Read Online Caravan of Thieves by David Rich - Free Book Online Page B

he stepped away calmly, then kicked me in the nuts when I finished. The only way to sense the passage of time was to keep track of the cold and the heat. The cold times were nights, I assumed, and the transition came suddenly, without the usual pleasant in-between period of feeling thankful for the relief and hopeful that the middle ground would hold. I was groggy from the drugs they injected and uncomfortable lying on the cot, or the floor, leaning against the wall. Too weak to exercise for more than a few minutes at a time, I tried concentrating on my mirage. Shutters, swing, well, trees: I couldn’t hold on long enough to bring the vision into focus. The house swayed and bits faded into a vague background. The voices came from the open living room window in the big house.
    They shouted at Dan, “You’re a scumbag. A degenerate.” And much more. They argued among themselves, someone would defend Dan.
    “He’s a degenerate, but I like him anyway. He’s gonna cooperate if we just ask him right.”
    Efficient soldiers they were, but they had misjudged their customer if they thought that lame stuff would affect Dan. In another circumstance, I would have felt sorry for them. Dan shouted in pain. Sometimes I thought I could hear the punches landing. I crawled forward on the porch of the big house, closer to the window, closer, but stayed below it. The house changed colors, but the window was always right above my head. Open. I could hear.
    “Join us. Join us, Dan. Tell us where the money is.”
    “He can’t tell us if he’s dead.”
    “You took the money, Dan. Admit it.”
    “I took the money. Plenty of money. Never counted it.”
    “And where is it now, Dan?” That voice was the boss. Calm and threatening. “Join us, Dan. We have a need for a man like you. Tell us where the money is.”
    “I don’t know.”
    They hit him and he gagged from the pain.
    It became a chant: irritation, diversion, even comfort. Verses repeated like a song that gets stuck in your head. I used it to conjure the mirage and I used the mirage to conjure the conversation, and all the while I strained to see inside the house but I never could. What ritual accompanied the chant? A big pot of boiling water on a platform; Dan tied next to it, waiting to be cooked. But, no, Dan would be suggesting the recipe, selling it to them, withholding the secret ingredient.
    When Dan was in the cell, the refrain played. “I never had anything I didn’t steal. Remember that.”
    “I will.”
    “Figure out who you are.”
    “I will.”
    “I never had anything I didn’t steal.”
    I had never seen Dan under physical stress. Plenty of soldiers resort to gibberish after they’re wounded or when the attack is too intense. At a small station north of Jalalabad, a captain kept muttering “Go no more, go no more,” as if he were in a horror movie. I ran into him a year or so later in Kabul, drinking tea in a cool courtyard, and asked him what it meant. He had no idea, barely remembered having said it. Even through the haze of the drugs, it hurt tosee Dan like this. He kept trying to smile, but the swelling distorted his expression, making him look like a guy trying not to vomit in front of his girlfriend.
    “Nobody knows me as well as you do. That’s why I couldn’t stay around. Do you understand?”
    “No.”
    “Yes you do.” I did. “It was wrecking my confidence,” he said. His voice was a whisper but clear. He wanted to make sure I heard him and understood him. “You’re going to make a great middleman.” I smashed the butt of my hand against the solid wall, which was as close as I could come to telling Dan how I felt about him. Dan chuckled and coughed. Then he said, “You know where the money is.”
    “I don’t.”
    “You do. You just don’t know it.”
    “They can hear us.” We were whispering, but it sounded like a shout to me. I looked around, as I had a thousand times already, for signs of hidden microphones. Whether I found