You Look Like a Ghost

A face looked down in the gathering day,

And laughing spoke from the wall:

“Ohe’, they mourn here: let me by—

Azizun, the Lucknow nautch-girl, I!

When the house is rotten, the rats must fly,

And I seek another thrall.

“For I ruled the King as ne’er did Queen,—

Tonight the Queens rule me!

Guard them safely, but let me go,

Or ever they pay the debt they owe

In scourge and torture!” She leaped below,

And the grim guard watched her flee.

—Rudyard Kipling, The Last Suttee

I was now standing on the tarmac of Point Zero’s airport. The wind was stiff, the air fresh, the sun wan.

The long vistas in all directions were heartening. It was the first time since my arrival that I had had any sense of physical grandeur in anything I had seen, and now, as I departed, I glimpsed what had inspired and conquered men for millennia. Around me were men long experienced on lonely airstrips in forsaken corners of the world. I took a deep breath; the cold air invigorated me. Eight of us were leaving Point Zero, heading for onward points and new assignments.

Jim, the chief, had driven me out from the compound and was chatting with a colleague. We had some time to kill before the plane arrived. I amused myself by gazing at the massive mountains on the horizon and enjoying the first sunshine I recalled in ages. A large aircraft sat not far from us.

“Hey, Jim. Can I go take a look at that?” He thought a moment, weighing whether he could trust a clueless officer out of his sight. “I won’t touch anything.”

“All right.”

The controls in the cockpit were all marked with taped instructions. I enjoyed a momentary crazed “Far Side” impulse to commit an absurdist’s prank and to shift the descriptions on the control panel around, so that “flaps” would be taped below the “landing gear” control, or “fuel discharge” below “altitude” or some other foolish combination. A gentle, puffing, springlike breeze blew into the cockpit through an open window, the sill wet with the raindrops and condensation remaining from that morning’s shower.

When I bored of that I walked around and scanned the airfield.

Crazy Cal was chatting with another passenger a few dozen feet behind me. I walked toward the exit and the runway. “Don’t go beyond the gate! Don’t go out there!” Crazy Cal shouted to me as I got to within thirty feet of it. It was the first time I had ever seen him animated. XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX . I stopped and stared dully at where I must not go. I had hardly slept in five days. The world around me was a kaleidoscope of impressions, one after another, merging together and breaking apart, my eyes open too wide, my perceptions passive; linear thought was hard.

I idly mulled that the airport was surrounded by mountains and that this would make it hard to defend. I wondered who was up in them. I wondered whether the British encampment, over 150 years earlier, was anywhere near where I was.

About a half hour passed.

The plane arrived without my seeing or hearing it, even though I thought I had been looking. I really must be out of it, I thought. Things just appeared before me.

The eight of us gathered our bags and waited for the arrivals to deplane. I stood gazing vacantly across the strip, when one of the guys who got off the plane came over to me, smiling.

“It matches,” he said, indicating my clothes. I was a little distracted and wondered why this guy was talking to me and what he was talking about.

“It does? I’m always very careful. Presentation and appearance are very important.” I thought he had said something about my blue and green ski jacket, and answered in what I thought was the same wiseass and inappropriate manner. Sort of weird. Maybe this guy was on edge about arriving at Point Zero.

He said something else. I didn’t get it and wasn’t paying him any attention. I started to shuffle dully toward the plane. He repeated it, with a smile of recognition and familiarity: “It matches. The scarf. The colors go with your jacket.”

What was this banter? I turned my attention from the mountains and boarding the plane and focused on what he said. It was true; I hadn’t thought of it before: My scarf, which was wrapped around my neck and rose up to my mouth, was off-white, with a green pattern on it, matching the green piping of my jacket.

I looked the guy in the face and focused on him consciously. I knew him! That’s why he was talking to me out of the blue. It was Ryan, my replacement. He was good-naturedly ragging on me about going native and playing at intrepid man of the desert. The last time he had seen me, months earlier, I was in a suit, as always. In a rare instance of logistical efficiency—surely a random event—the Agency had arranged it so that my replacement arrived on the very plane I was taking out of there.

“Hey, Ryan!” I said, shaking hands. “Sorry, I was zoning out a little. The scarf? No, no. You’ll want to get one at the compound as soon as you get there. You’ll need to wear it. It’s not a good idea to be recognized as an American. We are supposed to be incognito, not be recognizable as Americans. Really.” I had forgotten I was even wearing it.

“You’ll want one of those hats, too. XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XX XXX. They all wear them. I left mine at the compound for someone else to use.”

A flicker of doubt passed in Ryan’s face. He thought perhaps I was being a wise guy, or playing at tough war-fighter. His smile was slightly frozen, with a hint of hesitancy. I had forgotten, too, that I had a beard, and that my appearance and dress had been so changed by my location.

“It’s true. You’ll want one. They can help at the compound. XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX but you’ll get one as soon as you get there. You have to wear it XXXXXXXXXXX XX. Very stylish. You’ll find this place amazing, an unbelievable shit hole.”

“All right! Let’s load up! We gotta move!” Jim called from beside the loading ramp. I had only a couple of minutes.

“Listen, Glenn, I have an open mind on work,” said Ryan. “I think you make sense. I’m coming out here without any ax to grind. I’ll take it any way you or Headquarters wants. I don’t go the hard-guy routine in work, usually. You’ll have to work the office when you get back. I suggest you make the case in a cable.”

Ryan was referring to a long Stu III conversation we had had a few days before. I was challenging Headquarters on how to run the case. It was a big deal and it was an awkward moment for me to be pulled out. Ryan and I really needed to talk shop. There was so much I should brief him on. It was kind of Ryan, actually, to readily seek guidance from the guy he was taking over for. Normally we are all pretty proprietary: Once a case or issue is yours, it’s yours and you tend to avoid ceding the degree of control that comes with consulting others, especially your predecessors, who are knowledgeable of the work and may want to take the case in a different direction than the one you want.

The other seven passengers were hauling their gear and themselves into the plane quickly. Jim stood by the door, hands on hips.

I gestured with my head and Ryan and I wordlessly walked a few dozen feet away from the bustle around the plane, to where we could talk openly, unheard by others. Everyone around us was visibly more on edge and hurrying, not as tense as when I had arrived in country—we were protected by the berm—but still anxious to load up and leave an exposed location.

Our conversation was hurried. I noticed that Crazy Cal and Jim and the few who had arrived were getting ready to mount their vehicles. Jim wanted to close up the plane, get it airborne, and get off the runway.

“Don’t look to the guys stationed PCS here, Ryan. No disrespect to them. But you gotta do it yourself. They don’t have the manpower or the expertise. I don’t see it. It can’t happen. It has to be you. And don’t let any more goddamned ‘experts’ come out from Headquarters to offer their advice and play at tough guy, so they can get a trip out here. Just shut ’em down. I’ve denied travel to a bunch of them. It’s much better. Ask them what you need to by cable, or by Stu.”

There was no more time. Jim and Crazy Cal had signaled to the pilot and were getting into their vehicles. I hadn’t even expected to have these two minutes to brief him and to try to get him to see the case my way.

“Gotta go.”

“Okay.”

We shook hands.

“Oh, man,” Ryan said, in compassionate dismay, “you look like a ghost.”

I stared at him dully, sunken-eyed.

“Oh? No, I’m the REDEMPTOR.”

Ryan looked at me, bewildered, a trace of concern in his eyes that I was speaking alarming gibberish.

“It’s my call sign.”

I turned, climbed into the plane, and sat in one of the four seats with a window, looking out the left side of the plane. Ryan had already jumped in a 4x4, for the ride back to the station. The engines started, we pulled out onto the runway, and in seconds I felt the peculiar floating sensation of the takeoff. I looked down on the mountains beside the airstrip as we gained altitude.

The inside of the plane roared.

“We’re going to make a quick stop in XXXXX!” the copilot shouted to me as he passed into the hold directly behind my seat. I looked out the window with great interest and lost what little sense of time I had through my fatigue.

My mind came back into the plane when we started our descent. The flight had taken only an hour, a trip that would have taken men many days through hard country in times past. They could not have done it at all at this time of the year.

I had the floating sensation again as we came down. The runway looked surprisingly well tended and modern, the airport buildings in good repair. It all seemed modern almost, like a suburban high school from the 1970s, nothing like the dereliction and ruin of Point Zero. We were down quickly and within seconds pulled up to the main airport building. Three 4x4s were lined up, engines running and lights on. A few men in civilian dress stood in a rough row. There were no other signs of life or movement, just a soft breeze, lightly hazed-over sunlight and quiet, broken by the engines’ drone.

XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX.

The men all boarded the plane and loaded various packages onboard in seconds. As soon as the men were on, the copilot called out, “Okay, let’s move!” I gestured to one of the men to sit down beside me. The plane was rolling forward before he could do so.

“Thanks.” We shook hands and the plane was airborne seconds later. Another impressive performance by my colleagues. We rose fast and swung north. We passed two or three hundred feet over what looked like a tent village XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX. Then we were gone. The desolate airstrip was behind us.

My seatmate told me this was his second time in country. “I was here a year ago.” “Oh? In December?” “Yeah.” “You were really one of the first, then.” “Yeah.” I nodded, my eyebrows raised. One of the XXXXXXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXXXXX X. He was burly, about thirty, mild-mannered, laconic.

The plane roared on. Everywhere I could see looked desolate.

I was very tired. The drone and roar of the engines made me drowsy. Below, the landscape turned into solid, deep snow, endless steppe without the slightest sign of human life. My XXXXXXXXXXX XXX seatmate fell asleep in minutes. So did I, two U.S. government representatives on the frontier of American influence, leaving for a time to others the tasks of interrogating, or hunting, those trying to destroy America.

A couple hours later the shifting tone of the engines awakened me once again. We were only one hundred feet above the ground, about to land. The ground was covered in deep snow, the runway in half-cleared areas, with swaths of slush all around. I was surprised: I had anticipated something backward, small, and shabby. Now I was looking at long runways, numbers of Boeings on the tarmac, large hangars, snowplows.

The plane turned into its slot plowed in the snow, pivoting on its axis, then stopped. The pilot cut the motors. This time, the hatch on the side of the fuselage opened and we exited down the stairs. I followed my XXXXXX XXXXXXXX seatmate down the stairs.

“Hey, good luck.”

“Good luck. See ya around.”

Standing at the bottom of the stairs with a welcoming, confident smile was Reggie, a colleague I had known since the very beginning of my career and had last seen months before in the Headquarters cafeteria over breakfast, each of us benign and banal, sipping our coffees and eating our muffins at the beginning of the day. He was at least ten years my senior, but I had always found him unpretentious and unconcerned with rank. He was just a nice guy who was also competent. One of the better men and officers I had known in the Agency.

“I get off the plane on the edge of the planet, and the first person I see is you!” I laughed. “What are you doing here?”

Reggie laughed, too. “Welcoming you. What do you think?” We shook hands. It was obvious that he had a lot to do, so I moved out of the way as he oversaw the unloading of the cargo and shipping the dozen of us off to the various hotels he and his assistant had reserved for us. Watching Reggie do his job, chatting occasionally with him and the other arrivals, I thought that we were a very small outfit; during the previous several weeks I had crossed paths with three officers with whom I had worked over the years, in three different parts of the world, and now I had run into another one in the back of beyond. But I knew that we were everywhere, too, despite our size, working in dozens of other posts I had passed through.

A moment later Reggie’s mood darkened suddenly.

“You, sir. Come here. Now.”

The man to whom Reggie spoke had been on the flight with me. He walked the few steps to the back of the plane where Reggie stood over some of the packets that had just been unloaded. The friendly bustle around the plane stopped and all the men stood motionless, hands in pockets. We had all tensed. Reggie was angry, and loomed more imposingly than a moment before.

“What are you doing? You know you may not bring weapons here.”

“What? Oh. I didn’t know.”

Reggie was angry.

“You didn’t know? Here’s what will happen, unless I succeed in doing you a favor: You will be confined to quarters, you might be arrested by the local authorities—they have zero tolerance for anyone with any weapon—and we all may be thrown out of the country. If we’re lucky. And then your real trouble will begin.” Reggie looked around the motionless men. “All of you will give to me now all weapons and any related equipment you have with you. Then you will accompany me while I secure this with my security people. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

There were a couple of minutes of chastened luggage rustling, as Reggie closely watched the men separate their booty from their bags. I receded a little farther toward the snowbanks.

A couple minutes later Reggie and I walked to the waiting vehicles. The wind had picked up and was blowing snow horizontally in huge gusts. Darkness enveloped us as soon as we left the plane side. Reggie had returned to his jovial self as quickly as he had become stern a moment earlier.

“Jackasses. They didn’t know? They didn’t know like we’re in Miami right now.” I got into one vehicle, Reggie into another. “Hey,” he said, smiling and shaking my hand, “good to see you. Welcome to the edge of the planet.”

My vague preconceptions about the city where we had just landed were completely wrong. The city was large, with broad, clean boulevards, well-situated and numerous trees, modern and well-tended buildings. . . . Women were stylishly dressed. They wore very short skirts and lots of makeup, overdoing and confusing excess with attractiveness. The hotel lobby was bright, spacious, modern, and welcoming. The hotel had a good restaurant. There were fashion boutiques, buses, television, traffic. . . . I was back in civilization. It was a shock. A colleague told me that once he had spoken with a Russian Spetsnaz officer who had told him that the Russians had posted a sign one saw when entering into XXXXXXXXXXX X, the country I had just left, that said, you are now entering the eighth century.

The following morning, back at the airport, a sign caught my attention while I waited for my onward flight. It was written in English, but like so many signs one sees in non-English-speaking countries, it was almost incomprehensible. It said, more or less:

welcoming travelers:

must to be to ask of friendly traveling people that is to make so closely with awareness rules all formalized carrying bags. you not must to do, very friendly noted, such items as allowed forbidden to take in the internals of the craft with selves. charges will to be to make, if is size superfluent, or if is items larger of permit required leave. electron items allowed not will. too gracious to be cappted tipped.

And beside that:

passenger dears

your formalized carrying bags larger than perrmit required authorization we take to send in all directions.

I picked up a Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune in the XXXXXXXX airport during the first of a number of transfers, barely twenty-four hours after I had flown out from XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX X:

Journal: A grenade attack in Kabul injured two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter who were riding in a jeep. . . . Al Qaeda reactivated some camps in eastern Afghanistan and new volunteers are heading there for training, a U.N. monitoring agency said.

Herald Tribune: Two U.S. soldiers Wounded in Kabul Grenade Attack . . . one with injuries to the eye and the other to the leg. . . . It was unclear how badly their Afghan translator was hurt. . . . The assailants, ethnic Pashtun Afghans, were arrested. . . . Mohammed . . . was arrested with at least two grenades in his pocket. . . . The attack Tuesday was the latest in a series of sporadic attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. . . . Fifteen U.S. servicemen have been killed in combat or hostile situations in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign began last year.