“They’ll know. They’ve tapped my phone, my computer.”
“There are ways around their surveillance. And as far as the documentation goes, my guy is very discreet.”
Hisguy? It sounds shady as fuck, but if John can get Bayani a passport, then sending him somewhere safe would be possible. John could join him later, once he finds a way to escape the Hand undetected.
Julien says, “I consider myself an optimist, John, a glass half-full kind of guy. You never know when your lucky break might come, and it never hurts to be prepared. Wouldn’t you agree?”
John nods, still not trusting the assassin not to double-cross him.
Julien pulls out a business card, black with a silver etching of a bird, his namesake most likely. Using a flashy metallic pen, he scrawls a number on it. “My guy,” Julien says and hands the card to John. “Buy yourself a burner phone with cash and call him. Tell him I sent you. Do it soon, before the number changes and your window of opportunity closes.”
Julien glances up at the window and John follows his gaze to where Bayani’s round face appears. Julien tips his imaginary hat at the boy. Bayani only glares back at him. John smiles at the boy’s loyalty and vigilance.
“I would tell you to have a good night, but I don’t want to insult you,” Julien says in parting, then climbs into his black SUV and drives off into the night.
John stares at the card in his hand and tries to divine the assassin’s intentions. Friend or foe, ally or enemy? He wishes he could know for certain the composition of a man’s heart.
* * *
John has a nightmare that night.It’s a little different each time, but the one commonality is that John wakes in a panic with the sensation that his hands are dripping with blood. It’s likely metaphorical more so than physical, since John always uses gloves when dealing with carcasses, animal or otherwise. Tonight, he startles awake to find Bayani sitting on the floor beside him. He must have woken the boy with his thrashing and groaning. Bayani makes little cooing sounds and pets John’s head while John inspects his hands to make sure they are not black with blood.
“I had a bad dream,”John signs.
Bayani nods in understanding. “Want to talk about it?”
Perhaps it’s the quiet of the room and the absence of light. Or it is simply Bayani’s soothing presence that gives John the feeling of security to share one of his own worst memories. He could attempt to sign the story, but he’s not that fluent in ASL and he doesn’t want Bayani to misunderstand him, so he says, “I had a friend in the service. An Afghan interpreter who I met when I was stationed overseas.”
Even though it was more than a decade ago, John can still picture the vastness of the desert in Garmsir—sand for as far as the eye could see, and an unrelenting heat that made you feel as though you were being burned alive. The sun had never felt so cruel as in that landscape and the nights had never before brought such sweet relief. Much of their first few weeks as a squad was spent acclimating to the extreme temperatures and learning how to stay alive.
“What was his name?”Bayani asks.
“Karim,” John says. He wasn’t a trained soldier, but a local boy whose village had been occupied by U.S. forces long enough that he was able to pick up on the language. Quick as a whip with a mischievous sense of humor, Karim assisted with translating between John’s commander and the Afghan police chief who was also stationed on base. Their platoon was charged with rooting out Taliban insurgents. The police chief was supposedly trying to do the same.
“He was young,” John says, “and very smart. Picked up on card games easily, a strategic thinker, thoughtful. The Afghan police chief took an interest in him.” Their relationship was wrong from the start and not because they were both men, but because the boy was a minor and the police chief was his superior.
“My commander didn’t like the police chief,” John says, which is an understatement. His commander had loathed the man, partly because each of them believed the turf they were defending to be their own and also because the police chief had a habit of discounting the threat level of local insurgents as well as giving bad intel on where their cells were located–mistakes, if not outright lies, that could cost them their lives. Nobody in John’s squad liked the police chief, but he was their only source of local knowledge. John relays this background knowledge to Bayani and says, “And because Karim was Afghan and involved with the police chief, my commander didn’t trust him either.”
Despite their sexual relationship, John believed Karim was innocent to the police chief’s scheming. Karim did his job honestly and with integrity, even while knowing there was deception on both sides. Occasionally, Karim would confide in John about his challenges, not only with the police chief and commander but also the other men of John’s platoon, who viewed Karim as the resident whore and told him as much. Karim wanted to be respected for his skill with languages, and that would never happen so long as the police chief was fucking him.
This next part is difficult for John to relay, even with the many years that have passed. He hasn’t told anyone this story but has wrestled with it alone.
“I was on duty one night, keeping watch. My zone included the officers’ private rooms, both my commander and the police chief. Karim was with the police chief that night, as he often was. I could hear them… having sex.” The detail is only important because of what came next, though John would often hear them together in the nighttime. The police chief was not quiet about his passions, grunting like a pig and barking orders at Karim in Farsi while Karim was mostly silent throughout.
“My commander went into the police chief’s room…” John recalls the sudden silence, then a cry that was clearly Karim’s. “A shot was fired, and I rushed inside to find that the police chief’s throat had been slashed and Karim had been executed with a shot to the back of his head.”
The boy was naked, defenseless, a slight thing like Bayani. Completely innocent and far too young to die. The commander waited for his opportunity and took it. John’s stomach turns just thinking about the cold calculation that went into planning their murders. Bayani’s face reflects the horror of that night and John’s own confusion at the time.
“My commander said that he’d heard a shout and came inside to find that the police chief’s throat had been slashed, that Karim had done it and was wielding a knife at him, so he’d shot Karim in retaliation, which hardly explains the execution style of death.”
John takes a deep breath before continuing. “The scene was clearly a set-up. Everyone knew it. My commander had killed the police chief and pinned it on Karim, but because everyone hated the man, no one had the balls to contradict my commander. They also didn’t seem to care that Karim had been murdered along with him. ‘Collateral damage’ my platoon sergeant called him.”
John remembers the delight on Karim’s face whenever he’d lay down three aces in rummy, his toothy grin after beating John in a card game, the defiant jut of the boy’s chin when the soldiers taunted him and his relief when John’s mere presence made them scatter. John wishes he had done more, to prevent the tragedy and if not that, then to avenge Karim’s murder.
“Those were bad people,”Bayani signs.
“My commander definitely was, my sergeant was complicit, and the others fell in line, including me. I had to continue serving under that commander and with those soldiers for the next several months. Had to trust them with my life and save theirs in return. None of it excuses my own cowardice.”
John could have filed a report, either in the field or once he’d returned stateside. Instead, he got out. That was his second tour of duty and his last. John didn’t re-enlist despite the cushy promotion and signing bonus they were offering him. A few months later, his father dropped dead from a massive heart attack and John had to take over the family business and all that it entailed. In recent years, he’d simply given up on the idea of ever being happy. Until Bayani, he’d come to accept his miserable lot in life.
