The Warlord's Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

notoriously hard to disabuse of first impressions. He was also trying to get a fix on Skelly, and what he had detected so far made him wary, although he couldn’t yet say why.
    The man was in his early fifties, by the look of it. Full head of wavy hair going silver. His clothes were faded, rumpled and looked as if they’d already picked up a week’s worth of dust, although he had apparently just arrived. Decent shape. An extra pound or two around the middle, but moved as if he’d be quick on his feet when necessary. But his most striking trait was his gray-blue eyes, animated yet beaming a sense of calm and resolution that seemed at odds with the circumstances. Skelly wasn’t goggle-eyed the way most first-timers were in Pakistan. Although, like everyone else, he was already complaining about Peshawar’s soupy air.
    “How can you stand it?” Skelly asked, mopping a puddle of orange sauce with a flap of local bread. “I thought you’d at least be able to see the mountains from here.”
    “When I was a boy you could see all the way to Afghanistan. On some days now the smog even blows up into the Khyber Pass, although usually it is clear up there.”
    “Another good reason to head for the border.”
    So he, too, wanted to go to Afghanistan. Hardly a surprise.
    “By the way,” Skelly said. “If I ever suggest anything foolhardy, I hope you’ll have the good sense to let me know. So don’t be shy.”
    Najeeb nodded, wondering if the man had recently had a close call.
    “On the other hand, if you ever see the slightest chance for getting us off the beaten path, away from the hordes”—he spread his hands to encompass the cafe, where his colleagues of all nations filled the air with multilingual chatter—“then let me know right away, even if a little hazard and hardship might be involved. Am I making sense?”
    “You don’t wish to be killed. But you will take a few risks for a story the others do not have.”
    “Exactly.” He smiled broadly, although Najeeb knew better than to be flattered by mere smiles. He’d found them to be cheap currency in America, doled out by shop clerks and fast-food cashiers.
    “But I guess you get the same request from everybody.”
    Najeeb supposed he did, although none of his clients to date had been quite so up front about their ignorance of local affairs. His previous client had also been a first-timer from America, but he’d been neat and organized, pants creased and collars pressed. At their first meeting he had handed Najeeb a typewritten list of story ideas and people he wished to meet, and he had never wasted a chance to show off his knowledge of Peshawar, making it awkward for Najeeb to correct him on the numerous occasions when he was wrong. The man had apparently read somewhere that the best first question to ask a Pakistani man was how many children he had, so he’d done so at every opportunity and was crestfallen to find that Najeeb was not only childless but unmarried, as if there were no category for that response on his chart of Peshawar demographics.
    Skelly, on the other hand, was almost blithe in his ignorance.
    “So what should I be asking you about this place? Went to a demo this morning, but it was nothing special. Hardly seemed like the whole city was up in arms. Just a few hundred idiots who let the police push them around. What’s everybody think of the war?”
    “They hope it will not last long. The longer it goes on, the more likely the hotheads will take power. And no one wants them getting hold of the bombs.”
    “The nukes?”
    “Yes.”
    “Reasonable enough. You’re Pashtun, right? Seems like I heard you grew up in the tribal areas.”
    “Yes.” No sense leading him further in this direction.
    “Are you Afridi? Your tribe, I mean. Isn’t that one of the biggest, with all sorts of clans and subclans?”
    “Yes.” Stony expression, which he could pull with the best of them. “Is that a problem for you?”
    “Well, no. I just . . .