What Changes Everything Read online

  The voice of Clarissa"s stepdaughter, tight with tension, interrupted Danil"s thoughts. "I don"t know what we"re waiting for. Do we trust the word of some Afghan kidnappers more than we trust our own troops?"

  "I agree, Ruby," said the voice on the phone.

  There was a moment of silence before Clarissa spoke. "I know it"s frustrating," she said. "But Amin"s in negotiations right now. I want to stick it out. If something changes on the ground, Jack, you will let us know."

  A few minutes later, they hung up. The daughter rose, noisily got herself a glass of water, and sank back down. "I still don"t agree," she said, her voice strained.

  Danil realized they"d forgotten he was there. He wondered if he should clear his throat to remind them, but before he could decide, the husband"s boss spoke up. "I know it"s hard, Ruby," he said. "But I strongly advocate leaving this in Amin"s hands a little longer."

  "It"s more than hard, Bill."

  "Look, I"ll say it again," the boss said. "As soon as you introduce guns, any situation has the potential to become more chaotic. Mix in cultural and language divides, and it"s combustible. Besides, the Americans are juggling a lot of balls. One kidnapped relief worker is only part of the picture for them. Amin"s interests are not muddied."

  "How can he succeed without money for ransom?" the daughter asked.

  "There are longstanding relationships between families that are beyond our

  understanding."

  "When do you speak to Amin next?" the daughter asked.

  "Later today, I expect," the boss answered. "Tomorrow at the latest."

  "Well," the daughter said after a moment of silence, her voice dense with frustration. "I have to go."

  "Ruby," Clarissa"s brother said. "We"re all trying to do the right thing here."

  "I just wish we agreed on what that was."

  By now, Danil had shrunk back into the corner of the room and was deeply regretting not slipping away half an hour earlier. Ruby shot past the sitting room and through the front door without glancing in his direction. He heard the boss murmur something to Clarissa in a soothing tone and follow the daughter out.

  "Clari, hang in there," her brother said. "I"ll call you tonight, okay?"

  After the brother left, Danil peeked into the kitchen and saw Clarissa sitting with her forehead resting in the palm of her hand. He backed up, and bumped into a chair.

  "Danil." Clarissa rose and came into the room. "I"m sorry. I got so caught up that I forgot—"

  "I should have left…"

  "I think you were trying to. I wouldn"t let you." Clarissa smiled wryly.

  "I"m going to get out of your hair."

  "Not yet. Talking to you is actually helpful for me."

  "So what did he say, your husband?"

  "Not much. Maybe twenty words. He sounded okay. But it was too fast. I"m trying to process everything. All I"m managing to do is be present for the FBI briefings; the rest of my life is complete confusion. And even during the briefings, I can"t seem to handle it right."

  "I don"t know if there is a right way."

  "No, there is, there must be. Todd"s daughter, she"s … she"s angry with me. She thinks I"m crazy—or maybe something worse than crazy. She can"t understand why I can"t just trust them. I almost want to give in for her sake; we don"t need tension between us right now, and Todd wouldn"t want it." Then she turned to him. "What you went through was harder, Danil, of course I know that."

  Danil raised his head to meet her gaze. Her expression was quizzical. "My brother was killed by friendly fire."

  She put her hand to her mouth and then lowered it again. Danil remained standing. The words came slowly. He hadn"t spoken to anyone about this in so long.

  "They didn"t tell us at first," he said. "They claimed he was killed by enemy mortar during a firefight." He felt a surge of anger and wondered when—if—it would diminish. He hesitated for a beat, but now that he"d begun, he felt like a plug had been yanked from the drain. "They expanded the story, even. They said he was trying to drag a wounded soldier to safety when he was killed. They said he was being awarded a distinguished service medal, that it had already been approved. My mom got a letter from the president." He made a scoffing sound. "But something never felt right to me. I tried to explain it to my mother but it sounded like I was one of those people who thinks 9/11 was a U.S. conspiracy. She thinks she can read people, and she was convinced they were telling her the truth. Then one day, out of the blue, a soldier in my brother"s unit called me. He told me it didn"t actually go down the way the army said. I wasn"t surprised. But to hear it said baldly like that—I was kind of …." He paused, pulled in his breath. "I wanted the details. The reason I went to Afghanistan? To look my brother"s commander in the eye. To tell him my brother thought these guys were his best friends. And it worked. Person to person, he came clean. He told me he never wanted to keep it secret in the first place."

  "How"d it happen?"

  "They"d been airlifted to this area in the middle of fucking nowhere in the dead of night. They were told to wait until dawn and then they began foot-patrolling the outskirts of some village that they thought held al-Qaeda or Taliban. Insurgents, terrorists—what the hell, probably just a bunch of farmers with guns. They spent a couple hours climbing down steep mountainsides, searching crannies in between rocks for stored weapons or ammunition. Finally they were on their way out when they got pinned down by small arms fire that seemed to come from across a ridge. It was morning, about ten-twenty. They ducked and radioed in coordinates. There was some kind of malfunction with the tactical communication systems, but one second lieutenant was able to radio information out. The military sent in air power as backup. Either the pilot got confused or the right message never reached him. It was chaotic; and I think that"s how it is more often than we know. These guys were in firefights about every other day. They"d lost four soldiers over the previous month. They were probably all mentally fried. My brother was killed by cannon fire from a low-flying F18 on a strafing run."

  "Oh God."

  Danil"s legs suddenly felt heavy; he sat down. "But there were all kinds of PR reasons not to record it that way. When I got back, I tried to contact our liaison—they give you a liaison when you lose a relative at war. I left a message—a mistake—and told him what I knew, and pushed for an investigation. He didn"t call me back for weeks. When I got hold of him finally, he said they"d done an internal investigation, and the friendly fire allegation wasn"t true."

  "What?"

  "Yeah. Can you believe it? So then I tried to contact my brother"s commander again, and I never have been able to reach him. It goes on from there; I spent a lot of time trying to be heard. Trying to get an inquest. They kept sending me reports that showed he was killed by enemy fire. During that period, I did my first street art about the war. And it felt more satisfying than all the struggling, and more important for my brother, in some crazy way. So I stopped. I stopped all those efforts to correct the official records, and put my frustration into the work."

  "Danil." She shook her head.

  "But here"s the deal. My mother won"t accept it. She insists my brother was killed by al Qaeda—not the Taliban, not farmers pissed off by the foreigners on their land, and certainly not fellow Americans. For her, that"s the only way he"s a hero, if a bunch of internationally recognized terrorists killed him. That"s the only way she can accept that he"s gone. I told her the two have nothing to do with one another, that Piotr is a hero and he was before he went to war, but—" He broke off.

  "That"s hard."

  "We aren"t talking anymore," he said. "But before we stopped talking, she begged me not to tell anyone what happened. What I say happened, that"s how she puts it. And I promised."

  Clarissa drew in a breath.

  "Yeah," Danil said. "So that"s the problem with doing a show and getting asked questions about my brother. I"m not supposed to tell the real story."

  "Can"t you call your mother? Tell her what"s happening?"

&nbs
p; "Every conversation we"ve had around this topic has gone pretty bad."

  "That can"t be what she wants, either."

  Danil shook his head and gave a small laugh. "She"s tough, my mom. She"s a character."

  "Tough or not," Clarissa said. "No one wants to lose twice." She took an audible breath. "I"m sure about that," she said.

  Danil stared for a moment, letting her words sink in before he rose to go. She followed him to the door, and he turned to her, hovering for a moment. "Thank you," he said.

  "Of course."

  "You know, about the rescue attempt…"

  "Yeah?" She studied him. "You got any advice?"

  He shook his head. "I don"t know what you should do; I wouldn"t want your

  responsibility. But…" He hesitated and she waited for him. "I wouldn"t be too anxious to send in a rescue team. I"d be worried about mistakes in the heat of battle too."

  Retaliation

  Clarissa, September 18th

  Clarissa glanced at the caller ID and then lifted the phone gingerly to her ear. "Hello?"

  "Did you hear the news this morning?"

  "I did, Ruby."

  "Sixteen Afghans dead. Four of them children."

  "I heard." In fact, she"d already talked to Bill, left a message on Jack"s phone and had time to be grateful that Ruby generally stayed up late and got up late.

  "A wedding party. Clarissa. Could antiAmerican sentiment get any higher?"

  Clarissa didn"t respond.

  "I"m afraid they"ll retaliate against the man they"ve got in their hands."

  "Oh, Ruby—"

  "We"ve got to get him out."

  "I agree."

  "Good. So let"s okay a rescue attempt. Today. Now."

  "Ruby, we don"t even know if a rescue attempt is possible right now. I"m still waiting to hear—"

  "I"m not arguing this over the phone," Ruby said. "I"m coming over." And then the line went dead.

  Compromise

  Amin, September 18th

  Amin, his uncle, one of the elders and the elder"s son had been sitting in silence for ten minutes—a silence that had grown suffocating and large. Amin wanted to apologize for somehow missing crucial clues, throwing the jirga process into disarray. There were local issues he didn"t understand, dynamics he couldn"t follow. But some things he knew: he knew it would be seen as arrogant of him to speak first, so he had to wait until they signaled they were ready. He knew his uncle"s disappointment had grown deep; he knew the elder was here only out of friendship to his uncle but would feel no regret in turning his back on Amin if there were further missteps. He knew he somehow had to avoid those missteps if he was to have a chance of securing Mr. Todd"s release.

  These were men of his blood, but Samira had been right: he barely knew them. They didn"t know him either. They were strangers with a tangle of motivations and desires hidden behind lips that sometimes twitched with a craving to tell. They were men who shared an Afghan conviction that trust, like sunsets, looked different at the end of each day. He wished that he and the elder had time to speak without ceremony, without purpose, the way a dirt road can wander. Then, instead of using sterile words like honor, they might have been able to discuss the unlikely ties between people, the urgency of human compassion, the promise of second chances.

  The elder cleared his throat. "Tension has grown," he said at last. "Perhaps you"ve

  heard."

  Amin nodded. "But that"s not—"

  "With the waves of anger so high," the elder interrupted Amin as his uncle shot him a look that ordered silence, "this situation could be taken out of our hands soon. It may even be too late now."

  The elder"s son got up and poured more chai for his father and then offered it to the others who shook their heads.

  "However," the elder began again after another moment. "If you will guarantee this man will leave immediately and never return, never have further contact with our people of any sort, we might have a way to move forward. Might."

  Zarlasht had been right. The message she sent had pointed to this compromise. It made her involvement clear, but the nature of that involvement remained fuzzy, slightly beyond the edge of his vision. Still, what felt important at the moment was her effort to help. Now it was up to him.

  Amin put down his cup. "You mean this one, particular American?" he asked. "If this one American leaves and never returns, that would feel like justice?"

  "Ah, justice," said the elder. "Justice is complicated with the Americans. But it is this one particular American you are interested in, isn"t it? Or are there others?"

  The elder"s son dropped a smile into his open palm.

  "Yes. In Allah"s name, it is his release I seek," Amin said.

  "In this case, I think it may be possible. If we have that assurance, inshallah, we will hope to move forward."

  "We appreciate your enormous efforts on my nephew"s behalf," his uncle told the elder, and then turned a pointed gaze toward Amin, opening his hands wide in question.

  It seemed simple enough on the surface, almost too easy, a compromise Amin should gracefully and thankfully accept. But he"d already walked this path once, a million years ago at another point in his own history, and the history of his country. He"d arranged everything based on his personal guarantee to everyone that a man would leave. He"d made complex preparations, confident the man would understand the urgency. And then that man"s pride had been larger than his fear. Amin had been young, but he"d trusted his reading of a situation, and he"d been wrong. He"d failed. The echoes were eerie.

  "Mr. Todd is my boss, not the other way around," Amin said.

  "Yet this is your country," the elder said. "And your negotiation."

  "That"s right, Amin," said his uncle. "You must lead him in the required direction."

  They were all looking at him. Now it had become his turn to speak. If he gave the

  complex, more honest answer, the elder would stand, bow politely and leave, and his uncle would send Amin on his way. If he gave the "right" one, the elder would stand, bow politely and leave, but then he would set something in motion. And that"s why Amin had come here, after all.

  But if Mr. Todd refused to depart, or felt insulted by a request that he promise never to return, this time Amin would not be spared, nor would his family. For making pledges he couldn"t keep, Amin would be punished. He was being asked to vouch for the borders of another man"s stubbornness or sense of duty. For the sake of Mr. Todd, he could promise anything. For the sake of his wife, uncle, and children, he couldn"t make a promise that fell beyond his reach.

  He felt three pairs of eyes upon him. He bowed his head and made a silent prayer to Allah for strength to make the right choice, say the right words. He lifted his cup and drained the last sip of chai. Then he opened his mouth, uncertain until he began to speak of what would emerge, trusting in a Wisdom greater than his for guidance.

  Zer Sha, Zer Sha

  Todd, September 19th

  Todd groaned, forced awake by a jab in his still painful ribs. Not the forend of a weapon, though—he knew what that felt like by now—so he registered it as not critically important and, seeing through squinted eyes that it was not yet dawn, turned away, unwilling to abandon sleep. It was almost morning of the fifteenth day since he"d been kidnapped, and sleep had become his escape. He knew he had to be careful, to guard against depression, keep his mind sharp, his body strong. But he also had to control anxiety and fears for the future. For the moment, maintaining that control seemed to require more time lost within dreams.

  He felt another prod. "Get up."

  He cracked his eyes to see a bare foot kicking his chest, a little harder this time. "Stop," he said. "No." Though he spoke without conviction, he felt proud of asserting himself.

  "Get up!" He knew from the voice it was the youngest guard, the one he"d privately nicknamed Fuzzy because of the quality of his beard. "You"re moving."

  Moving? Where?

  Get up, Mr. Todd. Amin"s voice, an instructio
n he had to obey. Todd groaned again, pushed himself to sitting position, rubbed his eyes.

  Moving? Why?

  Calm, he told himself. Be calm. No point in getting alarmed over indecipherable

  implications. Moving meant there would soon be fresh air on his face, the outward swing of legs stifled too long, the joy in comparative freedom, even if it were brief, even if he were soon shoved into a car boot, a cargo of hidden, fervent fear. Even if each move so far had brought him to a place worse than the one before, closer to the chaos of Pakistan"s border, farther from the relative civility of Kabul.

  He felt his heart and breathing speed up, becoming a song. Badabumpbumpbump badabumpbumpbump badabumpbumpbump. This was what it felt like to be truly alone, even among others: one formed a tight alliance with one"s own breath and heartbeat, finding comfort in that internal language and none other. He shifted to his knees on the way to standing.