Free The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr Page B

even thought about changing his plans. But then he'd realized just what such a step would mean, how much he'd sacrificed for them already, and how he wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he gave them the rest of his life as well.
    Harry finished his drink and set the empty glass on the lanai, then reached for his sketchbook and flashlight. How slow it all seemed from here, the progress of the planet across millions of miles of space nearly imperceptible. A few lines on paper, the relation of a handful of dim points of light. And yet this was the only way the mind could even begin to make sense of it all.
    From somewhere inside the apartment came the muted sound of the phone ringing, but Harry didn't move to answer it. Char was the only person whose calls he cared to take, and she was asleep inside. It was too late for solicitors, which left only the possibility of a wrong number, or worse, one of those long, vacant calls filled with satellite chatter which Harry knew were not wrong numbers at all but vulgar reminders of everything he could not leave behind.
    The kitchen light switched on, obliterating the sky, and Harry saw Char's shadow skate across the lanai. He had told her several times not to bother with the phone, but she was the kind of person for whom such a concept was entirely impossible to grasp. In Char's world, Harry was learning, a ringing phone was meant to be answered, even at one o'clock in the morning. Especially at one in the morning, for the likelihood of disaster was so much greater then, the prospect that the caller might need help.
    It was this same impulse that had drawn Char to him, her innate desire to be of use in some way, to fix things that were broken—something, Harry couldn't help observing, that she appeared to be unable to accomplish in her own life. One day she was cleaning his house and the next she was in bed with him, as if his need for intimacy were as easily fulfilled as his desire for a clean bathroom.
    In their interactions with each other Harry and Char observed the unwritten etiquette of exiles, which meant asking as few questions as possible about the past, but Harry had managed to glean the basics of what Char had left behind on the mainland. At least one ex-husband and two kids. A house and a car. A job that, most likely, had not required cleaning other people's toilets.
    Harry turned in his chair and craned his neck, watching her through the patio doors. She had thrown on one of his shirts, but it was unbuttoned, and Harry could see her body and all its failings in the glare of the overhead lights. Her thighs were heavy and thick, her pubic hair a dark and unruly triangle, her stomach sagging, silvered with stretch marks. Two kids, Harry thought, possibly three.
    Char picked up the phone and cradled it against her shoulder, then looked quizzically out at Harry.
    “Hello?” he heard her say through the door.
    Harry shook his head vigorously, trying to signal his desire not to be interrupted, but it was no use.
    “Yes,” she told the caller, motioning to the phone, as if Harry simply hadn't understood that it was for him. “He's right here. May I ask who's calling?”
    A title searcher, Harry thought, watching this odd bit of professionalism revealed. Or an insurance adjuster, one of those necessary jobs that seem, to outsiders at least, completely unnecessary. That's what Char would have done. For a moment he could see her in a cheap suit and sensible pumps, eating a fast-food lunch in the front seat of her car.
    “Hang on,” she said into the phone, then she put her hand over the receiver and slid the patio door open.
    Harry reached desperately for his drink and tilted the last of the dregs from the glass. Not a soul out there, he thought, whom he'd rather talk to sober.
    Char leaned out toward him, her breasts slouching forward as she did, the nipples big and dark against Harry's shirt. “It's Dick Morrow,” she whispered, shrugging slightly, as if even she was