The Disappearance of Grace (26 page)

I've been taken to a basement room surrounded by old walls of stacked stone. Ancient stone. The room is as barren as an old woman's womb and just as cold. But it is not empty. Sitting up against the far wall, her knees pressed up against her chest, is my fiancée.

My Grace.

* * *

She is dressed only in her black underwear.

Duct tape covers her mouth and binds her wrists. She's awake, staring at me with wide eyes, her now filthy hair draping her face like a veil. I can tell she's trying to say something to me, but she can't possibly speak through that gag. My heart beats, but not for me. It beats because my Grace is alive.

Grace. Is. Alive.

The overcoat man has done something to her, however. Something I can't explain. He's painted her legs. Not the entire length of both her legs, but just from the knees down, including her feet. The skin is covered in red paint. Paint that resembles blood. It's as if he skinned her and left the flesh exposed to the air.

But my fiancée hasn't been skinned.

She's been painted.

Why he's done this to her, I have no idea. Only that he's done it. And she is alive.

My Grace is alive.

* * *

Coming from above. Footsteps. Footsteps pounding on the floorboards. Then, a door opening. Footsteps making the stone stairs down into the basement.

It's him. The overcoat man. Hakeemullah.

He's holding a long blade in his right hand. It's not exactly long enough to be a sword, but it's too long to be a knife. The blade is wide, shiny, and curved at the end in the shape of a crescent moon. The weapon of a horse-mounted warrior maybe. A mullah.

He allows the blade to brush his right leg, the sharp edge of the steel grazing against loose trousers. Looking up at him from where I'm lying on the dirt floor, I can see him move his mouth. He's saying something, but he's speaking it silently. Until the silence becomes a whisper.

“I. See.” he says. “I. See.”

My eyes shift from his face to Grace's face. She too is watching him, her chest bulging in and out in great heaves of inhales and exhales. I know she's panicking. She sees the knife. She's watching it graze his leg. She's already feeling the pain and the burn of the knife as it enters into her skin and flesh. I cannot see her like this. Not when I am so helpless.

“I. See.” The voice is growing louder now. “I. See.”

Something begins to happen to my eyes then. They are suddenly losing their focus, as I knew they would. As I feared they would. I shift my gaze back to Hakeemullah. His eyes are locked on mine. Deep pools of black ink.

“I. See.” he says again, the ‘See' ending in a long drawn, ‘zzzzz.” Like ‘Seeeeezzzzzzz.'

My eyes cut out on me.

I find myself in the dark. A brown gray, walled-in darkness that seems impenetrable. I can no longer see my Grace, see her chest heaving, her lungs searching for the air to fill them. I no longer see Hakeemullah. But in my brain, I see him as he appeared on the early afternoon he stole my fiancée. The long overcoat, the thin beard, the sunglasses, the short dark cropped hair. Like now, it was impossible for me to see him that day. But in my mind I remember the incident as if I saw him with full clarity of vision. 20/20 unobstructed vision.

“I. See.” he repeats yet again.

Along with the voice, I make out the sound of water lapping up against stone walls. I hear muffled voices coming from another room attached to this one. Faint voices speaking in a language that is neither Italian nor English, but if I had to guess, is Tajik. I hear the very distant hint of a motorboat, and I swear, I hear the delicate voice of a songbird.

I hear something else too.

I hear Hakeemullah's voice. But I no longer hear the words, “I. See.” Perhaps I never heard the words, “I. See.” Maybe I was deaf to the actual words or word he was speaking to me. Because if I concentrate…if I listen closely, I know for certain that he is not saying the words, “I. See.” He is not saying them at all. He is saying something else entirely.

He is saying, “Aziz.”

Chapter 78

“AZIZ.”

When it is spoken softly or spoken over a phone that is also filled with background noise, static, and distortion, it can sound very much like “I. See.” When it is spoken by a man who possesses the thick accent of a Tajik, it will sound like “I. See.” When you are undergoing bouts of temporary blindness for which there seems no cure, you will be aware of your eyes at all times. The words coming from the mouth of a man who appears to have kidnapped your fiancée will sound like, “I. See.”

But he is not saying “I. See.”

He is saying, “Aziz.”

I fought in Afghanistan. I fought and survived, and I had no choice but to order an airstrike on a small ancient village situated atop a nameless hill in the violent north country. A part of my job in Afghanistan was not to fight with the rebels, but to speak with them, to negotiate with them, to try and make them understand the process of peace without terror or the trading and distribution of heroin. In doing so, I was able to pick up some Tajik. Not a lot, but some words here and there.

One of these words was Aziz.

It means,
precious
.

Chapter 79

I HEAR THE SHUFFLING of boots on the gravelly floor. Just a couple of steps.

No more.

The steps move away from me, not towards me. When I hear the faint sounds of struggling and a screaming through a duct tape gag, I know Hakeemullah has now approached Grace. I know he is doing something to her and that I can't possibly come to her rescue. I am bound. I am helpless and useless.

I am blind.

I close my eyes as if this will help shield me from what he is doing to Grace. I am already blind. I already cannot see him or her. But I somehow see her gagged face and her red painted lower legs. But I don't want to see them. I try to turn off all my senses, all of my abilities to see something without the use of my eyes. I want to be blind and deaf. I want my sense of smell and taste to disappear. I want my heart to stop and my brain to stop functioning. I want all imagination and my ability to paint a vivid picture of what is happening to my Grace only a few feet away from me on this cold damp floor to be erased.

I want to die.

* * *

From where I lie on the floor on my side, I hear my fiancée thrusting about, her torso and legs slapping the hard-packed earth like she's a fish out of water. I try thrusting my body forward towards her. But it's impossible to move more than a few inches at a time in my bound condition. Tears pour out of my blind eyes. My heart pounds. My lungs feel like two overinflated balloons about to burst.

Until the room falls silent.

Chapter 80

ANY NOISES COMING FROM Grace have suddenly ceased. Now I no longer hear her body thrashing about. No longer hear her muffled screams and gasps. I no longer register anything other than stillness and calmness.

I can't help but think the worst: Hakeemullah has killed her.

He has cut her with that knife. Cut her neck.

I try again to shimmy my body towards her. But now, in the silence, I'm not even sure which direction to move.

I am a failure.

I am death.

Chapter 81

THEN I MAKE OUT the sound of a body rising up off the floor.

Footsteps.

I smell a musty odor. A raw, organic scent. Like old clothes that have not been washed in ages. I breathe in the faint odor of spices. Cooking spices. Then I sense a body lowering itself beside me. Not so close it touches me, but so close I can almost feel its heart beating.

Hakeemullah.

“His name was Aziz,” he whispers in broken English after a breath of heavy silence has passed. “Precious. And he was my son. You bombed my village. You killed our elders. You killed our animals and destroyed our homes. You killed our women. And you killed my little Aziz. My Precious. You destroyed his legs and you took his life. You broke my heart.”

I'm listening to him speak, but in my mind I'm seeing that fighter dive out of the blue Afghan sky, see it unloading its missiles, see the red-hot explosions, see the plumes of smoke, feel the rumble of the shock under the soles of my boots. Then I see the village, ravaged from the two explosions and from automatic 30 mm cannon fire. I see the dead and the wounded. I see a boy. I see his full face masked with a patina of white dust, his small arms thrust over his head like a child sleeping in his crib, and I see what's left of his legs. The charred and grotesque remnants. This man is his father. He is the father of the boy killed by the missiles. And now he has killed my Grace in revenge for what I needed to do in order to stop my men from dying.

“Precious is an angel now,” he goes on. “He resides in a paradise you cannot begin to comprehend. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know how it feels to lose something so precious. I wanted you to feel what it is to live in a fear so great, you live your every waking moment for the time when you will finally die. I wanted you to know how that felt, Captain.”

He falls silent for a moment while I begin to make out his panted breaths, and from down on the floor, I can practically smell the salt in his tears. I'm trying to recall seeing his face in the village. His bearded, brown face. His short cropped black hair. I try and picture him. Try and recall if I met with him when I met with the elders. Try and recall if we ever spoke, and I cannot remember a thing. But I recall his little boy peeking out at me from behind the corner of one of the stone houses. I recall approaching him and giving him chocolate which he greedily snatched from my hand while offering me a precious smile in return. That was the last time I ever saw him and it was the last afternoon of his short life.

“I set you up to die in that explosion under your apartment. I thought that if you died the same way my Precious left his mortal body behind, then his life will have been avenged and my soul would be restored. But when it was over and more innocents lie dead because of it, I knew that I would never feel the peace I so crave, no matter how many times I try and kill you. It is all useless. And I have only my tears and my memories to compete with my cold loneliness.”

Once more he goes silent. I have no choice but to lie here and listen, and pray that when he kills me, that I die fast. It's only the pain I fear. Nothing more. I want to die now. If he has cut Grace and allowed her life to bleed out, then I too want to die. It is the only answer.

“I know now that there is no bringing Precious back to me, Captain. There is no way to replace him, any more than we can repair the stone walls of the houses in my village; any more than we can return the blood to the bodies of the elders your men executed. It is all over now. All I want to do is return to my country to live out my days.”

I hear movement and the sound of him getting back up onto his feet.

I wish he would kill me. My God, why doesn't he just kill me now and get it over with? Why is he waiting? He's got the knife in his hand. I'm sure of it. Why won't he just use it and end this? Maybe I deserve to die for what I did to him. To his little boy. Maybe robbing me of my sight is not enough. Maybe following orders is no excuse. But then I remember why we fought the war. I remember those buildings in New York. Those twin towers gleaming and glistening in the September sun. I recall the planes and the explosions that ripped through steel and glass. All those precious innocent lives standing on the sills of the shattered windows, having to make one final decision. Whether to die by fire or die by collision with the earth. Burn or jump. All those souls making the sign of the cross, seeing the face of a Lord who awaited them that day in paradise as they slowly allowed their bodies to drop over the edge, like petals releasing themselves from the rose.

Then, the sound of footsteps moving away from me. Two or three bodies descending the stairs. The door slams open, as if it's been pounded open by a battering ram.

They enter the room.

Soldiers. Police. I know them without having to see them.

The sound of hobnailed boots slapping against old stone.

Orders are shouted out. Weapons being cocked and engaged. Suddenly a bright white light shines in my face. I can sense the light in my open eyes despite the blindness. It's so bright it makes me want to close them.

Three sharp shots reverberate against the stone walls.

The sound of a body dropping like a heavy sack of rags and bones tells me Hakeemullah is dead before he hits the ground. So does the spatter that hits the right side of my face. I wipe it off with the back of my hand while someone approaches me and in perfect English asks me if I've been hurt. An American. Another soldier shouts out the same words. And I'm certain that he is speaking to my Grace.

“Grace,” I say, the word barely coming out. “Grace…Grace.”

“She is okay, Captain. She is alive and unhurt.” I know the voice. It's spoken with a heavy Italian accent. Detective Carbone.

I feel a great wave of something wash over me then. It engulfs me and fills my veins with an exhaustion so profound, I'm not sure I can speak another word. I roll over onto my back, open my eyes back up onto nothing. Closing them, I pass out.