handful of non-military personnel at Kandahar, civilian intelligence men who went by the collective moniker of Other Government Agencies, and who, for the most part, kept to their cramped and makeshift offices in the old terminal building. At the Bagram base the OGAs were suddenly everywhere, including the in-processing facility.
Most of these civilians came from the alphabet soup of the intelligence world—the CIA, the FBI, or their foreign counterparts. But there were others whose loyalties were less easily identifiable, and for whose services the military had clearly paid.
Such arrangements were not unusual. A good portion of the army's support staff, including many mess and transportation workers, were civilian contractors. But the idea of intelligence contractors was something else altogether, and Kat wasn't quite sure what she thought of it. At the very least, it would take some getting used to.
In the world outside, it was frigid early morning, the bald half-moon glaring down on the dark and dusty expanse of the Shomali Plains, but the oversized watch on the wrist of the young MP who'd been assigned to Kat blinked a stubborn 6 pm. Mountain time, Kat observed, home time. Somewhere in Wyoming or Montana, the kid's family was sitting down to dinner without him.
Inside the facility, under the stuttering glow of the perpetually failing fluorescents, it might as well have been high noon. Two Special Forces teams had just returned from the mountains, and the old Soviet machine shop that served as the facil-ity's in-processing center was crowded and chaotic, the air thick with stale sweat and urine—the stench of hundreds of unbathed bodies in an airless space.
Kat's post, at the far end of the cavernous room, was the detainees' final stop before the mammoth cages in the main prison, the last in a series of humiliations in which they'd been stripped of their original clothes and repackaged in bright-orange jumpsuits and rubber slippers, and the men's final hope at a chance for freedom before they were caught permanently and inextricably in the web of military bureaucracy.
The Special Forces raids had been routine at Kandahar, and Kat was familiar with their results. The ostensible purpose of the sweeps was to ferret out the last of the holdouts. But the raids, conducted under the cover of darkness, were by definition indiscriminate, and more often than not the majority of prisoners were neither Taliban nor Al Qaeda but luckless peasants. Not good men, necessarily, but not bad men, either, fathers and grandfathers whose only loyalty was to their own survival. To Kat and the other interrogators fell the impossible task of separating the former from the latter. It was a job that was made all the more difficult by an insurmountable and nearly constant language barrier.
Kat was muddling through an intake interview in her halting Pashto, trying to calm the toothless old man across the table from her enough to get his name and age, when she saw Kurtz coming toward her through the crowd. She shouldn't have been surprised to see him. In the wake of September 11, Arabic speakers were a rare and precious commodity in the intelligence community, and she had thought of Kurtz more than once, but she had never given serious thought to the possibility that their paths might cross. Now here he was, just as she remembered him.
“Sergeant,” he said, stopping in front of her and making a stiff demi-bow. It was a gesture Kat remembered clearly from Monterey, an aspect of Kurtz's awkward formality that had made him seem vulnerable at the time. “I believe you have an Arabic speaker in the medical line.”
He still hated her, Kat thought. Nearly a decade had passed, and he still hadn't forgiven her for rejecting him.
“Hello, David,” she said. And then, because it seemed ridiculous to say nothing, “You look good.”
Kurtz nodded. “I was sorry to hear about your brother.”
So he knew, had already known she was on the base.
Most of these civilians came from the alphabet soup of the intelligence world—the CIA, the FBI, or their foreign counterparts. But there were others whose loyalties were less easily identifiable, and for whose services the military had clearly paid.
Such arrangements were not unusual. A good portion of the army's support staff, including many mess and transportation workers, were civilian contractors. But the idea of intelligence contractors was something else altogether, and Kat wasn't quite sure what she thought of it. At the very least, it would take some getting used to.
In the world outside, it was frigid early morning, the bald half-moon glaring down on the dark and dusty expanse of the Shomali Plains, but the oversized watch on the wrist of the young MP who'd been assigned to Kat blinked a stubborn 6 pm. Mountain time, Kat observed, home time. Somewhere in Wyoming or Montana, the kid's family was sitting down to dinner without him.
Inside the facility, under the stuttering glow of the perpetually failing fluorescents, it might as well have been high noon. Two Special Forces teams had just returned from the mountains, and the old Soviet machine shop that served as the facil-ity's in-processing center was crowded and chaotic, the air thick with stale sweat and urine—the stench of hundreds of unbathed bodies in an airless space.
Kat's post, at the far end of the cavernous room, was the detainees' final stop before the mammoth cages in the main prison, the last in a series of humiliations in which they'd been stripped of their original clothes and repackaged in bright-orange jumpsuits and rubber slippers, and the men's final hope at a chance for freedom before they were caught permanently and inextricably in the web of military bureaucracy.
The Special Forces raids had been routine at Kandahar, and Kat was familiar with their results. The ostensible purpose of the sweeps was to ferret out the last of the holdouts. But the raids, conducted under the cover of darkness, were by definition indiscriminate, and more often than not the majority of prisoners were neither Taliban nor Al Qaeda but luckless peasants. Not good men, necessarily, but not bad men, either, fathers and grandfathers whose only loyalty was to their own survival. To Kat and the other interrogators fell the impossible task of separating the former from the latter. It was a job that was made all the more difficult by an insurmountable and nearly constant language barrier.
Kat was muddling through an intake interview in her halting Pashto, trying to calm the toothless old man across the table from her enough to get his name and age, when she saw Kurtz coming toward her through the crowd. She shouldn't have been surprised to see him. In the wake of September 11, Arabic speakers were a rare and precious commodity in the intelligence community, and she had thought of Kurtz more than once, but she had never given serious thought to the possibility that their paths might cross. Now here he was, just as she remembered him.
“Sergeant,” he said, stopping in front of her and making a stiff demi-bow. It was a gesture Kat remembered clearly from Monterey, an aspect of Kurtz's awkward formality that had made him seem vulnerable at the time. “I believe you have an Arabic speaker in the medical line.”
He still hated her, Kat thought. Nearly a decade had passed, and he still hadn't forgiven her for rejecting him.
“Hello, David,” she said. And then, because it seemed ridiculous to say nothing, “You look good.”
Kurtz nodded. “I was sorry to hear about your brother.”
So he knew, had already known she was on the base.
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