{"product_id":"the-warlords-son-isbn-9781400030484","title":"The Warlord's Son","description":"\u003cb\u003e“A tantalizing, timely thriller” (\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e) from the highly acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eWinter Work\u003c\/i\u003e that offers a daring look at life behind the barbed wire of Guantánamo and a riveting portrayal of what goes on in the most secret levels of our government. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When the body of an American soldier is discovered in Cuban waters near the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo, Revere Falk, a former FBI agent, is reassigned from his job interrogating an accused al-Qaeda operative to investigate the soldier’s mysterious death. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Falk soon finds himself in a deadly game of intrigue that stretches from the charged waters of Guantánamo Bay to the polished halls of Washington. Every move Falk makes could be costly, and to make matters worse, a dark figure from his past reappears, brandishing a secret he thought he had safely buried.\"Mesmerizing. . . . Visceral. . . .  Keeps the reader's attention until the stunning  climax.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Denver Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A terrific novel of intrigue, duplicity and death in  the shadow of the Khyber Pass. . . . Fesperman is that rare journalist who is also  a gifted novelist.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A thrilling odyssey into Afghanistan  during the waning days of Taliban rule . . . a kind of post-modern\u003ci\u003e Heart of Darkness\u003c\/i\u003e.” —\u003ci\u003eSeattle Post-Intelligencer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Compulsively readable. . . . Fesperman [is a] writer  to watch.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A novel ripped from the headlines. . . . Better  than any news dispatch and . . . far more entertaining. . . . Fesperman amazes [with  his] searing insights into human nature.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Baltimore Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A first-rate geopolitical  yarn. . . . Fesperman combines his strong eye for detail with bleak film-noir cynicism,  managing to make plot twists that could have felt contrived seem depressingly believable.” —\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A convincing, accurate thriller. . . . This book is worth  reading if only for the passage where the hero, Skelly, glimpses Osama bin Laden  at a public hanging; the scene both convinces and frightens.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Thoroughly  gripping, intelligent and wholly believable. . . . There will be other novels written  about the last days of the Taliban . . . but few will match the verisimilitude, drama  and compelling characters found in\u003ci\u003e The Warlord's Son\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . The conclusion . . .  has the impact of a stun gun.\" —\u003ci\u003eFlint Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Fesperman’s experience as a war  correspondent, together with his powers of description and characterization, produce  an utterly compelling thriller and quite simply the best I’ve read all year.” —\u003ci\u003eSunday Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Enlightening and entertaining. . . . A riveting and sometimes  frightening read. . . . Fesperman sheds light on the tribal culture in such a way  that a murky idea momentarily crystallizes into a vivid picture.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Charlotte  Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"[Fesperman] exhibits a keen eye for the landscape's details...he excels  at drawing characters.\" —\u003ci\u003ePittsburgh Tribune-Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"[This] veteran reporter. .  . . depicts politics, geography and the tradecraft of reporters, smugglers, warriors  and spies with rare insight.\" —\u003ci\u003eSan Jose Mercury News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"\u003ci\u003eThe Warlord's Son\u003c\/i\u003e is a story  of humanity, of how primal instincts come to the forefront in dangerous situations.  But it's also about friendship and loyalty and redemption, either achieved or disappointed.  . . . One of the must-read novels of the year.\" —\u003ci\u003eJanuary Magazine\u003c\/i\u003eDan Fesperman is a former foreign correspondent who worked in Baltimore Sun’s Berlin  bureau during the years of civil war in the former Yugoslavia, as well as in Afghanistan  during the recent conflict.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eLie in the Dark\u003c\/b\u003e won the Crime Writers Association of  Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel, and\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe  Small Boat of Great Sorrows\u003c\/b\u003e won its Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller.The sun does not rise in Peshawar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt seeps--an egg-white smear that brightens the eastern horizon  behind a veil of smoke, exhaust and dust. The smoke rises from  burning wood, cow patties and old tires, meager flames of commerce  for kebab shops and bakers, metalsmiths and brick kilns. The worst of  the exhaust sputters from buzzing blue swarms of motor rickshaws,  three-wheeled terrors that careen between horse carts and overloaded  buses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut it was the dust that Najeeb Azam knew best. Like him, it had  swirled down from the arid lands of the Khyber and never settled,  prowling restlessly in the streets and bazaars as if awaiting a fresh  breeze to carry it to some farther, better destination.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the morning it coated his pillow, a faint powder flecked with  soot. In the evening he wiped it from his face and coughed cinders  into a handkerchief, never quite able to flush it from either pores  or lungs. Wherever he traveled it went along for the ride, a  parasite, a little gift from his adopted home. He was respectful of  its mysterious cloaking powers, because things had a way of  disappearing in Peshawar--people, ideas, entire political movements.  They would be loud and noticeable one day, only to vanish without a  trace the next, and with each new day someone or something else  always seemed to have gone missing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Peshawar dawn nonetheless had its charms, and Najeeb liked to rise  early to savor them. So, on a warm morning in mid-October he stood in  the darkness of his small kitchen a half hour before sunrise, brewing  tea while listening to Mansour's horse cart leaving for the bazaar.  He knew without looking that the old man stood like a charioteer on a  narrow wooden flatbed, reins in hand, pomegranates and tomatoes piled  behind him, the baggy folds of his shalwar kameez flowing ghostlike  in the pale light. The lonely clip-clop was soothing, yet also a sort  of warning, like the ticking of a bomb. It was part of Peshawar's  daily countdown to chaos. Soon enough the narrow streets would  explode with vehicles, animals and people, beggars and merchants  elbow to elbow as both cried out for rupees.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe loudspeaker of a nearby mosque crackled to life. Najeeb strolled  to the living room, setting his teacup on a shelf and kneeling,  lowering his forehead to the rug in prayer. This, too, was a ritual  of tranquillity, yet it never seemed quite peaceful enough here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the tribal lands of his boyhood the muezzin's cry had been a  solitary call, haunting and lovely. He used to pretend the message  was for him alone, and to Najeeb there was still no grander  expression of power than the words Allahu akbar, \"God is great,\" when  carried on a morning breeze across empty countryside. But in Peshawar  there were more muezzins than he could count, and their calls became  an unruly conversation--one voice trumping another in a war above the  rooftops. Cats yowling over turf. Or perhaps Najeeb was turning into  an infidel, a worldly backslider. A Kafir, as his father's Pashtun  tribesmen would have said. Life never seemed half so holy now as it  once had, and in a country where not only a man's calling but also  his marriage was generally set in stone by age eighteen, Najeeb was  still a work in progress at twenty-seven.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs a boy he'd roamed a wonderland of extremes, a rural princeling at  play among bearded, turbaned men with rifles slung on their backs,  all of whom owed their allegiance to his father. After breakfast he  might sprint barefoot through the dew of waist-high poppies, dodging  marauding boys from the village with slingshots round their necks. As  the sun climbed higher he sought the refuge of high defiles to watch  smuggler parades of camels and horses, teatime caravans swaying and  clanking through the passes. Then, off to bed on the verandah of his  father's hujera, the men's guest house, where he gazed up at stars so  icy bright that it seemed they might pierce his skull. Pleasantly  weary, he stretched out on a rope bed, eavesdropping on his father's  guests and supplicants --smoky, piratical gatherings in the hujera's  great room, with hubble-bubble hookahs and high-caliber bandoleers, lulling him to sleep with the streamside murmur of their mutter and growl, and the whine and hum of their radio, beaming news from the  great beyond. Occasionally a burst of laughter or an angry shout  shouldered into his dreams, but by morning there were only him and  the muezzin beneath another clear sky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet that world also had its special cloaking magic. It was a place  where he learned quickly to conceal his thoughts and dreams, and from  his earliest years Najeeb's elders taught him to hold in his  emotions, sheathing them like a weapon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the age of eighteen he abruptly left that world behind, dispatched  across the seas to a university in the United States. It was his  father's idea, a vain stab at worldliness to impress a few haughty  ministers in the government corridors of Islamabad. Najeeb went  reluctantly, and for months he held himself sternly under wraps,  bookish and brooding through a North Carolina winter amid airless  dreams of home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen came the spring, and Najeeb emerged timidly from underground,  sampling the bounty of bright new places that began to make home seem  small, plain and crude. There were supermarkets as big as his  village, libraries the size of canyons, lush trees alive with  blossoms and songbirds. Then there were the women, practically naked  compared to the ones he'd grown up with. They were a temptation, he  knew, yet there was a holiness about them, too--as if heaven and hell  had been rolled into one amazing creation of bare arms, exposed legs  and lustrous heads of hair, their animated faces open to the world  and all its possibilities. They soon became responsible for an  altogether new kind of training in Najeeb's life. Tell us your  feelings, they demanded. Share your thoughts. Having been exposed to  Shakespeare in the same heady spring, Najeeb found himself torn in  ways he had never anticipated. To feel or not to feel, that was the  question.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd now, years after his homecoming, he was not only restless but  trapped--banished from tribal lands by his father, barred from  America by consular officials.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis father's action had followed a betrayal that Najeeb no longer  cared to revisit. The consular ban was of a more recent vintage. The  United States had decided the previous month that it no longer wanted  his company, after his two worlds had collided in ways previously  unimaginable in the burning skies of lower Manhattan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo he soldiered on in Peshawar, feeling as if he'd snagged a little  of himself in each place he'd departed. And as each morning's peace  dissolved he often found himself brooding over what was missing,  sometimes believing that he, too, was disappearing into the Peshawar  haze, as indistinct as the horizon. In a country where most people  defined themselves by family or faith, Najeeb found himself resorting  to a more American approach, seeking identity from his various  occupations. For the moment, then, he was a translator and guide, a  painter of birds, an unemployed computer engineer, and, most  recently, a journalist of sorts, reporting for a rambling English  daily called the Frontier Report.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe few people in Peshawar who knew Najeeb well could have added  further labels--disowned son, enthusiastic fornicator, occasional  imbiber of forbidden beverage, habitual consorter with  foreigners--tireless seeker of any path, in other words, that might  lead beyond Pakistan. And at this precarious moment in the city's  history, when choosing sides was the order of the day, Najeeb  remained dangerously neutral.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne thing no one ever called him was lazy, and today's schedule was  particularly industrious. First on the agenda: a ride on his motor  scooter to the humble offices of the Frontier Report, where, as  always, there would be plenty to write about. His daily task was to  fashion a digest of news briefs from the tribal hinterlands of the  North-West Frontier Province. It always made for strange  reading--rustic feuds and oddball robberies, villages convulsed over  the tiniest of matters. Perhaps someday he would collect them in a  volume of curios for his friends in the United States, a Pakistani  gothic that would finally help them understand what made this place  tick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe most important business of the day was scheduled for late  afternoon, when Najeeb would meet yet another foreign journalist who  wanted to hire him for guiding and interpreting. A fixer, the job was  called, and today's client was American.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith most of the journalists so far the routine had been pretty  standard. They spent their first few days doing interviews in the  streets, liking the lilt of the word \"bazaar\" in their copy and  enjoying the way every merchant invited them inside for tea. Najeeb  translated while fending off hordes of curious barefoot boys and  legless beggars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf there happened to be a demonstration that day, they covered it,  taking care to stay upwind from the tear gas. Then came the  obligatory visit to a madrassah, one of the religious schools that  supplied the Taliban with so many foot soldiers. Black-haired boys  kneeling in straight lines on scrubbed marble floors, heads bobbing  as they recited the Koran. Then perhaps a chant or two of \"Death to  America,\" before collecting quotes from the resident Holy Scholar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNajeeb and his clients always shared an awkward laugh in the taxi  afterward, the reporter never quite sure where Najeeb stood on these  matters, and Najeeb never eager to say, not when every cabbie was a  potential informant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen, unless there was some new wave of refugees to badger, Najeeb  would escort his client east, three hours down the bouncing highway  to the calm green sterility of Islamabad, to seek out bureaucrats and  diplomats who might grant travel papers for the Afghan  border--because Afghanistan was the ultimate goal of every client,  even if the border had been closed for weeks and would likely stay  that way awhile longer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf it ever opened, Najeeb would probably cross it as well. Not that  he enjoyed gunfire. But at a pay rate of a hundred fifty dollars a  day he couldn't afford to say no, because the one thing that might  yet get him out of this place was cash.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet even as his supply of cash reached three thousand dollars and  counting, the American embassy grew ever more remote. A hasty  security cordon that had gone into place after September 11 had crept  ever farther down the surrounding boulevards. Now, a mere five weeks  later, you couldn't get within blocks of the place, and for the  moment a visa was out of the question. Not only had most of the  embassy staff left the country, but there was now a waiting list, a  clerk told him by telephone. It might take weeks, even months.  Meanwhile, reports filtered back from the United States of young  Pakistani men disappearing into jails by the hundreds, gone without a  word of explanation. So Najeeb bided his time and stacked his crisp  fifties and hundreds, stockpiling ammunition for a battle that might  never come.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuch was the drift of Najeeb's thinking that morning when, still on  his knees, he was startled by a whisking sound from over by the door.  Had he completed his prayers? He wasn't sure. The loudspeakers of the  mosques were silent. A rickshaw whined past outside, scouting for the  day's first fare. He checked his watch--still time for another cup of  tea--but his eyes were drawn to a spinning white object on the floor  tiles. It was an envelope, just coming to rest. Someone had shoved it  beneath the door. He listened for departing footsteps, but there was  only the clopping of another horse, so he rose stiffly and crossed  the room, throwing open the door in expectation of discovering the  crouching messenger, caught in the act.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut there was no one. Nothing. And the stairwell was silent. It was  as if the envelope had fallen from the sky with the first shaft of  sunlight. Shutting the door, he picked it up. Whoever had sealed the  cream-colored envelope had done so without a single smudge, meaning  he was either clean or careful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNajeeb tore it open at the top and pulled out a folded sheet of paper  of the same creamy complexion. There was no letterhead or official  markings, only a handwritten message in black ink, neat and cramped,  giving the impression of someone not accustomed to writing. At the  top were the numbers \"24:30,\" and the writing below was in Arabic. It  was a passage from the Koran. With no one there to watch, Najeeb  allowed himself an irreverent smile. No doubt he was about to receive  a scolding from a neighbor, some lesson in morals from a well-meaning  meddler.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Enjoin believing men to turn their eyes away from temptation and to  restrain their carnal desires,\" the first line said. \"This will make  their lives purer.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis smile widened. Someone must have seen Daliya exiting a few nights  ago, and it probably wasn't the first time. The memory brightened his  mood. Whereas he thought of himself as wispy and insubstantial, she  was full and complicated, a soul worth clinging to. He continued  reading.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Enjoin believing women to turn their eyes away from temptation and  to preserve their chastity; not to display their adornments.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOh, but such adornments. If this writer only knew. Another set of  numbers followed, 24:39, meaning the writer had skipped ahead. The  next passage took his smile away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"As for the unbelievers, their works are like a mirage in a desert.  The thirsty traveler thinks it is water, but when he comes near he  finds that it is nothing. He finds God there, who pays him back in  full. Swift is God's reckoning.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNajeeb wondered angrily what sort of \"reckoning\" the writer had in  mind. Did God's self-appointed scold also intend to be His avenger?  He crumpled the page, then reconsidered, smoothing it out and  reaching for a pen. This demanded a reply. He pulled his own copy of  the Koran from between English editions of Philip Roth and Paul  Auster, thumbing the pages. Where was that verse that had recently  caught his eye? There. Just as he remembered. He'd be quoting it out  of context, of course. In fact, he was likely misinterpreting it  altogether, a thought that returned his smile with a gleam of  mischief.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"2:79,\" he wrote. Then he scribbled in rusty Arabic: \"Woe betide  those that write the scriptures with their own hands and then  declare: 'This is from God,' in order to gain some paltry end.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe stuffed the page into the messenger's own envelope and resealed it  with tape, then wrote on the outside in Urdu, \"A reply to this  morning's visitor to apartment 12.\" After a second cup of tea he  grabbed his satchel and the keys to his scooter, taking care to lock  the door before rushing down the stairwell. He posted the envelope by  the mailboxes at the entrance, wondering how long it would be before  someone took the bait. For a moment he had misgivings--why stir the  pot?--and his stomach rumbled, as queasy as if he'd just eaten too  much chapal kebab. He'd have to remind Daliya to take more care in  her comings and goings. The city grew more dangerous and irrational  by the day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Meddlesome fanatics,\" Najeeb muttered on his way into the streets.  \"They'll be the death of us all.\"A Novel","brand":"Vintage Crime\/Black Lizard","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299828388069,"sku":"NP9781400030484","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400030484.jpg?v=1767742130","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-warlords-son-isbn-9781400030484","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}