Really?”
“They see to it that the boys from Indian intelligence don’t get their hands on me. Delhi is convinced that I had a hand in the Mumbai attacks. They say I armed the bad guys. They’re out for blood.”
Hence the Uzis. “Did you?” she asked.
“Of course,” said Balfour. “But that’s beside the point. I was just the broker. I sold them their toys. They could’ve bought them from anyone. In point of fact, the weapons were yours.”
“Mine? I didn’t even know you then.”
“I mean Russian. The lot. AKs, grenades, fuses, even the phones. It was a Russian package from stem to stern.”
Lara looked at her watch. They had been standing together conspicuously on the slope for ten minutes, which was nine minutes too long. As a contact, Balfour was a nightmare. Somewhere along the line, he had gotten it into his head that he was not a criminal wanted by the law enforcement agencies of a dozen Western nations but a legitimate businessman. In Germany or Britain, his brand of flagrant behavior would have gotten him either killed or jailed for life. In Pakistan, where he made his home, it made him a king.
“And so?” she said. “Midnight. At your hangar at Sharjah Free Trade Zone.”
“I’ll have one of my aircraft ready to transship the merchandise.”
“Where’s it going?”
“Tsk, tsk,” said Balfour. “That’s the prince’s business.”
“We like to know where our weapons end up.”
“There’s only one war going on in the region that I know of at the moment. Use your imagination.”
Business concluded, Lara waited as Balfour and his men skied to the bottom of the hill. On cue, the pair of Pakistani intelligence officers followed them down the slope.
She spent another hour at Les Grandes Alpes, taking the chairlift to the top of the hill several more times and skiing down. Certain she wasn’t being trailed, she made a final descent, took off her skis, and returned them at the rental desk, along with her boots and poles.
Leaving the rental desk, she proceeded into a changing room, where she removed her ski attire and packed it neatly in a shoulder bag.
She emerged five minutes later, wearing denim shorts, a tight black tank, and low heels. She’d exchanged her oversized Uvex goggles for Ray-Ban aviators and freed her hair from the ponytail, letting it take its usual ungoverned course, falling around her face and shoulders.
Walking past the base of the ski slope, she glanced up to the sky, where giant snow machines hidden in the rafters continued to shower perfectly formed snowflakes onto the mountain. Not bad, she thought to herself, for a desert kingdom thousands of miles from Europe. What did the Quran say? If Muhammad won’t go to the mountain, bring the mountain to Muhammad.
A moment later she pushed through a pair of tall double doors and stepped into the harsh sunlight and ninety-degree temperature of a late fall day in the sprawling metropolis of Dubai City, on the shores of the Persian Gulf.
As soon as she reached her car, she placed a call. Not to Moscow, but to Washington, D.C.
“It’s Emma,” she said. “It’s a go. Midnight at the duty-free zone in Sharjah. The prince himself is coming.”
Her name was Amina. She
was a nine-year-old wisp of a girl with fine black hair and doe eyes that bore a hole into Jonathan’s conscience the first time he saw her. He knew nothing more about her, whether she was in school or knew how to read, if she enjoyed embroidering or was a tomboy who played soccer. Amina couldn’t talk, and Afghan parents didn’t discuss their children with strangers. None of this mattered. As a surgeon, all Jonathan needed to know was evident the first time he examined her. He’d taken one look at her wounds and sworn that he would help her.
Amina lay sedated on the operating table. There was no respirator to ensure a steady flow of oxygen, no blood gas machine to monitor the anesthesia in her system, and no readily available blood should she hemorrhage. He didn’t even have scrubs or surgical masks. He had only his skill, generic pharmaceuticals, and what the Afghans called “God’s will.”
“Where do we start?” asked Hamid.
“With the face. It’s the most difficult and will take the most time. We do it while we’re fresh.” The temperature inside the clinic hovered at a damp fifty degrees. Jonathan massaged his fingers in an attempt to rub away the chill. “Okay, then, it’s eight-fifteen by my watch. Let’s do it. Scalpel.”
He rolled the instrument between his thumb and forefinger, examining the child’s features, plotting his steps. There was a hole the circumference of his pinkie beneath her jaw, where the bullet had entered, and a much larger wound where the bullet had exited, destroying most of the girl’s upper palate and nose. Amina was not a victim of war, at least not in the usual sense. She was a victim of carelessness,
and a culture where automatic weapons were as common in homes as brushes and brooms.
A month earlier, while playing with her older brother, she had picked up her father’s AK-47 and used it as a crutch or support, placing both hands over the barrel and resting her chin on her hands. No one knew what happened next, whether her brother pushed her or inadvertently kicked the rifle. All that mattered was that there was a bullet in the chamber, the safety had become dislodged, and somehow the trigger had been pulled, firing a 7.62 mm copper-jacketed bullet through Amina’s hands, through the soft flesh beneath her jaw, and into her mouth, where it passed through the palate and into her sinus cavity, striking bone (thus saving her life) and altering its trajectory ninety degrees, after which it left her skull, tearing away most of her nasal cartilage and flesh.
The tragedy didn’t end there.
Still traveling at near its initial velocity, the bullet continued on its new azimuth and struck Amina’s brother in the temple, entering his brain and killing him instantly.
The procedure would represent a test of Jonathan’s skills. He had no illusions about the result. He could never restore Amina’s beauty. The best he could hope for was a face that would not provoke gasps and might one day help her find a husband.
An hour passed. Outside, the sounds of battle rose and fell, long periods of silence interrupted by staccato bursts of machine-gun fire and the thud of mortars and grenades. Each progressive clash brought the fighting closer.
“Clean up some of that blood,” said Jonathan.
Hamid dabbed the wound with gauze, looking up from the girl every few seconds to gaze out the window. “Haq’s reached the village.”
“If he comes, he comes. There’s nothing we can do about it. I need you here. Not just your hands but your mind.”
Jonathan concentrated on cutting cartilage from Amina’s ear and using his scalpel to pare it into a slim strip that would define her nose.
A shell landed one hundred meters away. The building rocked, loosing a veil of dust. Amina’s father clasped his arms to his chest but
said nothing. Jonathan leaned closer to the girl, driving the noise and distraction from his consciousness. Somewhere beyond his world, a woman wailed, but he did not hear her. All that mattered was this little girl.
A bullet tore through the wall, spraying dust and wood splinters.
“Shit,” muttered Hamid, ducking.
Jonathan stepped back from the table. Despite the cold, he was sweating and his shirt clung to his back. “What do you think?”
Hamid stared down at the girl. “You’re a magician.”
“Hardly, but it just might do.” Jonathan pulled back skin and straightened the cartilage. “I don’t know if it’s an Afghan nose, but in Beverly Hills it might be the next rage.”
Just then a volley of automatic-weapons fire rang out close by. It was loud enough to make Jonathan wince and Hamid cry out. Amina’s father held his daughter’s limp hand, eyes to the ground, saying nothing.
Hamid hurried to the window, pulling his phone out of his pocket and clutching it as if it might save his life. “Why do they keep firing? No one’s trying to stop them.”
“Get back here,” said Jonathan. “There’s no one to call.”
Hamid swallowed and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Lowering his head, he returned to the operating table.
“Let’s close up this palate so this girl can eat some solid foods again,” said Jonathan. “Get me a syringe with five cc’s of lidocaine.”
Hamid didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on a funnel of smoke rising from the far end of the village. “That’s near our house.”
Jonathan looked at the smoke, but only for a moment. “Lidocaine, Hamid. Five cc’s.”
A camel was braying continuously. A gunshot rang out and the animal went silent. Several vehicles approached, engines whining as they battled the terrible road.
“Hamid.”
“Yes, Dr. Jonathan.”
“Lidocaine.”
Hamid handed him the syringe.
“Did I ever tell you why I came to your country?” Jonathan said.
Hamid met his eyes. “To do this. I mean, to help.”
Jonathan went back to his work. “That’s part of it. I had other reasons. I came to make up for some of the things I’ve done.”
“You, Dr. Jonathan? You’ve done bad things?”
“Not just me. My wife, too.”
“You told me you were never married.”
“I lied. I was married for eight years. Officially I still am, but after what she did, I’m going to call that game rained out. For the entire time, I was married to a government operative and I didn’t know it. She married me because my job with Doctors Without Borders provided her with cover and got her into politically sensitive spots in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe so she could carry out her missions.”
“Missions? I don’t understand.”
“Bombings, extortion, assassination.”
“She killed people?”
“She did. She worked for a secret organization called Division … She was their star.” Jonathan paused, and his tone dropped a notch. “I killed, too. I had to. There was no other way. Even so, I’m still not good with it. There’s more to it than that, but that’s why I’m here. To make up for her sins as well as my own. I figure if I was dumb enough not to know that the woman I shared my bed with was a spy, then at least I ought to own up to part of what she did. The funny thing is that I didn’t even know her real name until three months ago. It’s Lara. She’s Russian. Not even American. Crazy, huh?”
Outside the window, a pair of pickups with machine-gun mounts pulled up to the clinic. Taliban fighters jumped from the rear and entered the clinic. The door to the operating room opened. A tall, powerful-looking man entered the room, carrying a hunting rifle with a scope. A shorter man followed close behind, grabbed Hamid in an armlock, and forced him to his knees. A half-dozen agitated fighters entered the room and pointed their weapons at Jonathan.
Jonathan stepped away from the table. “I’m operating,” he said, mustering his calm. “Let go of my assistant and please leave.”
The tall fighter ignored his instructions and held his ground. “You are the healer everyone is talking about,” he said in unaccented English.
Jonathan studied the fighter more closely. It was the first time he’d heard American English in weeks. “I’m a doctor.”
“I must ask you to come with me.”
“We can talk when I’m finished.”
“You will come now.”
Another fighter approached, pulled a pistol from his belt, and pressed it against Amina’s head. His eyes went to the leader for approval.
The taller Afghan pushed the man’s hand away, then looked at Jonathan. “How long might that be?”
“Three hours. I asked you once already to leave. Now I’m telling you. Get out of my operating room and take your men with you.”
“A bold response for someone in your position, Dr. …?”
“Ransom. And you are?” asked Jonathan, though he already knew the answer. He noticed the fighter’s long, curling fingernails and followed his hand past a chunky Casio G-Force wristwatch to the rifle, where the name “W. Barnes USMC” was carved into the stock. “I take it you’re not Barnes.”
“My name is Sultan Haq.” Haq ordered Hamid to be freed, then handed the rifle to one of his men. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Amina. She had an accident.” Jonathan explained what had happened and how he was repairing her face. Haq listened as intently as a resident accompanying an attending physician on rounds.