Bleak. Desolate. Inconsolable. There was a hollowed-out pit of darkness at Baz’s core that grew larger and more voracious with each passing hour. It gnawed at her, every waking moment. And with sleep hard to come by, exhaustion made her even more susceptible to the raging fear and anxiety that had her in its grasp.
Ginger and Logan did what they could to support her, but they had nothing concrete to offer. There had been no word from Khaliq’s network of informers. Mac had as good as vanished into thin air, and Bakker was so long gone that all hope of finding him alive was rapidly fading.
‘How can people just cease to exist like this?’ said Baz. She and Ginger were up on the flat roof of the HAVA office building, looking out over neighbouring houses and gardens, and beyond them, the sprawling town in one direction and the glittering band of the Helmand River in the other. ‘He has to be out there somewhere.’
‘We’ll find him,’ said Ginger, but his words sounded hollow to Baz.
‘Where’s Logan?’ She’d left the house to come to the office before he was up, and he hadn’t appeared with Ginger.
‘He’s gone to the Bost to talk to the Governor’s number two about men and equipment for a rescue. We need to be ready to move in a heartbeat.’
Baz hardly felt reassured by this. ‘I’m going to make some calls,’ she said.
She headed down to the Well Diggers office and sat down at one of the desks. She’d called virtually all her press contacts over the last forty-eight hours, asking them to talk to their sources and come back to her if they heard anything about captured westerners. Now she scrolled through her address book and decided to call them all again. She couldn’t let a single person forget about Mac’s predicament.
‘Hey, Bob, how’s things?’
‘Carlos, good to hear your voice. Any news?’
‘Hey Jen, just wanted to catch up…’
But no one had anything to tell her.
The office door slammed and she looked up as Nagpal came into the room. His normally pristine dark blue turban was askew on his head, and he was holding one hand to a graze on his cheekbone.
‘Nagpal, what happened?’ She leapt up and guided him to one of the threadbare chairs in the small reception area.
He sank down, resting his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
‘Are you okay?’
When he lifted his head, she could see the extent of the cut on his cheek. ‘I’m okay,’ he said, but his voice was shaky. ‘A man knocked me off my scooter on the way here.’
‘You were in a traffic accident?’
Nagpal’s face darkened. ‘It was not an accident. The man was on a motorbike, and he came up close from behind. He drove me off the road and then sped away without stopping.’
Ginger listened from the doorway, having just come down from the roof.
‘Is there a first aid kit anywhere?’ said Baz, glancing across at him.
‘I’ll see what I can find.’ He disappeared into the small kitchen and returned moments later with a glass of water, and a large red rucksack which contained the office trauma pack. He put the pouch down beside her.
‘Why would someone do that?’ said Baz, cleaning the blood from Nagpal’s cheek with an antiseptic wipe.
Nagpal gingerly unwound his turban. Underneath it, his long hair was tied in place with a square of fine black fabric. Placing the metres of blue material and the black square onto the chair next to him, he let down his hair and gently felt his skull. The long, black tresses reached practically to his waist. He winced slightly. ‘Ay, that’s a bump. I took quite a knock when I fell off my scooter, but thankfully my dastar protected my head from serious injury.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Baz. ‘Should we take you to the hospital and get a doctor to check you over?’
Nagpal shook his head and gave her a weak smile. ‘I’m fine, Basima-jan. Really.’
‘But what about reporting the man to the police?’ said Ginger.
‘Of course that would be a waste of time,’ said Nagpal. ‘The police here have no sympathy for us Sikhs. They treat us as very second-class citizens, even lower than the Hazara.’
‘Could this be linked to what happened yesterday in Gereshk?’ said Baz.
Nagpal shrugged. ‘Things like this happen to Sikhs everywhere in Afghanistan, every day. As you saw, most Pashtuns view us as heretics, and even though the rules against us laid down by the Taliban are no longer in force, there are plenty who believe they still should be.’
He stood up and bent forward at the waist, pulling his hair up to the top of his head and twisting it into a loose knot. Baz watched fascinated – she had such problems getting her hijab to stay in place, she couldn’t imagine having to wrap a turban.
‘Can you pass me the patka?’ said Nagpal. ‘The black square.’
Baz passed it to him, and he used it to secure his hair in place. He spent a minute tucking in stray strands. Then he took up the long, blue cloth and folded it into neat pleats. Tucking one end between his teeth, he slowly wrapped it around his head several times, with each pass making sure that the pleats were flat and sharp. Finally, he took the tail from between his teeth and tucked it in at the back to hold all the layers in place.
‘There, done,’ he said.
‘What about your scooter?’ said Ginger. ‘Is it repairable?’
‘I think so,’ said Nagpal. ‘A shopkeeper saw what happened, and he let me leave the scooter at the side of his shop. I’ll fetch it in a minute and take it to the garage.’
Baz carried on calling her contacts, while Ginger and Nagpal went to sort out the scooter. She made call after call, but still there seemed to be no one with any idea who might have snatched Mac. She checked the office emails constantly, as well as all the newsfeeds, for any word of a ransom demand, for either Mac or Bakker. But all the while, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Nagpal had said, about the Sikhs being treated as second-class citizens. It outraged her. This was Nagpal’s country. He’d been born here and lived all his life here – he was as much an Afghan as the Pashtuns and Tajiks that made up the vast majority of the population.
Of course, she knew well enough how minorities like the Sikhs and Hazaras were treated. Religious and tribal prejudice was rife – and it made her despair. It was what had caused her parents to emigrate to America. Her father was Tajik and her mother Pashtun, and neither of their families had approved the match. Tribal and ethnic loyalties were placed above loyalty to the country as a whole, and it was one of the reasons why there would never be peace or stable governance.
But twice in two days, Nagpal had come under attack for his religious beliefs. It was sickening, and she knew she had to write about it. Her role as a journalist was not only to report the news, but to raise awareness of what was going on in the country – Americans needed to understand the full complexity of Afghan society and politics if they were going to succeed in helping the country.
And maybe it would take her mind off what was happening to Mac, for a few short hours at least.
She put it to Nagpal, when he and Ginger came back into the office.
‘Yes, I think that’s a great idea,’ he said. ‘You know, under the Taliban, we had to wear yellow patches on our clothes to identify us as Sikhs, and fly yellow flags at our houses and businesses. This just made it even easier for people to harass us. And since then, it hasn’t really got any better. Last month, my wife was frightened when someone threw rocks over the wall into our compound.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘Tomorrow, I’ll show you the damage that’s been done to the Gurdwara – our temple – and the desecration of our cremation ground.’
‘Baz! Baz, you need to see this.’ It was Ginger, shouting from the office next door.
‘What?’ She and Nagpal ran through.
Ginger pointed at an ancient television in the corner of the room. ‘One of the guards just brought this video up,’ he said, pointing at the screen. ‘Apparently a Hilux drove by the front of the building and this was thrown out of the passenger window. It was in a plain envelope, addressed to Well Diggers.’
Baz stepped closer to see what he was talking about. The quality of the image was poor – fuzzy and lined – but she saw immediately that it was Mac, standing unsteadily, with his wrists and ankles bound. It might only have been two days since he’d gone missing, but he looked a shell of his former self, back bowed, favouring one leg, and his face showing several bruises. His hands were trembling – the man was terrified.
Bastards!
She caught the tail end of what he was saying.
‘…the men who are holding me, if you do nothing to help me, they will cut off my fingers one by one and send them to persuade you. My blood will be on your hands if you don’t make this payment.’ He seemed unsure of what he was saying. ‘Please do what… please do as…’ He coughed. ‘Please pay the million dollars or you will never see me again.’
‘What the hell?’ said Baz, as the screen fizzled to black. ‘Let me see it again and call Logan here.’
They watched it over and over – while they waited for Logan and once he’d arrived – but it didn’t make things any better. Finally, Ginger snapped off the television with the remote. Logan sighed.
‘A million dollars?’ said Baz. ‘Where are we going to get that sort of money?’