Gravedigger Read Online Free Page A

drops of chemicals to each one, waiting for a reaction. This time nothing happened.
    Packing the kit way in the backpack, he stood up and looked around. The village was built on a plateau. Below spread fields of corn. Above the village an arc of crops separated the village from several ridges of mountains. At this time of year it was dry. He knew that in the winter there would be snow and much of the village’s water came from snowmelt. From the looks of the sky, dry wasn’t going to be a problem. The clouds hung dark and low and filled with rain. The air smelled like rain.
    Shouldering the pack, he started hiking to the high ground above the village. As he left the village, he was stopped by two men carrying AK47s.
    Derek’s grasp of Urdu was slim, but he had learned a few phrases. “ Salaam! Dost Suno .” Which, roughly translated, meant, “Hi! Hey! Friend!”, which, he had found, was a useful phrase in any number of languages.
    They glared at him through their bushy beards, jabbing their AKs at him. He kept his hands up, but said, “I’m an Amereykey scientist.” He wished he knew the Urdu word for scientist. “I’m with Abasin Yusufzai.”
    “Abasin?”
    “Yes,” he nodded. “Abasin. Ap aneguereyzey beoletai heyn ?” Do you speak English?
    “Abasin?”
    “So, you don’t speak English,” he said. He gestured toward one of his pockets. “I’m going to reach in here, okay? Really slow.”
    Carefully he plucked out a bag of candy he had bought in the bazaar. He held it out to the two men. They looked suspiciously at it, then at him. Cautiously one of them plucked a candy out of the bag, peeled the cellophane off it and popped it into his mouth. He nodded, smiling. Derek offered the bag to the other man. He too took some candy.
    “I’m trying to help,” he said, knowing that speaking English wasn’t getting him anywhere. “Help. You understand ‘help?’”
    They stared at him.
    Feeling like an idiot, he patted his chest, then pointed toward the fields. Then he made his two fingers move like he was walking. “I want to look around. You can come with me.”
    They still stared at him. The guns, at least, were no longer aimed at him.
    He tapped his chest again. “Derek. My name is Derek Stillwater. Amerekyey .”
    One of the men tapped his chest. “Abdullah.”
    The other pointed to himself. “Mohammed.”
    Derek offered the bag of candy again. They each took one. “ Tafey. ” Candy.
    “ Tafey ,” Abdullah said in agreement.
    “Now we’re cooking with gas,” Derek said, smiling. “We’re just like the fucking U.N.” He waved toward the farmland and tried again. “ Bagh . I wish to look at the bagh. ” Garden. He wished he knew the word for farm. “ Peyaden in the bagh .” He felt like his IQ was dropping every time he opened his mouth. Peyaden meant “on foot.”
    Abdullah and Mohammed looked at each other, seeming to discuss what Derek was saying. They shrugged, shouldered their assault rifles, and gestured for him to follow them.

5
    The fields, for the most part, were poppies. Which explained the armed Pakis, he supposed. Afghanistan, when it wasn’t exporting Islamic extremists, exported opium made from poppies. But they were in Pakistan, although as everyone in the governments kept saying, the border was porous.
    There were other plants, but he wasn’t sure what they were. He bent down and studied them. Poppies were easy to identify, but these were low, green plants that almost looked like bunches of onions. He crouched down to look closer, but still didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t poppies.
    Glancing around this part of the field, he saw that a few of them had purple flowers. He walked over to one of the flowers. He looked up at Muhammed, who said, “ Kesar. ”
    That didn’t help. He shook his head and smelled the flower, which had a very strong, distinctive aroma. Something stirred in his memory.
    Abdulla said, “ Zafran .”
    And it clicked. Saffron. The flowers