Ministers of Fire. Mark Harril Saunders

      prologue

      When april was gone, disappeared into the center of the world, her voice in his head would still insist that he had planned everything—not just the night in Samarkand but all that surrounded it. It was in the Burling character, she said, using his name as she did in the third person, to engineer things according to his own mind, to will them into existence while keeping his distance at the same time. The problem, Burling thought, was people. He was never any good with them. Whether that failure was due to a flaw in his makeup, or just a hedge in case things went to hell, April—the tall, abundant woman with the narrowing gaze that seemed to hide a sly yearning that Burling, in the short time given them, had not been able to fulfill—never had a chance to tell him.

      February 14, 1979: to this day no one marks it as significant. November 9, 1989, September 11, 2001, but not the last troubled months of the seventies, when the world we know was born. On that Wednesday, Wes Godwin, survivor of the Philippines, Korea, and the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam, left the Embassy Residence in Kabul by the rear gate to attend a practice of the Afghan national basketball team, of which April’s husband, Jack, was coach. Lucius Burling, deputy chief of mission and the Agency station chief, rode with Ambassador Godwin in his dusty black car. Plush seats, smell of cigarette smoke, milky sun smeared across the glass. Their route took them through an unpaved lane along walls the color of sand, punctuated at intervals by ancient wooden doors that opened onto courtyards shaded by fruit trees, where dark-eyed children with café-au-lait faces played solemnly in the dust. Burling had been a starting forward at Princeton, at a time when that meant something, but in retrospect he had to admit that his success at basketball had more to do with his natural size and a determined drive than with any great skill as an athlete. Slow-footed but strong, Burling would wait for the quick ones to feed him the ball, then lower his head, make a halting feint one way or the other, and take it to the hole.

      Bull, they called him, which was ridiculous and probably in fun.

      “More like Ferdinand,” Amelia had teased him.

      “I worked harder than they did, that’s all,” Burling said, a bit stung. At that time in their courtship, he was still getting used to her and couldn’t really tell if her tone was affectionate or cutting.

      “It’s your big blond head, darling,” Amelia said, reaching up to touch his hair, “with all those big thoughts inside it. The thinking man’s bull.”

      He was not much interested in basketball now, not in the kind they had going at home, anyway. He had taken his son to see Georgetown play, but John Thompson’s game had not appealed to him, partly because he knew he wouldn’t have lasted a season in that frenetic kind of scheme. The game in Kabul was not for him either, but some of Jack’s players had ties to the northern tribes, and Burling had a plan to go up there that was lately gaining traction at Langley.

      “Going through with this, are you?” Godwin said, face still turned to the world outside the car. At noon the alley was deserted except for a street dog that lapped at the gutter and perked up warily at the sound of the Cadillac, springs complaining as it shouldered through the ruts.

      “I don’t look at it that way,” Burling told him.

      The ambassador faced him, lips the color of bricks. He still wore his white hair in a military cut, in spite of his civilian appointment.

      “We need friends up there,” Burling said.

      “He-ell.” Godwin drew two syllables out of the word. “The tribes aren’t anyone’s ‘friend.’ They know Taraki is weak and the Russians are just waiting for an excuse to come across.”

      Burling watched him quietly, acknowledging the obvious. Godwin was southern military royalty and therefore, in Burling’s estimation, lacked nuance in the extreme.

      “You’re not thinking far enough ahead, Lucius. What about the Chinese? You don’t think they aren’t already in there? Deng Xiaoping’s got his own Moslem problem, and this is his backyard. Mark my words, this’ll blow back, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for twenty years.”

      “By then I hope we’re all in a better place,” Burling said.

      The Cadillac reached a crossing ten blocks from the compound. Across the intersection, wires hung from a rusted box mounted on a pole. The place seemed unnaturally quiet under the white sky, and Burling had a vague foreboding, like waking in the morning and not remembering what you’d done—something not in your character, apparently—the night before. Perhaps it was just a case of misplaced respect for a superior. Godwin was only ten years his senior, but the Second World War made the space between them feel wider. In spite of the ambassador’s greater experience, Burling was convinced that he, the younger man, was right.

      “How’s your bride feeling?” Godwin asked.

      “Better, thanks.”

      The ambassador rearranged himself uncomfortably and chuckled deep in his chest. “Some women aren’t made for this life. Doesn’t appeal to them.”

      Burling’s heart had begun to flutter. He was aware that he was about to reveal more than he should. “Sometimes I think I wasn’t meant to be married, Wes. I seem to enjoy isolation more than . . .” Lately Burling had begun to leave sentences undone, as if his own thoughts could be read aloud. The habit worried him. “More than the alternative, I guess. At one time Amelia thought she wanted this.”

      “Women are changeable. Worst mistake you can make is try to stand in their way.”

      “You take Jack’s wife,” Burling began.

      Godwin laughed aloud. “No, you take her, man. Too much trouble for me.”

      Burling smiled involuntarily, and a deep flush came to his face. Two nights before, in the Residence garden after drinking red wine at a dinner, he had done just that. Or not taken her, exactly, in the way that Godwin meant. The logistics of that he could not imagine. But he had kissed her, surprising himself if not, apparently, April. At first he had stammered an apology, but she had smiled at him as if he were a boy, then kissed him back, one palm placed tenderly against his chest. He couldn’t tell if she was stroking him or pushing him away, and he was trembling slightly as she drew toward him, lips parting on his; he could feel the cleft of her lower back beneath his hand.

      “It’s almost as if this country