"You don't want to know."

"Yes I do."

"He doesn't think you'll make it," she replied. "I told him that you'll do cold turkey here, and be waiting for me when I come back in a couple of months. He doesn't think so. He says you'll run out of here to get a fix the first minute the turkey begins.

I made a bet with him that you'd make it."

"How much did you bet?"

"A thousand bucks."

"A thousand bucks," I mused. It was an impressive stake, against the odds.

"Yes. It's all the cash he has-a kind of nest egg. He's betting it all that you'll break down. He says you're a weak man. That's why you take drugs."

"What do you say?"

She laughed, and it was so rare to see and hear her laugh that I took those bright, round syllables of happiness into me like food, like drink, like the drug. Despite the stone and the sickness, I knew with perfect understanding that the greatest treasure and pleasure I would ever know was in that laugh; to make that woman laugh, and feel the laughter bubbling from her lips against my face, my skin.

"I told him," she said, "that a good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be." Then she was gone, and I closed my eyes, and an hour or a day later I opened them to find Khaderbhai sitting beside me.

"Utna hain," I heard Nazeer's voice say. He's awake.

I woke unwell. I woke alert and cold and needing heroin. My mouth was filthy and my body ached everywhere at once.

"Hmmm," Khader murmured. "You have the pain already."

I pulled myself up on the pillows and looked around the room. It was the beginning of evening, and night's long shadow was creeping across the sandy beach beyond the window. Nazeer sat on a piece of carpet near the entrance to the kitchen. Khader was dressed in the loose pantaloons, shirt, and tunic-vest of the Pathans. The clothes were green, the favourite colour of the Prophet. He looked older, somehow, after just those few months.

He also looked fitter, and more calm and determined than I'd ever seen him.

"Do you need food?" he asked when I stared at him without speaking. "Do you want to take your bath? There is everything here. You can bath as often as you like. You can eat food-there is plenty. You can put on new clothes. I have them for you."

"What happened to Abdullah?" I demanded.

"You must get well."

"What the fuck happened to Abdullah?" I shouted, my voice breaking.

Nazeer watched me. He was outwardly calm, but I knew that he was ready to spring.

"What do you want to know?" Khader asked gently, avoiding my eyes, and nodding his head slowly as he stared at the carpet between his crossed knees.

"Was he Sapna?"

"No," he replied, turning to meet my hard stare. "I know the people say this, but I give you my word that he was not Sapna."

I exhaled a full breath in an exhausted sigh of relief. I felt tears stinging my eyes, and I bit the inside of my cheek to kill them.

"Why did they say he was Sapna?"

"Abdullah's enemies made the police believe that he was."

"What enemies? Who are they?"

"Men from Iran. Enemies from his country."

I remembered the fight; the mysterious fight. Abdullah and I- we'd fought with a group of Iranian men on the street. I tried to remember other details from that day, but I couldn't think past the sharp, guilty twist of regret that I'd never asked Abdullah who the men were or why we'd fought them.

"Where's the real Sapna?"

"He is dead. I found the man-the real Sapna. Now he is dead.

That much is done, for Abdullah."

I relaxed against the cushions, and closed my eyes for a moment.

My nose was beginning to run, and my throat was clogged and sore.

I'd built up a big habit in those three months-three grams of pure Thai-white heroin every day. The turkey was coming on fast, and I knew that it would be two weeks in Hell's punishment unit.

"Why?" I asked him, after a time.

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you find me? Why did you have him-Nazeer-bring me here?"

"You work for me," he answered, smiling. "And now, I have a job of work for you to do."

"Well, I'm afraid I'm not up to it, just at the minute."

The cramps were creeping into my stomach. I groaned, and looked away.

"Oh, yes," he agreed. "You must be well first. But then, in three or four months, you will be the right man to do this job for me."

"What... what kind of a job?"

"It is a mission. A kind of holy mission, you might call it. Do you know how to ride a horse?"

"A horse? I don't know anything about horses. If I can do the job on a motorcycle-when I get well, _if I get well-I'm your man."

"Nazeer will teach you to ride. He is, or he was, the best horseman in a village of men who are the best horsemen in Nangarhar province. There are horses stabled near here, and you can learn to ride on the beach."

"Learn to ride..." I muttered, wondering how I was going to survive the next hour, and the hour after that, and the worse that would come.

"Oh, yes, Linbaba," he said, reaching out with the smile and touching my shoulder with his palm. I flinched at the touch, and shivered, but the warmth of his hand seemed to enter me, and I was still. "You cannot reach Kandahar in any other way but by horse, at this time, because the roads are all mined and bombed.

So you see, when you go with my men to the war in Afghanistan, you must know how to ride a horse."

"Afghanistan?"

"Yes."

"What... what the hell makes you think I'm going to Afghanistan?"

"I don't know if you will do it or not," he replied with what seemed to be genuine sadness. "I am going on this mission myself.

To Afghanistan-my home, that I have not seen for more than fifty years. And I am inviting you-I am asking you-to go with me. The choice, of course, is yours to make. It is a dangerous job. That much is certain. I will not think less about you, if you decide not to go with me."

"Why me?"

"I need a gora, a foreigner, who is not afraid to break a large number of international laws, and who can pass for an American.

Where we will go there are many rival clans, and they have fought with one another for hundreds of years. They have long traditions of raiding one another and taking whatever they can as plunder on their raids. Only two things unite them, just at this time-love for Allah, and hatred for the Russian invaders. At the moment, their chief allies against the Russians are the Americans. They are fighting with American money and American weapons. If I have an American with me, they will leave us alone, and let us pass, without molesting us or stealing more than a reasonable amount from us."

"Why don't you get an American-a real one, I mean?"

"I tried. I could not find one crazy enough to take the risk.

That is why I need you."

"What are we smuggling on this mission to Afghanistan?"

"The usual things that one smuggles into a war-guns, explosives, passports, money, gold, machine parts, and medicines. It will be an interesting journey. If we pass through the heavily armed clans who would like to take what we have, we will deliver our goods to a unit of mujahed-din fighters who are putting siege to Kandahar city. They have been fighting the Russians in the same place for two years, and they need the supplies."

Questions writhed in my shivering mind, hundreds of them, but the cold turkey was crippling me. Cold, greasy sweat from the struggle smothered my skin. The words, when they came at last, were rushed and faltering. "Why are you doing this? Why Kandahar? Why there?"

"The mujaheddin-the men at the siege of Kandahar-they are my people, from my village. They are from Nazeer's village also.

They are fighting a jihad, a holy war, to drive the Russian invaders out of the homeland. We have helped them in many ways, up to this time. Now it is time to help them with guns, and with my blood, if it is necessary."