What Changes Everything Part 8

She nodded.

The stiff posture of her back, the rootedness of her feet, made a statement that demanded a response. "I have to," he said.

She shook her head. "No, you don"t."

"I have to do everything I can."

"Everything you can from the safety of our home, fine. Traveling into Ghazni, speaking out there on behalf of an American: this is madness. Were you so long away from this country that you forgot?"

"I have to do what I can. He"s my boss, and he"s human, and he"s done nothing wrong. It"s not nationality that matters."

"In your mind, yes. But not in theirs."

"What about yours?" he asked. "Would you feel better if it weren"t an American I was trying to help?"

She didn"t answer.

"It"s not as simple as us against them," he said. "It"s never been that simple. It"s all of us-Mr. Todd, and you, and me, and the others-and among us are some of them. You know that."

She turned and knelt before a wide-mouthed bowl she"d already filled with bread dough. She dove her right hand into the bowl and began kneading. The sight soothed him.

"Us. Them," she said after a minute. "A fine and esoteric argument. It will not help when they ask if you love infidels."

"I can manage their questions." He spoke with greater confidence than he felt. She wasn"t fooled.

"Like my uncle did?" His wife"s uncle, a policeman in Wardak, had been shot to death by Talibs five months ago simply because he worked for the government.

"I am not going to be killed, Samira. This is a jirga."

"And you think they will support this American over their own?"

"It"s a matter of honor. They are real Pashtuns. They will decide as they should."

She laughed, a little harshly. "Real Pashtuns. That"s what you count on?" She rose, dusted her hand on her skirt, stepped back and examined him. "Do you know a single one of them personally?"

"My uncle is part of the jirga; I told you that."

"He is your mother"s cousin. What do you know about him?"

"Samira, enough," Amin said gently. "If I am to be the father my children would look up to, I have to do this."

She lowered her voice and moved closer to him. "Oh no, don"t bring your children into this. Your impulse is as pure as a mud puddle, and you are only paying half-attention to your own mind and heart, Amin, if you don"t see that." He didn"t answer, so she went on. "You"re trying to change something that can"t be changed anymore. Something I think could never have been changed by you alone, but in any case, that caravan has moved on, years ago. Why are the dogs still barking?"

He sighed and sunk to his heels, squatting, so that he looked up at her as he spoke. He knew this would help soften her. "I could have done more, back then," he said. "And yes, it troubles me still. But this is not related to that."

"Really? I think-do you want to know?"

He smiled. "If I didn"t? Whatever is in your heart always rises to your tongue, Samira jan."

"You are being selfish in putting yourself in danger because of decades-old guilt. You"re not thinking of your children at all."

He almost laughed at the courage it clearly took her to say this. Theirs had been an arranged marriage; she was the daughter of his father"s cousin, seven years younger than he. He"d found her beautiful, but so shy. They"d lived together in the States for two years while he studied, and then returned. Once back, she"d faced the criticism of her family, who thought Amin was misguided-or even immoral-to work with foreigners. Under these pressures, he"d observed her strength and confidence grow, and he loved her more profoundly than when they were first married.

He rose. "Is this what you want to say to me in the moments before I leave?" he asked mildly.

"Our final conversation, you mean?" She glared at him.

"Samira, Allah is with me," Amin said. "But that was easier to achieve than gaining your support."

A weak smile appeared unbidden on her face, then vanished. "I see what you refuse to," she said.

"I see it," he said. "But I have to try. Inshallah, Mr. Todd will be freed, and I"ll come back. Inshallah, in three days this will be done. Now, give me something of your love to carry with me."

She stood silently for a moment, then went to the corner of the room, rummaged in a trunk and returned with a piece of cloth he knew she"d cut from her wedding veil. He handed her his cup and put the cloth in a pocket inside his vest. He put his hand on her cheek, but she pulled away. "I am not ready to be a widow," she said. "My children are not ready to be fatherless."

"A few days, Samira." He smiled at her, gave her a wink. "And then I will be hungry, my wife. So be ready for my return."

Clarissa, September 12th By the time Clarissa reaches the phone, it"s gone dead. It rings again, almost immediately, and she lifts the receiver. Todd"s voice, asking for something both urgent and vague. She calls his name and rushes to reply-wait, Todd, wait for me-but then out of her mouth, instead of words, a river of color spills: yellow becoming orange becoming red, flowing away from her in an arc.

Clarissa awoke fevered, and fully, as if she'd just run a block, panting, with no tendrils left behind in the thick mud of la.s.situde. The call, Todd"s voice, the colors: it felt like a memory, but must have been a dream.

She turned on her side. Thursday morning, 2:53 a.m., if one believed the clock by her bed. More like noon, going by her own body. Which made some kind of sense: it was nearly 11:30 a.m. in Kabul, and she was living in two diametrically opposed time zones now. She flipped on the lights and glanced around the bedroom. Her possessions had begun to look strange to her, unfamiliar and unwelcome: an oblong tube of hand-cream erect on the nightstand as if prepared to blast off and take flight, unread magazines lying fallen and limp, a closet with skirts clinging one to the next like timid sisters. None of it meant anything to her. Grief combined with fear had the force of a blizzard in the city, changing the shapes of buildings, turning the solid suddenly illusionary, obscuring all dependable landmarks.

The only item she felt she needed-and even its practical use remained unclear-was a map of Afghanistan the FBI had given her; she"d posted it on the wall. Sometimes she stood close to it, becoming intimate with the country"s geography: the terrain of regions, the location of provinces, the jumble of letters that made up the names of tiny villages. Sometimes she stood at a distance to study it, and the shape of Afghanistan became the profile of a woman gazing thoughtfully down at Pakistan, with Iran at her back and Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on her head. What were these places? Except for Todd"s presence, they meant nothing to her. She knew little of the terrain or the weather, and the towns were filled with strangers. Jack said they thought Todd was being held in Ghazni Province, right about where the woman"s eye would be. A US military presence remained in the province, but it was Talibanheld, Clarissa knew. Talibs had carried out a.s.sa.s.sinations of local officials, as well as previous kidnappings, including the well-known abduction a few years back of 23 South Korean missionaries. After 42 days, all but two were safely released. The other two: killed. Grim details; still, in certain moods, she found them comforting. As though mathematical odds could be extrapolated.

At this moment, however, nothing comforted. She went downstairs to the tiny room that was Todd"s study, opened the door and flipped on the lights. On the long desk sat a pile of yellow legal pads. She picked one up to read Todd"s scrawl. "Center expansion. Laura? Technical training-social media." In a corner on the floor, she saw three news magazines and a book spread at its spine, as if Todd had just put it down. Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence. Pinned to the wall above the light switch, a snapshot showed Todd, grinning, standing in the middle of a group of people. He"d told her the names of some, but Clarissa had met none of them. She felt sharply isolated. Who were they? How well did they know Todd? What would they tell Clarissa to do? What should she be doing?

Looking at the photo, she began to feel the walls squeeze in, an image from horror movies, she told herself. She sought a logical mind, but could find no other way to cla.s.sify the sensation. In the first days after the kidnapping, shock had made it seem as if her eyes were being tugged toward her temples. Then fear left her stomach as raw as the inside of a carved pumpkin. But this new off-kilter reality-this sense that what had previously comforted her now threatened her-was something else, something she couldn"t yet name. She found it hard to breathe and even more, she was struck by the illogical certainty that if she didn"t eject herself from her home, she might be crushed.

She"d never been given to insomnia before. She loved this two-story apartment that she and Todd had bought three years ago. On the rare occasions when she did awaken in the night, she"d found comfort in knowing she was safely coc.o.o.ned in a place that felt, for the first time she could remember, like home. With all lights off, she could glide to the fridge, or find her way to her reading chair, or confidently locate the front-door handle to make sure it was locked. This home felt like an extension of self, a sanctuary.

Now, though, it seemed whatever turmoil waited on the city streets for a lone woman on foot was less dangerous than what hovered inside.

And if she was feeling trapped here in her sanctuary, how did Todd feel, confined in someplace she struggled to imagine? She"d pictured a small compound, set apart from its neighbors and surrounded by high walls. Within, a building, the color of terracotta. She envisioned a thick but dusty rug on the floor along with a thinly padded mat for sleeping. One window, surely: the bit of blue sky a redemption. Any books? Probably not. A radio would also be too much to hope for. And the food? She wondered if he"d lost weight. He"d told her he had an iron stomach, which must be acting in his favor now, helping him stay physically strong. Emotionally, she imagined him solid too, calm and confident. She didn"t have it in her to imagine anything else.

Already wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, she tied the laces to her tennis shoes, tugged a sweatshirt over her head and slipped downstairs. Her stomach felt hollow. Hunger had largely left her during these last days-she"d always been an indifferent eater, but now she found herself forgetting about food altogether until she"d notice her hands were shaking. Ruby kept dropping off dishes, and Clarissa didn"t have the heart to tell her to stop. Clarissa"s kitchen had grown crowded and she felt guilty having all that food around as if she were preparing for a party. Now, by the light of the refrigerator, she ate half a yogurt, putting the remainder back before going out the side door on the ground floor.

The air had fallen still, almost tranquil, something that happened only at night in the city and rarely even then. It felt crisp, but tempered by a bit of Indian summer. The street lamp in front of her building spilled a murky teardrop on the sidewalk. To the left was the known neighborhood, to the right, less so. She hesitated only for a second, then turned right and began to walk, focusing on long strides, wanting to feel her body in motion, her arms swinging. Her sluggishness diminished with each step. At the corner, she headed toward Eastern Parkway, relatively well lit, and began to walk under the shadow of its paired trees, their kissing branches like a promise above her head.

She tried to relax as she walked. She wished she could think about something else for a while, but she couldn"t, and now the previous day"s conversation with the FBI ran through her mind. Jack on the speakerphone, Ruby, Mikey, Bill Snyder and Clarissa sitting in her kitchen.

"One more contact," Jack had said at the start of the conversation, and she"d felt her breath catch in her throat-each "contact" felt hopeful and abrasive at once. The Feds had a local guy speaking to the kidnappers separately, even as Amin tried his own path. To Clarissa, it seemed a little muddled, but Jack told her they didn"t want to let this connection go unless Amin seemed to be making what he called "bankable progress."

"They repeated their demand for $1.5 million," Jack said. "They also said they"d like to speak directly to you, Clarissa."

"They asked for her by name?" Mikey asked.

"To his wife, they said. We told them we would check to see when that would be possible, and they are calling again this week, they said."

"What do they want with Clarissa?" Mikey"s tone was protective.

"They aren"t getting anywhere with our negotiators on the ransom request," Jack said. "We"re stalling, and they get that. I think they"ve decided to go for the heart."

"Shouldn"t your negotiators be more skillful?" Bill Snyder asked.

"Should I talk to them?" Clarissa interjected, not waiting for an answer to that pointed but rhetorical question.

"Yes, I think you should," Jack said. "Right now they see Todd as goods. If they talk with you, they might begin to see him as human. We"d like to hook up your phone so the conversation can be recorded. We want you to say you want to achieve a solution and you want your husband home. Nothing else."

"Shouldn"t she ask to talk directly to Todd?" Bill Snyder asked. "Wouldn"t that be natural? Won"t anything else sound phony?"

"Look." Jack sounded slightly impatient. "Let"s run through where we are at this moment. From the three contacts we"ve had, we believe Todd is still in Afghanistan, and probably in the hands of criminals, as opposed to the Taliban."

"Of course our man on the ground has said that all along," Bill Snyder said. "So your guys are catching up to that viewpoint?"

"Well, the lines are blurry over there," Jack said. "Intel is cautious in making a call on this. But they note the kidnappers haven"t issued any political demands, which kidnappers who solely identified with the Taliban likely would. This impacts the way we negotiate, and actually in a good way. It gives us a little more leverage. "

Bill Snyder gave an audible exasperated sigh. Clarissa hadn"t warmed to Jack either, but she decided she would talk to Bill privately later about adopting a more cooperative att.i.tude, for Todd"s sake.

"So ultimately we really have no idea who has Dad?" Ruby asked.

"They are terrorists," Jack said, "but we believe they"re contingent terrorists, not absolute terrorists."

"Which means what?" Clarissa asked.

"They don"t have much of a political agenda. It"s about dollars. On the other hand, we"ve tried hard to talk down the dollar amount they"re demanding, and they haven"t budged at all. That concerns us."

"Why?" Ruby asked.

"If they"re holding out so completely, they probably have a Plan B. And that likely involves selling Todd to the Taliban. The Taliban is aware of Todd"s presence, obviously, and there"s probably been some discussion of transfer of goods. Sorry, but remember, to them this is business."

"We get that," Clarissa said.

"Right. So his situation is relatively stable at the moment, but if the kidnappers start to feel the monetary negotiations are irrevocably stalled..." He paused. "In that case, they would sell him-for less than they hope to get from us, but at least for something-to the Taliban or, even worse, specifically the Haqqani network. Haqqani"s group is pretty intractable. Then your husband"s situation becomes significantly worse. I can"t stress that word enough. Significantly."

He didn"t repeat aloud the question about permission to rescue, but Clarissa knew it dangled in the silent s.p.a.ce on the phone line. She let her eyes linger over the faces in her kitchen. Ruby"s position had not changed, and Bill continued to absolutely oppose military involvement. Mikey had told Clarissa privately that he thought if a military operation was to be attempted, it should be sooner rather than later, while Todd was physically stronger.

Why couldn"t Clarissa simply say yes? Why did her gut keep saying no? Was that really what Todd would want?

On Eastern Parkway now, Clarissa pa.s.sed a suitcase abandoned next to a bench, and then a parked car with a man sitting in front, dancehall reggae blaring from his dashboard radio. "Givin ya mi man juice, jah mi baby madda, so we can pa.s.sa-pa.s.sa, oohman mi naa jesta." Indifferent to her destination, she cut in toward St. John"s Place. She'd already left behind the few landmarks she knew from this neighborhood and was pa.s.sing boarded-up brownstones and apartment buildings she didn"t recognize.

As she walked, she tried to visualize Todd. He"d always made her think of the ocean. His tall, lanky body belonged to a lifeguard, but his eyes were long and fish-shaped, and his lips sprawled above his chin like they were lounging on a beach, enjoying themselves. His hair was graying, but still brown with a touch of gold from the sun. And his arms had always seemed surprisingly muscular; she"d teased him once that it was a shame they were so often hidden beneath shirt sleeves. His voice held a scratchy undertone, as though he were a smoker, though he wasn"t.

She found herself remembering a trip they"d taken, right after they got married, to Tombstone in Arizona. Todd appreciated her interest in cemeteries, though he didn"t share it. On this day, she"d done research and was ready to show him around the cemetery she"d never visited. Before she could, though, he"d taken her hand authoritatively, as if he knew where to go. He"d led her to a rock-covered grave marked with the epitaph they"d both laughingly read aloud in unison: "Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a .44. No Les, no more."

She could recall with precision the heat of the sun and the dust of the cemetery, the ocotillo cacti and the spiny palo verde trees with their tiny, thirsty leaves. The feel of Todd"s hand, warm but dry, as they weaved between the tombstones. The closeness between them combined with the frivolity of the moment and the pleasure she"d taken in the fact that he"d brought her to the very gravesite she"d intended to show him. It was as if they had communicated without words.

Why couldn"t they communicate that way now?

An ice cream truck pa.s.sed, playing its repet.i.tive tune. Too improbable to believe it patrolled the streets at this hour looking for ice cream lovers; likely it was hawking something else. Clarissa stopped at that thought, wondering when she"d become so cynical, so convinced that little was as it appeared to be.

She glanced up at the street sign above her head: Ralph Avenue. She"d never had the occasion to walk here before. The sidewalk was more littered than hers; the buildings presented themselves less gracefully. In front of one boarded-up door lay an empty Georgi vodka bottle. At the corner stood a bodega and a beauty salon, both sleeping behind metal shutters for the night. She paused, dropped her shoulders and waited, listening to her own breath. What do you want, Todd? Do I trust Amin? Do I tell Jack they can barge in with guns? I want this to end, I want you home. I want you alive. So give me a sign.

She stood motionless and waited, expectant, for several minutes. But nothing came, nothing at all, and quietly, adamantly, she cursed.

Danil, September 12th Danil, crouching, paused from his work to watch an approaching woman halt and turn statue-like on a street corner in the dark half a block away. She didn"t seem desperate and she didn"t act frightened or high. But it was all backwards to see a woman alone in this neighborhood at this hour. If you did, she"d either be a crack wh.o.r.e yelling a waterfall of curses, or she"d be alert and nervous, head bowed, legs moving like a racetrack engine. In neither case would she gaze directly ahead, pausing as if to meditate, like she was in some yoga studio in Brooklyn Heights.

Danil straightened and thought about calling out to her. Would it scare her to hear a voice emerging from the darkness? If she was sane, certainly yes. And if she wasn"t, which was more likely, wouldn"t he simply be starting s.h.i.t for no good reason? Just last week, a man on a bicycle had paused at 3 a.m. and begun telling Danil a history of nearby Nostrand Avenue, which seemed potentially interesting until he started including details of the lives of the devils he said hid beneath the fire hydrants, cracking the sidewalks when they emerged in the afternoons. Danil finally had to pretend to be finished, walking once around the block, relieved to find the man gone when he returned a quarter of an hour later. No thank you.

As he watched, considering his options, the woman seemed to shudder. She muttered something, and then began walking again, pa.s.sing without appearing to notice him, though near enough that he could have taken two steps forward and touched her. She was a bit over five feet tall with frizzy hair to her shoulders, slight in build, maybe in her late 30s. Her face was focused, but she didn"t appear crazy, or blurred by alcohol or drugs.

Again he thought about calling out, scolding, warning. Hey, this is central Brooklyn. The economy sucks. Folks get desperate or crazed and then rub up right against other folks. What"re you doing? Go home.

People didn"t realize how often they put themselves at risk, how many hundreds of times each week in ways both little and large. "Accidents" were nearly always, in retrospect, entirely predictable, that was one thing he"d learned at a cost, though not soon enough to teach his little brother. One simple mistake led to another, and then it spiraled out of control. The plane crash: preventable. The bicyclist hit by a car, the fire that starts in the fifth-floor apartment, Al Capone shooting himself in the groin. The soldier killed by friendly fire. There is an order in which things are broken, rules as quantifiable as gravity, if scientists would only turn their attention there. Within that order, logic dictates some woman who chose to venture out onto the street on a blind-eyed middle-of-the-night stroll could well be the city"s next victim of violence.

Someone should warn her, this woman who didn"t seem to understand.

As she moved away, he became caught in an airless moment of doubt. Here he was, faceto-face with a question that had been nibbling at him for months. How much responsibility did one person have toward another? If what you mainly had in common was being alive at the same moment and in the same physical s.p.a.ce, and then being present enough to see a need, how far must your outstretched hand reach?

Put another way: what did family, in the broadest sense, mean?

This interlock of blood connections, this steady ent.i.ty that traveled together over generations, linked by a sense of common history and a mandate of loyalty-what happened when that history frayed, interpretations of the past divided, loyalties unraveled? At that moment, wasn"t it fair to rethink the narrowness of an obligation to those who first tucked you in at night, and revise the definition? Couldn"t Joni be his sister? Couldn"t a woman on the street at night be his aunt?

And, in return, shouldn"t someone else look after his own mother?

So here he was. His theory in practice. And his turn.

Who was he? Someone who helped, or not?

Then his mind swung the other direction. Only fifteen minutes more, that"s all he needed to finish up here, to complete the only undertaking that brought him relief: this time, the face of a soldier in a purple splotch of color. His more mature way of saying: f.u.c.k your war. See? He was growing up.

This woman wasn"t in immediate trouble, as far as Danil could tell. Besides, he had to watch out for himself. Out here, no one had his back but him. He had to stay aware, cemented to his surroundings, and at the same time operate as if in a bubble, his energy focused on his work. It took effort to get into that s.p.a.ce and he wasn"t ready to move out of it yet.

But maybe this was the way it happened: one excuse after another to divert one"s eyes, to let the stranger walk by. To pretend need didn"t exist.

He took a deep breath, and shuddered in an echo of the woman"s tremor. Then he silenced his mind and turned back to the stencil on the wall: his loud whisper in the dark, a public intimacy, a swipe of spray paint that, remarkably, soothed like a lullaby.

Todd, September 12th "You love your country?"

"Yes I do," Todd said. "But I also love Afghanistan."

"Bah." Sher Agha made a scoffing sound. He"d arrived this morning and, watching him through the window, Todd had become doubly certain he was in charge. It was in how Sher Agha held his shoulders back while talking to the other guards, and in the way they leaned in toward him. He wore a white turban. Deep dimples sunk into his cheeks. His face reminded Todd a little of Ahmad Shah Ma.s.soud"s, only more worn, and his eyes did not contain the thoughtfulness of Ma.s.soud"s.

Todd sat uncomfortably in the middle of the room. His ribs were still painful. They"d also bound his ankles right after dawn prayers for no reason discernable to him, and that made it impossible for him to stand. "Afghanistan," Sher Agha said, "is not one country. I am Pashtun. Your country makes patriots. People like you who think of themselves as American, without loyalty to the land of their grandfathers. But this does not make you open-minded. America does not produce humans. Humans would not behave as you have in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo."

"I agree that was wrong. But it wasn"t me."

"Yes," Sher Agha said, nodding as if with satisfaction. "And then you, all of you, deny responsibility. This is your pattern."