CHAPTER 23

Dr. Kevin Boyle, Medical Director for the CARE Kabul hospital, was an amiable, balding, five-foot-ten general surgeon from Omaha, Nebraska. He had been in Afghanistan since 2005 when the Afghan Ministry of Public Health asked CARE, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to transforming the lives of sick, wounded, and disabled children and their families throughout the developing world, to take over the former Soviet one-hundred-bed hospital and health clinic.

After getting the rundown on what had happened in the waiting area, Boyle thanked Harvath and Gallagher and then took them on a tour of the facility. As they walked, he told stories about not having any heat when they started out, as well as how badly ravaged the buildings had been from years of war and neglect. He pointed out burn marks on the floors in the hallways where the Taliban had set up campfires during their siege of Kabul.

Harvath asked Boyle to detail the training their doctors received before leaving for Afghanistan, especially as it related to kidnappings. And though it wasn’t as thorough as Harvath would have liked, it was considerably more than most organizations offered their staff. If Julia Gallo could remember to do what she had been taught, she had a much better chance of staying alive.

Boyle led them up a flight of stairs, past a seated Afghan security guard, and through an iron gate to the main building’s second floor. Here, he explained, were all of the hospital’s administrative offices and lecture rooms.

In the middle of the corridor was a door marked Surgeons, which he unlocked and held open for his guests.

The surgeons’ office was a large square room with windows on the far side that looked out toward the main gate and the old Soviet military base across the road. There was a metal desk in each corner with extra chairs in front. Only two of the desks had computers.

Stuffed bookcases and mismatched file cabinets lined the perimeter of the room. There was a small door that led to a private bathroom. Upon it was a single hook overloaded with white coats.

Boyle introduced the only other person in the room, an Afghan surgeon named Dr. Hamid, who was busy at one of the computers. After shaking hands, Boyle led his guests to a couple of chairs in front of a desk on the other side of the room. He disappeared into the bathroom and returned with three clean coffee cups, which he filled with hot water from a dispenser next to one of the file cabinets.

Dropping a tea bag into each one, he then set the mugs down on the desk, pulled up a chair, and said, “Thank you again for what you did downstairs.”

Harvath was about to respond when the young Afghan doctor from the waiting room entered with a thick stack of folders tucked beneath his arm. Boyle waved him over and introduced him as Dr. Atash, one of their family medicine residents. He still looked shaken by what had happened.

He shook hands with Harvath and Gallagher, then excused himself to discuss his charts with Dr. Hamid.

When Atash had walked away, Gallagher turned to Dr. Boyle and said, “You should think about hiring additional security. Next time, you may not be so lucky.”

“True,” he replied, “but unfortunately, we need a new ultrasound machine more than we need additional security. But that’s not important. We’re here to talk about Dr. Gallo.”

“We are,” said Harvath. “And as Mrs. Gallo explained to you in her email, Mr. Gallagher and I have been brought in to help secure Julia’s release.”

“Well, the hospital is ready to help in any way we can.”

“That’s good. So let me ask you, when Dr. Gallo came to work here, did you know who she was, or more important, who her mother was?”

“I did. Julia’s mother is friendly with one of our board members, but she wanted to be treated like every other doctor we have, not like the daughter of Stephanie Gallo.”

“In other words, no special treatment.”

Dr. Boyle nodded as he took his tea bag out of his cup and dropped it in the wastebasket. “She also didn’t like talking about her mother or her family much. She was real tight-lipped about it.”

“But did people know who she was?” asked Harvath as he tossed his tea bag too.

“If you’ll pardon the graveyard humor, doctors like to say that the only way three people in a hospital can keep a secret is if two of them are dead and the other is in a coma.”

Harvath had read copies of all the reports dealing with Julia Gallo’s kidnapping. He knew that all of her colleagues at the hospital had been thoroughly questioned. Unfortunately, hospitals weren’t the only places with thriving gossip mills; so were ex-pat communities. Add in the fact that gossiping was the Afghan national pastime, and Julia Gallo was all but guaranteed to have caught the attention of the Taliban. It was just a matter of time.

“She didn’t trade on the family name,” continued Boyle. “That was for sure. She didn’t need to. She was a damn good doctor and really cared about the Afghans she treated. Maybe even cared too much.”

“What do you mean by too much?” asked Harvath.

Boyle showed him an official reprimand that had been placed in Julia’s file. Proselytizing, whether it was religious or political, was strictly against CARE’s rules, especially in Afghanistan. They expected their doctors to lead by example, not by persuasion.

The medical director detailed their rural medicine program and how Julia had jumped at the chance to travel to remote villages outside Kabul. It was dangerous work, made even more so by allegations that she was encouraging women to do things like go to school, report abusive husbands and fathers, and refuse to enter into forced marriages.

Looking back, Boyle realized he should have forbidden her from making any more trips outside the hospital, but because of her family’s VIP standing within the organization, he had looked the other way. Instead, he had written up the reprimand, provided Julia with a copy, and put the original in her file. He had hoped it would show her how serious what she was doing was, but it didn’t seem to have worked.

Kevin Boyle was a good person, and Harvath could see that. He believed in what he was doing for the people of Afghanistan and he cared very much for his staff. He felt guilty about what had happened to Julia Gallo, but what he didn’t know was that her kidnapping had nothing to do with what she was encouraging the women of Afghanistan to do. It had everything to do with her mother and her mother’s close ties with the new president of the United States.

If the Taliban hadn’t been able to snatch her in the countryside, they might have eventually come to the hospital to grab her. And if that had happened, Harvath knew that it would have been much worse than what had transpired in the waiting room that morning.

He asked Boyle to fill in several blanks from the reports he’d read about the kidnapping and then asked a few additional questions about hospital security. Gallagher also asked one or two of his own.

When they were finished, the men stood and shook hands. As if it was an afterthought, Harvath said, “I heard you’re a Navy man?”

“I am,” replied Boyle with a smile. “They’re the ones who sent me to medical school. How about you?”

“I was in the Teams.”

The medical director was impressed. “Well, I can understand why Mrs. Gallo wanted you on board.”

“If I had known there was another Navy man in Kabul, I wouldn’t have had to bring a Marine on the team,” Harvath said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at Gallagher, who rolled his eyes.

Removing his Afghan cell phone and opening up the address book, Harvath added. “If I need to call you, where can I get hold of you?”

The medical director dictated a number he said was good day or night, and Harvath entered it into his phone.