‘You are confirming that what Nor has told us is credible?’ Monteith insisted.
‘It’s credible.’
‘And you have identified a group prepared to undertake the task?’
Yakoob Beg pursed his fleshy lips. ‘Of course, it can be arranged if you are prepared to pay the right amount. But it is short notice and there are fewer groups available for hire than there were before the Taliban. I cannot guarantee that those available are best suited to the task.’
‘It is not a pleasant task,’ Monteith told him. ‘I don’t expect pleasant people.’
‘I have asked the Uzbeks to come,’ Yakoob Beg said, ‘at your request, but I cannot vouch for them. You must make your own judgement. You have an expression in Latin,
caveat emptor
, yes? It means buyer beware.’
The moon and the frost lent everything the silvery patina of an old photograph. They were standing in the shadows beside the outer wall of the compound. They had abandoned their room full of sleeping bags for fear of eavesdroppers. Monteith was speaking, his voice barely rising above a whisper. ‘I’ve been told that capturing Bin Laden alive could deepen complications. According to the Americans, evidence that he ordered the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings might be difficult to produce in court. None of the informants involved in the case have direct knowledge of his involvement. Trying him could prove embarrassing, particularly if it comes to light that the Clinton administration has concocted a secret policy with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to tolerate the creation and rise to power of the Taliban.’
‘So we do as Nor suggests,’ Alex said.
‘The Americans cannot sanction an assassination,’ Monteith explained. ‘They have a presidential executive order preventing it.’
‘But they want their pipeline,’ Beech said.
‘They want their pipeline,’ Monteith agreed.
‘So they want us to do their dirty work for them?’
‘Something like that,’ Monteith replied.
Alex shrugged. ‘Nor is right. If we kill Bin Laden the chief suspects will be Massoud’s Northern Alliance.’
Beech glanced at Jonah, who couldn’t help but feel that what was being discussed involved crossing an invisible line, beyond which the consequences were difficult to determine.
‘Can we be certain of Nor?’ Beech asked.
‘He’s never lied to me before,’ Jonah replied, uneasily.
‘We abandoned him,’ Beech said. ‘Can anybody tell me what he’s been doing for the last two years?’
‘Not really,’ Jonah replied. Nor had been vague on the specifics of his activities when Jonah had questioned him. He claimed that he had remained in touch with Brigadier Khan, his handler in the ISI, that he had taught at one of the camps near Khost, but had offered no specific details.
‘Can we double-check with the Pakistanis?’ Beech asked.
‘There’s no time,’ Alex said, ‘and no indication that they would share the information with us.’
‘Nor was the best bloody source we had here,’ Monteith replied, making no effort to hide his irritation. ‘He never let us down.’
‘But we let him down,’ Beech argued. ‘And what about Yakoob Beg’s Uzbeks? Do you really think that they are appropriate for this task?’
‘Appropriate?’ Monteith growled. ‘They are entirely appropriate for the task.’
‘They are available,’ Alex added, ‘and within our price range.’
‘Do they know the identity of the target?’ Lennard asked.
‘There’s no reason for them to know,’ Alex said.
‘Killing people in wartime or even in self-defence is one thing,’ Beech said. ‘Arming and training people fighting for their freedom is another. What is being discussed here is an assassination. Cold-blooded murder.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’ Alex retorted. ‘This is Afghanistan.’
‘We do this and we step outside the boundaries of what is legal,’ Beech insisted. ‘There’s a reason the Americans have a law against it.’
‘We stand in the eye of a storm,’ Monteith said. It was obvious from the set of his shoulders and his upturned nose, the expression of the terrier-like quality that he was renowned for, that Monteith would brook no opposition. ‘If we don’t act now and stop Bin Laden, mark my words, we face the prospect of a resurgence of terrorist violence the like of which the world has never seen.’
As he was speaking, Jonah observed a man step out of the shadows close to the far wall. He came towards them along a path through the thorny outlines of denuded rose bushes. Others flitted through the shadows behind him. Moonlight glinted on rifle sights and loops of ammunition. The courtyard was deserted, and for a moment Jonah thought that they were about to be attacked. He reached for his pistol but Monteith put his hand on Jonah’s to restrain him.
‘I am a friend,’ the man said. ‘I am Khalil. I was crossing the courtyard to your rooms when I saw you.’
‘You have good eyes,’ Monteith replied, glancing towards the shapes hanging back in the rose bushes.
‘I understand that you want to speak to me?’ Khalil asked. He was wearing a
chitrali
cap and had a blanket around his shoulders, and it was difficult to make out much of his face, except that his smile gave the set of his jaws a starved and skeletal look.
‘Are your men ready?’ Monteith asked.
‘They are,’ Khalil replied. His smile broadened menacingly. ‘We will meet you tomorrow night.’
January 1999
They were perfectly camouflaged. One moment there was only the ghostly, stippled bark of the gum trees and then there was a gentle rustle of the leaves, a breath of wind, and it was as if the trees were moving of their own volition, the bark unravelling. You could hear the padding of tiny feet.
‘Birnam Wood,’ whispered Beech.
It was close to midnight. They were waiting at a bridge west of Jalalabad. They had been standing for an hour on the concrete apron at the eastern end of the bridge when Khalil’s gang emerged from the eucalyptus plantation to greet them.
There was a collective intake of breath. ‘Jesus, they’re kids.’
They were a pack of fifty or so, dressed in motley: tennis shoes, army jackboots, chequered scarves, haj and
chitrali
caps, turbans and Kalashnikovs. They had dark fuzz instead of beards and their starved, lupine faces shimmered in the moonlight. They were skittish, jockeying for position at the front of the pack, and grinning. The oldest among them could not have been more than twelve.
‘This is fucked,’ Lennard muttered.
‘It’s the fucking Lost Boys!’ Beech turned on Monteith. ‘You’re not serious?’
Lennard whistled. ‘And blow me, it’s Captain Hook …’
Khalil stepped out of the trees with a whip in his hand. He raised it and the boys nearest to him flinched. They scattered and then circled back again, pressing in behind him. He stepped forward, and tapped Monteith’s chest with the whip.
‘Yakoob Beg has confirmed that he is holding the money,’ he said. ‘So we are yours to command.’
‘This is unacceptable,’ Monteith told him.
‘What is unacceptable?’ Khalil asked.
‘These are children. I will not fight with them.’
‘Then you will not fight,’ Khalil replied.
They stared at each other. Jonah swore softly under his breath. Monteith looked as if he was going to explode.
Beech left later that night. He divided his rations and ammunition between them while Monteith sat some way off on a boulder, seething.
‘Technically of course this is desertion,’ Lennard said, accepting a block of Kendal mint cake and a bottle of Tabasco.
‘We don’t exist,’ Beech told him. ‘I don’t. You don’t. This mission doesn’t.’
They bear-hugged.
‘You’re letting the team down,’ Alex told him, shaking his head. There had been shouting earlier. Monteith had produced a pistol and pointed it at Beech, who had simply turned his back on him. Monteith had stood there visibly shaking, before storming off.
Beech turned to Jonah. There was a pause. ‘You’re better than this,’ he said, sadly.
They hugged, Jonah gripping him in the darkness.
At dawn they began the long walk to the ambush position. Down a steep valley, and up the facing mountainside, their feet sinking in scree and snow, clutching at rocks to pull themselves upwards, Jonah afflicted every step of the way by Beech’s accusation. He stifled the voice, which was his own, telling him that anything, even this, was better than throwing it all in and going back to an empty life and a wife who no longer loved him. He concentrated on the sounds around him: the howling wind in the rocks, the shifting scree and the frightened chatter of the boys. Icy fog closed in on them. He wondered whether the route might be a figment of Khalil’s imagination or even a trap. He kept going, numb fingers reaching for icy rocks, terrified that if he did not keep going he’d be lost in the void. The path widened again, the fog lifted, and they came on to a ridge that seemed to overlook the whole world. Deep gorges and jagged peaks stretched away on either side. The going was easier. The path along the top of the ridge was wide, and the boulders larger and more easily navigable. They passed an old fortress, adobe-walled and crumbling, topping the ridge.
In less than five hours they stood above the gorge of the Kabul River, with the thin strip of the road running through it. Khalil spoke for the first time, turning back to them. ‘We will do it here, where the valley narrows.’ He smiled. ‘They say that the Pashtuns killed many English here.’
‘Let’s get this done,’ Monteith growled.
Another hour passed as they hiked down to within range of the road. Years of neglect, flooding and rockslides had almost destroyed it, breaking up the tarmac, leaving huge craters. Alex sat down on a rock and blew on his fingers, before reaching into his pack for an entrenching tool. He began digging a shell scrape, a shallow two-man trench. Khalil and Monteith went to deploy the cut-off teams. Jonah stood, staring at the road. It was the oldest Afghan trick: lure the invaders into the narrows of the Kabul river gorge and cut off their means of escape.
It was all up to Nor.
The boy crouched among the jumbled rocks and dirty clumps of snow with his weapon disguised in rags. There was a hammer and sickle badge pinned to his
chitrali
cap. He looked about eleven years old.
Jonah had been watching the boy since dawn. He was located with the main ambush team, sharing a shallow scrape with Alex on the crest of a ridge overlooking the gorge. The boy was shivering, his oval eyes darting this way and that. When he had first become aware of Jonah staring at him, the boy had glared back at him, an expression that was both defiant and fearful.
Afghanistan was full of orphans.
There were times, Jonah thought, in an ambush, for instance, when soldiers could experience a sense of being of one mind, like a shoal of fishes that swerves as one under the surface of the ocean, times when an older, lower brain rises to the fore.
‘Three vehicles heading east,’ whispered Lennard from one of the cut-off teams, in Jonah’s earpiece.
It was one in the afternoon. Three mud-caked Shoguns with blackened windows and jerrycans lashed to the roof raced into the narrow, steep-sided ravine.
There was a collective intake of breath.
Jonah began to count:
one, two …
He glanced to his left. Monteith was a few feet away, in a scrape with Khalil.
Three …
The mud beneath him smelt of the wind, of ozone.
Four …
For a brief moment he had no awareness of future or past, just the Uzbeks in the rocks around him and the lines of cable running to him along the hillside from the charges placed where the ravine tapered at either end.
Five.
‘Now,’ said Monteith, as the convoy drew level with him, his voice barely audible above the roar of the Kabul river.
Jonah pressed the button and spun the key on the Russian exploder.
Events unfolded in unison: the charges exploded, rocks tumbled into the ravine in billowing clouds of dust and the road collapsed; the lead vehicle slewed sideways and rolled, tumbling into the gorge below; and the Uzbeks opened up as one with everything they had – assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades. The air crackled and swirled. Brass cases cascaded down the slope. The fuel tanks on both vehicles exploded.
It was over in seconds but it went on for several deafening minutes. In the next scrape Monteith gesticulated furiously at Khalil. Jonah could imagine his anger and frustration at the ill-disciplined expenditure of ammunition. Soon the bodies would be unidentifiable. It was potentially disastrous. They needed proof, photographs of the dead Arab, if the mission was to be successful.
Abruptly Khalil stood and his gang rose as one to join him. And as they did so, they let out a triumphant wailing sound,
wulla-wulla-wulla
, from the back of their throats. The hillside seethed with sudden movement. The Uzbeks swarmed down the slope, whooping and yelling, sliding in the scree. At the bottom, they surrounded the vehicles and dragged the passengers out.
‘Go take a look,’ yelled Monteith.
Jonah scrambled down the slope with Alex at his shoulder and plunged into the crowd, trying to get to where the bodies were being fought over. He was instantly disoriented. Acrid black smoke was pouring from the vehicles. The boys were pushing and shoving. Leering faces surged at him out of the smoke. Hands pulled at his clothing and his rifle. He pushed back, slamming his elbows into the nearest faces. He stamped on legs and feet. He barrelled forward. He caught a glimpse of a body. The blood and charred skin and rags of clothing made it difficult to identify. Then he got a clear sight of a familiar hammer and sickle badge and the boy wearing it, with arms bloody to the elbows; in one of his hands he held a machete and in the other a dismembered head. Despite the bruised and bloody features, Jonah recognised the face immediately.
It was Jim Kiernan, the former CIA station chief from Islamabad.
They’d killed an American.
I’ll never forgive you for this.
Nor’s words from two years before, disregarded at the time, brought sharply back into focus; and immediately following them, the absolute certainty that the Americans would never forgive them for this. Jonah turned and fought his way back through the crowd, desperate to find some space in which to breathe. Breaking free, he dropped to his hands and knees and retched, and retched.