The Opium Prince Read online

  Standing before the mirror now, Daniel felt that wall come up again, hard inside his ribs. He fought Telaya’s voice until she vanished and a calming narrative appeared in his defense: the accident was not his fault. But Daniel’s conscience shot down each of his defenses like toys gliding by in a carnival game. He splashed cold water on his face.

  In the bedroom, Rebecca was pulling a T-shirt over her head, the lace she’d brought with her forgotten. She loosened her hair from its rubber band and turned to him. She was just a shadow, backlit by the fading city.

  “I don’t know what you need,” she said softly.

  “We both need sleep.” For three months he had longed for her, but she hadn’t been ready. Not once had he tried to persuade her. He always said he understood, even when he no longer did. Last night, after packing for the trip and turning the lights out, she had returned to him. It had been tentative, but had felt like a milestone nonetheless, the end of a long winter. Now a different kind of cold was upon them.

  Slipping into bed, Rebecca pulled the covers up to her neck and curled up tightly. Everything about her seemed completely closed. Daniel turned the room’s only armchair to face the window. In the alley below, men played chess, drank tea from small glasses, and smoked from hookahs. Shopkeepers strolled over to each other, told stories, compared the day’s earnings, traded a melon for a Sprite. Men and women appeared and disappeared in the windows of the homes dotting the hills. Daniel watched until they had all gone dark, flickering off like dying fireflies. He wasn’t sure what time he went to bed. He slept fitfully, half-awake most of the night, consumed by a feeling that something wanted into his mind and something else wanted out.

  Awake before the sun, he repacked their suitcase. Rebecca moved slowly, brushing her hair and twisting into yesterday’s blouse and capris. She seemed to pass through several emotions, unable to choose one. Someone brought breakfast to the room, but they barely ate.

  “Are you ready?” Daniel asked when Rebecca emerged dressed from the bathroom.

  “In a minute.”

  He took their luggage down, checked out, and waited in the car. The starburst in the damaged windshield made everything look fractured: the sky and the road and the thick morning crowds, and Rebecca when she came out of the hotel. When they reached the highway, it seemed different. The asphalt was darker, the side ditches deeper. Daniel thought he saw shadows rising from them. Then came the moment he could not avoid: the sight of the Kochi camp in the distance. It felt like the nomads were moving toward Daniel instead of him toward them. Rebecca offered her hand, just as she had last night, but he pretended not to notice, afraid she would feel his tremor. She pressed her mouth into a thin line and turned to the window, wedging the hand under her leg.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She shook her head as if Daniel had asked the wrong thing. He drove over the incline and reached the site of the crash. On the asphalt, the tire marks, splotches of sunbaked blood, and shards of glass were visible. Out, damned spot! cried Lady Macbeth in the schoolboy recesses of his mind. Another voice joined her.

  I was only nine, Telaya said. Maybe ten. It isn’t fair.

  Suddenly, Rebecca wrapped her arms around her waist and released a whimper.

  “What’s wrong?” Daniel said, alarmed. Every time she winced like this, he remembered that terrible night when, curled up on the bathroom floor, she wept as he tried to clean the tiles, the towel only swirling blood over the marble floor. Sometimes Daniel thought he still saw a halo of pink hovering beneath him. Laila had talked about infections and scars and trying again.

  “I’m fine.”

  “The medication’s in your bag.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “It’s bad enough that you’re crying.”

  “That’s not why I’m crying.” Rebecca struck the window with her fist in frustration. Daniel went silent.

  “Do you still want to have the party on Saturday?” she asked an hour later as they neared Kabul. “For Peter.”

  Daniel had forgotten about Peter Whitbourn’s visit. Until yesterday it had loomed over him, but the ghost of a dead child weighed more than the one of a past betrayal. “Sure,” he said.

  “He’s staying with the Sutherlands. They’re still friends from when Peter worked for Nixon.”

  Naturally, Professor Whitbourn would be staying with none other than the American ambassador.

  “I don’t care if we see him or not,” she said.

  Daniel had always thought Rebecca was a bad liar. They drove in silence. The smells of Kabul greeted them when they reached the city. It was the scent of naan baking in fiery holes in the ground, of fried meat in carts sold to hurried passersby for a coin or two. The stench of donkeys, urine, gasoline, and dust, but also the perfume of the acacia trees and roses people grew in walled-off gardens everywhere. Maiwand Boulevard was closed, barricades forcing cars into detours because a Russian envoy had passed through here and would do so again tonight. His visit was scheduled to last three days. The detour wasn’t well marked, but Daniel knew his way through the city. At the last major intersection before home, on Darlaman Road, the traffic light blinked red, broken since February.

  “When are they going to fix that?” he said.

  “They’re never going to fix that, Daniel.” Rebecca sounded like she held him personally responsible for this and many other things.

  Watching over their house and the unpaved road, the snowcapped mountains welcomed them back. Even after a short absence, the sight of the majestic range usually left Daniel inspired. Today he found it disquieting, with its strange angles and peaks. Born of the mighty Hindu Kush, the Asmani peaks leaned subtly to the west, so the effect was one of gathering motion, like a cluster of men on the verge of a run.

  4

  Imran had been a streetsweeper for eight months. He had learned to tell time last year and measure things like days and weeks, so he was sure it was eight months. Sweeping was a spiritual act for Imran. Every forty strokes, he imagined he was sweeping something away, making room for something new. Forty strokes: forget about the girl who had left him for the fourth time in ten years. She was getting fat anyway, and hairy, like a big sheep with too much wool. Forty more strokes: stop wanting to kill the landlord who had thrown him out again. The son of a goat wasn’t worth a prison term.

  Dragging his broom along the pavement, Imran passed the national bank, Sajadi Enterprises, and the Ministry of Finance, with the fancy Khyber on the ground floor, a restaurant where Imran could never afford to eat. He made piles of cigarette stubs, candy wrappers, and greasy wax paper mixed with dust and leaves. There was more work than usual this morning. What chaos there had been yesterday—a man shot at 14:05, people shouting and waving flags. Men running around with one of only two ideologies: Communist or Muslim. Imran’s parents were Bahai. Sometimes God was prone to excess. Why three religions? If He wanted to see men fight, He only had to make two. Imran swept carefully around the tanks that lined the street like the bums lined the sidewalks. Soldiers peered out of round windows. One stuck his tongue out.

  Mr. Sajadi appeared earlier than usual and arrived by bus. Usually, he arrived in a Mercedes. He usually smiled, and Imran smiled back, though he kept his lips together because showing your teeth to a man like Mr. Sajadi would not do.

  The gentleman looked different today. Dark circles made his eyes look small. He was hunched over like he was walking through a strong wind. He did not smile. Mr. Sajadi looked like a man who needed to sweep something away.

  In the early morning light, Daniel’s last name gleamed across the granite facade of the building that housed both Sajadi Gemstones and USADE. He had moved the agency office to his family’s building for one simple reason: it had air conditioning. Daniel began every day with the vague sense of having performed a great swindle. He was never sure who the impostor was—whether he was the owner
of a great company and scion of a local legend posing as a US official, or the other way around.

  His steps echoed on the marble floor. In his mind, they faded into echoes of bare running feet that made no sound when they landed. Gracing the lobby walls were the paintings he’d remembered at the police station. One commemorated the last war against the English. Men of every age were following their young leader, Sayed Sajadi. They rode horses, their scabbards against the animals’ flanks, guns angled across their chests. The warriors moved as one, creating a sense of wind-like speed as the eye traveled with the army from left to right. Daniel stepped into the elevator. When he pulled the iron grate over the sliding doors, it was like drawing drapes over blinds, creating the second layer of the solitude he craved.

  He walked past the Sajadi office and remembered that Rebecca’s earrings would finally be ready, after delays caused by his own insistence on the perfect lapis lazuli. The anniversary had passed, but the jewels should still be hers.

  At USADE, the work rose in tidy piles across his desk like a skyline, mocking the city’s contours outside. Mud houses climbed up the sides of mountains—Kabul had nowhere else to go. By the phone was a stack of messages, including several from Elias at the newspaper. Daniel spent the morning on mindless tasks—taking phone calls, asking his secretary to make appointments, signing invoices. Miss Soraya brewed tea between errands and brought him a tray. “You’re back early from your trip,” she said.

  When she spoke, she showed deference by lowering her head. She didn’t ask about the gash on his brow. She looked different today, as did everyone. Daniel’s staff envied him for having the prettiest of the secretaries, but today, Miss Soraya’s most striking asset was not her beauty but the fact that she was alive.

  When she came around his desk to refill his cup, he slipped his hands into his pockets like a thief hiding evidence. He leafed through the newspapers on his desk. Elvis Presley had died—that was the biggest story, accompanied by a comparison of him and Ahmad Zahir, the Afghan Elvis. Further down, a Communist member of the government had penned an article. He spoke of workers’ wages, the dangers of Islamism and the religious right, the sexual exploitation of children, equality of the sexes, and the need for land reform. The Communists weren’t wrong about everything. They were right enough to hold appeal, and Daniel sometimes wished their ideas were not so closely tied to one of the most brutal regimes in human history. Wherever there were Communists, there was Russia. And Russia had always pursued conquest, invasion, infiltration, oppression. But now they could pretend they were doing these things in the service of a glorious sisterhood and brotherhood and a better tomorrow that never came.

  Below that, there was a short article by Elias. It talked about the scourge of the poppy fields and the need to distribute that land to honest farmers rather than let them fall into the hands of foreign interests.

  Foreign interests. Daniel wondered what his own interests were. When he heard the voice of a youngster, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him again. Miss Soraya came slinking through the door after a gentle knock, a letter in her hand and amusement on her face. “An urchin just came by and left this for you,” she said. “He insisted I deliver it personally.”

  The envelope was addressed to Daniel, not USADE. Daniel strode to the window, pushing aside the sheers. A boy in ragged clothes was running from the building as fast as his feet could take him, threading through the cars and crowds.

  Before returning to her desk, Miss Soraya said, “Sir, the others are wondering about a staff meeting.”

  When he paused, she added, “It’s just that . . . well, there hasn’t been one. In seven months. Since you got here.”

  “Who’s asking for one?”

  “Everyone. Mr. Epstein, Mr. Romano.”

  “I see.”

  When she lingered, he asked if there was anything else.

  “Mr. Kauffman held meetings every week, sir.”

  “Mr. Kauffman is no longer directing this office.” He regretted his tone as soon as the words escaped his mouth. “But you’re right. Let’s set one up soon.”

  She left him alone. Staff meetings. Hadn’t they been the undoing of his predecessor? Too many opinions, too much compromise, and not enough work. If Philip Kauffman had stopped taking advice from everyone, he might have stayed in his position and been able to achieve more than he did. Under his tenure, only one poppy field had been reformed, and the results were disastrous. Irrigating the land without proper planning, they had only drawn the salt up to the surface and ruined the soil. Since Daniel’s arrival, three plots of land had been reformed. It was true that they were small, their khans poor and willing to work with USADE. But the Yassaman field wasn’t small, and it would be the fourth. Daniel had planned to take it over since he’d first read the file back in January. The true Reform would start there.

  He was still holding the letter. He slid the letter opener along the crease. The churning feeling in his gut had returned. As he read, he could sense what each next word would be, as if the author’s intention could travel faster than light.

  To Daniel Abdullah Sajadi, my esteemed new friend and compatriot:

  I trust that God is keeping you well, and that you have recovered from your recent injury. While I am saddened by that unfortunate day, I am grateful that God has chosen to place a man such as yourself in my path, and I believe you will agree that God's reasons are evident. I would not dare suggest that I, a simple son of the land, am in any way your equal. But I was humbled to find that I share with you a great love of country and an abiding sense of duty. And I was overjoyed to learn you worked for the American government, for I believe I understand your agency’s mission better than most.

  I hope you forgive me for taking the liberty of writing, but I must ask for your indulgence in a request. I should like to present you with a proposal, from one patriot to another.

  I shall call upon you soon and hope this missive prepares you for my visit, so that my appearance will seem neither impudent nor sudden.

  My humility prevents me from writing my name in a letter that contains yours.

  Your faithful servant

  Balling up the paper, Daniel controlled the tremor in his hands. He was grateful when someone knocked. Iggy Romano and Seth Epstein stood in the doorway, a huddle of farmers behind them.

  “Just back from a workshop at the university,” Seth said. He had a jacket on despite the heat, his hair carefully styled to cover his encroaching baldness. It was difficult to imagine him digging ditches in Kenya and Bangladesh, where he’d overseen the construction of complex irrigation systems, dams, and canals. Daniel could smell urine and hay and the warm, earthy scent of an animal, and noticed a mass of fur moving in the hallway.

  “One of the trainees brings his mule everywhere,” Iggy said. “His last one was stolen, so he won’t leave it outside.” His young face was shiny, and his belly swelled against his shirt.

  “We’re going to take these guys to lunch and get Miss Soraya’s birthday present while we’re at it. We still don’t have your share.” Seth held out his hand, and Daniel retrieved his wallet.

  “Did you read my memo?” Seth continued, again making his case for more workshops and equipment.

  What Seth and Iggy talked about would have bored most people. But Daniel admired them, because engineers understood that great civilizations were built on boring things like trenches and pipes. He gave them enough cash for a nice gift, apologizing for forgetting Miss Soraya’s birthday.

  “Kauffman never forgot things like that,” Seth said, counting the bills. “I guess he was used to having staff, seeing as he’d been around a long time.”

  “I’ve got a lot on my desk right now,” Daniel said, gesturing to the door. He was in no mood to be reminded that some people resented his arrival and blamed him for Kauffman’s ousting. No one needed to tell him that an analyst did not become
a regional director overnight at age thirty-one without connections.

  The engineers left. Trying to concentrate on Seth’s memo, which he found in the middle of a pile, Daniel couldn’t stop his mind from drifting back to the letter. When the phone rang, he almost expected to hear Taj’s voice, but Miss Soraya connected Laila, who had called to say Rebecca had been in bed at home all day. She just needed to rest, Laila explained.

  “Is she okay? Did you figure out what was wrong? She was really in pain yesterday, even though she kept saying it wasn’t bad. You know how she is.”

  “She’s fine. She was almost five months in, Daniel. It’s going to take some time.”

  Daniel could hear the bustle of the clinic in the background. A baby’s cries escalated to screams. Before disconnecting, Laila added that she was looking forward to the party Saturday night.

  He threw the khan’s letter into the trash bin and was suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue, as if the sun had pierced his skin and shot a sleep serum into his veins. He pulled off his jacket. Something fell from the pocket. It was the mirror from the girl’s dress, winking in the light. He held it in his palm and stared. Long ago, he’d asked his father why people sewed mirrors on their clothes. Sayed said, Because sometimes they wonder if they are invisible, and this reminds them that they are not. The telephone rang for the twentieth time.

  “It’s Leland.” There were no pleasantries when Daniel’s supervisor called him from Washington, DC. “I tried you at that goddamn hotel in Herat, but they said you weren’t there. Now I find you here.” Daniel could hear Leland Smythe puffing on a cigarillo. “Good news. It’s going to be filmed.”

  “What’s going to be filmed, sir?”