The Opium Prince Read online

Page 22


  There was even a small river, albeit a shy and pale one. Sayed and the others poured gasoline on rags and tossed them on the flowers, which coiled and twisted in the flames. Daniel slipped from behind a boulder, and Sherzai caught sight of him, taking him back to the car. His face smeared with soot and his clothes smelling of smoke, agha told Daniel his father was a brave man who did what needed to be done. At home, the Sugar Fire went undiscussed, Sayed refusing to answer Daniel’s questions. As always, the task fell to Sherzai. Daniel sometimes wondered what he would think of his father if Sherzai hadn’t been there to make sense of the man. After the fire, fear drove some of the poppy growers out. The poppy operations still in progress in Helmand were not on the best plots, nor were they run by men with Taj Maleki’s skill.

  The highlight of February was Ian’s purchase of a car made for royalty: the former king’s limousine. Daoud’s regime had confiscated the monarchy’s fleet of cars the day of the coup four years ago, and their long-promised auction finally took place. Standing at Daniel’s front door on Valentine’s Day, Ian’s whole face was a wide-open smile, his cheeks pink. He wore blue jeans and an old T-shirt, his standard uniform now that Pamela had gone back to America in the rising tide of violence. No more pistachio shirts with arrow collars; the bolo ties were gone, too.

  “Did you get me chocolates?” Daniel said.

  “Heart-shaped ones, and a dozen fucking roses.” Ian grinned. “They’re in the limo.” He crooked his thumb over his shoulder. “But if you want them, you’ll have to come along. You haven’t worked on a car with me for ages. Let’s go.”

  The royal limo was in good shape, but it was old, its coat dented and dull and the radio dead. While Ian tidied up the body with a dent-puller, Daniel repaired the radio. He felt himself sweating through his oil-stained shirt, although the weather was cool. He also felt happy, as if making the car whole again made him whole again, too.

  “She’s ready,” Ian said, tossing his tools to the ground. “All she needs now is a new coat of paint and she’ll be fit for a king. Again.” He leaned in, screwing up the volume on the radio.

  “Pretty staticky,” Daniel said.

  Ian shrugged. “Some antenna somewhere not working, I guess.”

  “It’s a beautiful car,” Daniel said.

  Ian slung an arm around his shoulder. “How come you call a beauty like this an ‘it’?”

  “Because it’s a thing.”

  “Whoa. It is not just a thing.”

  “Whatever you say.” There was a time when Daniel would have agreed with him.

  Ian pointed to the tiny fridge pushed up against the back of the driver’s seat. He wiggled his bushy eyebrows. “Open it.”

  Arranged neatly on the only rack, which was marred by patches of rust, was a heart-shaped box of Belgian chocolates. Ian was laughing silently, chest heaving.

  “Where are the roses?” Daniel said, laughing too. He felt giddy from hours of work, hunger, beer, and the smell of gasoline. They leaned back in the car’s luxurious seats, eating chocolates and wondering why girls liked the stuff so much. Daniel had talked to Rebecca just hours ago. She was happy. She was healthy. The baby was growing. She missed him. Everything was normal. Except that nothing was, and a seed of dread was growing inside him. He sensed that when everything exploded, he would be going with it. He fought this feeling night and day, finding solace in the thought of reuniting with Rebecca and making a new home somewhere in a tidy little house with a tidy little fence. Every time he thought of this, his stomach tightened.

  27

  By the end of the month, winter retreated and the rains came, announcing spring. On the city’s sidewalks, last year’s trash surfaced on the pavement as the snow melted: old candy wrappers, disintegrating cigarette boxes. Daniel both dreaded and anticipated the day the agency would visit Fever Valley to see whether Agent Ruby had destroyed the Gulzar soil or crops were growing normally. When that morning came, it was humid and cold, the sky a slate of steely gray. Daniel arrived at the USADE office just as the others were gathering by the door, ready to go.

  Seth led the USADE delegation, which he packed into two vans. Lukewarm tea spilled from Daniel’s glass as he twisted himself into the last row of seats between Iggy and a local expert whose name he forgot. At first, everyone was quiet, even Seth. After a short while, the choppy, awkward sounds of small talk began. As they approached Fever Valley, the chatter slowed and eventually stopped. Seth’s knuckles were pale, his fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel. The nameless expert took long drags off his cigarette. Iggy tapped his foot and kept his eyes on the landscape.

  They passed the last village. The turnoff appeared, and Seth took his foot off the gas. It was clear he was unsure where to stop. In winter, the land lay buried under a blanket of snow that blurred the boundaries between the fields, though villagers and nomads always knew where one ended and another began. In spring, the snow thawed a little at a time, creating a beige-and-white quilt that stretched toward the mountains. Daniel recognized the curve of the Yassaman field. When they arrived at Gulzar, he called out a good stopping point for Seth, who edged the van to the side of the highway, the second van following suit.

  Engines fell silent; car doors slammed loudly. They crossed the highway. Iggy had forgotten to wear fieldwork shoes, and he tiptoed across the road in his loafers, avoiding patches of crushed, dirty snow. Standing at the edge of the Gulzar field, none of the men spoke. Even before they had stopped the van, anyone looking outside knew what they would find. Seth stood with his hands on his hips, Iggy’s tie flapped in the rising breeze while sweat trickled down his face.

  “It’s normal for plants to come in slowly after a strong herbicide is used,” the local expert said. He spoke too loud and too fast. He walked away, stroking his mustache. Iggy waded into the cracked snow and bent low to examine the growth. But there wasn’t much to look at. The corn was unrecognizable, just a spill of limp leaves clinging to stalks that struggled to grow. The stream, filled by recent rain, flowed amply, and its waters tumbled into the Gulzar field through the channels that had been built last year.

  Seth rubbed his chin. “The Gulzar soil was never good.”

  “The way we fertilized this place?” Iggy said. “All the water that’s flowing in? All the work we put in? It should still be coming in better than this.”

  “Agent Ruby,” Daniel said.

  “No one asked you,” Seth replied, but his voice betrayed disappointment.

  “Can’t you see what’s going on?”

  None are so blind as those who will not see, Telaya said, quoting from a Bible she couldn’t have read.

  Daniel walked over to Taj’s land. It was like the Yassaman and Gulzar fields were experiencing entirely different seasons, springtime coming to only one of them. Planted in January, the green poppy stalks of Yassaman were coming in dense, crowding each other like belles in line for a dance. Kochis wearing heavy scarves used scythes to thin the sprouting plants. They worked as if the Feverdrops Slaughter had never happened.

  USADE had several weeks to prepare a report on the Gulzar field. The staff couldn’t disagree about what they had observed, but continued to disagree on its causes. The conclusion reflected Seth’s views. None of it was surprising, and Daniel had stopped arguing. At the office, Miss Soraya was Seth’s secretary now, but she didn’t seem to know it, and if she did, she didn’t care. She would stop by Daniel’s office with tea and offers of assistance. She even continued helping him with personal matters. One afternoon in the middle of April, she delivered the quarterly reports for Daniel’s gemstone firm. Sherzai had dropped them off.

  “This is January through March,” she said. Daniel scribbled his signature on the report. That same day, a Communist whose name he’d heard before was assassinated outside his own home. Elias called Daniel and told him what everybody was saying: the government had killed him. Two days later, thousands
of sympathizers marched in the streets. President Daoud warned of a crackdown. The streets fell quiet.

  On the morning of Thursday, April 27, Seth opened the USADE office to hold a special meeting about the Gulzar field and Agent Ruby. The call included Smythe and John Marquette, the vice president of Dannaco-Hastings, who apologized for making everyone come in when the office was closed. His schedule alone had dictated the time. Miss Soraya came in for a few hours to provide assistance. She offered her help to Daniel, not Seth. When Daniel entered the conference room, he felt a certain satisfaction in seeing Seth’s tired face. Hadn’t he wanted to run the office? By all means, let him report what Agent Ruby had done. After brief pleasantries, Seth began to describe the state of the Gulzar field. Marquette dissipated the tension with a single phrase. From his office in Arlington, five thousand miles away, he explained that nothing was growing in that field because the soil had always been bad. It had nothing to do with Ruby.

  Seth pointed to the speakerphone, the color returning to his face. “That’s exactly what I said.” He slapped the table.

  In the measured, reasonable voice of executives everywhere, Marquette said he had expected this outcome. “Ever since we got Greenwood’s files, we knew,” he said. “The field just isn’t usable and never was, no matter how much water and other good stuff you throw on it.”

  Smythe, who was breathing heavily into the phone and apologizing regularly as he complained of a cold, gave a vigorous endorsement of what was emerging as the official position: Agent Ruby had not failed as much as been wasted on the Gulzar field.

  “With all due respect, nothing like Agent Ruby has ever left the land unharmed,” Daniel said. “I’d suggest dumping it into the sewer, but who knows what that’ll do to it.”

  From Arlington, Marquette’s voice replied, “Mr. Sajadi, I think we all know the value of your contributions. This is your mess. That whole batch was wasted. We’ll move the rest of it down to Little America in Helmand, where good Americans are doing real work.” Before Daniel could reply, he continued. “Frankly, I’m not sure what you’re doing in this meeting. You’ve personally cost my firm a lot of money.”

  “If you specify a dollar amount, I’ll reimburse you with interest.” Daniel excused himself, grateful for Iggy’s half-hidden smile. As he passed Miss Soraya outside, she told him Ian had called to say the limo’s radio was broken again. It was completely dead. She laughed and added, “My radio isn’t working either, and it was made in Japan.”

  He was glad for her laugh, but it brought little solace. He was now counting not just the days but the hours until he could fly back to California, to Rebecca. He asked Miss Soraya to bring him the bottle of whiskey from the liquor cart, which was now in a guest office. Once he was alone with Johnnie Walker, he locked the door to his tiny office and drank from a glass she’d filled with ice. When the glass was empty, he poured the cubes onto the floor and watched them melt. Time passed quickly, and he could hear the others leave the office, silence filling the suites before the clock struck noon. Alone, he drank until the bottle was empty.

  When he lay down on the sofa, he felt as if he were falling a great distance, only to land on cushions that were hard and punishing. He closed his eyes because the sky was spinning and the ground was spinning and he was spinning, too. Spinning like a dervish. Like the earth. Straight into an abyss. The room began to fade.

  28

  When Daniel awoke, his body was shaking. Beneath him, the floor was shaking, too. How could he still be so drunk? Or was this an especially horrific hangover?

  The windows began to tremble. The wedding photo on his desk tipped over, its glass cracking. It wasn’t him, then. The world was shuddering. Daniel struggled to rise. His stomach tightened, and he spewed hot bitter liquid everywhere. Outside, men were shouting. These were not the chaotic shouts of the mad but the precise, self-assured shouts of people who worked for the law.

  “More to the left! Stop there. You! Do you hear me? There!”

  What was happening? Crawling on his hands and knees, Daniel went to the window and peered over the ledge. He tried to make sense of the scene below. The traffic circle and the road were overrun with uniforms. There had to be thirty men out there. This was no ordinary parade of military might. What had happened while he’d slept? Jeeps were parked along the circle, their engines running. He could hear the eager voices of obedient young men asking questions, ready for a fight. Excited. Daniel knew now why the earth was shaking. A column of tanks was moving toward the circle. He reflexively put a hand on his chest as if feeling his heartbeat would prove this was real.

  He saw men and women stalking and running away from the scene, disappearing into nearby streets. But others simply stood on the sidelines, staring. Two soldiers were arranging the installation of signs and barricades around the area as the tanks came closer. Others brandished machine guns, which they aimed at the Ministry of Finance. Their medals and stripes shone in the sun. So did the emblem on their chests. They were close enough that Daniel could read the word at the center of the red logo: kalq. The more radical of the two main Communist factions was now shouting orders outside his building, no longer marching in the street or waving flags in front of a nightclub. They were here. Armed, organized, and with intent. Above the name was the gold star. He pictured agha with his cane, alone at home, unable to flee. They wouldn’t harm an old man with a bad leg—surely they wouldn’t. His stomach twisted, squeezing out more liquid. Fighting to catch his breath, he backed away from the window. When the room stopped trembling, his terror deepened. It meant the tanks had come to a stop. There were more shouts, more loyal men obeying orders.

  Hugging his knees, Daniel lowered his head, willing his mind to work. He crawled to his desk and pulled the phone to the floor. He lifted the receiver. Nothing. They had cut the lines. He switched on the radio. Nothing. That was when he realized that they had taken control of the radio signal yesterday afternoon, shutting it off throughout the city. He got to his feet and left his office, but it was as empty as he’d thought. Everyone had gone home.

  He didn’t have to hunker here alone. There were civilians in the street whom the Kalq seemed to be ignoring. And Daniel had diplomatic immunity. He tore off his soiled shirt and took a clean one from his desk drawer. He rummaged for his wallet and took out his diplomat’s ID. He found a satchel in Iggy’s office, dumped its contents, and stuffed it with every document he could find about Fever Valley. He left everything else behind, wondering if he would see any of it again. His broken wedding photo remained facedown on the desk. His intoxication was rapidly turning into a hangover, stabbing at his eyes and the back of his head. In the bathroom, he washed his face. The cold water stung. He walked slowly down the stairs and exited the building into an alley, where his car was parked.

  It was a beautiful day. The springtime air was soft and cool, and the sky was the color people meant when they said “sky blue.” Not far, a shepherd coaxed his fluffy flock away from the men with the guns and tanks. The world of pastels made the garish red and gold of the Kalq uniforms uglier, the jagged violence of men tearing apart the contours of the gentle day nature had made. A few of the soldiers were smoking, leaning against their trucks, but others were now watching a huddle of urchins who had emerged from the alleys. A boy walked boldly toward one of the tanks and clambered aboard. A soldier nonchalantly lifted him off and told him to scram, but other children came now. “Coins?” said a little girl, her hand outstretched. The soldier slapped her fingers, sending her running.

  Daniel’s eyes were on Imran. The street sweeper had just come into view from behind the Ministry of Finance. He held his broom tightly to his chest as he made his way toward the circle. He tried to talk with a soldier who was visibly bald under his cap. The man in uniform grew angry, shouting, “Go sweep somewhere else.”

  “No,” Imran said, tapping the ground with his broom handle. “Please, saheb. I count a certain number of
strokes for each block, and I have to start here or I lose count.”

  When the soldier shot Imran in the leg, he crumpled like a cartoon character, falling to the ground in a sequence of sharp movements that made his killer laugh. A short, redheaded soldier threw open the doors of an unmarked van, dragging one of the urchins inside. His comrades helped, herding the kids into the van, lifting the smaller ones and manhandling the taller teens, who protested loudly. He promised the children they wouldn’t be harmed, that he was taking them somewhere better. He didn’t know that the innate wisdom of children about the untrustworthiness of adults was magnified a thousandfold in those who’d grown up in alleys. Fighting with all they had, the urchins called the man a liar and pounded their abductors with their fists. Daniel got into his car, put it in reverse, and drove backward, aiming directly for the circle. The soldiers dispersed. Guns were raised and safeties released.

  Are you going to run them over? Telaya asked as gunmetal flashed in the mirrors of her dress.

  “Stop!” the soldiers shouted as Daniel drove toward them.

  He stopped. The bald soldier who’d shot Imran tapped on the car door with his gun and ordered him out. Daniel tried to look surprised as he stepped into the road with his hands up, diplomatic ID clutched between his fingers. The man examined his credentials and jabbed him in the stomach with his rifle.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Mr. Abdullah Sajadi?”

  Soldiers corralled more children into the van. A boy biting his captor’s wrist earned a slap across the face. He didn’t cry, nor did he stop fighting.

  “I was just leaving work, listening to a tape with headphones on. I didn’t realize what was happening here.”

  “Headphones?” The redheaded soldier, who had ambled over, sounded more jealous than skeptical.