Ministers of Fire. Mark Harril Saunders
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Burling were surrounded by a haze of uncertainty. That seemingly amused capacity for taking things as they came was what had drawn him to her. And he was, he realized now, deeply attracted, on a level and in a way that had been working in him since she and Jack had arrived in Afghanistan more than a year ago. “She’s a hippie anthropologist, Lucius. The Wretched of the Earth, all that. I’ve seen her type before in Vietnam. Comes over for the soft stuff, but what she really wants is to get in the shit.”
The prospect thrilled and terrified him.
“You should take her up north, Lucius. Involve her in your little scheme. She’s the one who speaks the languages.”
A sound like a rock hitting glass caused both men to strain forward into the deep space between the seats. A star had formed on the windshield, and Godwin’s driver—a thin, graceful Afghan with delicate fingers that could palm a basketball—slumped against the wheel. Slowly, with a smooth motion, the car rolled across the intersection, and its hood rose up, the radiator exploding behind it, emitting a wicked hiss of steam.
“Holy shit,” Godwin said, sounding deeply perturbed.
Men in police uniforms were grabbing at the handles, and Burling fumbled with the strap of white vinyl on his own door, fighting to keep it shut. Behind him they pulled Wes Godwin from the car. Burling heard the singsong of Pashto or Dari—he couldn’t tell which. The man at his window was gone, and he whipped around, expecting a blow from behind. Through the opposite door he could see Godwin’s midsection, the starched white shirt and navy tie too short on his belly, his naked arms grappling with the men. His sleeves were rolled at the cuffs, and his hands tried to keep his assailants away from him, bobbing like a fighter, grasping at anything. The street outside was bright.
“We’re going to the Serena,” one said in heavily accented English, referring to the Kabul Hotel. “You are going to give us the mujahedin.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Godwin told them, breathing hard now, still fighting. “We’re not holding any soldiers of God.”
“Wes,” said Burling. “It’s a kidnapping, an exchange.”
“Hell with that.” Bullets began to hit the car again.
In spite of his position, Lucius Burling was a peaceful man. An intelligence analyst, not an ex-soldier like Godwin, or Jack Lindstrom, spoiling for a fight. He had come to this country, as he had more than a dozen years before to Vietnam, to assess the situation and to offer help, a way forward. A man had a few things to lean on or comfort him in life, and the integrity of this position was one of Burling’s.
“Get down, Wes!”
Burling ducked, and the back window shattered. One of the kidnappers’ bodies was flung against the trunk. Automatic fire came from three sides, and the men dressed as police crouched down and returned it with pistols and shotguns. Burling began to crawl across the seat, intending to pull Wes to safety. He was unprepared for how loud the firing was at close range. The man who had struggled with Godwin was hit in the back and thrown against the tufted leather of the door, his chest ripped open like a suitcase.
Wes was unprotected now. Burling watched him trying to push the dead man off his legs, but he couldn’t do it without leaving cover. Godwin turned a quarter of the way toward Burling; his shirt bloomed red, and he fell on his side across the seat. Burling’s ears were plugged. The rattle of gunfire sounded far away. A bearded face in a keffiyeh appeared in the space where the windshield had been. Burling thought briefly of Amelia, and a great, lonely sadness overwhelmed him. That he would die now, could die, with so much silence and distance between them. I really didn’t know this could happen, he thought.
Wes Godwin’s life left his body in a spasm.
Burling swallowed and his hearing returned to him, like a train approaching from far away. The broken car was running with a tick, then a rasp. He closed his eyes to squeeze out the water. When his vision cleared he realized that he was alone.
in the days after the killing, the organism of the city broke down and its hungers were exposed. Kabul came under siege. The city lay in a pale bowl of light, and every movement seemed magnified. April insisted it was a troop of Jack’s basketball players who attacked the compound wall one windy, hot afternoon, but Lindstrom said they’d disappeared.
“Gone up north to fight the Russians, just like they told me they would.”
Jack was sitting in the garden late that night as Burling returned from his office to the Residence, where all remaining personnel had retreated in precaution. Lindstrom spoke up as Burling approached, answering an unasked question from the darkness of the overhanging branches above a bench.
“They killed the American ambassador,” Burling said, “so they ran.”
From the tip of a brass pipe the shape of a cigarette, an ember glowed in front of Lindstrom’s face. “Keeping you up, is it?”
“I’m the guy that’s left behind.”
“Me, too,” Lindstrom said, exhaling a plume of blue smoke. He stood up slowly, a head shorter than Burling but possessed of a taut strength, like a wrestler. Burling saw that he was wearing a sidearm, as if in the aftermath of the attack he had returned to his former life as a marine. He peered up into Burling’s face. “You know what I’m talking about?”
Burling took a step backward on the uneven path. “I need to get back to Amelia.”
“The mujas didn’t kill Wes, your buddies in the government did.”
“I was there, Jack.”
“Then you should have seen it for what it was: a cluster fuck.”
“The mujahedin wanted to grab Godwin. Taraki’s people tried to stop it and shot him by mistake.”
“You don’t wonder how the government forces knew what was about to go down?”
“I wonder about a lot of things. Apparently you have a theory about this one?”
“It’s just stoned thinking, Lucius. You go on back now. Tonight might be your last chance for a while.”
Burling stared uncomprehendingly at him in the dark. Strangely, there was no sound of birds or bugs here at night. The dry air was luminous and still. Far away he heard the pop of gunfire. “Why, what’s happening tomorrow?”
“I’m a married man, too,” Lindstrom said, “so I know how it goes. The mysterious rhythms.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Man, you really don’t, do you? You don’t keep track of that shit at all.”
From an open window of the Residence came the sound of a television, the volume unnaturally loud. An American newsman was talking about hostages. “What are you smoking in that thing?” Burling asked.
“Thai stick. Grass soaked in opium. Very mellow, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to make love to your wife.”
Burling tried to hide his astonishment, but the effort made him seem prim. Lindstrom’s vaguely Asiatic eyes held two counterimages of the match, like tiny blazing question marks, as he lit the pipe again.
“We’ve been married for twenty years,” Burling told him. For some reason, the contemplative menace in Lindstrom’s face made Burling want to reach out to him. Or maybe, he thought, it’s because we have April in common. “There’s just not the urgency now.”
“Between the two of you, no.”
“What’s happening tomorrow, Jack? I really want to hear.”
“Half of the staff won’t show up,” Lindstrom told him, squinting as he waved the smoke away with his hand. “The masons you ordered from north of the city won’t come to fix the wall.”
“Your players told you this?”
“A month ago or more.”