Highway A1, Helmand Province, Afghanistan
A pair of fast jets appeared, as a couple of black dots sweeping low across the harsh Malmal Sar flatlands, approaching quickly from the East. Jack watched carefully through the windscreen as the two planes hurtled in close formation toward the road, then flicked themselves onto their right wingtips almost directly above the battered and potholed tarmac of Highway A1, and roared off again toward the mountains to the West. They had telltale winglets forward of their cockpits and large triangular delta wings crenelated by impressive payloads of destructive ordinance: ‘Typhoons,’ he thought to himself. ‘I wonder if it’s a routine patrol, or a fire mission?’ If it was the former, he hoped they were going to have a quiet day. If the latter, he wished them Godspeed.
Not far from here, up in the highlands, somewhere not far from where the jets looked to be headed, was a place that would never be far from his thoughts, and that he would never have stumbled away from had it not been for the eventual arrival of air support. Although a large part of him wished that the outcome of that awful day had been different, he knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault, other than the militants, that the aircraft, called in by his ambushed colleagues, had arrived a few minutes too late to save his buddies...
He was gripping harder than necessary onto the rigid plastic steering wheel, which juddered in his fists as the tired suspension of the car bounced across the uneven highway surface, and in his head he could hear the screaming, the shouts of confusion, and the anguished radio messages ringing in his ears again. Even though he was conscious of the long grey strip of roadway, leading off into the distance through the windscreen, he could see sand and dirt being kicked up, spouting angrily from the line of blue-sky backed earth, only inches away from where his face was pressed hard, onto the cruel and unforgiving soil, of one small corner, of this cruel and war-torn country.
“Are you okay?” Nick’s voice dragged him back to the present.
“Sorry,” he muttered, shaking his head to exorcise the memories.
“Are you sure?” Nick continued. “You seem pretty edgy to me.”
Jack glanced across at his passenger’s bulky form, squeezed into the front of the tiny car next to him, but Nick was looking away, staring impassively out of the side window. Jack knew this was probably a considerate attempt to give him more space, even in this cramped old rust-bucket, and he appreciated the gesture.
Nick was right. He’d been on edge.
He knew that they needed to be.
Every stray pile of rubbish, every empty cardboard box with panels flapping lazily in the desert winds, every car backfiring, every group of ambling males or females hiking along the roadside, might be a threat. Might conceal a dreaded improvised explosive device. Might be the death of them.
Or, more probably, might not.
You just didn’t know.
They were less than a third of the way into their journey, and would need to stay vigilant throughout.
He’d found this battered white Toyota saloon at a backstreet garage on the outskirts of Kandahar. Its bodywork had collected an impressive collection of knocks, scrapes, and large dents during its reasonably short life and had, as a result, not been an expensive cash purchase. Not that cost had been an issue. Anonymity was much more important. The engine had appeared, and sounded, like it was in good condition. Mileage suggested it hadn’t been used much outside of the town – which also explained its above average levels of aesthetic damage. Jack hoped his instincts would be proven right, and that the almost nonexistent suspension was the only way that the vehicle would let them down mechanically over the next day or so.
A darker patch of fresh tarmac, and two neat lines of well constructed anodised railings, slowly emerged from the shimmering late afternoon heat haze in front of them. They marked the Delaram Bridge.
“We’ll stop ahead,” he announced. “In Delaram. We need to get rid of these uniforms. We’re too conspicuous in them.” He glanced over to Nick, who nodded silently in acknowledgement. “We’ll stay the night there too,” he continued. “It’s better if we complete the journey in daylight. Especially as this road has some very exposed stretches where it crosses between the foothills north of here.”
“Worried about ambushes?” Nick asked.
Jack huffed. “That and breakdowns,” he replied candidly.
~~~~~
Delaram Market, Afghanistan
We wander amongst narrow lines of brightly canopied trestle tables, breathing air headily scented by piles of wildly coloured exotic spices, and surrounded by the babbling sounds of feverish bartering and, I guess, general gossip. The noises of this language are all completely alien to me and, for that, they match this whole environment perfectly.
All day I have watched, transfixed, as sight after sight has drifted into my eyes and then burned itself inexorably onto my retinas. These last few months have been one long journey into the complete unknown, and Afghanistan has just taken this to another level.
From rows of ramshackle dry-stone buildings, that make Jack’s walling efforts look like world-class masonry, to the elegant spindle-like minarets of beautifully decorated mosques. From endless expanses of dry-brown dusty desert, to a distant glimpse of towering snow-topped mountains. From the hulking masses of armoured personnel carriers, to mopeds with whole families, and sometimes their livestock, balanced precariously on top. Spending just part of one day in this land, has made me feel like I have never been so far away from home. So far away from anything I understand.
“These are good,” says Jack.
The sound of his voice reminds me of how glad I am that he’s here with me, and I move closer to him to see what he’s looking at.
“These are called Kurta or sometimes Kameez,” he says, holding one of the long beige-white shirts up against the front of my battledress for size. “This linen is good and thick, but not too hot.” He bundles up a couple of them, and starts rooting through the hats.
All around us, the milling crowds of people wear similar clothing. Loose fitting shirts and trousers. Practical, simple, clothing. Whites, off-whites, and browns. The women appear to dress similarly, though sometimes in brighter colours. Pinks, greens, blues, reds, and sometimes purple, are all visible as I scan around.
Jack turns round with a tan-coloured, flat, round hat on his head. It’s made of soft material and its disc is being pushed up slightly by the crown of his skull underneath. It has a striped roll of material beneath its narrow circular brim which clings to his forehead to hold it in place. At a glance it looks a little like a large, crusty, apple pie perched on his crown. “What d’you reckon?” he asks with a grin.
I stifle my immediate reaction. “Very stylish,” I say sarcastically, though it does suit him quite well.
“This is a Pakol,” he says, plucking it off his head, and swivelling it in his hands in front of him. “Also known as a Mujahideen Cap.”
“Mmmm,” I do recognise it. “Yes, I think I’ve seen them before, on TV.”
“They’re very practical,” he says. “Much less hassle than a turban.” He throws it onto the bundle of shirts, and picks another one out of the selection on offer. “It’s a man’s hat. Try this one.”
“And for women?” I ask, as I plop the surprisingly soft material onto the stubble of my buzz-cut.
He waves his arm around indicating that perhaps I should use my eyes. “Pashmenas or Burqas,” he says. “The majority of women still keep their heads covered. Sometimes these are worn.” He reaches toward the back of the stall, and stands up holding up a large pale sheet of beautifully embroidered, lightweight, linen. There is a round hole framed with ornate stitching in the centre. The hole is masked with a spider-silk mesh of filigree handiwork. “It’s called a Chadri... I think?” He looks to the stall-holder. “Chadri?” he asks, gesticulating with the large cloth.
The stall-holder nods respectfully. He is obviously wary of our uniforms, and holstered sidearms, but unable to stop himself from glancing optimistically at the large mound of potential trade building up next to my partner.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and Jack nods to me and adds it to the pile.
“Do you think we could pick up one or two of the more colourful items too?” I ask carefully.
“Why not,” says Jack.
~~~~~
Tomb of Sultan Agha District, Herat, Afghanistan
Murat Nagpal lifted the plain metal teapot and poured strongly scented green tea into two, small, well worn, teacups. First he honoured his friend, pilot, soldier, comrade, drug smuggler and ally – Gulyar bin Imraan. Then he poured his own.
Bin Imraan watched him from across the table, nodded his appreciation of the gesture, then lifted his cup and sipped at the strong liquid. His lips were barely visible amongst a bushy black beard. “Excellent,” he pronounced.
They sat together on a small wooden veranda, which clung haphazardly to the street-facing wall of a small tea house, near Gulyar’s safe house. To Murat’s right, down past the hotchpotch of dwellings, eating houses, and merchants’ properties, the twin minaret towers and the tip of the gold-covered, onion dome of the Tomb of Sultan Agha rose above the low-lying buildings. But Nagpal was not looking at the tomb. He was deep in thought.
“You are always welcome here, my friend,” said Gulyar bin Imraan carefully. “Do as you will in the house. I have another residence here in Herat, and several others elsewhere. I have no need of it.”
Nagpal looked across at the other man. Bin Imraan was bundled in many layers, with his hair tucked up into a grimy turban. The dark-brown weather beaten skin of his face and hands was the only flesh that was visible, and much of his face was concealed behind his beard. Deep set, permanently shaded, eyes sat sternly above a long straight nose. He was nondescript. Hard to identify. One of many. Perfectly camouflaged to hide in plain sight. “It is good to drink tea with you again, comrade,” said Nagpal.
The beard creased into a small smile. “And you, my friend. So now what?”
Nagpal looked away. “The mission is barely started. I must be patient and rebuild.” He looked back at Bin Imraan. “Of course, when I succeed, the nation state of Khandastan will be eternally grateful to those who assisted us. Most generously grateful.”
“Of course,” said Bin Imraan. “But such matters are of little importance. My wealth is secure, and not the reason for my aid.”
Now it was Murat’s turn to smile. He knew full well that Gulyar made substantial sums from his clandestine drug smuggling operations. Large quantities of opium moved in many directions across these lands. He found it amusing that the infidels did much to finance their own destruction, and that his friend facilitated such activities. He bowed his head in acknowledgement of the other man’s generosity.
Gulyar leaned forward to the table and lifted his teacup again. “Something is troubling you, Murat?” he asked, his breath steaming gently over the surface of the hot liquid.
Nagpal nodded again. “The boy,” he replied. “I am troubled by the boy.”
“You think he might have been turned?”
“No. I think he is loyal. Just naïve. A liability.”
“He can still be useful,” Gulyar sipped at his tea.
“Maybe,” Nagpal said. “I worry that our enemies might still be tracking him somehow.”
Bin Imraan’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have any evidence to suggest that they are?”
Nagpal shook his head. “Nothing. We were undisturbed in Constanta. I cannot even be sure that it was a bug that betrayed Azat. Ebrahimi’s younger brother may have been captured, and given away the Hungarian meeting point, under torture or just questioning. The local thugs we hired might have sold us out. Any number of things could have happened. This is part of what troubles me. The infidel’s bug was not the most modern technology. It’s almost as if they might have wanted us to find it? Perhaps we were bugged in England? Who knows?”
“Have you destroyed everything from there?”
“Everything that might carry such a device.”
“Good.” Gulyar nodded. “Maybe I can help you to settle this.” He smiled across at his friend. “I have a few trips to make, and some unpaid debts owed to me in the camps.” By ‘camps’, Nagpal knew he meant the Afghan Army Bases. “Some of my own countrymen are too foolish not to dabble in my wares. They owe me. I suspect I can get my hands on a decent American counter-surveillance scanner. One of the latest models...”
~~~~~
Suitably attired in our Shalwar Kameez and with charcoal sleeveless waistcoats over the top of the baggy, cream-coloured, linen shirts and trousers, we approach the outskirts of Herat in the Toyota. It is late afternoon and the sunlight has a burning orange tint to it.
The car has behaved admirably and at the moment it’s carrying us across the long concrete Pashtoo Pol bridge. I look down out of the side window as we cross. The river bed is wide, but the river itself has shrunk down to the barest of dirty brown trickles.
“The water flows down from the mountains during the rains,” explains Jack. “It’s as wide as the Thames when it’s in full flow.”
“Hard to believe,” I mutter to the side window.
“Better fire up the laptop,” he says. “We’re nearly there.”
The road runs, as straight as one of Vengeance’s arrows, in front of us. It leads directly into the heart of a ground-hugging cloud of sepia brown dust and smog, which spreads for a considerable distance in both directions along our horizon line. Huge pine trees line the road, creating an unexpected avenue of lush green foliage and cool shade. Simple yet effective, they are an obvious, and strangely welcoming, visual statement that we are leaving the wilderness behind us, and reentering an environment shaped and dominated by human hands.
I lean into the gap between the front seats and reach into the back, roughly pushing a pair of washed-out green parkas to one side, and retrieve the EMT computer. It’s entombed in a dark-grey plastic and carbon fibre casing which bulks it up to the size of a large hardback book. It’s about the same weight too.
Sitting back into the passenger seat, I open the device on my lap.
Jack glances over. “Any updates?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I answer. There are no update messages. I’m busy calling up a map of the city.
Jack knows what I’ll be doing. “Any movement from Ebrahimi?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Well, nothing significant. The tracer is still showing as being in the city.”
“That signal will be a few hours old by now,” says Jack, somewhat pointlessly.
I already know this, and choose not to respond.
We continue up the long straight road. More of the sprawling mass of low-rise buildings become visible as we move into the city’s outskirts. Looking west, past Jack’s concentrating face, I spy an eye-catching tower rising above the rooftops; it’s an elegant modernistic, freestanding, ogee arch, with its two limbs joining at their highest tip, like a pair of huge arms raised into the sky with hands clasped together in prayer.
We need to head in that direction. “Take a left,” I say.
“Does it matter which one?” he asks. “If not, I’ll take one of the wider ones.”
It appears that the trunk roads are reasonably well maintained: some are wide enough to have several carriageways on each side. The contrast with the remaining thoroughfares is stunning in its own right. The main roads split the city roughly into a wide grid, but between these tarmac arteries there are little more than dirt strips: a jumbled maze of confused, unmapped alleyways which exist only as convenient gaps between the mud, brick, and concrete dwellings.
“Your choice,” I say. “But keeping to the main roads seems like a good idea.”
He nods and navigates us around a large green oasis of parkland, before turning us off toward the distant monument. I call up the laptop’s GPS to check exactly which road we’re on, and a new, blue, flashing dot appears on the screen. Ebrahimi’s marker is red, and it’s not flashing.
“Okay,” I say. “We’re a bit too far north. Take a left at those lights up ahead. Should be a cross roads.”
He grunts his acknowledgement and follows my instructions.
“Wow,” I mutter. The jumble of buildings on my side of the road have opened up into a huge pristine quadrangle of beautifully tended gardens. At the end of the quadrangle stands a magnificently powerful frontage. Three huge stone squares, enclosing three elegant equilateral pointed arches. Every inch of the stonework is delicately tiled in a myriad shades of blue, gold, orange, green, yellow...
“The Friday Mosque,” says Jack. “Masjid Jami.”
From the smaller arches on either side of the main entrance, two cylindrical minarets rise toward the heavens, like narrow lighthouses, topped with their own shiny cobalt-blue crested domes. Beyond the usual cacophony of car horns and engine noise, the haunting call to prayer begins to ring out from the spires. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.
I’m transfixed as my senses are pounded by the sights and sounds of this magnificent building, standing there, majestic in its plush gardens, bathing serenely in eerie orange-yellow evening sunlight...
“This isn’t some f*cking tourist trip!” Jack sensitively nudges my attention back to the laptop by carefully reminding me of the task at hand. “There’s a bloody great-big castle behind us, up the road,” he expostulates, jerking one thumb backwards over his shoulder. “One that the medieval kings and queens of England would have shit themselves to get their hands on! All big f*cking walls, and round towers, and crap like that. Want us to turn around and go...,” he glances over at me.
Fortunately for him, given the remarkably low levels of intellectual empathy he’s just been demonstrating, he doesn’t need to be Einstein to interpret my much-less-than friendly expression.
He shuts up.
“Not far now,” I growl. “Turn right at the end.”
We navigate the junction without further word. The call to prayer rings around us and the hum of the city seems to fade slightly in response to it. Dusty, diesel-fumed, air gusts through the car’s open windows as we turn back to a westerly direction.
“Across the next junction,” I instruct.
Another major building stands further along the road. It also looks impressive. A similar architectural structure to the Friday Mosque, and only fractionally less ornate. It isn’t so well tended though. There is, what looks like, a mess of construction work scattered in a wide radius around its perimeter. I check the map.
“That must be the Tomb of Sultan Agha,” I say. “We can park up somewhere near here.”
“Some tomb,” says Jack. “It looks like it’s standing in the middle of a sodding building site.”
Looking at the narrow dusty streets, leading off into the mind-numbing jumble of buildings ahead of us, I suspect it’s not going to be the least attractive sight we’ll see today. Ebrahimi’s little red light says he’s somewhere in the middle of that maze of backstreets. Only a few hundred metres away from us.
~~~~~
London
“Their EMT’s GPS has gone dark again,” Ellard reported calmly.
Greere span his chair so he could see the terminal in the corner of the office. The satellite-photo-overlaid map of Constanta had been replaced by one of Herat. The blue dot on the screen had indeed vanished.
Ellard continued sanctimoniously. “Let’s hope the morons are being careful this time, and not just planning to walk up to Ebrahimi in plain daylight and tap him on the shoulder.”
Greere sneered but kept his thoughts to himself.
~~~~~
Herat
Even in our civilian clothing, flat round Pakol hats, and the bulky faded knee-length parka coats – and despite us both sporting several weeks worth of Mediterranean-spring suntan – it still feels like we’re standing out as if there are flashing signs over our heads.
“We need to grow our beards,” mutters Jack from beside me. “You especially.”
I snort despite, or perhaps because of, the tension and gently tease the parka’s material to ensure that the profile of my holstered Browning isn’t showing. We’re carrying our sidearms but the rest of our kit is hidden away in the car. It would appear that Jack has a nifty way of adapting rear bench seats amongst his wide portfolio of talents.
He heads off down another alleyway and I follow.
Unpointed, rough stone walls press in from either side. These walls are punctuated by random window holes – sometimes glazed – or plain boarded doors – sometimes wide open. It is becoming surprisingly quiet as we move deeper into this rabbit warren of narrow twisting pathways. Only occasional engine noise, or raised voices, manage to percolate the cram of dwellings.
There are few people visible, away from the main streets, but my skin crawls as if we’re being watched from every dark opening. Washing lines strung into the narrow gap between the upper floors of the buildings are bowed by the weight of drying Kurta shirts and they look like lines of cartoon ghosts, drifting gently back and forth, in the shaded evening glow.
This alley is deserted.
Jack stops and lounges nonchalantly against one of the walls. I move and take up a similar stance alongside him. “There’s no point in trying to look anything other than western,” he’d explained in the car. “The best we can do is look nonmilitary. If we get challenged we’ll make out we’re with the Red Cross on humanitarian duties.” He’s clutching a battered and dirty old linen bag with a miscellany of fruit and vegetables visible at its brim. In his other hand he clutches a tattered but glossy Lonely Planet style guidebook. It has a folded paper map obviously sticking out from amongst the tightly gripped folio. “Props,” he’d explained.
He leans toward me. “Go to the end, there,” he whispers, and nods along the alley to where it ends in a rust-brown, brick enclosed, shadowy T-junction, “and keep an eye out.”
I head away and reach up to activate my hidden earpiece and microphone. “You there?” I mutter, as I amble toward the junction.
~~~~~
“Copy that,” Jack said quietly, as he watched Nick proceed away from him.
From where he was, he could see through to where they’d entered this side street so, keeping one eye on the entrance, he stooped and rummaged around in the fruit and vegetables. The PDA concealed in his palm blinked on and he waited, holding it face downwards for a few seconds, while it worked out where it was.
“Is anyone coming?” he whispered.
“Clear,” said Nick.
He flicked the device over and studied it carefully. Ebrahimi’s marker appeared to be further along one of few slightly wider streets. Not far away. Either on the street he’d just diverted them off, or another close by.
They’d need to lay up somewhere closer and discretely try to get a better fix.
“Nick,” he whispered. “Follow me.”
~~~~~
Jack leads us, back the way we came, and waits at the junction for me to catch him up.
“The marker is further along this street,” he explains standing with his back to the direction he’s suggesting. I look past him, as if disinterested in his conversation, and gaze randomly beyond a couple of nearby merchants’ stalls.
“There’s a tea shop ahead,” I say. “At the next junction. Looks like it’s got a veranda out front.” Veranda is something of an overstatement. The wooden structure is canted to one side and looks more likely to fall down than stay standing.
I casually move ahead of him, then pause and turn back. He has lifted the guidebook up and is studiously flicking through it whilst he glances beyond me.
“Too close for comfort,” he mutters. He shakes his head dramatically and gesticulates back down the street toward the distant minarets of the tomb; just like a lost tourist might. “We’ll come back after dark,” he says.
~~~~~
Sergei tossed his battered physics textbook to one side, pushed himself up from his thin and uncomfortable bedroll, and scratched absently at his backside as he walked across the safe house’s open-plan first storey room. He seemed to have a small lump under his skin. He’d not noticed it before, and now there was no way of seeing it. There weren’t any mirrors in this place. The latrine he was heading for was an awful stinking pit, in a shared shed-like structure, out the back.
‘It’s probably just a spot,’ he thought to himself as he made his way across the simple sleeping area. The walls of the room were made of unfinished breeze blocks with a pair of roughly glazed windows in each of its front and back walls. These afforded more light than downstairs and his bedroll lay spread on the rough timber floorboards beneath one of them. He could read there.
Two prayer mats were laid out, facing south, in the open space in the centre of the room and a row of old wooden packing cases provided some scant screening between his and Nagpal’s bedroll – which Sergei knew lay as an untidy, unoccupied, sprawl in the opposite corner.
The other man was spending most of the daytimes away in the city somewhere; presumably networking and scheming the next phases of whatever genius plan he was now concocting. Sergei didn’t mind. He was happy that Nagpal wasn’t around very much, and being instructed to stay and guard the house had been a welcomed assignment.
On one side of the room, a gaping hole emptied itself into a simple flight of sturdy, roughhewn, wooden stairs. These led down into the gloomy ground floor area.
Downstairs, the space was split into two rooms: a living area, containing two rickety chairs and one rickety table; and a kitchen area, containing a single wall of ill-fitting and unmatched kitchen cabinets. On top of these waist-high cabinets stood the sink – a large steel bowl and a chipped crock jug.
An ancient electric hot-plate cooker propped itself precariously in the shadows of the far corner. It might originally have been white – once – sometime last century – but nowadays it presented little evidence of its original condition. It certainly wasn’t white any more.
The ground floor had two tiny windows and two doors: one door and window to the front, another to the back of the property. The rear door led to a small courtyard which was little more than a sixty square-metre handkerchief of stranded desert. It was completely enclosed between the rear walls of the neighbouring houses and contained the single, shared, soak away, latrine which serviced all of the properties. For a building to have its own ‘squat’, shared between only a half dozen families, was a luxury round here...
Sergei grimaced, took a couple of deep breaths and headed toward the stinking shed.
~~~~~
Having returned to the car, we use the rest of the evening productively.
First we move the Toyota into a better location – still near the tomb, but now out of sight, and tucked in amongst some half-built house shells. From there we cautiously scout routes into and out of the alleyways. Jack wants us to avoid being seen, and there are far fewer locals in the backstreet mazes.
Jack also pings a message from the EMT terminal: ‘41 – 17 – 83’.
Then we eat a cold meal together, sitting in the car, watching as the sun slowly sets and the towering cube of the Tomb of Agha fades slowly into the pitch blackness of an unlit city night.
~~~~~