Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,12

the 964 be surprised? Because they were behind the whole thing, that’s why.

Frost crept into Alejo’s veins as it all came together. The picture shoved under the door of his house in Bolivia, a bunch of little kids arriving home from school in uniforms and overstuffed backpacks. A house number clearly visible over the door. Stalin had also gotten a really weird picture of his parents wearing matching lime green t-shirts at a rally for world peace.

Alejo had been so obsessed with Salazar he’d paid no attention to the Prism funders’ reaction to Marco’s death. He’d felt the surprise at seeing that picture show up but never figured out the hint.

“They’re telling us they know where our families are,” he stated the obvious. Alejo’s tone turned bitter. “If we leave, people we care about die.”

Four o’clock came early the next morning, when the Khan came to pick him up for the trip to the countryside Tribal Area. A sleek black Hummer glided to a stop in front of the apartment, purring in the early morning chill. A man in a shalwar kameez that was cotton candy pink held the Hummer’s rear door for Alejo: Mateen, an employee of the Khan that a guy would be wise not to mess with, despite the pink clothes. Mateen nodded wordlessly at Alejo and deferentially closed the Hummer door behind him.

The leather seats were freezing. Alejo crossed his arms across his chest and greeted two of the Khan’s burly body guards, wearing the round woolen caps that were traditional Pashto garb. Each held a well-cared for automatic weapon very comfortably between their knees. “Asalaam Aleikum,” they grinned back at him over thick, unkempt beards.

“Ishmael,” Alejo nodded at his boss, who, eerily, was impeccably dressed even at this ungodly hour of the morning.

Ishmael Khan was a philanthropist, giving away a lot of his wealth to build hospitals and schools here in Pakistan as well as in Bolivia. The broken hand of two-year old Jamila was what Ishmael Khan fought for. This was what Alejo’s handler saw every time he heard about another child killed by the Americans in Afghanistan: the tiny, coffee-colored hand of his niece, protruding from the rubble of her home in the mountains. She’d been crushed by a stray American missile back in 2008, massacred in the same day as her five siblings.

The Americans had apologized. The Khan hadn’t accepted.

Now Ishmael Khan was Alejo’s handler in the Prism, this Muslim organization dedicated to fighting against injustice for Allah. Alejo was the Prism leader for all of South America, excluding Colombia and Venezuela, where Marco’s replacement now worked.

The chill from his conversation with Stalin yesterday still sat in Alejo’s bones. The Khan was a strict Muslim, but would he really react so strongly to Alejo’s moving on as Stalin had implied? Maybe only the 964 really cared, because they were the ones who invested all the money in training Alejo.

Or maybe Stalin and Alejo were just painting themselves scary pictures from nothing, like campfire ghost stories under the moon.

Gabriel cleared his throat from the third row of seats behind Alejo. The rest of Alejo’s team had stayed behind in Peshawar. “I thought we might have to drag your butt out of bed,” he chuckled. “For the first time ever. You were looking pretty down yesterday.”

Alejo was irritated. They didn’t know why he personally hated Salazar so much. To them he was just another scumbag who was about to be offed. And, except for Stalin, they absolutely didn’t know a thing about the decision Alejo was trying to make.

The roads outside of Peshawar were cut into dry, dusty mountain faces, and incredibly sheer drop-offs framed their narrow edges. Eventually the Hummer left the peaks and jolted across a stony field where the rutted tracks were barely visible in the weak light of dawn. Everywhere, mud-brick houses sprung up out of the rocky dust; most were shattered from missiles, empty shells of the family life that must once have filled them. Small children sometimes lined the road, staring with huge, kohl-lined eyes as the impressive Hummer roared past, clouding their ragged bodies in billows of thick dust.

Sometime around noon, the armored Hummer arrived at a run-down village, consisting of a cluster of houses around a stone well. Mangy, skeletal donkeys wandered about, tethered to fraying ropes. Scrawny chickens had free range of the dusty central courtyard. A baby cried franticly from inside one of the single-room homes. A piece of burlap hung over the small