He dared a look up at my face. “Lance-naik. I am only a driver, sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Shabbir Hussain.”

“Very well, Lance-naik Hussain, why was your officer trying to kill me?”

“He wasn’t trying to kill you! He was going to give you to those Afghans and they would take you away. He would put it out as a kidnapping. It happens all the time on these roads.”

“And why was… this officer, what was his name and rank?”

“Captain Ahmed Waqar.”

“What unit?”

He lowered his face. “I am not allowed to say.”

“Don’t be stupid, Shabbir. You have no choice, and no one will ever know what passed between us. I am trying to save your life, so help me, please. What unit?”

“Intelligence. But I am only a driver. I don’t know anything.”

“Thank you. And now, why was Captain Waqar of the ISI trying to have me kidnapped?”

“I told you, sir. I am only a driver.”

“Yes, you keep saying. Would you like a cigarette?”

He would. I gave him one and let him smoke half of it in silence. Then I said, “Let’s begin again, and let’s not continue with this story that you’re only a driver. An ISI captain on a mission like this would not take along a lance-naik driver. He would require someone who could take charge if he were out of action, perhaps a senior NCO, a havildar major or a subedar, and you are too young to be either of those, so I suspect you are a lieutenant. And by the way, lieutenant, drivers have little cuts and scars on their hands and grease around their fingernails. You have never changed even an oil filter with those soft hands.”

He took in this comment and his shoulders sagged.

“Shoot me, if you like,” he said sullenly. “I’m not saying anything more.”

“Why not? Captain Waqar is dead, and your main problem will be figuring out what to tell Major Laghari when you return to Pindi. Fortunately, I understand he’s not too bright, so you should have little difficulty making up a plausible story.”

He stared up at me. “How did you know-” he began and then realized his mistake.

“How did I know you were sent by Major Laghari? Because, my friend, you have been suckered into a family affair. Major Seyd Laghari is my uncle. I bet he didn’t tell you that.”

He gaped at me. “No. He said you were an American spy.”

“I’m sure. Well, the fact is I’m not here to spy on Pakistan. I’m here to look for my mother. She’s one of the people kidnapped with William Craig. You’d know all about that, too, wouldn’t you?”

I was looking into his eyes when I said that, and I saw them register surprise and something deeper too. Perhaps guilty knowledge. I thought then that Lieutenant Hussain did not have a shining future as an intelligence agent if he could not lie more convincingly.

“And the Taliban that Captain Waqar was talking to in Peshawar. What’s his story?”

“I don’t know,” said the lieutenant sullenly. “Some Afghan.”

“Name?”

“Baz Khatak.”

“Who is he?”

“Nobody. An informant.”

An insurgent was more like it, but I didn’t press it because I thought I’d got everything I was going to get out of Lieutenant Hussain without actual torture. I made him drag his boss’s body back to the Toyota and heave it into the back compartment, and all the time he was doing that he kept looking at me, like I was going to pull some fiendish trick of the kind we Americans are famous for, maybe shoot him at the last minute. But I did not, and instead made him toss the dead Tajiks and the AK down the dropoff and let him get in his car and drive away.

The Ducati had lost some of its fairing but it was still in running order and I used it to return to Peshawar, because I was not going to try to drive back to Lahore with ISI searching the roads, as they would be as soon as the lieutenant called in what had gone down. I should have capped the poor bastard, but I didn’t have the heart; he looked too much like my cousin Hassan, even though I’ve shot dozens of people who resemble my relatives. It was just not his day to die.

W hen Rashida comes in the next morning with the eternal naan, dal, and tea, Ashton says, in reasonable Pashto, “Rashida, my gazelle, where are my eggs and bacon? I specifically ordered eggs and bacon this morning, and whole-wheat toast, and strong coffee.”

Rashida ignores him as she always does. She does not acknowedge the presence of strange men; she places her tray and tugs her dupatta more tightly around her face.

“Well, if I can’t get a decent breakfast, we’re never stopping here again,” he continues. “What do you say, Schildkraut? Next time we’ll do the Pearl, I think. Baths, coffee, and, I believe, they don’t do decapitations.”

Schildkraut smiles thinly at this, and the captives all gather around the breakfast tray, except for Sonia. She has observed Rashida’s subtle signal. She rises from her charpoy and follows the girl into a corner of the room.

Rashida raises her arm, flashing a clutch of gold bangles, and, grinning, says, “I am betrothed to Batur. God willing, we will be married as soon as my father has sold three cows and can pay the walwër. Perhaps it will be one week from now.”

“God’s blessings be on you and him and may you have twenty sons,” says Sonia, embracing the girl.

“Thanks in the name of God,” says Rashida, “but it will be a poor wedding, without sweetmeats and wedding clothes, if the emir does not open the road to Mingaora before then. We hear there will be another chop soon,” she adds in a lowered voice.

“Why will there be another chop soon, Rashida?”

“Because the infidels have made an attack on a place where many of the leaders of the jihad are staying, I don’t know where, and some may have been killed. Everyone is talking about this, and waiting to see if any were killed, God forbid. And if any were, one of you will be chopped. But it will not be you; you will be the last of all. Or that is what they say.”

“I see. Then I will tell my friends. Is this the reason the roads are closed?”

“No, the road is closed because of the bombs. We have many strangers coming in trucks to take the bombs away to Afghanistan to destroy the tanks of the crusaders there, which is a very good thing. Even in Iraq they will use our bombs, they say. They are in silver cases with the name of God marked on the outside. It is a great secret, so they close the roads against spies like you. We are not supposed to look, but no one notices a girl.”

She lets her dupatta slip away from her face, and Sonia can see that her perfect bisque forehead is knotted with worry.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to tell you. The emir is very angry with you. He is angry with Idris, but it is about you. He says if you do not stop interpreting dreams falsely he will put you back in the goat pen and beat you. And Idris says he shall not and they fought, and only Abu Lais stood in their way or their men would have spilt blood. My cousin Amira was cleaning in the house, and she heard it all.”

“This Abu Lais must be a great man.”

“Yes, they say so. He is a real Pashtun from a good family, not like the emir, who is a mongrel dog, my father says, although he buys loyalty with his money. Abu Lais has made the bombs, which is a good thing, but he eats with Arabs, whom no one likes. They cannot speak properly and they smell wrong, although they say they are Muslims. But everyone must respect Abu Lais, because he is a brother of the sheikh Osama and Mullah Omar. So now you are warned. I hope they don’t whip you, because I don’t think that the women can save you again.”

Sonia thanks the girl, who gives a quick smile, veils herself, and leaves the room. Sonia goes back to the prisoners, who are still eating their breakfast. Manjit makes a place for her and shows that he has saved her four slabs of naan and a mound of dal. Her tea has cooled but she drinks it and eats the food gratefully, despite the tension she feels among her fellows. She tells Amin what she has learned from Rashida.