Legends

Martin asked quietly, “How did you lose your leg?”

“I was told it was a land mine.”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Some nights fleeting images of what happened surface in my brain: a deafening explosion, the taste of dirt in my mouth, the stickiness of my stump when I reached down to touch it, the feeling I had for months that the leg was still there and I could feel pain in it. The images seem to come from the life of another, and so I have trouble reconstructing the event.”

“Psychiatrists call that a survival mechanism, I think.”

Leaning on one cane and then the other, Rabbani returned to his high chair and hefted himself into it. “I first met Samat when I was buying Soviet surplus arms and munitions in Moscow in the early nineties so that Massoud and my brother could defend the Panjshir. The Russian army units pulling out of their bases in the former German Democratic Republic after the Berlin Wall came down were selling off everything in their arsenals—rifles, machine guns, mortars, land mines, radios, jeeps, tanks, ammunition. Samat, representing the business interests of someone very powerful, was the middleman. It was a period of my life when I felt no guilt about buying and using these arms. I did to the Taliban what they eventually did to me. That was before I myself walked on a land mine. Take it from someone who has been there, Mr. Odum, it’s an exhilarating experience, stepping on a mine. One instant you are attached to the ground, the next you are defying gravity, flailing away in the air. When you fall back to earth you have one limb less and nothing—not your body, not your mind—is ever the same. It was Samat who arranged for me to be flown to a Moscow hospital. It was Samat who came around with my manufactured-in-America artificial leg. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I became another person. Which is why you find me presiding over a warehouse filled with prostheses that we sell at cost.”

“And where does the name ‘Soft Shoulder’ come from?”

“Samat and I were traveling in the U.S. once,” Rabbani explained. “We were driving a large American automobile from Santa Fe, in New Mexico, to New York, when we stumbled across the idea of going into the business of exporting artificial limbs at prices that would make them more easily affordable to the victims of war. We had pulled up at the side of the road to urinate when we shook hands on the project. Next to the car was a sign that read ‘Soft Shoulder.’ Neither of us knew what it meant, but we decided it would make a fitting name for our company.”

The intercom buzzed. Rabbani depressed a lever with a deft jab of a cane and barked irritably, “And what is it now, my girl?”

Mrs. Rainfield’s voice came over the speaker. “Truck’s here for the Bosnia shipment, Mr. Rabbani. I sent them round back to the loading dock. They gave me a certified bank check for the correct amount.”

“Call the bank to confirm it issued the check. Meanwhile get Rachid to supervise the loading.” Rabbani tripped the lever closed with his cane, cutting the connection. “Can’t be too vigilant,” he moaned. “Lot of shady dealers make a lot of money peddling prostheses—they are not happy when someone else sells them at cost.” He pried the stub of the cigarette out of his mouth and lobbed it across the room into a metal waste basket. “When were you in Israel, Mr. Odum?”

“Went there roughly ten days back.”

“You told Mrs. Rainfield to tell me you knew Samat from Israel. Why did you lie?”

Martin understood that a lot depended on how he answered the question. “In order to get past the front door,” he said. He angled his head. “What makes you think I was lying?”

Rabbani pulled an enormous handkerchief from a pocket and wiped the perspiration under his shirt collar at the back of his neck. “Samat left Israel before you got there, my son.”

“How do you know that?”

The old man shrugged his bony shoulders. “I will not ask you how you know what you know. Do me the courtesy of not asking me how I know what I know. Samat fled from Israel. If you came knocking on my door today, it is because you somehow found a record of his phone conversations and traced the calls he made to this address in London, despite the fact that these phone records were supposed to have been destroyed. I will not ask you how you did that—the phone company is not permitted to reveal addresses corresponding to unlisted numbers.”

“Why did you let me in if you knew I was lying about Samat?”

“I calculated if you were clever enough to find me, you might be clever enough to lead me to Samat.”

“Join the queue, Mr. Rabbani. It seems as if everyone I meet wants to find Samat.”

“They want to find Samat in order to kill him. I want to find him in order to save his life.”

“Do you know why he fled Israel?”