Prism

2

gaudy gold



Peshawar, Pakistan

2017

ALEJO PERCHED ABOVE THE ANCIENT LABYRINTH that was Old City Peshawar, counting down the seconds until he would take a man’s life. The tri-colored apartment complex where he waited soared to the cloudless sky, cream, cinnamon, and pistachio. A giant block of Neapolitan ice cream, sizzling under the Peshawar heat. In a dusty courtyard with solid walls below, the three men who marched between grave Pakistani police were mere specks to Alejo. Gabriel was at the scope, reporting the details of the scene below; Benjamin lay prone as Alejo did, both of them one with the black rifles propped on sandbags.

“So, they just entered the courtyard,” Gabriel said softly. Sweat poured down his pale face from the tightly-wrapped black turban. They were alone on the cement rooftop high over Peshawar, and abandoned the Pashto language for their native Spanish. “The Paki police are pretty nervous. Ok! Here come the Americans. They’ve all got bullet-proof vests.” Gabriel’s bony fingers tightened on the scope and his voice rose with excitement.

Not surprising. The U.S. army wouldn’t want any crazy Talibs to take out their precious little prisoners before they get to “justice” now, would they? But how many years would the young soldiers get for murdering Afghan children across the border and posting bloody trophy pictures on the internet? Three years in a comfy cell with three meals a day? That was more than most Afghan children could dream of.

Security was tight around that little compound with the courtyard, as the whole surrounding area would like to see the American soldiers in Pakistani custody mutilated and dead.

But no one would expect a shot to come from this distance.

A cacophony of horns blasted from the matchbox cars snaking along below. The sound would cover the shot perfectly. Alejo shifted one leg, ever so slightly, letting blood flow back into one of his thighs that had been riding a rock for the past half-hour.

“Targets are moving towards the mark,” Gabriel said calmly. He rolled into place in the line of three men on their stomachs and positioned his gun on the sandbag. The three of them gazed through the gun scopes now at the American prisoners, blond and thin inside their bullet-proof vests. Alejo evened his breathing and willed his weak arm still.

He drew a slow lungful of air, then held it, finger exact and deathly-still on the trigger. He heard each beat of his heart echo in his ear, steady and slow. He waited until one heartbeat had just drummed, then murmured in the space between, “Now.”

Below in the Old City, the timing was perfect. An ornately-painted bus lumbering around the corner of the compound honked and belched black smoke, just as Alejo’s bullet entered the medulla oblongata at the base of the middle soldier’s skull and he slumped to the dirt in a crimson mist. The other two collapsed on top of him, the part of their brains that controls involuntary movements effectively destroyed. It took a full five seconds for all hell to break loose in the courtyard as mustachioed policemen and high-up American officials all turned up dust diving for cover.

Alejo could tell there was no need to take a second shot. He felt cold, and lowered the rifle from his eyes, staring at the dim outline of the mountains encircling the city. Still lying low, he pulled a small gray cell phone from his pocket and punched a button. Ishmael Khan, recruiter from the Prism and Alejo’s handler, would be pacing the floor in his mansion until he heard the soldiers were dead.

Alejo set his jaw, then motioned to Benjamin and Gabriel. They slunk into the tri-color apartment building and into a room filled with grimy shalwar kameezs, ammunition, and cigarette butts. Afghan-made cigarettes. This was the kind of hole Taliban fighters always frequented, and whoever one day discovered this place Alejo had set up would not be surprised to see a slew of rifles on the kitchen table next to the moldering rice and half-eaten naan bread. Everyone in Peshawar packed lead.

Slick with sweat and fine concrete dust, the three men dumped their soiled shalwar kameezs with the rest of the filthy clothes on the bathroom floor and pulled on jeans and t-shirts, the clothes of upper-class Pakistani students. With bronze skin, wavy black hair, and perfect Pashto, Alejo never had problems passing as a Pakistani on his many trips to the country. The other two guys on his team were also from Bolivia, a little lighter-skinned than Alejo but they still passed as Pakistani or Afghani.

“Death to the infidels,” Gabriel grinned, stuffing wads of tattered rupee bills into a bag around his thin chest. Benjamin and Alejo rolled their eyes.

“Goodness, I’m just kidding.” Gabriel flashed merry eyes at them and winked. “Let’s get out of here.”

The throbbing wail of a siren cut through the heat outside the apartment building, racing towards the murdered Americans. The white orb of midday sun still blazed through the murky haze of pollution over the city. And less than twenty blocks away, three lives had just been extinguished.

They were getting away. The three of them would walk through this entire maze of a city, get to the Khan’s house, and report a successful mission.

Alejo tried to tell himself he should be happy.

At least a little.

That night, the feast at Ishmael Khan’s house was bounteous. Alejo and his team sat on burgundy and ivory carpets, faced with silver platters of seared roti bread and lamb curry. Milky tea simmered in bone white porcelain, rich with sugar crystals and cardamom. The rest of his team was having the time of their life in the marble hall of the Khan’s mansion, but Alejo needed to get out of there. He made his excuses to the entire clan of Khan relatives and navigated Peshawar’s labyrinth streets back to the apartment that was always waiting for him here in Pakistan.

Alejo slammed and locked the heavy wooden door and pulled a couple of guns from under his clothes. He tossed them onto the red silk bedspread, next to the heavy religious book with ornate golden swirls. For a second the image shocked him, and he blanched, turning to scan the familiar studio-style apartment. He was caged in by ornate, gold-painted furniture in the seventeenth century style, including a giant gilded wardrobe that could have doubled as a coffin for King Tut.

Feeling sick and angry, Alejo collected the two weapons and the gilded Arabic book and stuffed them in his black suitcase in the corner. The suitcase was basically empty, ready to head back to Bolivia after the trip to Pakistan’s Tribal Area Khan had insisted on the day after tomorrow. Peshawar’s bazaar was full of beautiful things, but Alejo’s suitcase was empty because, honestly, there was no one to bring anything home to.

In the morning his team would meet here early. It was time to plan the next job after Pakistan, something that called from Alejo’s native Bolivia and refused to be laid to rest. He really hoped that killing Salazar after so many years would give him some kind of peace.

It probably wouldn’t.

Alejo tossed himself onto the silk bedspread fully dressed and forced his eyes closed in the darkness, fully expecting a reunion with nightmares.

And his dreams didn’t disappoint him. The first stabs of light through the golden curtains were a welcome relief.

Alejo could always sleep through anything, a habit you learned fast when you spent your time doing the things he did. But last night had been awful. He dumped a bucket of cold water over his head in the shower, then exercised for a couple hours til his team arrived.

By the time the knock came on the apartment door, Alejo felt like he’d been awake forever.

“Asalaam alaikum,” the guys greeted him in the traditional Muslim way one by one, pushing past him into the apartment in pale cotton shalwar kameezs. They were all Muslims, having converted at different times in their lives: high school, university, graduate school. Benjamin, a doctor in Bolivia, greeted Alejo now with a droll smile and watchful eyes behind wire glasses. He wore a little brown goatee, some kind of homage to the Muslim tradition of big thick beards.

Alejo never even tried to grow a beard, because the scattered stubble that appeared on his chin when he didn’t shave for a week was really, really pathetic.

Gabriel ambled into the apartment, grinned, and gave Alejo one of those manly, back-clapping hugs just inside the door, the kind only Latin guys can share. Gabriel was the skinny, fair-skinned guy who could make something from anything, a regular MacGyver. Only twenty-three years old, he came from an Arabic-background family in Bolivia.

Lázaro strode in next, wearing a deep blue shalwar kameez and a wool Irish cap. He was the newest guy on Alejo’s team and had been sent over from Puerto Rico. Lázaro was one of those guys with a permanent tan from hours of camping and rock climbing and starting fires with nothing but sticks.

Last came Stalin, wheezing like a badger in the hazy Peshawar pollution. Stalin was pasty, with round glasses and straggly lion-colored hair parted down the middle. The guy was a PhD in philosophy and comparative religions, so he came in handy, instructing new recruits in religion. He also wasn’t a bad shot. And yes, Stalin’s parents, student revolutionaries, had actually named their infant son Stalin Lenin Gomez.

This was his team. The organization was called the Prism, because they wanted to bring God’s light to the world. Like a prism scattered light into different colors, everyone in the organization had different talents, brought the light in different ways.

By the time Alejo closed the door, his team was already making themselves comfortable. The ghastly hue that hung over the golden room after the nightmares was no match for the aroma of the expensive Colombian coffee Gabriel was dumping into the coffeemaker. Benjamin produced fresh roti bread and goat cheese from a paper sack, and Stalin was already stretching his legs out on the bed. Those socks looked like they had seen a good week of adventure in Peshawar without a wash.

This was life in Pakistan.

Alejo felt a grin coming on, and he plopped down at the table, pushing aside an ugly vase of melon-colored, gold-coated roses.

“The coffee smells strong today,” Gabriel nodded proudly. “Just how we like it.”

Benjamin was quietly spreading goat cheese on a piece of bread, leaning his chair up against the wall next to Alejo. “You seem to be in an especially good mood today, Gabo. Haven’t seen Ambrin again, have you?”

Gabriel’s green eyes took on saucer form and steaming coffee sloshed over the edge of his cup, wetting the top of his sandal on the way down. Stalin frowned and stopped stuffing grapes into his mouth from yet another sack of food the guys had carried in.

“Oh come on you guys! Leave poor Gabriel alone! You know he doesn’t like to be teased about Ambrin.”

Gabriel had by now managed to get a grip on his coffee, but his usually-pale neck was now stained scarlet. “Yeah you guys, we shouldn’t even be talking about her. You know I can’t see her…it wouldn’t be right. We’re not even engaged. She knows I didn’t mean to see her without a veil that one time.”

“But that’s when you fell in love, isn’t it?” Benjamin commented without looking up from the cheese.

The whole team knew it was. Walking in the garden at the Khan’s mansion one day, Gabriel had run into Ishmael’s niece, Ambrin…without a veil. All the guys knew the story by now: sapphire eyes, and Gabriel was instantly in love. He was trying to get up the nerve to ask for her hand in marriage.

Alejo let them go on about it for a while, because he really was dreading the thing he was about to bring up. Stalin, mouth still full of food, beat him to it.

“So,” he asked, polishing his little glasses on the tail of his long kameez shirt and spewing crumbs, “who’s up to be the next speaker at our retreat?”

By speaker, he meant the next target. Lázaro, who always seemed to have an opinion about everything, set his feet apart on the floor and leaned forward to eye them all intensely. “I would nominate the Southern Baptist mission house back in Cochabamba. The world couldn’t be a much worse place without them, right?”

A grin stretched his tanned face and Benjamin seemed to agree with him. Alejo fought a sour expression. Was the guy never going to let it go? He’d only known Lázaro for six months, and had already overdosed on the guy’s hatred for Americans. And missionaries. Word on the street was that Lázaro had dated a cute missionary girl who later dumped him, thus the dislike of anything missionary or American.

Alejo thought that Lázaro just wanted an excuse to do whatever he wanted.

“I’ve already lined up the next speaker,” Alejo shook his head. He tried to sit up straight but felt the three cups of coffee he’d just downed settling in his gut like cool acid. Sweat trickled down his ribs and he saw blackened fingers through tall white grass, fought the urge to gag.

“Well whoever it is, I think it would be a lot more beneficial to get rid of all those missionaries preaching pie-in-the-sky while letting the world we live in go to hell.” Lázaro again. Stalin was grinning, amused.

This was getting ridiculous.

“It’s Franco Salazar,” Alejo said, cutting them off.

One of Gabriel’s blond eyebrows rose. “The politician? What has that fat old dude done? Everybody seems to like him back in Bolivia. He’s fashionable, drives a swell red sports car, and, they say, even has gold teeth.” His chipper grin died away at the look on Alejo’s face.

“Tell us about him,” Benjamin pushed away the plate of bread and cheese. “Guys, Alejo knows what he’s talking about.”

Benjamin always respected him; they had been friends for years, since they were both recruited into the Prism together while getting masters degrees in London. Alejo knew his expression had morphed into something pained, but he couldn’t control it. He felt the sun baking his neck again, like it had that day, while the breeze whistled through the tall white grass. The smell of death threatened to engulf him here, fifteen years later.

I do know what I’m talking about, but I would give anything not to know. I don’t know if I can say this.

Alejo did his best to focus, felt his face darken. “I’ll tell you. And when I’m done, you’ll know why Salazar has to die.”

His team leaned forward and, stuffing the nausea that came whenever he thought about Ruben, Alejo told them.

But he didn’t tell them about Ruben.

Even without Ruben, it was enough.

When Alejo was finished, Benjamin’s face burned. Stalin chewed on his lip, and Gabriel looked ready to vomit.

“He’s our next speaker,” Lázaro managed to croak. “It’s a good choice.