WE TRAVELED BY horseback for two more days across the upper Wakhan, stopping in Kirghiz nomad camps along the way. We spent our last night in the Wakhan in Urtobill, a community of four extended families. Together they'd pooled their resources and bought Chinese solar panels, a car battery, a TV, and a video player. That evening we sat with them inside a Kirghiz utok, or community house, and watched their only video: a grainy 1975 documentary called The Kirghiz of Afghanistan.

The next day, we galloped up to the Tajikistan border, which was marked by a tangled, partly downed barbed-wire fence. Nobody was there. Just more open brown country.

It was the end of the road for Sarfraz. We dismounted and took pictures. Sarfraz had become a friend, and we were going to miss him—just how much, we had no idea. We hugged and shook hands, and then Doug and Teru and I walked into Tajikistan.

We followed a washed-out tank track due east along the barbed-wire fence, passing two tall, abandoned guard towers.

"That's a shot," said Doug. We heard another round fired, and we spun on our heels to see an officer with an ak-47 running our way. We put our hands in the air; he was on us, screaming, "Dokumenty! Dokumenty!"

After ten miles we still hadn't seen a soul. Up on the hill to our left were another guard tower, some tanks buried in tank pits, and some buildings, but the place appeared deserted, so we kept going.

A quarter-mile past the outpost, we heard a pop and a zing. "That's a shot," said Doug. He was brilliant.

We heard another round and spun on our heels to see an officer with an AK-47 running down the hill toward us. We put our hands in the air. In seconds the officer was upon us, screaming in Russian and waving his rifle in our faces. "Dokumenty! Dokumenty!"

He was the spitting image of a young Robert De Niro in The Godfather: Part II, and seemingly just as volatile and unpredictable. I could see his finger trembling on the trigger.

We slowly handed him our passports, along with the note from Wohid Khan.

"Wohid Khan, Wohid Khan," we said in high, choirboy voices. The name seemed to register.

He marched us to the base. All the buildings were abandoned but one. We were taken inside, past a small kitchen, into an even smaller office, the door closed behind us. A metal desk, a shelf with Russian military books, a couch. We sat on the couch while Vito Corleone laid his AK-47 on the table and allowed us to see that he was also packing a sidearm. He looked like the kind of guy who was waiting for us to do something stupid so he could blow us away right there.

Eventually he got up, opened the door, and motioned for us to step out. We were taken to a little kitchen and served tea and cookies. In the next room we could hear Vito calling his superiors. Two hours later another officer arrived.

"Welcome in Tajikistan," he said happily, then shook our hands. He looked like a bearded Antonio Banderas.

We thought he actually spoke English, but he didn't, so the interviews took a long time. Vito and Tony had some kind of comic-book interrogation manual that they used to extract information from us.

Were we Al Qaeda? Were we Taliban? Were we CIA? Were we drug smugglers?

We answered no to all of the above.

What were we, then?

Tourists.

Tourists. Tourists who walked all the way across the Wakhan?

Yes.

We showed them our route on the map.

That is not possible, they said. No one has ever crossed this border.

We know. That's why we're here.

Vito and Tony were dismayed. They decided to go through the contents of our backpacks, one item at time. Toothbrush, dirty underwear, unwashed bowl. They made a complete inventory, but it was obviously a letdown. No guns, no drugs, no secret documents. Had we been real spies or at least drug smugglers, Vito and Tony would have been promoted and could have gotten out of this shithole outpost. On the other hand, since we really were three stupid American tourists, they could chill out.

That night our interrogators gave us their own bunks while they slept on the hard floor of the office.

I was so thrilled I couldn't fall asleep.

"We did it, guys," I whispered. "We crossed the Wakhan!"

"And now we're under arrest," said Teru.

"I would call it temporarily detained," said Doug.