She wanted someone there who could help her, if you had no good intention with her."

"He was her bodyguard..." I muttered, thinking she didn't trust me...

"Yes, Lin, he was, and a good one. I understand it that there was some violence, on that night. Abdullah did do something to save her-and perhaps to save you. Isn't that true? This was Abdullah's job, to protect the people for me. That is why I sent him to follow you when my nephew Tariq went to stay with you in the zhopadpatti. And on the very first night, he did help you to fight some wild dogs, isn't it true? And for the whole time that Tariq was with you, Abdullah was close to you, and to Tariq, just as I told him to be."

I wasn't listening. My mind was all angry arrows, whistling backward to a much earlier time and place. I was searching for Karla-for the Karla I knew and loved-but every moment with her began to give up its secret and its lie. I remembered the first time I'd met her, the first second, how she'd reached out to stop me from walking in front of the bus. It was on Arthur Bunder Road, on the corner near the Causeway, not far from the India Guest House. It was the heart of the tourist beat. Was she waiting there, hunting for foreigners like me, looking for useful recruits who could work for Khader when he needed them? Of course she was. I'd done it myself, in a way, when I'd lived in the slum. I'd loitered there, in the same place, looking for foreigners just off the plane who wanted to change money or buy some charras.

Nazeer walked up to join us. Ahmed Zadeh was a few paces behind him. They stood together with Khaderbhai and Khaled, facing me.

Nazeer screwed his face into a scowl, and scanned the sky from south to north, calculating the minutes before the snowstorm hit us. The packing for the return journey was complete and double-checked, and he was anxious to leave.

"And the help you gave me with the clinic?" I asked, feeling sick, and knowing that if I unlocked my knees and let my legs relax, they would crumple and fold beneath me. When Khader didn't speak, I repeated the question. "What about the clinic? Why did you help me with the clinic? Was that part of your plan? Of _this plan?"

A freezing wind blew into the broad plateau, and we all shuddered, unsteadied, as the force of it whipped at our clothes and faces. The sky darkened swiftly as a dirty, grey tide of cloud crossed the mountains and tumbled on toward the distant plain and the shimmering, dying city.

"You did good work there," he replied.

"That's not what I asked you."

"I don't think this is the right time to talk of such things, Lin."

"Yes, it is," I insisted.

"There are things you will not understand," he stated, as if he'd thought it through many times.

"Just tell me."

"Very well. All of the medicine that we brought here to this camp, all of the antibiotics and penicillin for the war, was supplied to us by Ranjit's lepers. I had to know if it was safe to use here."

"Ah, Jesus..." I moaned.

"So I used the opportunity, the strange fact that you, a foreigner, with no connection to a family or an embassy, set up a clinic in my own slum-I took that chance to test the supplies on the people in the zhopadpatti. I had to be sure, you understand, before I brought the medicines into the war."

"For God's sake, Khader!" I snarled.

"I had to be-"

"Only a fuckin' maniac would do that!"

"Take it easy, Lin!" Khaled snapped back at me. The other men tensed on either side of Khader, as if they feared that I might attack him. "You're way outta line, man!"

"I'm out of line!" I spluttered, feeling my teeth chatter, and struggling to make my numb limbs obey my mind. "I'm out of fuckin' line! He uses the people in the slum as guinea pigs or lab rats or whatever the fuck, to test his antibiotics-using me to trick them into doing it, because they believed in me-and I'm the one who's out of line!"

"No-one got hurt," Khaled shouted back at me. "The medicines were all good, and the work you did there was good. People got well."

"We should get out of the cold, now, and talk about it," Ahmed Zadeh put in quickly, hoping to conciliate. "Khader, you'll have to wait for this snow to clear before you leave. Let's get inside."

"You must understand," Khader said firmly, ignoring him. "It was a decision of war-twenty lives risked against the saving of a thousand, and a thousand risked to save a million. And you must believe me, we knew that the medicines were good. The chance of Ranjit's lepers supplying impure medicines was very low. We were almost completely sure that the medicine was safe when we gave it to you."

"Tell me about Sapna." There it was, out in the open, my deepest secret fear about him, and about my closeness to him. "Was that your work, too?"

"I was not Sapna. But the responsibility for his killings does come back to me. Sapna killed for me-for this cause. And if you want me to tell you the whole of the truth, I did make a great benefit from Sapna's bloody work. Because of Sapna, because he existed, and because of their fear of him, and because I made a commitment to find him and stop him, the politicians and the police allowed me to bring guns and other weapons through Bombay to Karachi and Quetta, and to this war. The blood Sapna spilled- it did oil the wheels for us. And I would do this again. I would use Sapna's killings, and I would do more killings, with my own hands, if it would help our cause. We have a cause, Lin, all of us here. And we fight and we live and perhaps we will also die for that cause. If we win this fight, we will change the whole of history, forever, from this time, and in this place, and with these battles. That is our cause-to change the whole world. What is your cause? What is your cause, Lin?"

I was so cold, as the first flakes whirled about us, that I shivered and shook and couldn't stop my jaw from shuddering.

"What about... what about Madame Zhou... when Karla got me to pretend I was an American. Was that your idea? Was that your plan?"

"No. Karla has her own war with Zhou, and she had her own reasons. But I approved of her plan to use you, to get her friend out of the Palace. I wanted to see if you could do it. I had the thought, even then, that you would one day be my American in Afghanistan. And you did well, Lin. Not many people do so well against Zhou in her own Palace."

"One last thing, Khader," I stammered. "When I was in jail... did you have anything to do with that?"

There was a hard silence, the kind of deadly, breathing silence that insinuates itself into the memory more deeply than the sharpest sound.

"No," he replied at last. "But the truth is that I could have taken you out of there, even after the first week, if I chose to do it. I knew about it almost at once. And I had the power to help you, but I did not. Not when I could have done it."

I looked at Nazeer and Ahmed Zadeh. They stared back evenly. My eyes shifted to Khaled Ansari. He returned my stare with an anguished and angrily defiant grimace that pulled his whole face into the jagged lash of the scar that divided his features.

They all knew. They all knew that Khader had left me in there.

But it was okay. Khader didn't owe me anything. He wasn't the one who put me there. He didn't have to get me out. And he did, in the end: he did get me out of jail in the end, and he did save my life. It was just that I'd taken so many beatings, and other men had taken beatings for me, trying to get a message out to him... and even if we'd succeeded, even if we'd managed to get a message to him, Khader would've ignored it, and left me there, until he was ready to act. It was just that all the hope had been so empty, so meaningless. And if you prove to a man how vain his hope is, how vain his hoping was, you kill the bright, believing part of him that wants to be loved.