“Honor requires it, saheb. You know this.” Taj lowered his head and his voice. “I assure you, you will not die.”
Daniel understood why some locals called the great opium khans Manticores, after the mythical creature with the body of a lion and rows of razor-sharp teeth like a shark’s. The Manticore’s dragon tail was filled with poison, and when it attacked a man, it left no part of him behind.
Rebecca stood by the car door, which she held open, watching Daniel. In her eyes, he could see it. She wanted to leave not only the station but the road, the desert, probably the country.
“They know where you work,” Taj said.
Daniel wondered if the Kochi tribe would send men after him to extract revenge months or even years from now. Rebecca. What if they avenged the girl by harming Rebecca?
“I’m not afraid of them,” he told Taj.
Taj smiled, revealing a hairline crack in one of his incisors, a single flaw in an even row of teeth. “A man who says he is not afraid is afraid. So why not come now, while I am here to protect you?”
From the station, an Indian chanteuse whined out a song that Daniel had heard a thousand times. Sergeant Najib sat in a chair visible through the open door, uninterested in his lingering Kochi guests.
“I hope you understand my point, Daniel Sajadi,” Taj said. He ran his sleeve over the gun one last time before returning the weapon to its holster.
Rebecca approached them with quick steps. “Let’s go,” she whispered.
Taj drifted back into the station, the end of his turban floating in the wind. Once alone, Daniel and Rebecca argued. When she learned that he planned to return to the desert, she swayed as if the things holding her together were escaping. He held her by the shoulders. He didn’t say that he had no choice. He only told her he would be safe.
And he believed it. An opium khan would not kill an American official. This was not Burma or Colombia, with their turf wars and drug killings. There was no such violence here. The khans were not cartels, but a scattering of powerful and mysterious men who ruled more because people needed them than because people feared them, though no one wanted to cross a Manticore. Nor would Taj allow the elders to execute Daniel. What then would have been the point of bringing him to the station? All they would want were ceremonial apologies, perhaps more money. Daniel’s confidence slowly returned. He would manage. He was the son of Sayed Sajadi.
Rebecca’s eyes were red, and her breath was faint and light. She was watching Taj, who stepped back inside the station and asked Sergeant Najib a question they could not hear.
“We need to leave,” she insisted, pulling Daniel toward the car. Her hair had come loose from its ponytail, golden strands clinging to her brow. Daniel took her hand and promised he would return quickly. That it was just a formality. Tradition.
“You’re crazy,” she said. “Don’t do this.”
“Madam,” Taj called out. “I’m sure the young constable would be honored to escort you to a hotel of your choice in Ghazni.”
She crossed her arms tightly and lowered her head, her lips trembling.
“But it is the closest city,” Taj said, as if her resistance were due to apprehension about geography.
The rumble of an engine was followed by the appearance of Mir, who had brought a car around from behind the station—a Moskvitch, the Soviet answer to Datsun. It had three hubcaps and a bent fender.
“He’s harmless,” Daniel told Rebecca. It was true. There had been men like Mir in Sayed’s every warehouse and factory.
“If you think that’s the guy I’m afraid of, you’ve had a different day than me.”
Taj held the back door of the Moskvitch open, but she took the passenger seat and slammed down the lock, shutting out Taj, her husband, and the day itself. Daniel told Mir to drive to the Ariana Hotel in Ghazni, whispering the directions, aware of Taj lurking. The young constable steered Rebecca onto the highway.
The drive back to the Kochi camp was aggressively silent, like the aftermath of an explosion. Daniel resisted the urge to turn over the wheel to Taj. He would have let anybody drive the car, if only he could avoid passing the place where it happened. He could control the car, he told himself. More difficult were his thoughts. Those childhood memories returned. Dorothy’s stories of the violence of the Kochis. The paintings that hung in his father’s offices and factories, depicting nomads heading into battle with zeal. His foot was rigid on the gas pedal, hands tight on the wheel.
Baseer and his wife had known all along what Taj was. Of that, Daniel was sure. In a month, the great opium harvest would begin, so, like the other khans, Taj was likely searching for workers in the nomads’ sprawling camps. Daniel should have known the moment he’d seen the man, so out of place there with his onyx and silk. But Daniel had always assumed that Manticores sent their underlings to choose workers. Maybe the khans didn’t trust anyone they hadn’t seen with their own eyes. Maybe they wanted fear and love from those in the fields, and these sentiments were best engendered face-to-face.
A convoy of tanks rolled past them toward Kabul. The last one stood out, though Daniel could not say how. The tanks shrank in the rearview mirror, where Daniel also found Baseer’s eyes. The old man’s weathered features softened into a smile, a look of pity mixed with something inscrutable.
At the Kochi camp, Taj assisted the parents with the body, declining Daniel’s help. The day was ending, the sun burnishing the silver-plated sky.
“Wait here,” he said.
“For what?”
“Would you prefer to come and face the elders?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to.”
Taj said goodbye to the parents and watched them cross the road. Daniel’s pulse was unsteady. The Kochi couple was soon out of sight.
“What is this?” Daniel said. “You told me you were bringing me to stand trial with the elders.”
Taj gestured to the driver’s seat, but Daniel hesitated. He looked toward the Kochi camp, wondering if he could seek safety there, then realizing that he was trapped between two forces he knew little about. Somewhere deep inside, he had the answer, but all he could hear was Telaya’s voice. I’m faster than you, she whispered. Do you see me?
The khan bowed slightly and waved his hand toward the car again.
“If you have something to tell me, you can call my office. Most of your colleagues have agreed to work with us,” Daniel lied.
The khan laughed as if he’d just heard a long-anticipated punchline. “My colleagues! The small farmers you work with are not my colleagues.” He said “small” the way people in Rebecca’s Los Angeles neighborhood said “southern.” He pointed to the car again, this time with the barrel of his gun, and it was like he had never laughed at all. “Drive,” he said. “If you behave yourself, everyone lives.”