The Guardian (32 page)

Saunders crossed to the kitchenette and opened the cabinet above the sink to get a glass.

‘Right on the first guess,’ Milo commented.

‘Not too many places to keep glasses,’ Saunders said. He pulled out two and put them on the table. The seal wasn’t cracked on the bottle, and he opened it and poured some into
both glasses.

‘Does it bother you to have booze in the house?’ Cianna asked Milo. She knew more about his past than she let on.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It bothers me to have useless clutter in the apartment. By all means, have at it. Just get rid of the bottle when you’re done, okay?’

‘No problem.’ She looked at Milo, and Saunders could tell she was waiting for him to leave. Saunders took his gun out of his pocket and laid it on the table next to the glass, picked
up the glass and took a sip. He could see Milo’s eyes go wide at the gun.

‘Do you have someplace you can go?’ Cianna asked.

Milo gave a dismissive wave. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m a resourceful guy.’

‘It’s better for you if you’re not here,’ Cianna explained.

‘So I can see,’ he said. ‘Someday you’ll have to tell me what this is all about.’

‘Probably not.’

‘Right. Let me just get my things.’ He disappeared into the bedroom for a moment, came out with a jacket. ‘It’s supposed to be cold tomorrow,’ he said. He walked to
the door and turned back to them. She went over and gave him a hug.

‘Thanks so much,’ she said.

‘Like I said, no problem. Will you be back at work tomorrow?’

She looked at Saunders and he took another sip of the Jack. ‘Not likely,’ she said.

‘Ever?’ Milo asked. His voice sounded small.

‘Keep a good thought,’ was all she would say.

He hugged her again, more tightly this time. ‘I need you around to help with the kids,’ he said to her. ‘You know that, right?’

‘You did what you do before I started working with you,’ she replied, touching his face.

He shook his head. ‘Not very well. Now we’re actually making a difference. I need you to come back. The kids need you.’

She nodded and leaned in and kissed his cheek. ‘We’ll see. But you’ll be fine either way. You have more strength than you know.’

‘And less than you think.’ Saunders thought Milo was going to cry, but he didn’t. He sucked it up and turned the doorknob. Over his shoulder, he said, ‘John, it was
nothing but a pleasure meeting you. Take care of her, okay?’

Then he was gone.

‘He likes you,’ Saunders said.

‘He does,’ she agreed. ‘Not in that way, though,’ she added. She was walking around the apartment, looking at the pictures on the walls. They were all generic prints of
boats and seascapes. ‘He’s gay.’

‘Is he?’

‘Do you have a problem with gays?’ she asked. There was the hint of an accusation in her tone.

He shook his head. ‘Gays serve in the military. I have no problem with anyone who serves in the military.’ He slid the second glass of Jack over to her, tipped his own up in toast.
‘Hooah,’ he said.

She picked up the glass and raised it. ‘Hooah,’ she replied. She picked the glass up and took a long pull. It felt good, and for the first time that day she felt the exhaustion creep
up on her. ‘What’s the plan now?’

‘We wait,’ Saunders said. ‘My boss has my cell number. He’s been helping Akhtar all along, so he must have had a plan to get the Cloak out of the country from the start.
He’ll get things organized and contact us soon.’

‘How will he feel about Akhtar’s death?’ she asked. ‘About the fact that we didn’t do more to save him?’

Saunders shook his head slowly, took another sip, and poured some more. ‘He was an asset. Nothing more.’

‘
An asset . . . nothing more
,’ she repeated quietly.

He shrugged. ‘It’s one of the first things you learn on the job. Never get attached to an asset. Eventually they all get burned. That’s the nature of the business.’

‘And me?’ she said. He looked up sharply at her. ‘I’m just an asset, too, right? You used me to find my brother. To find the Cloak. I’m
an asset . . . nothing
more
.’

He looked at her silently as he took another sip of the bourbon. ‘You’re an asset,’ he agreed. She was glad he didn’t lie to her. She would have lost respect for him if
he’d done that. ‘But you have skills. You’d make a good agent.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

Neither of them said anything for a little while. They both just sat there at the table, waiting. ‘Where will he go?’ Saunders asked finally. She looked at him, an eyebrow raised.
‘Milo,’ he explained his question. ‘Where will he go?’

She understood. ‘He has another apartment,’ she said.

‘Another apartment?’

She nodded. ‘He doesn’t know I know about it. It’s over in the South End in Boston. Nice place. I followed him when I’d just started working with him. I wanted to know a
little bit about him, figure out who I was dealing with. There seemed something off about him; like there was something he was hiding. Turned out he’s been hiding something for most of his
life. I’m not sure he’s come to grips with it yet, so he keeps that part of his life separate. I think that’s why he’s so dedicated to the kids he helps. It’s like
it’s some kind of penance for what he still, deep down, thinks of as his sins.’ She took another drink. ‘He’s a good person.’

Saunders gave a skeptical smile. ‘There’s no such thing,’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘You believe that?’

The smile faded. ‘Maybe not. Maybe I just don’t know what it means.
A good person
. If you do bad things, but you have a good motive for doing them, where do you
fall?’

‘Is that how you see yourself?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t see myself.’

‘Must be nice.’

‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘It makes things easier. How about you?’

‘How about me?’

‘Who is the real Cianna Phelan? Soldier . . .? War hero . . .? Guardian of wayward children . . .?’ he paused, watching her. ‘Murderer . . .?’

She could feel her face fall with his last pronouncement. She poured some more bourbon, picked up her glass and stepped away from the table. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
‘You read my record,’ she said. ‘Of course. You were looking for Charlie, you would have. So you think you know me.’

‘I know your file. I also know that files contain only the information others put into them.’ He walked over to her. The apartment was small enough that it was difficult not to stand
close. ‘I’ve read about the medals and the missions, and the remarkable things you’ve done in the service of your country. I’ve read the accounts of you killing a man in
cold blood. I know what it is that you do now, and I’ve seen what you’re capable of when the shit hits the fan. None of it fits. None of it makes sense. So, no, I don’t think for
a second that I have any idea who the hell you really are. You remain a mystery, if it’s any consolation.’

‘Very little,’ she said. ‘What would solve the mystery for you?’

‘I want to hear it from you. In your words.’

‘What happened over there? You want me to tell you?’

‘If you want to.’

‘And you think that will matter?’

‘I don’t think anything really matters.’

She turned and looked up at him. She hadn’t been this close to anyone without a fight in two years. ‘Yes, you do. You know that some things do matter.’

In early August the heat in Kandahar was at its peak. Outside the madrasa the temperature was pushing 110 degrees, and it wasn’t noon yet. Sergeant Cianna Phelan
squinted up into the punishing Asian sun and wondered how hot it might get. One-twenty at least was her guess. Under the full uniform – including the Kevlar vest and helmet – a body
could be overcome in this kind of heat without any warning.

She was there with an elite Delta Force unit that specialized in anti-terrorism tactics. Radicals were recruiting more and more women to carry out terror attacks, and in order to combat this
phenomenon, the Army recognized that Delta Force needed women in anti-terror roles. Afghan society was still so segregated that men alone could not adequately investigate, search and identify those
women who might be preparing an attack.

Few were surprised when Cianna was one of three women chosen for the training. She was the most decorated woman serving in Afghanistan, with a silver star, two bronze stars, and two purple
hearts; she’d already seen more active combat than most of her male counterparts. Even for all that, there was some concern that those within the Delta Force unit would only see the tits
under the medals. She’d found acceptance, though, and the training was beyond anything that any women had undergone in the US military to date.

On August 11, her unit had been called up to support the local military police to make sure that a series of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations did not get out of control.
‘Control’ was a difficult concept to define in a place like Kandahar, where most men carried weapons, and the area just outside the city was rife with poppy fields fought over by the
Taliban, the territorial militias and the Federal Government forces. Often the best the US military could do was limit chaos, rather than exert control.

The demonstrations that day were likely to get ugly. Five days before, a young Shia woman had refused her husband’s sexual demands in violation of a Federal Law. The woman, who was
pregnant and sick when she’d dared to rebuff her husband, was dragged to the center of the local square in her village outside the city. There she had been tied to a boulder and whipped
mercilessly as a warning to other women in the village. When she was finally released, she had to be taken to the hospital, where it was discovered that she had miscarried. That news had driven her
husband to beat her again, right in the hospital. It was no longer clear that she would survive.

News of the attack had spread throughout the nation. The Karzai government was under intense pressure from the UN and its allies to take the law off the books, but he needed the support of
the Shia Mullahs in the upcoming election, so he was walking a middle line, promising to review the law without making any commitments about taking it off the books. Others within the country,
though, were not being as passive.

The demonstration in Kandahar that day had been organized by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan – RAWA – an independent group that had been struggling for
women’s rights for more than three decades. Many of the organization’s leaders had been executed in front of the crowds at local football stadiums during the Taliban rule, but the
organization was gaining strength again. There were expected to be as many as seventy young women joining the protest that day, walking three blocks, from the madrasa run by an influential Shia
cleric to the city center. It would be the first protest for women’s rights in the city of Kandahar since 1973.

The demonstration wasn’t the danger, as far as the police and Delta Force were concerned. The danger would come from the counter-demonstrations. The challenge to the law recognizing
male supremacy within the household was viewed by many in the community as an attack on the Muslim faith as a whole. Worse, it was viewed as an attack organized by foreign interests. They were
expecting as many as a thousand counter-demonstrators to confront the women marching. Those numbers made physical confrontation a virtual inevitability, and the Delta Force anti-terrorism unit,
thirty-strong including the three women, was sent in to support two hundred Afghan police officers in trying to prevent a massacre.

The protest began as expected. A bus pulled up in front of the madrasa at 11.30 a.m. and stopped. No one was moving on the street except the police and military. The rest of the city seemed
deserted. The faded-grey school bus blended in with the cement buildings and the chalky road. It was as if the place could hold no color – the entire area had given up the battle against the
dust that had covered it since the beginning of time. The street was eerily quiet as Cianna sweated under her gear, her assault rifle hooked in the crook of her arm.

The women came off the bus in silence, like spirits, single-file, eyes fixed straight ahead of them. Most of them wore western-style dresses or jeans and blouses. By and large they were in
their twenties and thirties, and they held their heads up high. There were even a few young girls with them, holding hands with their mothers as they took up the fight to change their world at an
early age.

Cianna looked around the small square where the madrasa was located. It was near the center of the city, and a narrow tin arch marked its entrance. A series of billboards in multiple
languages pictured wanted men alongside smiling faces hawking commercial products Cianna couldn’t identify from the context. The archway resembled the ticket gate of a decrepit southwestern
drive-in theater in a Stephen King novel. In the distance, the 100-foot Ferris wheel at the old fairground in the center of the city stood rusted and motionless, like the skeletal remains of a city
that had once held promise. The air seemed to buzz around them as the women lined up, and all of the tension of the city seemed concentrated on the one tiny area.

Then it began.

The doors to the madrasa opened and the men poured out, screaming and chanting and shouting foul oaths. Cianna swiveled her head back and forth, trying to comprehend what was happening. They
were coming from the front door, but also from side doors, and from around back of the building; swarming the square like ants from a giant anthill. It hardly seemed possible that they had all fit
within the madrasa itself.

The Afghan police hesitated, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. There were two hundred police, but five times that many counter-demonstrators, and those organizing the men had effectively
surprised the police with an instant show of force. Cianna had only just begun learning Pashto, but she understood enough. They were shouting at the women, calling them western whores and telling
them to go home to fuck their fathers. For a moment, Cianna thought the women would actually get back onto the bus. Who in their right mind would stay to face such a bloodthirsty mob?