Rules of Betrayal

2

Jonathan Ransom woke and knew that something was wrong.

Bolting upright, he pulled his sleeping bag to his waist and listened. Across the room, Hamid, his assistant, slept on the ground, snoring. Beyond the shuttered windows, a camel brayed. Outside, a pushcart rolled past, its arthritic axles in need of oil, followed by a trio of voices raised in conversation. The cart, he had learned during his week in the village of Khos-al-Fari, belonged to the butcher, who was presently transporting his daily supply of freshly slaughtered goats to the town bazaar to be displayed hanging from tenterhooks in the front of his stall.

The cart continued down the hill. The voices died away. All was silent but for the ghostly roar of the Gar River churning through the nearby gorge.

Jonathan remained stock-still, the frigid air stinging his cheeks. It was only mid-November, yet in the steep, inhospitable foothills of eastern Afghanistan, winter had arrived with a vengeance.

A minute passed. Still he heard nothing.

And then the crack of a rifle. A single shot-high-caliber, judging by its report. He waited, expecting more gunfire, but none came, and he wondered if a hunter had taken one of the big-horned Marco Polo sheep that roamed the mountainside.

It was almost five a.m. Time to begin the day. With a grunt, he unzipped the sleeping bag to his feet and stood on the dirt floor. Shivering, he lit the kerosene lamp, then hurried to pull on a second pair of woolen socks and a beat-up pair of flannel-lined cargo pants.

A camp table in one corner held a washbasin, a jug of water, a cup with his toothbrush and toothpaste, and a washcloth. Jonathan poured water into the basin. The water had partially frozen overnight, and islands of ice floated on the surface. He washed his hands and face, then ran the washcloth over his body, scrubbing vigorously to stop his teeth from chattering. Finished, he dried himself, brushed his teeth, and put on his shirt and jacket. His hair was too long and tangled to tame with a brush, so he combed it with his fingers for a few moments before giving up on it.

“Hamid,” he said. “Wake up.”

To combat the cold, Hamid had disappeared inside his sleeping bag. Jonathan crossed the room and kicked him. “Move it.”

A head of unruly black hair popped out of the sleeping bag. Hamid peered angrily around the room. In the dim light, the circles under his eyes gained depth and he looked older than his nineteen years. “That hurt.”

“Get your butt out of the sack. We’ve got a lot to do today.”

“Just a sec-”

“Now.”

Hamid sat up slowly, pulling his cell phone out of the bag and checking it for messages.

Jonathan observed him, wondering for the hundredth time how a village could not have electricity but manage to have cellular phone service. “Your mom call?”

Hamid didn’t look up from the phone. “Not funny.”

“Yeah, well, put that thing away and get moving. I’ll see you at the clinic.”

Jonathan picked up the duffel that held his equipment and swung it over his shoulder. Pulling on his pakol hat, he opened the door and sniffed the air. Wood smoke, damp foliage, and peat: the smells of the world away from civilization. It was a scent he knew well.

For eight years he had traveled the world as a physician with Doctors Without Borders. He had worked from the top of Africa to the bottom. He had spent time in Kosovo, Beirut, and Iraq, too. Wherever he was located, his mission was to bring medical care to those who needed it most. Politics was not a factor. There were no good guys or bad guys. There were only patients.

He’d arrived in Afghanistan two months before, but he no longer worked for Doctors Without Borders. Events in the recent past prevented him from working in an official capacity as a physician or surgeon for them or anyone else. The man at the American embassy had told him he was crazy to venture into the Red Zone-the Red Zone being anywhere outside Kabul. When Jonathan said he was traveling alone, without bodyguards or weapons or any personal security whatsoever, so that he might offer medical care to people in the remotest villages, the man called him “suicidal.” Jonathan didn’t think so. He had calculated the risks, weighed them against his responsibilities, and found the balance equal, more or less.

Now, standing outside his one-room shelter in the predawn darkness, his boots sinking into the icy muck, he listened again. It wasn’t noise that unsettled him, but the lack of it.

“One hour,” he said to Hamid, then shut the door.

A soft rain fell as he walked along the path zigzagging down the hillside. Below, shrouded in clouds on a spit of flat terrain tucked between steeply descending mountains, lay the village. All the structures looked the same: low-slung, rectangular slurries of rock, timber, and mud that seemed to have grown out of the earth itself. A thousand people lived in Khos-al-Fari. Many times that number visited from the surrounding valley to trade at the bazaar, sell crops and timber, and conduct a rudimentary social life.

Hands thrust into his pockets, Jonathan made his way through town. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he walked purposefully, leaning forward as if to combat a rising wind. To look at him, one would think he was a native. He wore the baggy trousers and untucked shirt known as a shalwar kameez. To protect against the cold, he wore a herder’s sheep-fleece vest. His beard was coarse and long, black cut through with gray. But a closer look revealed his European ancestry. His nose was prominent and well shaped. His teeth were straight and white and, most tellingly, in complete order. His skin was smooth, and except for the crow’s feet at his eyes, youthful for a man of thirty-eight. His eyes were the color of tar and, even at this time of day, lit with resolve. Nowhere in his face was there a hint of Mongol blood, or of the tireless suspicion born of millennia spent repelling invaders. There was only competence, tenacity, and hope.

Jonathan Ransom was an American.

The patients were lined up outside the clinic when Jonathan arrived. He counted fifteen in all, including several children in the company of their fathers. Some had visible infirmities: badly healed burns, gliomas, cleft palates. Several were amputees, the victims of the land mines and bomblets left behind by the Russians. Others simply looked wan and tired, and were most likely suffering from the flu. Jonathan greeted them with respect, taking care to shake every man’s hand while ushering them inside and explaining that they must wait an hour until he could see them.

One father stood apart from the others. His daughter leaned against him, a scarf covering the lower half of her face. Seeing the tall foreign doctor, she turned away. Jonathan knelt in front of her. “I’m happy to see you,” he said softly. “We’re going to make you better. You won’t have to wear this scarf anymore. You’ll be able to play with the other children again.”

“You are really going to do this?” the girl’s father asked in halting English. “Today?”

Jonathan stood. “Yes.”

He entered the building, lowering his head so that he didn’t strike the lintel. He had divided the clinic into five rooms: a waiting room, two consultation rooms, an office, and an operating theater. The conditions were dismal, even by local standards. Hard-packed dirt floors. Low ceilings. No electricity. No running water.

Upon arriving, he had discovered a battered wooden desk inside with the words “Medecins Sans Frontieres: ou les autres ne vont pas” carved into it. Roughly translated, it said, “Doctors Without Borders: Where Others Dare Not Venture.” And below it, also in French, “The Doctor Is Always Right,” and the year “1988.” His colleagues had preceded him to this remote village more than twenty years earlier. To Jonathan, it was confirmation that he had made the right decision in coming.

He walked into his office and dropped the duffel onto the ground. Inside was everything he needed. Scalpel, forceps, and Metzenbaum scissors for surgery. Cipro and Ancef for antibiotics, Pepcid for ulcers, iron supplements for the women, and multivitamins for the children. Lidocaine in 30cc bottles for use as a local anesthetic and Ketamine for putting a patient under. There was prednisone, Zyrtec, norepinephrine, and a host of pharmaceuticals to treat a gamut of ailments beyond most doctors’ imagination. And sutures, syringes, Band-Aids, ace bandages, and lots and lots of alcohol swabs.

Jonathan spent an hour equipping the clinic for the coming day. He started a fire, boiled water, and sterilized his instruments. He swept the floor of the operating room and laid a clean plastic sheet over it. He arranged his supplies and inventoried his medicines.

At seven a.m. he saw his first patient, a boy of ten missing the lower half of his right leg and walking with the help of an ungainly wooden prosthesis. Three years earlier he’d stepped on a Russian mine while playing in the fields. The amputation had been badly done. Over time the flesh had withered because of a lack of circulation and become infected. The skin needed to be debrided and cleansed and the boy put on a course of antibiotics.

“You’ll just feel a little pinch,” said Jonathan, preparing a syringe of lidocaine. “It won’t hurt at-”

Hamid burst into the room. “We have to go,” he said, gasping for breath.

Jonathan regarded him impassively. “You’re late.”

“Did you hear me?” Hamid was short and skinny, twenty pounds underweight, with narrow shoulders and an eager, bobbing head. Jonathan had found him outside the offices of a medical aid organization in Kabul shortly after his arrival. Or rather, Hamid had found Jonathan. A second-year medical student, he’d offered his services as a translator, guide, and doctor’s assistant for $50 U.S. a week. Jonathan offered him $40 if Hamid would find him a decent four-by-four and accompany him into the Red Zone. Hamid agreed, and a deal was struck.

“Yeah, I heard you,” said Jonathan.

“They’re coming.”

“They” meant the Taliban, the orthodox Islamic fighters locked in a struggle with the American and Afghan forces to retake control of the government and the country and reassert Islamic law over its population.

“It’s Sultan Haq. He took a town sixty-five kilometers from here yesterday and massacred the village elders.”

Jonathan considered this. He’d heard of Haq, a particularly vicious Taliban drug lord who captained his own militia in Lashkar to the south, but he was confused by his presence. Khos-al-Fari was a poor village far from the poppy belt, with no apparent strategic value. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” answered Hamid wildly. “Does it matter?”

The father took his son by the shoulder and hurried him out of the room.

“Tell the others to come back tomorrow,” said Jonathan. “All except Amina. She can’t wait. Set out a standard tray in the operating room. Make sure I have some extra anesthetic.”

Hamid eyed Jonathan as if he were mad. “You’re going to operate on her?”

“It’s her turn.”

“That’s a four-hour procedure.”

“Longer. You never know with reconstruction.”

“Just give her medicine for the infection. You can come back and take care of her another time.”

“She’s waited long enough.”

The blast of a distant explosion caused the room to tremble.

“Mortars,” said Hamid, rushing to the window. “Sultan Haq’s men killed eighteen people yesterday. He executed ten of them himself. An American will be at the top of his list.”

“What about Pashtunwali?” asked Jonathan. “The villagers will watch out for us.”

“Pashtunwali” referred to the Afghans’ code of honor and hospitality, which demanded that they protect a visitor taken into their home or village.

“It doesn’t stand up very long in the face of superior firepower. We have to get out of here.”

“Set up the tray, Hamid.”

Hamid retreated from the window and came closer to Jonathan. “Leave, or you will die.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“And me?”

“You said you wanted to learn. I respected that. Now’s your chance. You’ve never seen me perform this procedure. Think of it as an opportunity.”

There was another explosion, closer this time. An exchange of automatic-weapons fire, then silence.

“They’ll kill me, too,” said Hamid. “I helped you. Besides, I’m Hazara.”

Jonathan dug in his pockets for the keys to the truck and tossed them to Hamid. “Go. I understand. You’ve been a great help. I owe you.”

“But you won’t be able to operate on Amina without me.”

“It’ll be harder, but not impossible.”

Hamid studied the keys in his palm, then put his head against the wall and moaned. “Damn you,” he said after a minute.

“Set up the tray,” said Jonathan.