“Yes, that’s my name. Who are you?”

“Oh, thank God!” exclaimed the man. “You have no idea how much trouble I have been through to find you. I have had not only to go through official channels but unofficial ones as well, if you understand my meaning, and in this country, unfortunately, unofficial channels are the only ones that work.”

“What country is this?” she asked, staring at him through the grille.

“Why, you are in Egypt, my dear woman. And I am bending my every resource to get you out of it. It is just that you are so very unofficial, and they fear to take cognizance of holding you. I mean that until they admit they have you, they cannot very well release you. The Americans are, I believe, satisfied that they, and you, have been the victims of a hoax; the evidence is irrefutable, and of course they would very much like to forget it has ever happened. Such embarrassment for the government! But there is you, of course-”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He smiled and issued a self-deprecating laugh. “Oh, forgive me,” he said. “I am Farid B. Laghari, at your service. I am your lawyer.”

21

T heo seems frozen. The footsteps and the rattle of armed men sound closer on the stairs. Ahead, Abu Lais beckons urgently to them. Sonia shoves Theo forward, putting all her weight behind it. His instincts take over and both of them dash into the room at the end of the hallway. Abu Lais shuts the door behind them. Theo is stunned, staring at the other man. He says, “It is you. They told me you were dead.”

Wazir’s face breaks out in his famous smile and Sonia sees her son throw his arms around his brother. The men embrace, and Theo begins to ask a string of questions in rapid Pashto that Sonia can barely follow, but this reunion is interrupted by a pounding on the door. Wazir motions them to the far corner of the room and opens it.

Sonia hears a brief conversation in Arabic and then heavy footfalls and shouted orders.

Wazir says, “The sentry on the roof was shot. They thought it was one of the locals, a sniper, because they thought it was impossible for anyone to get up on the roof without passing them. I told them to stay inside and that I doubted that anyone would try to assault the house.”

He sits at the desk chair, as if normal business can now resume.

Theo asks, urgently, “Wazir, what are you doing here?”

Wazir shrugs. “I’m a Pashtun and this is Pashtunistan. Where else should I be? Let’s say it’s a long story. I don’t have to ask what you’re doing here-you came for her. But by God, I’m glad to see you!”

Theo is grinning and shaking his head in amazement. Then he sobers and says, “I’m sorry. I shot one of your friends.”

“They are not my friends,” Wazir says. “They are nominally under my orders, but in fact they were sent to watch me. The Arabs are very suspicious, especially of Pashtuns. You might even have done me a favor.”

“I don’t understand.”

He looks at Sonia. “How much does he know?”

“I have no idea,” she says. “I don’t even know how he found this place.”

“How did you?” asks Wazir.

“That’s a long story, too,” says Theo. Sonia studies his face as he looks at the other man. It is like flipping through one of those books that depicts the range of human expressions: love, anger, astonishment, confusion; each blooms, flickers, dies, and is succeeded by another. Her heart aches.

Theo says, “I can’t believe it, Wazir, by God, it’s been half a lifetime! Where did you learn English? You sound like an American.”

“I practically am. I was in the States nearly as long as you. I was educated there, Case Western and Berkeley.”

“How? The last time I saw you, you were a Pashtun mujahid. How in hell did you get a college education?”

“A Ph.D., actually.”

“And you never tried to contact me in all those years?”

Wazir looked a little embarrassed at this and asks Sonia, “Can I tell him?”

“That’s up to you, Wazir,” she says. “I’m retired.”

“Retired from what?” asks Theo. Now the confusion on his face gels, with an angry flush, a knotting of the brows. “Wazir, what is she talking about? What in hell is going on?”

Wazir leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath, lets it flow out.

“Well, let’s see-where to start? Let’s start with your mother.”

He makes a rotating motion with his fingers.

“The axis, the source of it all. Sonia’s the reason I got an education in America. She pulled me out of the jihad just like she pulled you, but in my case I did a little better in school than you did. I can see you’re about to ask why she did such a thing. Why me? Well, I’m smart, she knew that from Aitchison College and our many conversations up on the roof at your grandfather’s house, and she needed a smart Pashtun with good mujahideen credentials.”

“I don’t understand,” says Theo.

Wazir looks at Sonia, eyebrows elevated in surprise. “You never told him?”

She shakes her head.

“Told me what?”

After a considerate pause, Wazir answers, “Your mother has been an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency for a very long time, and she’s been involved in a very deep Agency game, probably the deepest it has ever played.”

“That’s crazy,” Theo says. “Sonia’s not a CIA agent.”

“Asset. There’s a difference. Think about it for a minute, Theo. In 1973, Sonia Laghari probably knew more about Soviet Central Asia than any other American. She was an embarrassment to the KGB. Don’t you think the CIA would’ve been interested in her? And they were. An agent approached her and she turned him down: oh, no, she was not going to spy for America. Then, what happened to your grandfather happened, and we did what we did. As I’m sure you know, she thought you were dead too, and when she found out you weren’t, it was nearly as bad, because you were lost in the jihad. You, her last child; she was desperate to get you back. And they knew this. They contacted her in Zurich again, and this time she agreed to do anything they asked her to do if only they would get you out. They gave her a contact in Peshawar, and he arranged for you to be snatched and taken to America. So then it was time for the payoff, and the payoff was me.”

“Why did they want you?” Theo asks. “They were funding the jihad all along, they had access to all the leaders, and you were just a foot soldier.”

“Yes, then I was, but I was also young. I could be-how should I say it?-groomed for greater things.”

“I don’t understand. Are you saying the CIA educated you? For what, to spy on the jihad?”

“Not exactly. Let me give you a hint. My B.S. is in physics, and my doctorate is in nuclear engineering. My thesis was on new computational approaches to the analysis of nuclear explosions. The research was paid for by the Department of Energy, the people who manufacture nuclear weapons.”

Sonia is silent, watching her son’s face as he thinks this through. She feels a wave of shame, another blast of her failed-mother grief, and also compassion for what she has allowed to happen to him. He is not stupid, her boy, but neither is he Wazir; no, she has not groomed him.

At last Theo says, “You’re a Trojan horse.”

This provokes another sunny smile on the handsome face. “Exactly! I am Abu Lais, the great hope of the whole jihad to lay hands on nuclear weapons. Isn’t that a joke?”

“Yeah, it’s hilarious,” says Theo, unsmiling.

Wazir does not notice this, his grin grows broader. “Yes, and the kind of joke only a Pashtun can really appreciate: Pashtunistan, the Brillo pad of intersecting betrayals.”

“Why you?” Theo demands. “Why do you get this terrific education, courtesy of Uncle Sam?”

“As I said, it’s a long story,” Wazir says, not smiling now.

“We got time,” says Theo. “I like long stories.” He unslings the AK, props it against the wall, sits down on the charpoy. Sonia sits next to him.