Ashes and Light Read online

  All he’d done was manage to rile a daughter who carried her faith like a weapon.

  It wouldn’t happen again. He would leave them in peace with their loss.

  “Work your way towards wisdom with no personal covering.” He muttered the Rumi saying against attachment and covetous nature, and looked into the sun hanging low in the sky.

  It was a ball of flame that caught on the mountain tops and impaled battered Kaabul like an interrogator’s light. Michael inhaled the clean scent of the distant snows overlaid with the aftertaste of kerosene, charcoal, and wood smoke.

  Once this city had been the subject of tales of wonder. Now poor mud-brick houses clung to the sides of the mountains. Most of the bricks had been dried in the streets in front of the construction. Most would fall in one of the frequent earthquakes that plagued this part of the world, along with the man-made destruction he so desperately wanted to prevent.

  He strode the maze of streets, pulling his last cigarette out of the cloth bag he wore across his chest. The smoke was a godsend, spiked mildly with hashish that curled into his lungs to steady him. It wasn’t that he smoked all the time, but when in Kaabul, do as the Kaabulay, they said. He inhaled a draught of the heavily laced Turkish tobacco and smiled.

  Hashish be damned. The tobacco alone ought to take at least a couple of years off this life. The hashish—well, it was no good for any agent, but at least it numbed pain.

  At the corner of Darulaman Road he nodded to three old men, white turbans wound loosely around their heads and necks, grey shawls around their shoulders as they smoked and talked companionably in a pool of late sunlight. Beyond lay the foreign military encampment.

  He studied the men’s faces and the way they looked at him. Safe. Not watchers.

  From the base of Kohi Asamayi he followed a careful, circuitous route along the winding watercourse of the almost-dry Kaabul River. He’d visited this place when he’d accompanied his father as a small child on business trips.

  He’d been part of his father’s disguise, he supposed. More successful than Michael’s current one, probably. Then, his father had had a small boy playing on a green river bank and climbing poplar trees as people strolled.

  Now, after the hardships of the guerrilla war against the Russians, the disastrous fighting amongst the warlords and the depredations of the Taliban, the once-green lawns were sprawling banks of filth and plastic bags; the trees had been torn down for firewood. A gutted place, suited to what he’d become.

  His fists clenched at the memory and the stench of the raw sewage that ran in the river. He’d reported the situation in Kaabul, but no one had listened. At least no one had cared. But things were better now, thanks to his efforts and the work of others like him. The Kaabulay, the people of Afghanistan—they were the ones he served—not his damned government. To hell with the embassy’s Simon Cox and his accusations that Michael had gone native.

  He bartered for another pack of cigarettes and casually scanned the street. To the northwest waited Chicken Street with its small red-light district and stores that stocked Western goods. Farther north along Bibi Mahro Road stood the well-guarded American Embassy.

  Those streets were magnets for those looking for information to report to his enemies. The leaders of the Taliban would be pleased to get news of an old adversary. They were also the people who could tell him of the man he sought—Hashemi. The man he hoped to get news of at his meeting.

  He ducked across the crowded street, between ancient automobiles, huge-wheeled horse carts, and trucks painted in psychedelic colors and mythic patterns. At a loudspeaker wailing Hindi music, he stopped. Turbaned men crouched along the roadway. Almost all wore leather belts with knives and ammunition slung over their salwar kameez.

  Anyone could be a watcher. Anyone could be the enemy.

  He crossed the river to the knotted streets of the Char Chata Bazaar and the old city, checking behind him. No one followed, it seemed.

  Still, his visit to Mohammed Siddiqui was too easily marked and provided too easy a way to pick up his trail. He’d been a fool to take the chance, even if he needed to take counsel with his old friend. And to plead forgiveness.

  In a corner of the main, sunlit square a group of old men drank tea and played a rousing game he had come to think of as speed backgammon. Their laughter and shouts filled the air. One of the spectators, an old Kaabulay, was Michael’s contact.

  Farid Jan had survived decades of war only to find that virtually his entire family had not. Now he ran the occasional errand for businessmen and reporters, acting as a guide into places that the Westerners might otherwise not see. A collector of information, once he had had a thriving business getting Michael and those like him in and out of questionable places around the country.

  “As-salaam ‘alaykum.”

  Old Farid stood as he gave the traditional Muslim greeting, his brown salwar kameez falling beyond his knees, his untrimmed beard now saturated with grey that had come from too many hair-raising adventures.

  The two men embraced. Farid was thin, his body still taut with the steel that came from years of war and a land where only the wily survived. His black eyes crinkled as he gave Michael the backslap of old comrades.

  “I had not known you had returned to Kaabul,” Farid said for anyone listening. He motioned to the low line of crumbling concrete that formed a loose seating area around the players. “Come, join us in tea. The evening is fine. See how the light shines on Kohi Asamayi.”

  Michael took the opportunity to study the scene. The old man still was a savant of subterfuge—like many Afghanis. The slight slope of the old city placed Asamayi’s T.V. tower and military observation post in silhouette against the sky, and his gesture gave Michael the chance to see if anyone followed.

  The Kaabul street flowed around him—all the tribes of Afghanistan trying to get their business done before the last call to prayer. Karakul-hatted Tajiks wandered among the more common Pashtuns with their dark turbans or pawkul caps. A few Mongol-featured Hazzara who had escaped the Taliban’s deadly purges filtered through the edges of the crowds. The air stank of rotted fruit, coriander, garlic, and cardamom, and Michael smiled at the scents of vibrant life.

  Farid lifted his bearded chin and hissed. “The chai channa.”

  Michael, feigning laughter, followed Farid’s gaze past the dried-fruit seller with his burlap sacks of dried apricots and raisins and nuts, to the tea shop back the way he had come. A Pashtun in a faded, gold-threaded kandahari cap spoke with the animated gestures of the men of Helmund Province.

  Michael’s internal alarms jangled. He’d last seen the man on a hillside with a goat. The man glanced in Michael’s direction and away.

  “Perhaps I will sit a while, old friend,” Michael said.

  Sitting would make him an easy target, but a man with something to hide would not sit and watch a board game.

  The game’s Coke bottle caps clacked quietly, quickly, their audience studying the moves and the strategy, their voices rising and falling as first one player, then the other, showed dominance. The sun sank behind the mountains and sprayed the sky with long beams of amber light, like the flecks in Khadija’s eyes.

  Damn it, the woman was no traditional Afghani beauty. She was too angular, with her square jaw and wide set eyes, and yet those eyes still held in his head—clear and dark and haunted with green and gold—like the hillsides of Afghanistan where flowers bloomed in the spring.

  Like Yaqub, and yet unalike. There was no overt passion to her like her brother had. Instead there was strength buried deep. The strength to obey a father’s wishes and be exiled far away, and strength to come home again when her father did not wish it. She’d known Mohammed had needed her.

  But her eyes held hidden wounds, too. He’d recognized them and they drew him, like to like. Too bad those eyes of hers did not also show Yaqub’s friendship. Probably safer for her. Much safer.

  He lit another cigarette and inhaled, but it just wasn’t the sam
e without the hashish. He ground it under his heel and glanced at Farid.

  “Hashemi. Is there news?”

  Farid’s head-waggle of equivocation was enough answer. Michael swore under his breath. He’d sought Hashemi since Bamiyan, to no avail. Hashemi was an evil spirit—a djinn.

  The man in the kandahari cap still waited and Michael curled his fists. Damnation, he needed news.

  As if reading his need, Farid leaned in to Michael, a large smile on his face.

  “You need to be away, my friend. Abdul Isabek waits. He has news of Hashemi—the Taliban—they increase the reward on your head. Let me lead you to the meet.”

  This was unusual. Farid usually just passed along the location of the messenger. Michael studied his friend.

  “Just tell me where. You don’t need trouble, Farid.”

  Farid waggled his head, equivocating again, which didn’t quite make sense.

  “Aacha. It is nothing. Time for an old man’s blood to move again. Besides, my daughter’s daughter hounds me for the funds to go to school before she marries. She’s all I have left and mostly an obedient girl, unlike these whores who show their faces.”

  He lifted his chin at a passing group of women who had set aside their burka and wore only their long jalabiyya and scarves.

  “But I will not see her locked away like those butcher Taliban did.” He grabbed Michael’s arm. “Come. I will only charge you double.” He grinned.

  Michael following on the old man’s flapping sandals through the stench of raw sewage and swirl of people in the narrow streets. Gradually the shops lessened and became homes. Children screamed laughter at a tethered rat they poked with a stick. The animal shrieked and tried to leap away, only to be jerked back by the kite string that held it.

  Then the buildings became bombed-out ruins. Likely no one knew who had destroyed them, but the people still brought life here among the craters and debris. Someone had planted a small garden plot amid the fallen brick.

  Yelling came from somewhere ahead and Farid lengthened his stride. In the evening light they came to the bombed-out remains of a mud-brick home. A sheet of rusted metal hung across what had once been a courtyard entry and a single black shoe lay amid the rubble—strange in a land of many one-legged men. A tingle ran up Michael’s back.

  “Every craftsman searches for what’s not there to practice his craft,” Michael whispered the Rumi saying to no one at all.

  Farid glanced at him as he ducked beyond the metal. Michael followed. Some would say he was a fool for entering this unknown place, but he knew Farid and he knew his own prowess. Besides, he needed the information Abdul Isabek had for more than his job.

  There was Afghan revenge to be had and then the bitter self-hatred might ease.

  The doorway gave onto the old garden of the house. The house itself, and a rear portion of the courtyard wall, had collapsed from the concussion of the bomb explosion that had left a deep crater in the centre of the garden. Some enterprising soul had enlarged the crater to create a cock-fighting pit lit with a circle of flickering torches already set against the gathering darkness.

  A crowd of shouting men rimmed the pit. Not a good place. Certainly not a place you could easily watch your back.

  Michael’s senses shifted to high gear, tracking the flow of men, the currents of conversation as he studied the faces. At least Farid was there, would help to watch his back.

  Sweat, poultry, and unwashed clothing tingled his nose—and blood. Farid led him behind the crowd to a space beside a barrel-chested, fair-skinned man who wore a bearskin hat with the cockiness of any Uzbek.

  Abdul Isabek grunted as Michael and Farid pushed in beside him and stared into the pit.

  A large black rooster took the attack to a red cock that had already lost most of its comb; the black cock’s spurs had been replaced by curved steel gaffs that sliced lethally at the red bird. The red cock fluttered into battle, its own spurs slashing at its larger adversary in a last desperate attempt to save its life.

  The press of men screamed and waved wads of Afghani bills. The black bird’s spurs impaled the smaller bird’s neck. The red bird slashed at the large cock’s belly. The crowd’s screams increased.

  Abdul Isabek leaned close to Michael.

  “Something happens in the north. We get word from Wakhan. Taliban. In China.” It was spoken in accented Tajik.

  Michael slapped the man on the back and held out bills as if they were agreeing on their wagers, but his mind assessed the information.

  Not Hashemi, then. Wakhan, the narrow panhandle of Afghanistan that led to the Chinese border. It had provided Marco Polo with a route to China in 1272. It had been handed to Afghanistan by the British in the late nineteenth century to form a buffer between Russia and the English sub-continent—much to displeasure of the King of Afghanistan. It still acted as a remote route to China, and anything to do with the Chinese was important.

  In the pit, blood pulsed from the spitted red bird. It struggled to free itself as the black cock pecked out its eyes.

  The men’s shouts rose as the red bird collapsed. It was now or never. There would be mayhem as the men exchanged their winnings.

  “What word?” Michael asked.

  “From Kashgar. The Uigher. An attack. The Amrikaayi…,” Abdul Isabek began, then his face went stiff, eyes wide. He sagged against Michael. A knife handle grew from a bloom of blood on his back.

  The crowd seethed around them, screaming at the birds. No one had noticed the knife work. Michael scanned the nearest men seeking the danger. Across the pit he spotted the man in the gold-threaded kandahari cap.

  He was too far away to have wielded the blade. There was someone else. A trap.

  Michael pulled Abdul Isabek close, but already his eyes filmed. There was too much noise and too much danger. Michael turned to Farid.

  Gone. Michael caught a glimpse of him exchanging money with a Tajik.

  Men pressed around him. The owner of the black cock collected his tattered bird and two new combatants were brought to the pit.

  Just get out. Divert attention and get out.

  Michael tumbled Khan’s body into the fighting pit even as he shifted back through the crowd, aware of the knives, the danger. The ring of spectators went silent.

  His knife filled his hand. Just get to the corrugated metal that formed the wall behind him.

  A roar went up. Every man freed their weapon. Oaths, epithets filled the circle and Michael prayed for a fight. A fight would make it more difficult for the enemy to find him.

  The man in the kandahari cap fought towards Michael, but was caught in the crush of shifting men. Farid yelled at him from beside the Tajik.

  Friend or enemy? Decide later. Get out and get the information to others who could use it.

  Michael made it to the wall, rusted steel at his back. He awaited the attack, the flash of steel.

  Nothing. Only loose wire tethered the sheeting to the remains of the wall. It leaned against the crumbling masonry. Michael slipped between metal and wall, out into the narrow alley that ran behind the house.

  The pungent odor of opium and sweat met him. The air was cool after the press of men. His pulse hammered with adrenaline.

  Something. A shift of dark air. The hiss of cloth.

  He spun as an attacker’s knife slashed. The blade flashed in the glow of the cock-fight’s torches through holes in the sheet metal fence. The knife sliced his side. Breath slammed out of his chest as the sweet rush of pain lit his brain.

  Metal on meat. When knives entered the equation, flesh always lost.

  The man slashed again. Michael leapt back, almost slipping in the slick of fresh sewage.

  Damnation! The whole thing had been a setup. Kill Abdul Isabek and this was the logical escape route. The man had waited here like the answer to a prayer Michael hadn’t known he asked.

  He ignored the flooding shock from the wound. Stepped, twisted, slammed his instep into the other man’s knee. Tissue and bon
e cracked. The man screamed, but lashed again with the knife. Met Michael’s blade in a cry of metal.

  He danced back and the other man’s bloody blade caught in the loose fold of Michael’s petu. He threw the shawl into the other man’s face, following it with his knife. The blade slammed into the man’s throat.

  Bone crunched and the attacker’s breath turned to a gurgle. The sound of fighting from the cockpit increased to a roar. The shawl fell away and Michael caught the man, pressed him up against the brick wall where a stray beam of torchlight found his features through the gloom.

  Hawk-nosed Pashtun. Breath carried traces of the tea and lentils he had eaten as his last meal. Dark hair caught in a black-and-white turban. Mustache and full, ratty beard. Young. Too young. Probably one of the devout recruited from the Pakistani madrassa to fight jihad against the West.

  “Damn you,” Michael growled, and shook the corpse. “Why couldn’t you be stronger? Faster? Why not help me die?”

  Michael knew he should be leaving; the warmth of blood down his side said he needed medical attention, and he had to get his precious information to Simon Cox at the embassy. Anything that brought China into the Afghan equation was a problem Afghanistan and her allies didn’t need.

  He looked at the empty eyes. Sighed.

  “Be free, my friend. Free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, and mountainous wanting.”

  Pain hitched his side as he leaned closer. Let there be some clue this time. Something that would make the decision easier, the death he knew he deserved, endurable.

  “Pray, soul of fallen warrior, what waits beyond?”

  No answer.

  He dumped the body in the sewage, reclaimed his filthy petu to tie against the blood, and loped into the darkness. He’d acted like a damned neophyte.

  No more.

  Chapter 4

  The single marigold filled his nostrils with a scent of earth and green growth and hope as Mohammed heard Khadija return from seeing Michael away. The tea cups and pot clattered together in a most unusual way; Khadija was generally much more careful with those precious remnants of her mother.