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.
3
It was snowing in the resort of Les Grandes Alpes. Large, fluffy flakes tumbled from a curiously clear sky onto the mountainside. Translated, the resort’s name meant “the Big Alps,” but the slope was nowhere near Switzerland, nor any other mountain range in Europe, and its runs were anything but grand. The entire skiing area consisted of a single well-groomed piste that descended in three sections, like flights of a staircase, steep, then flat, and finally a gentle decline to the bottom.
The woman named Lara Antonova attacked the hill expertly, skis pressed together, hands at her waist. It was just past three and the slope was crowded with skiers. Most were novices. The snowplow was the rule, and the majority had difficulty mastering even that. Dressed in white stretch pants and a turquoise down parka, her auburn hair pulled into a ponytail that hung past her shoulder, she carved a sleek line among the other skiers, her eyes casting about for a familiar face.
Lara Antonova had not come to Les Grandes Alpes for the skiing. Born in Siberia and raised a ward of the state, she was a highly ranked operative assigned to Directorate S of the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service. Directorate S was responsible for foreign clandestine operations: intelligence-gathering, blackmail, extortion, and in the rare case assassination. Lara Antonova had come to Les Grandes Alpes on assignment to meet the most powerful arms dealer in southwestern Asia.