"Why?" I asked, shivering in the cold.

"It is because we are strictly forbidden to describe the features of the Prophet, or to talk about him as someone who is seen. This was the Prophet's own wish, so that no man or woman would adore him, or take any of their devotions away from God. That is why there are no images of the Prophet-no drawings, or paintings, or statues. But I did dream of him. And I am not a very good Muslim, am I?

Because I am telling you about my dream. He was on foot, walking somewhere. I rode up behind him on my horse-it was a perfect, beautiful white horse-and although I didn't see his face, I knew it was him. So I got down from my horse, and gave it to him. And my face was lowered, out of respect, all the time. But at last, I lifted my eyes to see him riding away into the light of the setting sun. That was my dream."

He was calm, but I knew him well enough to see the dejection that hooded his eyes. And there was something else, something so new and strange that it took me a few moments to realise what it was: fear. Abdel Khader Khan was afraid, and I felt my own skin creep and tighten in response. It was unimaginable. Until that moment I'd truly believed that Khaderbhai was afraid of nothing.

Unnerved and worried, I moved to change the subject.

"Khaderji, I know I'm changing the subject, but can you answer this question for me? I've been thinking about something you said a while ago. You said that life and consciousness and all that other stuff comes from light, at the Big Bang. Are you saying that light is God?"

"No," he answered, and that sudden, fearful depression lifted from his features, driven off by a look that I could only read as a loving smile. "I do not think that light is God. I think it is possible, and it is reasonable to say, that light is the language of God. Light may be the way that God speaks to the universe, and to us."

I congratulated myself on the successful change of theme and mood by standing up. I stamped my feet and slapped at my sides to get the blood moving. Khader joined me and we began the short walk back to the camp, blowing warmth into our frozen hands.

"This is a strange light, speaking about light," I puffed. "The sun shines, but it's a cold sun. There's no warmth in it, and you feel stranded between the cold sun and the even colder shadows."

"Beached there in tangles of flicker..." Khader quoted, and I snapped my head around so quickly that I felt a twinge of pain in my neck.

"What did you say?"

"It was a quote," Khader replied slowly, sensing how important it was to me. "It is a line from a poem." I pulled my wallet from my pocket, reached into it, and took out a folded paper. The page was so creased and rubbed by wear that when I opened it the fold-lines showed gaps and tears. It was Karla's poem: the one I'd copied from her journal, two years before, when I went to her apartment with Tariq on the Night of the Wild Dogs. I'd carried it with me ever since. In Arthur Road Prison the officers had taken the page from me and torn it into pieces. When Vikram bribed my way out of the prison I wrote it out again from memory, and I carried it with me every day, everywhere I went. Karla's poem.

"This poem," I said excitedly, holding the tattered, fluttering sheet out for him to see. "It was written by a woman. A woman named Karla Saaranen. The woman you sent to Gupta-ji's place with Nazeer to... to get me out of there. I'm amazed that you know it. It's incredible."

"No, Lin," he answered evenly. "The poem was written by a Sufi poet named Sadiq Khan. I know his poems by heart, many of them.

He is my favourite poet. And he is Karla's favourite poet also."

The words were ice around my heart.

"Karla's favourite poet?"

"I do believe so."

"Just how well... how well do you know Karla?"

"I know her very well."

"I thought... I thought you met her when you got me out of Gupta's. She said... I mean, I thought she said that was when she met you."

"No, Lin, that is not correct. I have known Karla for years. She works for me. Or at least, she works for Abdul Ghani, and Ghani works for me. But she must have told you about it, didn't she?

Didn't you know this? I am very surprised. I was sure that Karla would have talked to you about me. Certainly, I have talked to her about you, many times."

My mind was like the screaming jets that had screeched over us in the dark ravine: all noise and black fears. What had Karla said as we lay together, struggling against sleep, after fighting the cholera epidemic? I was on a plane, and I met a businessman, an Indian businessman, and my life changed forever... Was that Abdul Ghani? Is that what she meant? Why hadn't I asked her more about her work? Why didn't she tell me about it? And what did she do for Abdul Ghani?

"What does she do for you-for Abdul?"

"Many things. She has many skills." "I know about her skills," I growled at him angrily. "What does she do for you?"

"Among other things," Khader answered, slowly and precisely, "she finds useful and talented foreigners, such as you are. She finds people who can work for us, when we need them."

"What?" I asked, gasping out the word that wasn't really a question, and feeling as if pieces of myself-frozen pieces of my face and my heart-were falling splintered around me.

He began to speak again, but I cut him off quickly.

"Are you saying that Karla recruited me-for you?"

"Yes. She did. And I am very glad that she did."

The cold was suddenly inside me, running through my veins, and my eyes were made of snow. Khader kept walking, but when he noticed that I'd stopped, he halted. He was still smiling when he turned to face me. Khaled Ansari approached us at that instant, and clapped his hands together loudly.

"Khader! Lin!" he greeted us with the sad, small smile that I'd come to love. "I've made up my mind. I gave it some thought, Khaderji, just like you said, but I've decided to stay. At least for a while. Habib was here last night. The sentries saw him.

He's been doing so much crazy stuff-the things he's done to Russian prisoners, and even some of the Afghan prisoners near here on the Kandahar road in the last couple weeks are... well, it's grisly shit-and I'm hard to impress in that way. It's so weird, the men are going to do something about it. They're so spooked, they're gonna shoot him on sight. They're talking about hunting him down like a wild animal. I have to... I have to try to help him, somehow. I'm gonna stay, and try to find him, and try to talk him into coming back to Pakistan with me. So... you go on without me tonight, and I'll... I'll come through in a couple of weeks, on the next trip out. That's... that's it, I guess. That's... what I came to say."

There was a cold silence after the little speech. I stared at Khader, waiting for him to speak. I was angry, and I was afraid.

It was a special fear-the kind of arctic dread that only love can inspire. Khader stared back at my face, reading me. Khaled looked from one to the other of us, confused and concerned.

"What about the night I met you and Abdullah?" I asked, speaking through teeth clenched against the cold and the even colder fear that ripped through me like spasms of cramp.

"You forget," Khader Khan replied a little more sternly. His face was as dark and determined as my own. It never occurred to me then that he, too, was feeling deceived and betrayed. I'd forgotten about Karachi and the police raids. I'd forgotten that there was a traitor in his own circle, someone close to him, who'd tried to have him and me and the rest of us captured or killed. I never saw his grim detachment as anything but a cruel disregard for what I felt. "You met Abdullah a long time before the night that we met. You met him at the temple of the Standing Babas, isn't it true? He was there to look after Karla on that night. She did not know you well. She was not sure of you, not sure that she could trust you, in a place that she did not know.