By the end of the month, winter retreated and the rains came, announcing spring. On the city’s sidewalks, last year’s trash surfaced on the pavement as the snow melted: old candy wrappers, disintegrating cigarette boxes. Daniel both dreaded and anticipated the day the agency would visit Fever Valley to see whether Agent Ruby had destroyed the Gulzar soil or crops were growing normally. When that morning came, it was humid and cold, the sky a slate of steely gray. Daniel arrived at the USADE office just as the others were gathering by the door, ready to go.
Seth led the USADE delegation, which he packed into two vans. Lukewarm tea spilled from Daniel’s glass as he twisted himself into the last row of seats between Iggy and a local expert whose name he forgot. At first, everyone was quiet, even Seth. After a short while, the choppy, awkward sounds of small talk began. As they approached Fever Valley, the chatter slowed and eventually stopped. Seth’s knuckles were pale, his fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel. The nameless expert took long drags off his cigarette. Iggy tapped his foot and kept his eyes on the landscape.
They passed the last village. The turnoff appeared, and Seth took his foot off the gas. It was clear he was unsure where to stop. In winter, the land lay buried under a blanket of snow that blurred the boundaries between the fields, though villagers and nomads always knew where one ended and another began. In spring, the snow thawed a little at a time, creating a beige-and-white quilt that stretched toward the mountains. Daniel recognized the curve of the Yassaman field. When they arrived at Gulzar, he called out a good stopping point for Seth, who edged the van to the side of the highway, the second van following suit.
Engines fell silent; car doors slammed loudly. They crossed the highway. Iggy had forgotten to wear fieldwork shoes, and he tiptoed across the road in his loafers, avoiding patches of crushed, dirty snow. Standing at the edge of the Gulzar field, none of the men spoke. Even before they had stopped the van, anyone looking outside knew what they would find. Seth stood with his hands on his hips, Iggy’s tie flapped in the rising breeze while sweat trickled down his face.
“It’s normal for plants to come in slowly after a strong herbicide is used,” the local expert said. He spoke too loud and too fast. He walked away, stroking his mustache. Iggy waded into the cracked snow and bent low to examine the growth. But there wasn’t much to look at. The corn was unrecognizable, just a spill of limp leaves clinging to stalks that struggled to grow. The stream, filled by recent rain, flowed amply, and its waters tumbled into the Gulzar field through the channels that had been built last year.
Seth rubbed his chin. “The Gulzar soil was never good.”
“The way we fertilized this place?” Iggy said. “All the water that’s flowing in? All the work we put in? It should still be coming in better than this.”
“Agent Ruby,” Daniel said.
“No one asked you,” Seth replied, but his voice betrayed disappointment.
“Can’t you see what’s going on?”
None are so blind as those who will not see, Telaya said, quoting from a Bible she couldn’t have read.
Daniel walked over to Taj’s land. It was like the Yassaman and Gulzar fields were experiencing entirely different seasons, springtime coming to only one of them. Planted in January, the green poppy stalks of Yassaman were coming in dense, crowding each other like belles in line for a dance. Kochis wearing heavy scarves used scythes to thin the sprouting plants. They worked as if the Feverdrops Slaughter had never happened.
USADE had several weeks to prepare a report on the Gulzar field. The staff couldn’t disagree about what they had observed, but continued to disagree on its causes. The conclusion reflected Seth’s views. None of it was surprising, and Daniel had stopped arguing. At the office, Miss Soraya was Seth’s secretary now, but she didn’t seem to know it, and if she did, she didn’t care. She would stop by Daniel’s office with tea and offers of assistance. She even continued helping him with personal matters. One afternoon in the middle of April, she delivered the quarterly reports for Daniel’s gemstone firm. Sherzai had dropped them off.
“This is January through March,” she said. Daniel scribbled his signature on the report. That same day, a Communist whose name he’d heard before was assassinated outside his own home. Elias called Daniel and told him what everybody was saying: the government had killed him. Two days later, thousands of sympathizers marched in the streets. President Daoud warned of a crackdown. The streets fell quiet.
On the morning of Thursday, April 27, Seth opened the USADE office to hold a special meeting about the Gulzar field and Agent Ruby. The call included Smythe and John Marquette, the vice president of Dannaco-Hastings, who apologized for making everyone come in when the office was closed. His schedule alone had dictated the time. Miss Soraya came in for a few hours to provide assistance. She offered her help to Daniel, not Seth. When Daniel entered the conference room, he felt a certain satisfaction in seeing Seth’s tired face. Hadn’t he wanted to run the office? By all means, let him report what Agent Ruby had done. After brief pleasantries, Seth began to describe the state of the Gulzar field. Marquette dissipated the tension with a single phrase. From his office in Arlington, five thousand miles away, he explained that nothing was growing in that field because the soil had always been bad. It had nothing to do with Ruby.
Seth pointed to the speakerphone, the color returning to his face. “That’s exactly what I said.” He slapped the table.
In the measured, reasonable voice of executives everywhere, Marquette said he had expected this outcome. “Ever since we got Greenwood’s files, we knew,” he said. “The field just isn’t usable and never was, no matter how much water and other good stuff you throw on it.”
Smythe, who was breathing heavily into the phone and apologizing regularly as he complained of a cold, gave a vigorous endorsement of what was emerging as the official position: Agent Ruby had not failed as much as been wasted on the Gulzar field.
“With all due respect, nothing like Agent Ruby has ever left the land unharmed,” Daniel said. “I’d suggest dumping it into the sewer, but who knows what that’ll do to it.”
From Arlington, Marquette’s voice replied, “Mr. Sajadi, I think we all know the value of your contributions. This is your mess. That whole batch was wasted. We’ll move the rest of it down to Little America in Helmand, where good Americans are doing real work.” Before Daniel could reply, he continued. “Frankly, I’m not sure what you’re doing in this meeting. You’ve personally cost my firm a lot of money.”
“If you specify a dollar amount, I’ll reimburse you with interest.” Daniel excused himself, grateful for Iggy’s half-hidden smile. As he passed Miss Soraya outside, she told him Ian had called to say the limo’s radio was broken again. It was completely dead. She laughed and added, “My radio isn’t working either, and it was made in Japan.”
He was glad for her laugh, but it brought little solace. He was now counting not just the days but the hours until he could fly back to California, to Rebecca. He asked Miss Soraya to bring him the bottle of whiskey from the liquor cart, which was now in a guest office. Once he was alone with Johnnie Walker, he locked the door to his tiny office and drank from a glass she’d filled with ice. When the glass was empty, he poured the cubes onto the floor and watched them melt. Time passed quickly, and he could hear the others leave the office, silence filling the suites before the clock struck noon. Alone, he drank until the bottle was empty.
When he lay down on the sofa, he felt as if he were falling a great distance, only to land on cushions that were hard and punishing. He closed his eyes because the sky was spinning and the ground was spinning and he was spinning, too. Spinning like a dervish. Like the earth. Straight into an abyss. The room began to fade.