Rules of Betrayal

19

The Toyota pickup rocked to a halt on the muddy track.

Sultan Haq clutched the dashboard, grimacing as pain racked his body. “Dammit,” he said, staring out the windscreen at the dense foliage pressing in on all sides. “I was here two days ago. Where has it gone?”

Haq threw open the door and stepped outside, fighting back the tangle of branches that threatened to envelop the truck. He sniffed the air, and his eyes watered with the scent of ammonia and wood smoke. He was close. He stepped to the front of the truck and gazed ahead. The track continued for a brief stretch, then curved to the right and was swallowed by forest. According to the route marker on his handheld GPS, he was in the right place. Yet no matter how hard he looked, he could see no sign of the security fence or the long wooden building or the corrugated tin roof and chimneys that carried away the toxic smoke.

Haq forced his way to the driver’s window and punched the horn three times. Not ten meters away, a swatch of foliage rustled and, as if by magic, disappeared. Two men clutching Kalashnikovs waved him forward. Haq saw the fence and the guard dogs, and behind them the abandoned lumber mill housing a refinery to convert raw opium into morphine paste. He signaled for the truck to advance, and followed it into the clearing.

Immediately the fence was secured. The foliage slipped back into place. The refinery was once again hidden from the outside world.

A haggard old man wrapped in black robes stood on the sagging landing, smoking an opium pipe. “How much?” he asked, his mouth a toothless, black hole.

“Five hundred,” said Haq, meaning five hundred kilos of raw opium.

“Bring it in.”

Sultan Haq ordered his men to unload the truck and leaned against the body as they carried bag after bag of raw opium into the building. Normally he would help, but his injuries prevented it. Bandages on his neck, shoulder, and forearms covered third-degree burns left by the American bombs.

A week had passed since his father’s murder at Tora Bora, seven tortured days during which he’d endured the blistering of his seared flesh. Seven days during which he’d mourned his beloved father, who had been his closest friend and most trusted counsel. Seven days during which he’d thought of nothing but the American healer, Ransom, and his treachery, and how he might one day meet him again and kill him. He knew that such sweet revenge would not be granted him. No matter. He would make do with punishing those who had sent Ransom. America would pay dearly.

Haq climbed three steps and entered the building. The first room was for intake and storage. Transparent plastic bags filled with raw opium crowded every wall, rising past the rafters. The process of refining the raw opium into morphine base began in the next room over. Haq looked on as men emptied bag after bag of the resinous, tar-like opium into great rusted oil barrels filled with boiling water and lime. The raw opium quickly dissolved into a clear brown liquid. Shreds of poppy plants, dirt, and residue sank to the bottom. The morphine alkaloid in the opium reacted with the lime slake to form a white rind of morphine paste on the surface. The boiling water was filtered and the morphine paste separated and taken to the next room, where it was placed in another barrel and reheated with concentrated ammonia.

As the paste solidified, it settled to the bottom of the barrel, becoming large brown chunks of morphine base. The rule was that ten kilos of raw opium made up one kilo of morphine base. The morphine base was taken into a separate room and wrapped into brick-sized blocks. It was now ready for sale and shipment to heroin laboratories.

The economics of the opium business were impossible to dispute, mused Haq as he walked through the dark, humid, foul-smelling rooms. One hectare of land under poppy cultivation yielded twenty kilos of raw opium. The market price for one kilo ran between $250 and $300. A farmer cultivating a single hectare could earn nearly $6,000 for his crop, a princely sum in a country where the average annual income barely reached $800. Haq and his clan controlled over 2,000 hectares of land suitable for poppy cultivation. This year’s harvest had brought in over 40,000 kilos of raw opium and would end up yielding nearly 4,000 kilos of morphine paste.

Haq sliced open a plastic-wrapped brick with his long curling fingernail and scooped out a pile of the brown base. One snort confirmed that the quality was exceptional. The pain from his burns subsided, and a sense of contentment took hold. He was tempted to take more, but discipline forbade him. He must ration the drug carefully, lest he become an addict like the production master. He would not shame his father so.

Haq chopped the block into quarters and slipped one into the folds of his jacket. It would provide useful in the coming days. A balm for his pain, so he might concentrate on more important matters.

A television was playing in a corner. Three addicts sat on the floor, entranced. Haq approached. “What are you watching?”

“Gangsters in America,” said one.

Haq picked up a DVD cover off the floor. “Scarface,” he said aloud. “Good?”

“Very. The Americans like drugs.”

Haq stared at the screen. A man was chained to a curtain rod in a shower. Another wielded a chain saw. The opium in his system combined with the violent sound and images to transport him to another place. He was not home, but far away. He was at Gitmo. The room at Camp X-Ray was hot and smoky and smelled of sweat and vomit. A circle of anxious, well-fed faces surrounded him. A television blared in one corner. The same film always played. Three happy sailors cavorting across Manhattan, singing and dancing in their white uniforms. The volume was turned up very loud to drown out the unpleasant noises.

The questions began.

“Tell us what you were doing in Kunar Province during the months of July through November 2001.”

“I sell carpets. Persia. Isfahan. Very good quality.”

“Horseshit, Muhammad. You couldn’t tell a good carpet from a used shit rag.”

“Yes, sell carpets in Kabul.”

“Then why did we pick you up two hundred miles north of Kabul along with five hundred soldiers fighting for Abdul Haq?”

“Abdul Haq? I do not know this man. I travel. I sell carpets. I with him for safety. I no fighter.”

“A big strong brute like you, not a fighter?”

“I sell carpets.”

“Horseshit.”

“We heard you’re his son. Admit it.”

“No. Only sell carpets.”

And then the hood fell over his face and he was tipped backward and the water flowed into his face and he could not breathe.

And always when the hood was removed, there was the television blaring down at him, mocking him, mocking his culture. The three sailors singing and dancing merrily across New York.

He saw this forty-seven times.

Finally the red-faced men from the CIA believed him. By then he knew New York City well. The Bronx was up and the Battery down. And he despised it.

Haq felt someone nudge his shoulder, and the old, frightening images fled from his mind. He turned and looked into the toothless face of the production master. “Well?”

“Two days to finish,” said the production master.

Haq eyed the ziggurat of bricks stacked in the center of the room. He calculated there were approximately four thousand kilos, wrapped, weighed, and ready for shipment. With shrewd negotiation he might sell the lot for as much as $10,000 a kilo. Forty million dollars was not a princely sum. It was a conqueror’s sum. And he would use it to drive the crusaders from his land.

“Have the entire supply ready by then. I will be back the day after tomorrow.”