Crossfire

41

Well over an hour behind schedule, and six security checks and X-rays later — including one right at the door of the aircraft — the Indian Airlines Airbus 320 took off into the hot blue sky over Delhi and pointed north-west for the two-hour flight to Kabul.

Departures had been a nightmare. We'd even been segregated in our own little holding area. It reminded me of the Belfast to London flights during that war, except that here the whole terminal, including our Kabul leper colony, was plastered with flat screens showing non-stop Bollywood. No matter which film it was, they all seemed to star the same tall guy with a grey beard; he even popped up in the commercial breaks, advertising mobile phones and aftershave. Then one of the channels ran a documentary about his waxwork in Madame Tussaud's.

The aircraft could have carried 150 passengers but was only half full. Kabul was hardly competing with Amsterdam or Prague for the city-break crowd. The Gurkhas and Filipinos in economy, paid to guard compounds, were proud big-time of what they did, and didn't care who knew it. They toted US Army camouflage print or Brit DMP day sacks, and their T-shirts were emblazoned with eagles wrapped in the Stars and Stripes and messages about Operation Enduring Freedom.

Up in business class, Indian men in pressed, short-sleeved shirts scribbled furiously on notepads, arranging the shipment of another twenty tonnes of Fairy Liquid and marmalade into the war zone.

Some of the Westerners looked like seasoned contractors, the sort who supplied the armies with everyone from cooks to radar operators. They were the ones in black polo shirts with embroidered company logos. There were also a few of the bigger-buck contractors. They wore Gucci safari vests, and their hair was longer to show they weren't military. One had a Mohican. They didn't want a sergeant major shouting at them by mistake. Me, I was in my normal shit state, but at least I had brand-new boxers and socks on. When I pulled off my boots the stink wasn't half as bad as usual.

The seat-belt light pinged off and the attendants started serving our pre-ordered drinks. I'd gone for Pepsi to wash down the antibiotics. I gazed out of the window. I'd thought I'd never get shot again, and I had been. Afghanistan was one place I'd thought I'd never come back to, and here I was. Whatever happened, I didn't want to be running up and down those fucking hills again.

When the Russians invaded in 1979, it had been for much the same reasons as we did in 2001. They were 'liberating' the country. The West didn't see it that way. Soviet troops weren't welcome so close to the Gulf oilfields.

As a young Green Jacket squaddy running round Tidworth garrison in Wiltshire, the invasion had about as much impact on my life as coastal erosion in Northumberland. It didn't directly hit my pay packet or interrupt the supply of curry sauce to the local chippie, so why should I give a shit? In any case, I didn't even know where Afghanistan was.

To start with, the invasion was a breeze. The Russians thought they'd cracked it. Their problem was, none of them had a clue about mountain warfare or counter-insurgency, and their weaponry and military equipment — particularly their armoured vehicles and tanks — were crap. Their other problem was the mujahideen.

The Dad's Army in cowpat hats finally started to get their act together and kick ass — until the Russians brought in the Hind gunships. Basically an airborne artillery park, the Hind was the most formidable helicopter in existence. It turned the tide. By the mid-eighties, the Americans were flapping big-time. It was still the Cold War. The Kremlin needed to be taught a lesson.

Ronald Reagan was suddenly hailing the muj as freedom-fighters. A wealthy Saudi, Osama bin Laden, called on Muslim fighters round the world to come and do their bit. Weapons poured in from all over, and they didn't have a clue how to use them. Dickheads like me, by then a lance corporal in the SAS, were told to get cracking and give them a hand.

The only way the muj could win that war was by making the Russians pay such an unacceptable manpower cost for the occupation that public opinion back home turned against them and the army rebelled. Simply put, that meant killing and wounding as many Soviets as possible, and fucking up their infrastructure any way we could. Just about anything was a legitimate target.

Before that could happen, the Hinds had to be eliminated.

The American Stinger ground-to-air heat-seeking missile was the best in the business at knocking things out of the sky. The trouble was, it was so good the Americans were reluctant to let go of them. The risk of them falling into the wrong hands was just too high.

Instead, the Brits were tasked with teaching the locals how to use Blowpipe, our equivalent to the Stinger. We'd round up about thirty at a time and get them out to Pakistan. Then we'd throw them on a C-130, and have a two-day trip to one of the little islands off the west coast of Scotland. We ran our own field-firing exercises, teaching the boys everything from how to use Blowpipe to how to drop electricity pylons. At the end of their couple of weeks of rain and cold, we'd put them back on the C-130 with a packed lunch and a can of Fanta, get them into Pakistan, then over the border to put theory into practice.

The trouble was, Blowpipe was a heap of shit. Not even the Brits used it any more: you had to be a PlayStation wizard to operate the thing, and that was before PlayStation even existed. It was soon clear it wasn't working. The sky was still full of Hinds. The Americans had to relent. They opened the toy cupboard and broke out the Stingers.

The muj had to be trained all over again. The west coast of Scotland reopened for mujahideen short-breaks and the C-130s resumed their shuttle.

The kit was filtering into Afghanistan via covert convoys, but the shifty fuckers weren't using it. Stingers were far too nice and shiny, and the muj were saving them for a rainy day.

It was then that we had to go over there ourselves and get our hands dirty. We were running all over the snow-peaked mountains and harsh rock valleys I was now seeing below us. We ambushed, attacked, blew up and killed anything that carried a hammer and sickle. Every time a Hind retaliated, one of us would loose off a Stinger and blow it out of the sky. All my Christmases had come at once.

Eventually the Russians had had enough. We'd helped make Afghanistan their Vietnam. One day they just got back into their tanks and few remaining Hinds and crept out of town.

We withdrew, only for the muj to start fighting among themselves all over again — as they do. If there's no enemy, they kick the shit out of each other. They're even worse than Jocks. Fifty thousand people were killed in Kabul alone during the civil war that followed.

The Taliban finally won in 1996, and they ran the shop until late 2001. That was when, after 9/11, the USA came calling with a few thousand tonnes of bombs so the Northern Alliance could enter the city and take over for the US forces that were 'liberating' the country. And so the show goes on.

Even today, the US are still shitting themselves at the prospect of Stingers being used against them, and rightly so. Pallet loads of the things are unaccounted for. They could be lying in somebody's shed, still waiting for that rainy day, or in Iran, being busily reverse-engineered.

42

'This your first time in Afghanistan, mate?'

The Australian in the aisle seat to my left was in his late fifties, with grey, well-groomed hair. He'd been dressed from head to toe by Brooks Brothers. The hand that took a gin and tonic from the permanently smiling attendant was manicured. He had 'diplomat' written all over him.

One look at my T-shirt and unbooted feet should have been enough to tell him how I fitted into the picture. There would be thousands of guys like me in-country, and our two lives wouldn't overlap. No invitations to the ambassador's party would be heading in my direction.

Nonetheless, he held up his glass. 'Cheers.'

I nodded. 'Yes, first time.'

He took another sip, then dipped into our bowl of cashews. 'So what do you do? What brings you here?'

'Travel writer. I do guidebooks. We call them "Outside the Comfort Zone".'

He laughed, then threw a few more nuts down his neck. 'You really think people will want to come here?'

'Dunno. That's what I've come to find out.'

I sat back in my very comfortable seat, reclined it a bit more and picked up one of the Indian business magazines to fuck him off as nicely as possible.

The alias cover address and alias business cover linked me with Outside the Comfort Zone, a small independent publisher in the East End whose niche was extreme travel. The Firm had probably set it up donkey's years ago. The books it brought out featured all sorts of places the Firm was interested in. I was now one of their freelance employees. My passport had had to go through all the normal channels. The visa application had been handled by a commercial company in London, and still had their sticker on the back.

The laptop told me I had a girlfriend, Kirsty. I could never remember her new number, which was why it was right there for me. If anyone called it, she would back me up as part of the ACA. No wonder I loved her.

I flicked through the mag. Uncle Sam wasn't exactly flavour of the month. Nor was Uncle Tony, come to that.

I flicked through some more and saw a picture of Dom alongside a piece about 'Veiled Threats'. He was sitting with the woman I'd seen on screen in Dublin, on the bonnet of a 4x4. He was dressed in a safari vest and had an earnest expression. She was wearing the same gear as in the documentary, a white headscarf and long black dress. Her name was Basma Al-Sulaiman. Basma. Baz… A few blue pepper-pots stood around in the background to give the shot some depth. Well done, Pete.

The article was about the plight of Afghan women and the safe-house Basma ran in Kabul. She was talking about the promises made after the Taliban were kicked out. Their lives were supposed to get better once they were 'liberated'. Local women were supposed to be running multinationals by now, yet they were still third-rate citizens. Some of the girls in her refuge had been shot up with heroin at an early age to make them dependent, then used as mules by dealers to move drugs from around the country. It was perfect cover. Nobody paid any attention to them, and there was a lot of spare room under a burqa.

It sounded as if nothing much had changed since my last time there.

When the girl Farah died, I'd carried her body a short way from the village that night and buried her. I found out from Ahmad a couple of weeks later that her husband had managed to get over his loss. He'd gone out the next day and bought himself a replacement.

43

'We've started our approach, sir.'

The attendant was giving me a gentle shake. I hadn't even realized I'd fallen asleep.

I looked down at the vast mountain plain, six thousand feet above sea level, which held the capital. I'd never set foot there. Last time round, it was full of guys with red stars on their hats goose-stepping about with vodka bottles in their hands. We'd stayed in the mountains that hemmed them in.

The Australian didn't waste a second. 'Kabul has swollen from less than a million to nearly three million since the Russians left, and now the Taliban are back in the mountains, refugees from there are pouring in.'

To dodge any more waffle, I studied the parched landscape ten thousand feet below. The city was a giant mosaic of low-level, grey-brown buildings, not more than a couple of storeys high.

He didn't get the hint. 'Do you know what the Australian government advice is about this place? Don't go. And if you're there, get out.' He smiled to himself as he leant forward to share the view.

'Welcome to sunny Kabul.' He laughed. 'Who in their right mind would want to come to this Godforsaken place?'

I kept looking out. 'Who knows? I file a first-person account exactly as I find it. It's more like a travelogue for their website, really.'

I sat back in my seat. He nodded, not believing a word. Private contractors wouldn't tell other private contractors what they were doing. Different bits of the military wouldn't tell each other either. In a place like this, everyone had op sec. Or bullshit.

We thumped the runway. Flashing past the window on our left were more fixed-wing aircraft than I'd ever seen parked in one place, military or civilian, then every size and shape of helicopter. HESCOed compound followed HESCOed compound, each flying a different national flag, but all part of the International Security Assistance Force. More than thirty countries supported ISAF, from Finland and Norway to Portugal and Hungary, but only four were doing the actual fighting: the Americans, Brits, Dutch and Canadians.

The Stars and Stripes fluttered over a collection of stadium-sized tents. I bet some of them were bowling alleys and movie houses with milkshake bars.

The British compound would be the one with the Portakabin, a small TV, the boxed set of Only Fools and Horses, and a couple of teabags for the kettle. It was probably on the other side of the runway, where the husks of bombed-out buildings sat alongside the occasional intact concrete block, like a row of old man's teeth. Beyond, it looked like dustbowl all the way to the mountains.

Flags everywhere flew at half-mast. These days, they were probably like that permanently.

As we taxied past acres of armoured vehicles and steel containers, economy passengers were already surging forward to disembark. They chattered away on their cellphones as the aircraft still rolled.

The Australian had a suit-carrier handed to him. When the aircraft stopped and the seat-belt lights were switched off, he stood up and held out his hand. 'Well, nice to have met you. I hope it goes well.'

'And you.' I pulled my Bergen from the overhead locker. All it contained was the laptop and a bit of washing kit.

I detached myself from him in the crowd and walked down the steps into the blistering heat and blinding sunlight.

A pair of helicopters lifted off and cleared our aircraft by no more than thirty feet. Two Humvees armed with.50 cals roared along the runway and pulled up at the bottom of the steps. I guessed they were just there to look mean and keep us from straying.

Razor-wired compounds flanked the terminal. It was a small, two-storey, regional-airport-type building, but with so much concrete involved it had to be a Russian legacy. Handpainted signs told me there was just about nothing I was allowed to do but stand in line and await instructions. To keep it that way, bearded men in thick grey serge uniforms and high-legged boots stood glowering at either side of the doors, AKs at the ready.

We filed inside. It was dark, and it took my eyes a while to adjust. The place was wrecked. I was just thinking it must have taken a major hammering at some stage when I spotted a poster. There was a major refurbishment under way, courtesy of the US and EU. Fluorescent lights dangled from the ceiling. Guys in overalls drilled away at the concrete floor. A guy in a blue suit and tie was having a go at a pillar with a hammer and chisel.

An Indian passenger at the front handed out immigration forms to the rest of the queue. They were poor-quality photocopies. Two forms had been reproduced on the same sheet of A4, then torn in half. I didn't have a pen.

Another bearded man in grey serge sat in a box at Passport Control, surrounded by handpainted signs saying No photography and No smoking. He didn't even look at the form I hadn't filled in, just glanced at the visa in my passport, stamped it and waved me through.

I had to put my day sack through another X-ray machine. Once I was clear, I dug out my sunglasses, slipped the string round my neck, and exited the building.

This time I really did find a bombsite. We must have been on the fucked-up side of the runway. All I could see was rubble and dust, and the shells of buildings. There was a strike mark in every square inch of rendering.

Traders had set up shop in the back of old Russian trucks without wheels. They sold the two essentials: cigarettes and tea.

Beyond them, on a dustbowl the size of a football pitch, were scores of cars, trucks and 4x4s. A couple of boys in UK desert DPM, Osprey and sunglasses stood next to a filthy Toyota 4x4. Six or seven clean and shiny ones were parked nearby. Their drivers were also sunglassed-up and had all the party gear on, trying to out-cool the military.

44

I'd called the hotel from a phone box in Delhi to organize a car. I didn't know the score on taxis. Would there even be any? And, if so, would I be driven off to some quiet little corner of town and persuaded to hand everything over?

It had been a nightmare trying to get through. I'd had to dial the number so many times it was etched into my brain. Then it was even more of a nightmare trying to communicate what I wanted, because the notion was so alien to them. But in the end they laid one on especially for me, the mad Brit who didn't have his own vehicle and protection.

I squinted into the sun. They'd said a driver would pick me up in Car Park C. That was a joke. There wasn't any Car Park C, just a big dustbowl.

Three locals hit on me with baggage trolleys. They rattled over the rubble and the first guy to arrive tried to grab my Bergen. I shook my head. He tried again. 'Yes — it is law.' In conflict zones most speak at least a little English. It's the language of war.

No way was I letting it out of my hands. I gave him a dollar as baksheesh and carried on walking. You couldn't blame them for trying. There was fuck-all else going on for them.

Crowds of people milled round the area, being regularly checked by AK-toting men in grey serge. I carried on past the contract guys in wraparound sunglasses and thigh holsters, and finally spotted 79 9654 000 in shaky letters on a sheet of A4. I'd asked for just the hotel number to be shown, and on a clear board.

Even in places far less dodgy than this I'd never have my name in full display. It's too easy for someone either to run it through their BlackBerry or recite down the phone for a mate to Google, looking for multinational heavy hitters and other good kidnap fodder. All they have to do then is fuck over the driver, take his place and drive you to a world of shit. It would have been madness to advertise myself on a Serena Hotel board, even with a cover name. I had no idea how many big-shot Stevenses there were on the planet, and I didn't want to be mistaken for one.

The young guy holding up my board was skin and bone. His shiny jet-black hair was parted on the left. Apart from a bum-fluff moustache, he was clean-shaven. His shirt was untucked over brown trousers and buttoned all the way up to a collar that was two sizes too big.

I gave him a smile and offered my hand. 'Hello, mate — you taking me to the Serena?' It never hurts. Let them have a nice day. Chances are they're treated like shit the rest of the time.

'Yes,' he said. 'Maybe.' He went to shake my hand but caught himself in time. He touched his chest in greeting first, then gave me a semi-toothless grin as we finally treated ourselves to a couple of shakes. 'Come, Mr Stevens. Come.'

I followed his dusty black plastic shoes through the maze of vehicles. Most were white and yellow taxis of all makes, sizes and stages of dilapidation. Among them were dusty 4x4s, a mixture of clapped-out Fords from the eighties and brand-new Mazda saloons.

He told me his name but I didn't quite catch it first time; his voice was like gravel and his English very accented.

'Magrid?'

'Magreb.' He beamed. 'Magreb.'

I nodded. 'Nice to meet you, Magreb.'

His ten-year-old Hiace people-carrier was coming to the end of its days. It looked like the blacked-out side windows were only held to the bodywork by layers of dust, so it was hard to hide my amazement when the door was slid open for me by a smartly uniformed escort. No grey serge for this boy: his black ball cap coordinated with his trousers, high-leg boots and heavy body armour. Only the brown wooden stock of his AK was off-message.

I climbed into the back, next to a torn and food-encrusted baby seat. The escort closed my door and sat up front with Magreb. The air-conditioning was going full blast.

We only got a few yards before we hit the end of a queue. A couple of old guys in suits, polo-neck jumpers and Afghan pancake hats manned a homemade checkpoint. The drop-bar was two branches roped together and painted red and white.

Magreb pulled a dollar bill from his pocket.

I leant forward. 'Police?'

Magreb gave an Italian-style shrug. 'No, no — police come here later, Mr Stevens. They come to collect the money, maybe.'

We drew level and he handed over his bribe. The old men lifted the barrier. We drove out past the empty shells of bombed-out buildings.

The wrecks of Russian vehicles rusted at the roadside. Only one bit of Eastern hardware had stayed the distance. A MiG jet fighter sat at a forty-five-degree angle in the middle of the exit roundabout, as if it was about to take off. Its freshly painted camouflage gleamed in the sunlight.

We hit an official checkpoint, manned by guys in khaki serge. They waved us through for free.

We turned south on to a dead straight road. The sun was on my right. 'How long to the city, mate?'

'Twenty minutes, Mr Stevens. Maybe.'

'Please call me Nick.'

'OK, Mr Nick.'

His breath stank from too many cigarettes.

Even from this distance, Kabul was clearly dominated by the mountain at its centre. It was like London with Ben Nevis instead of Hyde Park.

Magreb followed my line of sight. 'TV Hill, Mr Nick.'

It had two peaks of roughly the same height, with a saddle in between. Two colossal antennae farms capped the summits. It might be a hill to the locals, alongside the snow-capped mountains that surrounded us, but in the UK it would have been a national park.

I gave him a smile. 'Let's see if this works.'

I waved my mobile, sat back and powered it up.

The buildings either side of us looked like they'd been out in the sun too long. Even the advertising hoardings were like bleached skeletons.

The potholes were the size of bomb craters, but that didn't stop the local drivers going for it at motorway speeds. Instead of a central reservation, there were just one-foot-high concrete bollards.

We came to a run of shops and stalls, mixed with mud houses and stark concrete apartment blocks. One sold bananas, the next oranges. The one after that seemed to have cornered the market in second-hand plimsolls. Old boys sat in the shade beside them gobbing off into mobiles.

I had five bars of signal, and a text from my new mates at TDCA welcoming me to Afghanistan. I tapped the keypad as kids kicked a football on a dusty make-do pitch with rocks for goals. A family had set up home in the bombed-out remains of a one-storey building. The roof was a moth-eaten tarpaulin.

Everything and everyone was covered with dust. I could already feel a layer of grime on the back of my neck, and that was just from the air-conditioning.

There were four or five rings, and then I heard a familiar voice.

45

'I'm in the city, heading for the hotel. Any more emails?'

'Yes. We have a problem. They want the money in position by Saturday morning. If not, he dies.'

'Chances are he's history anyway, right?'

'Correct.'

'I'll read it when I get to the hotel.'

I closed down the cell and leant forward again. 'This your wagon, maybe?'

He smiled proudly and nodded like a madman.

'Nice.'

He nudged us past a dozen pushbikes taking up half the road. The traffic was bumper to bumper. I saw plenty of 4x4s and orange-and-white taxis, but everything else seemed to be a Corolla.

High walls, razor wire and floodlights sectioned off the buildings in this neighbourhood. They probably housed NGOs, big companies and government bodies, and were guarded inside by the entire male populations of the Philippines and Nepal.

Outside almost every one of them was a plywood guardhouse. Local guys in serge sat on plastic chairs in the shade, their body armour so thin it was more like a stab vest. Each had an AK across his thighs, a brass teapot and a glass at his feet. Nothing much seemed to be going on. They just sat and stroked their beards.

I tapped the baby seat. 'How many children you got, mate?'

'Four! All boys, Mr Nick!'

'You've been busy.'

He turned and gave me the world's biggest grin. 'Maybe!'

The escort nodded along, too, as Magreb explained what we were waffling about.

We crawled past rack upon rack of bootleg DVDs, mostly Bollywood by the look of it. A poster in the shop window behind them showed a beautiful woman with perfect teeth dancing around in blindingly coloured clothes as the guy with the beard watched on admiringly. The fucker was stalking me.

We reached a roundabout. Traffic in all directions was at a standstill. Four guys in a different style of grey serge pointed at vehicles and shouted, then kicked the ones that didn't obey. They wore oversized Russian-style white peaked caps they'd had to place on the backs of their heads so they could see. They looked like drunken sailors. A couple wore face masks, as if they were directing traffic in Tokyo.

Magreb made a tutting noise. 'A bomb in a car. The man killed himself, Mr Nick, maybe.'

The escort thought he'd better demonstrate. His arms went up in the air. 'Boom!' He pointed along the exit immediately to our right.

I watched one of the peaked caps land a kick on the side panel of an orange-and-white. Magreb tutted again.

'You work at the hotel?'

'I work in kitchen, Mr Nick. I am chef. They need someone go to airport, and I speak English. My English OK for you, Mr Nick?'

I gripped his shoulder and gave it a bit of a manly shake. 'Maybe, Magreb. Maybe. Thanks for picking me up, mate.'

Cars tried to worm their way into any gap. Magreb somehow worked the people-carrier forward. The traffic cops' brand-new green-and-white Toyota 4x4 was parked in the middle of the roundabout. A sign on the back announced in English that it was a present from the people of Germany.

An old man selling SIM cards took advantage of the jam and walked between the vehicles, his merchandise hung from a board held high on a pole, like a glockenspiel.

I tapped the escort. 'Give him a shout.'

Magreb translated. The window creaked down and the guard called him over.

The old guy wore about three coats and a cowpat hat. His eyes brightened at the prospect of a sale. Every card that hung from the board in a cellophane wrapper showed a footballer that even I could recognize. I pushed my arm between Magreb and the escort.

'How much?'

Magreb translated. 'Ten dollars each, maybe.'

My hand dived into my jeans.

The old boy's head almost filled the open window.

I spread my fingers. 'Give me five.'

He grinned like I'd made his year and handed over a set of Thierry Henrys. Perhaps he'd celebrate with a fourth coat.

Transaction done, the Hiace was moving again. I rummaged in my Bergen and pulled out the mobile I'd bought at Heathrow. The Yes Man didn't have to know everything I needed to do. And I certainly didn't want him tracking me on the Firm's mobile once I'd got my hands on Dom. I'd give him just enough information to make him happy and keep him letting me use his resources. It wasn't op sec and it wasn't bullshit. It was self-preservation. I didn't know what he had planned for me once I'd handed Dom over. If I handed him over.

As I loaded one of the Thierrys, a two-ship Humvee convoy barged its way to the detonation site. Both wagons had.50 cals on top and the American drivers were taking no prisoners. Faces shrouded by dust masks and goggles, they shouted, gesticulated, leant on their horns. It had no effect. In the end the Humvees decided just to bump cars out of the way with their bull bars. The gunners up top in the turrets swung their.50 cals in wide arcs. How to make friends and influence people, Washington-style.

'Kate, it's Nick. Top of the morning to you.' Well, it was Dublin. I got a sort of laugh from her as she tried to pretend no one had ever said that before.

I asked if she could have a little rummage in Moira's office for me and see if she could find where Basma Al-Sulaiman had her safe-house.

'I'm so sorry, Nick. It's a women's refuge. Part of the deal was that Dominik wouldn't divulge any details.'

Shit.

'But I have a mobile number.'

'Kate, you're a star. What are the colours of your national flag?'

She hesitated. Either she didn't know the Polish flag or it was just a stupid question. 'Red and white.'

'That's the colour of the flowers I'll send you, then. Has my number come up?'

I got lots of giggles and a thank-you before she gave the answer I wanted. 'Yes.'

'Great — can you text me the number? I'll get those flowers to you as soon as I can. I won't tell Moira if you don't.'

I closed down as Magreb eased in behind the second Humvee. The.50 cal gunner didn't like that. He swung the barrel and waved at us to back off.

Magreb pulled a face that said, in any language, Yeah, right. I liked this boy more by the minute.

We made some progress and passed a huge mosque shrouded in scaffolding. An army of plasterers was filling in strike marks and shell holes.

Just round the corner a fortress was disguised as the Serena Hotel.

46

Whoever had designed the place had made it almost impregnable to ground attack by anything except a Challenger or a Warrior, and with not a HESCO or roll of razor wire in sight.

The two main gates must each have been about twelve feet square, and built of thick steel bars in close grids. Marble columns at either side supported a thick stone canopy; whatever else it was meant to do, it provided shade. The guards underneath were impressive, too. They wore the same kit as my escort, as you'd expect in a place with a $35 million price tag. He gave them a wave.

I'd read all the stuff about it online at Heathrow. It had gone up last year over the ruins of the old Kabul Hotel, which had been bombed and shot to shit for years. Going by the pictures and blurb on the website, it was the safest and most luxurious place in the whole of the city, probably in the whole of Afghanistan. Unless, of course, you were bunkered in with ISAF.

The gates opened inwards and we drove into a stone-slabbed courtyard. It was lined with a pair of white Toyota Landcruisers with UN markings and three American GMC suburbans with blacked-out windows and enough antennae to double as NASA mobile control centres. The drivers leant against their bonnets in the new grey spotty camouflage, thigh holsters and wraparound shades and watched us rattle past.

Magreb stopped under a huge stone and marble portico. A doorman dressed in the local turban-type get-up rushed out and opened my door. His London equivalent would have been decked out as a Beefeater.

I shoved them both a twenty-dollar bill and the escort discovered a little English. 'Thank you.'

It was probably more than they earned all day, and it showed.

Two young bellhops ran out looking in vain for bags. I pointed at my Bergen and shrugged. They tried to take it from me, but I held on. I shook hands with the security guy and he wandered back to his mates at the main gate.

It was Magreb's turn for a handshake. 'Do you want to drive me while I'm here, mate? Maybe buy a new baby seat for son number four?'

The handshake got more rigorous. This was a good day for him, and of course he liked me. I was nice to him. 'But I work, Mr Nick… I cook nice food for you, maybe.'

'No problem. When do you finish?'

He looked at his watch as if it was going to tell him. 'Seven… seven.'

'Good, write down your number and I'll call you at seven, OK?'

He jumped back into his seat and found a pen.

Job done, I headed for the metal detector immediately to one side of the entrance. My new mate with the turban ushered me straight towards the tall glass doors. We might have been in a war zone, but it felt a million miles from Basra. There were no mortar rounds or rockets raining down, no armoured track vehicles, no helmets, no body armour jutting under my mate Gunga Din's robes. The only reminder was a printed sign telling me no firearms were allowed inside.

The lobby could have belonged to a five-star hotel in Paris or New York. There were marble floors, glass walls and gold finishing to all the surfaces. Local carpets and dark wood added to the palatial impression. The only thing out of place was the reggae music coming over the speaker system. Either they'd got their lobby and party disks mixed up, or there'd been a cock-up in the mailroom at the hotel chain HQ and a Caribbean pool party in Jamaica was trying to dance right now to traditional Afghan folk songs.

Thirty-five million dollars for a hotel in Kabul made good business sense. The oil companies had their guys exploring the north of the country to see what could be sucked out of the ground up there. When their top brass jetted in for a visit, they could hardly be put up in a downtown flophouse. There always had to be wartime melting pots for the so-called great and good. There was a Serena lookalike in every war zone, maybe not as luxurious as this one but they existed all the same.

I started checking in. In this part of the world they don't trust plastic; it's folding money all the way — and preferably green, with presidents on.

I thanked reception profusely for organizing my lift and handed over fifteen hundred US for the first five nights I'd booked.

As I signed the register, seven or eight guys swaggered past, all in BDUs with razor-sharp creases and desert boots straight from the quartermaster. Each carried a laptop bag over his shoulder, and a small fancy box in his hand. The pink ribbon they were tied with looked bizarre next to the thigh pistols. I took it that the sign outside was for the bad guys only.

They headed for the reception desk flashing credit-card-sized IDs on their armbands, just in case we hadn't realized they were American officers.

47

I headed upstairs. The hotel was only three storeys, with rooms on the first and second floors. I'd asked for one on the first. In theory it would be harder to hit with an RPG from the outside because of the perimeter wall. With luck, anyone taking a pot shot would only zap the top floor.

My room was huge. Plush carpets, lots of dark wood, all the gear. There was even a little office area and a torch in case the emergency generator didn't kick in when they lost power. The air-con hummed above me as I looked through the sealed, double-glazed windows. Maybe I was wrong about RPGs. The perimeter wall was being heightened to give a little more protection from direct fire.

Down in the compound, the neatly pressed Yanks had just placed their pink-ribboned boxes into their three-ship GMC convoy. They lifted out M4s, a shorter-barrelled version of the M16 with a collapsible butt, and loaded them up before climbing into the wagons.

I left them to it. First things first. I powered up the laptop and connected to the room's ADSL.

I had no idea how the secure comms worked on one of the Firm's machines, but there was encryption and decryption at each end, and that was all I needed to know. Normal email addresses were used. I was on AOL, paid for by direct debit from my ACA bank account at the Royal Bank of Scotland. I'd be sending to a Hotmail account belonging to the Yes Man. Echelon wouldn't be able to intercept: it would be a load of old mush bouncing around in cyberspace until the Yes Man opened up his own computer and retrieved it.

The mailbox was full of emails about jobs I was planning and had already done for the publisher. Their emails would keep arriving all the time I was away. There was also a healthy amount of spam. In fact, it looked so normal I was amazed the Firm hadn't downloaded some porn on to it.

The hidden bit of the hard drive prompted me for my password. I keyed in my eight-digit army number and it took me straight online.

There was one email with an attachment waiting. It was from the Yes Man.

Dom's reply this morning to the email Siobhan had sent from the kitchen wasn't good news. The language was controlled, but you could tell he was sweating.

Siobhan's email, in contrast, was all over the place. I imagined her sitting at the island sobbing into her alcohol.

I reread them both. There was something wrong with Dom's. The proof-of-life statements showed he was alive around the time they were sent, but it didn't feel like Dom was sending them.

He was a clever lad with a degree in English literature. Under duress he might spell the odd word wrong, but he wouldn't have spelt 'cheque' like an American. In fact, I knew he didn't. I'd seen the proof in Pete's files. So had I got an American at the end of these emails? Could be; there were enough of them in-country.

The Yes Man told me they were being sent from AM Net Café. It was on the corner of Flower Street and Jadayi Sulh, two shops in from the junction opposite the Emergency Surgical Centre for War Victims.

There was no welcome pack in the room and no courtesy map, no bus trips on offer to see the sights or visits to the ballet. One day I guessed there'd be guided tours of bin Laden's caves and the glorious poppy fields in bloom, but not yet.

There was a PDF map of the city on the desktop. I'd try to correlate the main routes with satellite imagery. It was important to know exactly where I was, and exactly where I was going — there was absolutely no room for fuck-ups.

I could have used the Firm's satellite imagery to study the location, but Google Earth was just as good for the detail I needed.

The street map itself wasn't detailed enough to give street names, but the sat imagery was good.

I found the café. It was only about a K and a half away, but I was going to need to burn the routes there and back firmly into my memory. I switched between the PDF and Google Earth and soon had my bearings.

I found a bottle of water among all the mock-tails in the minibar and went back to the laptop. This was a dry country. If you wanted alcohol, you had to smuggle in your own — or go to a place like the Gandamack Lodge.

It was next on my list. I'd have to check all Dom's known locations to find out where the fuck he was by Saturday morning. Even if the cash was handed over, he was still going to get a round in the back of the head. And if I discovered he'd killed Pete, I wanted it to be me who pulled the trigger.

The Gandamack Lodge had opened in the days following the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, when a glut of news crews found themselves with nowhere to stay. It very quickly became a Mecca for journalists. That, in turn, made it a Mecca for another breed of war veteran, the fixer.

I checked Google Earth again. It wasn't easy to work out where exactly it was on the map when all I had to work with was an address that read: 'Next to the UNHCR building and just up from DHL'.

This wasn't unusual. I'd worked in plenty of cities where the directions were just as vague. Phrases like 'round the corner from' or 'at the back of' keep cropping up. My favourite had been in Jalalabad. One address had been 'street number two, second alleyway, house fifteen, four doors left'.

I thought I'd worked out which building I was looking for. UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) was marked on the PDF, but I still wanted a decent local map. I wasn't going out there on the streets without one. TV Hill stuck out like a sore thumb, but Kabul was a city of three million people. That was a fuck of a lot of streets and alleyways.

I closed down the laptop. The Firm's disk would close itself down automatically and go hide somewhere in the main drive. It would also be defended against interrogation by sniffer devices, which could read a hard disk from a few metres away. Targets of industrial espionage can have their hard drive downloaded while they're checking in at an airport without having a clue that it's happening. Even the new biometric passports aren't immune. IDs are routinely stolen this way, especially by people-traffickers.

I sparked up the personal mobile and a text was waiting. Kate had sent Basma's mobile number.

I highlighted and hit send. It rang four times. It was answered, but whoever was at the other end didn't speak.

'Hello, Basma? My name is Nick.' I could hear rustling and distant traffic.

'Basma, I'm a friend of Dominik Condratowicz.'

'Where did you get this number?' The voice was female, and spoke perfect Home Counties English.

'I need to see you. It's about Dom. He's in trouble and I think you can help. I know he's there. I was with him when you phoned a couple of days back. Where are you?'

There was no hesitation this time. 'Do not call me again.'

The line went dead.

I stored her number, and closed down to save the battery.

The laptop and the Firm's mobile went into the room safe, and my two passports, cash, room card, RBS card and, of course, my Thierry Henrys went down between my socks and my Timberlands.

I'd bought a black nylon bum-bag at Heathrow at the same time as the phone. I went to the bathroom and padded it out with the flannel and half a roll of toilet paper, then fixed it round my waist so the pouch was on my right hip and protruded from under my T-shirt. The personal mobile went into the pocket of my jeans.

I switched on the TV. I looked back as I hung the Do Not Disturb sign outside, and the first face I saw on the screen was the grey-haired bloke with the beard.

48

'A map? You don't need a map, sir.'

They didn't have any at Reception either. No one who stayed at the Serena had ever asked for one. Maps implied walking or giving a driver directions. The manager said no Westerner should go round Kabul on foot or without a driver and escort.

He pointed me in the direction of the pastry shop and asked me to wait there while they tried to track one down. He was sorry I couldn't have Magreb again but he was needed in the kitchen. Was I sure I didn't want him to organize a convoy with one of the security companies? It would only take an hour or two.

'Thanks, but I'm quite sure.'

I headed for the pastry shop and ordered a coffee. An Afghani in a suit walked past with three women, two of them in the old-style American desert camouflage, one in the new. The talk was about contracts. I half listened, but my attention was diverted by the black woman in the old-style stuff. Her stomach was so pronounced she had to be at least six months gone. It was bizarre to see someone pregnant in uniform.

I picked up the Afghan Times to stop me lifting the Tubigrip and picking at the scab. My arm still hurt, but not so much that I was constantly thinking about it.

A story about an Italian and his Afghan interpreter who'd been kidnapped off the street a week ago dominated the front page. The Taliban had got hold of them. Their demands weren't met, so they cut off their heads. The bodies had been found on wasteground to the south of the city. The newspaper urged Westerners not to travel anywhere without an armed guard.

The three American women returned, carrying the same little boxes with pink ribbon I'd seen before. The ribbons were soon undone and the boxes opened. They munched pastries. Maybe she wasn't pregnant after all; maybe it was just big-time wheat intolerance.

Eventually the manager arrived with a map. One of the bellhops had been sent out to a local bookshop to buy it.

I studied it as I finished my coffee. It showed all the embassies, hospitals and main mosques, and the ministry of this and the ministry of that. It sort of correlated with what I remembered of the satellite imagery, but I didn't know which had been produced first. The map still showed this hotel as the Kabul, so it was at least a year old. It didn't really matter. It would still get me to AM Net and the Gandamack.

I slipped it into the empty Bergen, which I threw over my shoulder as I headed for the door.

Two businessmen in suits exited in front of me. Both carried briefcases and dripped with sweat as they waddled towards the 4x4 two-ship waiting in the courtyard. Their BG watched as they climbed aboard the rear vehicle. Then he took the front right of the lead wagon, and they were ready to go.

I walked towards the pedestrian door at the left of the main gates. I couldn't waste time waiting for Magreb to finish work and certainly didn't want a security company to send a convoy. I had to get on.

The guard from the Hiace sprang out of the guardhouse. He lifted his upturned hand. 'No Magreb? No car?'

I smiled and shook his hand. 'It's OK, I know where I'm going. It's just round the corner.'

I overrode him with my happy face, and machine-gun English that he didn't understand. I just hoped I'd done it without pissing him off. I might be running back in about five minutes and needing that AK of his to spread the good news.

49

I turned left. I knew that the road soon bent round to the right, towards a roundabout. The second right after that would have me heading north into the diplomatic quarter. The Internet café was close to the Iranian embassy.

I was facing south. The sun was on my right. It had maybe two and a half, three hours' burning time left.

The air was hot but not sticky. Without humidity to damp it down, dust was king. Every vehicle carried a thick layer. A little kid of five or six scrawled a message on a door panel with his finger.

Traffic was heavy and slow-moving in both directions. The pavements were clogged and pedestrians spilled on to the road. People dressed in grey, white and brown wove in and out between the cars.

I passed the big mosque I'd seen from the cab. Its twin towers were sheathed in scaffolding. There was a big regeneration programme under way. The signs stuck to the railings explained that some nice Italians had signed the cheque.

The two-ship passed me, and the businessmen swivelled and stared. I gave them a glare back that said, 'Yeah, that's right, I'm walking.' What else could I do? Like Basra, Kabul wasn't exactly a hail-a-cab sort of place for foreigners. At least I kept control of where I was going — and by the look of things I'd be quicker on foot anyway. I needed to recce the café in daylight.

I kept my head up and strode along as if I belonged there, trying not to make myself look like a target. The traffic on the road skirting the mosque was at a standstill. I guessed it was a tailback from the drunken-sailor roundabout, but then I heard shouts and screams, amplified over the speaker system. Fuck, here we go — a mad mullah sparking everyone up on a demo, hatred for the West, that sort of shit. Why couldn't he have waited an hour?

I was against the clock here. I'd have to keep going. AM Net was one of only three known locations for Dom — I needed to find out how it would look when I came back in the morning and waited for whoever was sending the emails; I didn't need to know how it looked at dark o'clock when everyone had gone home. I also didn't want to be on the streets at night, sticking out even more like a sore thumb than I already was. If I turned the corner to find a mob, I'd just have to leg it.

Books were stacked by the hundred against walls and railings. Guys in suits and local get-up, and women, some in burqas, flicked through the pages. Nobody seemed perturbed by the noise of the demo. Stalls sold newspapers with headlines and pictures of their war in both English and Pashtun. Kabul used to be the capital of the Mughal Empire. These boys had been playing war for five hundred years.

I reached the roundabout. A bunch of drunken-sailor policemen stood in the middle of the mound. One of them yelled into a microphone and gesticulated at vehicles like a TV evangelist on speed. Behind him, a huge PA system was mounted on the roof of their green Toyota.

A guy selling olives tried to grab me. He dipped a glass into a big drum and dragged some out for me, but I brushed him off without breaking my stride.

I didn't know if it was kicking-out time in offices or some kind of public holiday, but there were thousands on the streets. The traffic was chaos, and the drunken sailors just added to it. It would have been suicide to cross now to take the right I wanted.

There was a metal pedestrian bridge just short of the junction. A poster stretched along almost the whole of its span. A smiling granddad type with a shiny bald head and perfect white teeth offered a free mountain bike in two languages to anyone who just said no to drugs.

The bottom of the steps was seething with newspaper, fruit and tea stalls. I pushed past and took the steel stairs two at a time, bobbing left and right to avoid people in the tunnel created by the roof and the hoardings that lined the sides.

I reached the far end and was about to come down. A woman laden with shopping bags laboured up the last couple of steps. I did my bit and waited for her to pass. While I waited, I looked down at the pavement.

Three guys in Gunga Din gear were staring up at me, checking me out. Their faces were gaunt and creased, a lot harder than anyone else's round here. Each had a little flower in his waistcoat, and that was the big giveaway. They were Taliban, down from the hills for a few days' R&R after shooting at ISAF or cutting off some Italian heads.

They watched me with total hatred in their eyes. Those boys wanted to rip me apart.

I was committed. There was nothing I could do but keep going down. If I turned and ran they'd come after me. I had to front this out.

Both hands shot to my hip. I unzipped the bum-bag with my left and jammed the right inside. My fingers closed round the padding as if it was a pistol grip.

They muttered to each other and exchanged a quick glance under their cowpats.

Two of the traffic cops stepped into the frame as I was about halfway down. They seemed interested in finding out what the three were getting sparked up about.

The cops looked at me, then at each other. At that point they also spotted the small flowers and turned on their heels.

Fuck it. I got about three-quarters of the way towards the cowpats and flicked my left hand to wave them back. 'Fuck off! Fuck off!'

People who'd been making their way up the stairs melted to either side. The ones right at the bottom decided they'd gone off the idea altogether.

'Fuck off! Fuck off!'

Three sets of eyes locked on to mine, but I kept coming. They looked at each other again, suddenly unsure what to do. This was the OK Corral, Kabul-style.

They edged back a step or two.

I had to keep the initiative. 'Fuck off! Out of my fucking way!'

They were close enough to spit at me, and they did. They growled what I guessed were obscenities.

I pointed at each one in turn. 'Fuck — off — now!'

I moved past them and on to the pavement. The two policemen were standing under the bridge, eyes fixed on the very interesting summits of TV Hill.

I leapt the barrier and ran like a man possessed against the flow of traffic.

Horns honked. Angry fists waved. My sunglasses bounced up and down on my chest as I pumped my arms.

I dodged, wove and jinked round vehicles. Drivers went ballistic. A chorus of shouts went up behind me.

Fuck 'em. I was making distance. That was all that mattered.

50

Up ahead, the street broadened into a wide avenue bordered by imposing buildings hidden behind high walls. Their tops bristled with security lights and concertinas of razor wire. Plywood huts jutted on to the pavement. Guards sat outside on plastic chairs.

A three-ship Humvee patrol was speeding down the road towards me. I jumped back on to the pavement. The pedestrian traffic had thinned and the Taliban hadn't followed. They wouldn't come up this far into the embassy area. There was too much security.

The centre Hummer towed a trailerload of suitcases and camouflage-pattern day sacks. The gunner on its.50 cal jerked his thumb at the rear of his vehicle, shouted and screamed at the traffic behind. As they passed, I could see a big red sign dangling beneath him. Judging by the way he waved his arms, it said something like Fuck off, suicide-bombers. The Corollas and orange-and-whites didn't take the slightest bit of notice.

I slowed to walking pace to get my breath back. My arm throbbed. I began to see one or two more white faces, but they were all in vehicles.

On my right, a big set of gates swung open and two black Cadillac Escalade SUVs surged on to the pavement. Both had a big antenna on the roof. I couldn't tell what nationality they were. There weren't any flags flying on any of the buildings, no ID to show which embassy was which.

The two guys in the front wagon glanced through their wraparounds at the dickhead in the T-shirt and Timberlands, then studied the heavy traffic carefully before driving straight across all the lanes. The Highway Code didn't seem to apply to them.

It was only when I got level with the closing gates that I saw a small plaque. It was the Chinese embassy. The plywood huts outside were painted grey and red. I half expected to see Red Guards with flags sitting on the chairs instead of the local lot.

I approached the first shed. The four guards glared at me from under their hats. Two got to their feet. They didn't look happy, but they were paid to look that way. This was Kabul.

I smiled and gave them a wave as I got nearer, as if I was on a morale-boosting visit. 'Hello, mate, how are you?' I held out a hand, shook, and kept walking. I got a smile back from the smaller of the two. He touched his chest and gave me a nod. The next guy offered a hand. I did it on the move, not missing a step.

There were still remnants of the Russian occupation here. In an open space between two walls lay the rusting hulk of an armoured personnel carrier, its tracks splayed out from the wheels and the mother of all big fuck-off holes ripped into its side by a HESH (high-explosive squash head) round.

I pulled out the mobile and sparked it up. I went into Tools and made sure Number ID was off, then called Basma.

Two armoured vehicles came down the street towards me and stopped. I couldn't tell whose army they belonged to. All I knew was they were green and had six wheels. Matching green uniforms sprang out, helmeted, body-armoured, all tooled up.

Her mobile rang and rang. She probably ignored calls from numbers she didn't recognize just as much as the ones she did. But at least her mobile was still on, and if it stayed that way I'd locate her — once I'd found myself a fixer.

I was nearly on top of the armour by the time I closed down. The arm flashes told me they were Turks. One wagonload ran across the street to cover from that side. Maybe one of the walls belonged to their embassy. Whatever, it looked routine. It wasn't me they were interested in.

I turned the corner and immediately hit another set of guardhouses. I smiled, shook a hand or two. A sign said the steel double gates belonged to the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Jadayi Sulh was signed on the junction opposite. Flower Street had to be close by.

I turned back to the guards and gave them a smile. 'The hospital?' I pointed down the road. 'The war-victims hospital?'

I gave them a peek under the Tubigrip.

They had a quick discussion and a laugh, then showed me.

I ran across the road in the direction they'd pointed.

51

The stone wall directly opposite me was ten feet high, and the sign that ran the whole length of it confirmed in red that I was at the Emergency Surgical Centre for War Victims.

A corrugated-iron canopy shaded two long benches at either side of the entrance. It was guarded by a huddle of grey serge and AKs. Old guys occupied the benches, smoking, waffling, reading the paper. I couldn't tell if they were patients, visitors or just waiting for a bus.

On my side of the junction, a couple of guys sold glasses of tea as black as boot polish. Above their heads, a small blue handpainted sign with an arrow said AM Net was round the corner.

This was the sort of thing I needed to know about — what was happening during working hours when I'd be hanging about and waiting for someone who spelt in American English.

Flower Street was narrow and the sun had stopped shining on it for the day. Every shop sold either flowers or cakes. There were pavements both sides. It was potholed, but there were still traces of tarmac. Large open concrete drains lined one side.

AM Net was exactly where the Yes Man had said, two shops in from the junction. I walked under the rusty corrugated-iron awning and glanced through the grimy window. The room was small and dark. No one was using too much electricity here. I saw two rows of four grey monitors, maybe three or four people hunched over them. An old guy waited at the desk by the window to take their cash.

I kept going without looking back. If I'd missed something, tough shit, I should have done a better job. Enough people were looking at the white face as it was and quite a few didn't like what they saw. I lengthened my stride.

The smell of grilled meat reminded me I hadn't eaten since getting off the plane. I came to a steel trough, maybe three metres long. Lines of kebabs sizzled away over glowing embers in the half nearest me. Two kids up on boxes fanned the charcoal at the other end, keeping it sparked up. At least they gave me a cheery wave.

I kept walking, past yet more flower and cake shops.

My time with the muj had taught me they loved flowers — and not just poppies. Maybe it was something to do with the barren mountains they had to live among. The Taliban were the same, and a lot of the guys we trained and fought alongside were now with them. They liked to put them down the barrels of their AKs as well as in their waistcoats when they had the chance. But the idea of going to San Francisco never crossed their minds — unless it was to bomb the fuck out of the place.

The deep ditch on the right was obviously a great place to park your bike. All I could see were seats and handlebars. The people milling round were doing exactly what anyone else on the planet would be doing right now, just getting on with their lives — picking up a birthday cake or some treats for the family on the way home. It always amazed me how people so fucked-up by war still managed to carry on. Maybe they had no choice.

Word had definitely spread that there was a white guy in town. Kids materialized from doorways and held stuff up. 'Mister! You buy this!'

No, thanks. I didn't need twelve boxes of matches wrapped in cellophane.

'Boots dirty, Mister — I shine!' A ragged little boy thrust his shoe-cleaning kit and black brushes insistently at me. I pointed at my scuffed brown Timberlands and shrugged.

I pushed on and most of them faded away within ten or fifteen paces. A group of pepper-pots headed my way and stepped out on to the road. I was careful to wait until they'd got back on the pavement and walked past.

Flowers and cakes gave way to furs and leather. Skins of all shapes and colours hung from awnings or were stretched on frames. Large hides were being prepared as rugs. A couple of white spotted cats looked mildly surprised, thanks to their new glass eyes. When the Taliban weren't shooting ISAF, they killed anything else that moved on the mountains to make a few bob. Maybe my three new mates were in town to drop off pelts.

I could see the crossroads maybe fifty ahead. Turning left would take me to a main drag. Then if I turned left again I'd get to the junction near the Gandamack.

But that wasn't going to happen. There were too many cowpats with pissed-off faces gathering at the junction. Young men smoking, staring, waiting. I didn't know if it was the prospect of money, wanting to know what the fuck I was doing there, or just because I was white. I wasn't going to hang around long enough to find out.

I crossed the road as casually as I could, heading towards the nearest alleyway. As soon as I was out of sight, I broke into a run. I took the first left, then a right down a rubbish-filled gap between two buildings. I wanted to put as many angles between them and me as I could. I jumped a low wall and landed in a small square. I was losing my bearings as I ran into another street, but at least it was quiet, just closed doors and growling dogs.

Shouts bounced off the houses behind me.

I charged down another alleyway, not looking back, just trying to make distance. The shouts seemed to follow me. My sun-gigs bounced even higher as I took a right between two mud buildings. I spotted a mountain of firewood and burrowed in behind it.

My throat rasped as I lay there gulping air.

Woodsmoke and the sound of Bollywood wafted from the house above me.

I fought to control my breathing as I heard more shouts and the slap of sandals and boots on what was left of the tarmac.

I moved my head very slowly and peered round my cover. Three or four were running, searching, sounding more and more pissed off at not gripping me.

It was getting close to last light. I would have to sit it out and wait. This wasn't the time to get out my map and play tourist.

52

I wondered if it was the Indian guy with the beard who'd been singing and dancing on their television for the last thirty minutes.

It was fully dark, and the crowd had dispersed. I pulled the mobile carefully from my jeans and powered it up, shielding the glow of the display with my hand.

'Magreb, mate. It's Nick. The Gandamack — do you know where the Gandamack Lodge is? The hotel?'

Pots and pans clanged in the background as the Serena's answer to Gordon Ramsay yelled orders at his sidekicks.

'Yes, yes. You want me drive you there, maybe?'

'No, I want you to meet me there after work. But right now I need you to tell me how to get there on foot.'

His voice took on a strangulated tone. 'Not walk, Mr Nick. Very bad men there. Wait until I finish work, maybe—'

'Too late, mate. Listen, if I describe where I am could you get me on the right road? I know I'm not that far away from it.'

He didn't sound too happy. I wasn't sure if he was concerned for my safety or for lost income if I got lifted.

I extricated myself from the woodpile. 'I'm looking at a big road just ahead. By the junction I see a sports shop — Gym Tonic. The windows are full of running machines, mate. You understand, multigyms? Punch bags?'

It seemed so out of place. I'd have thought the last thing the locals would be worried about was toning up for the beach.

'OK, OK.' He was thinking. 'Mr Nick, walk past sport shop and go right, then—'

'I'll stop you there, mate. I need to keep on the side-roads. The bad men have already found me. I'm hiding from them. I don't want to be under those shops' lights, do I?'

It took a few seconds to sink in. Either that or he couldn't hear me above the din of Gordon's latest wobbler.

'OK. You walk away from sport shop, maybe, the other way, and tell me what you see.'

I did what he said. I walked for the next ten minutes without hitting a landmark. At last I found a handpainted street name and spelt it out for him.

We worked our way down streets where occasional slivers of light forced their way between shuttered windows. Traffic groaned incessantly on parallel roads. I imagined the pavements full of angry young men in cowpats.

'What can you see now, Mr Nick?'

I stood between two trucks. 'There's a crossroads. On the far side there's a high wall with razor wire, maybe an embassy. I might be at the start of the diplomatic area.'

'Yes, Mr Nick. What is in the middle of road? Concrete, maybe?'

The road had a central reservation of scabby bushes. 'Bushes, mate. Not concrete. To the right I can see the lights on TV Hill.'

'Go left, Mr Nick. Left and you will come to the Gandamack.'

I jumped the junction and headed left, hugging the wall. Headlights caught me in their glare but there was fuck-all I could do about it.

'Go up the road, Mr Nick. Walk more. You see computer shop, maybe?'

'Yes.'

The little fucker was spot-on.

'The Gandamack is on this road, on same side as computer shop.'

There were shouts from behind me. I spun round to see cowpats, maybe five or six of the fuckers, running my way.

'I'll call you later.'

I closed down as I legged it, and within a few strides I could make out the shapes of guard huts sticking out from the line of buildings.

The cowpats were gaining on me but I was getting closer to the huts.

Bodies spilled out to investigate the commotion. They couldn't have been sure what the fuck was coming at them out of the dark.

A couple had their weapons up. Another two were already checking their safety catches.

I held up my hands as I ran. 'It's OK, it's OK! Gandamack!

My hands stayed up. I got to within about fifteen metres of them. 'The Gandamack! Where's the Gandamack?'

One pointed down a dark gap that loomed on my left. I couldn't tell if the building behind had been bombed or was being repaired, but these guys had to be guarding something.

Their weapons lowered. I checked behind. The cowpats weren't that brave.

My hands dropped to my knees as I fought for breath. 'No need to shoot me. I won't complain about the food, honest.' I held out my hand and they shook.

I picked my way over rubble and bricks. Plastic buckets full of the stuff sat waiting to be moved.

There was a pedestrian door to the right of the gates. Set into it was a sliding peephole.

I gave the gate a couple of punches. The steel rattled. The slide was pulled back and a set of dark brown Afghan eyes wanted to know what the fuck I wanted.

53

I gave him a big smile as the door swung open and I got a big row of brown teeth back. He was dressed for winter warfare in a thick black polo-neck jumper beneath an even thicker stripy tank top. Me, I was wiping sweat off my face. On the floor of his plywood gatehouse were a bedroll, bottled-gas burner, kettle, teapot and glasses. He was set for the night.

A dozen or so dusty 4x4s were jammed against each other in the courtyard. The house was large, with additions all over the place. I followed the gravel path across a patch of garden to a set of concrete steps that led up to the glass-fronted entrance.

The first thing I saw in the hallway as I stepped inside was a long rack of old Martini-Henry rifles, probably relics from the last time we tried to control the area and got fucked off big-time. The Khyber Pass to Pakistan wasn't that far away.

The reception desk wasn't manned. A card told me the name Gandamack had come from the fictional home of Harry Flashman, the nineteenth-century answer to James Bond. It was also the name of the village that had seen the slaughter of about sixteen thousand British troops by the Afghans in 1842. I wondered if some of the gear in the racks had seen action there.

I wandered into the eating area. The tables were laid for dinner later tonight, with starched white cloths and china. All the breakfast stuff — jars of marmalade, jam, honey and Marmite — were stacked ready on a side-table, just like in a B and B. The walls were decorated with hunting and fishing prints. Stuffed parrots flew around in a glass-fronted cabinet. The only thing to remind you that you weren't in an old Surrey inn was the neatly stencilled sign on the door: Only side-arms allowed in the restaurant.

I looked through the open windows and on to the grass. Two big, muscular guys had squeezed into a couple of wicker chairs under the external lighting. They sat with their tree-trunk legs splayed apart. With their dark skin and black leather jackets they could only have been from the Balkans. My money was on them being Serbs.

They had been taking afternoon tea. A wicker table was set with china. Ducks waddled round their legs scavenging scraps of sandwiches.

Neither looked the afternoon-tea type. One's head was shaved bald, and reflected the light like he'd been having a go with the Mr Sheen. The other had greasy brown hair down to his shoulders and a top lip like John Major's. He was talking into a mobile.

I moved closer to the window. He wanted to know why they hadn't got the equipment they'd asked for. If it didn't come soon, someone was going to pay. That would have had the person at the other end sitting up and taking notice. To a Serb, payment didn't necessarily mean cash.

A young lad in a white shirt appeared behind me. He was all smiles.

'Hello, mate — where's the pub?'

'The Hare and Hound? Downstairs, sir. I'll show you.'

He led me out of the restaurant, past the weapon racks and back outside towards a flight of steps down to the basement.

'Is my mate staying here? Tall Polish guy, irritatingly good-looking? His name's Dom, Dominik Condratowicz. Might have left a couple of days ago, I'm not sure.'

He thought for a while. It couldn't be that hard. The card had said there were only fifteen rooms. 'I do not think so, sir.'

'Could you find out, mate? Maybe at the desk?'

He nodded and gave a smile as five dollars found their way into his hand.

I carried on down a couple of stone steps to a large wooden door. I took off my Bergen as I went through. It was like walking into an olde-worlde pub, right down to the low-beamed ceiling. The only giveaway that we were still in Kabul was the two hundred years of rifle and machine-gun history stuck on the wall.

It wasn't busy. There were a couple of guys at one of the tables in a corner, and a couple of women at another. An overly Western-dressed local nursed a Coke at the bar. Bob Marley was on the speakers. Was it the anniversary of his death or something?

The young barman wore jeans, a tight T-shirt and had long, centre-parted hair. I asked for a Coke. All the drink was in bottles or cans. Löwenbräu was the only stuff on tap.

I took my cold can and glass and headed past the dartboard to one of the vacant tables.

The two huddled in the corner were big lads, maybe in their late twenties. They'd obviously been hitting the weights before slapping on the hair gel and heading out for the night. They hadn't been working on their lower bodies, though. They'd just been hitting the chest and arms so they looked good in their spray-on T-shirts.

Sundance and Trainers wouldn't have approved.

54

They had holsters and mag-carriers on their belts but nothing inside them. Maybe it was different rules downstairs: not even side-arms allowed in case things got out of hand after a few Löwenbräus.

They cracked into their cans of Guinness and cast an eye over the other table. The girls sounded as though they were from London. Both were wearing red and white Arab shemags, slung fashionably round their shoulders. Not only wrong country but wrong ethnic group. They checked their Thuriya sat phones for messages. I doubted they'd have many: Thuriyas are the dog's bollocks of the mobile world, but even they aren't too clever in basements.

It was the local guy at the bar I was interested in. Maybe mid-thirties and clean-shaven, he was trying too hard to do the Western thing. His shirt had the little polo-player motif; his jeans had a sharp crease down the middle. His navy ball cap had KBR embossed across the front. Kellogg, Brown and Root were a military contractor and Halliburton subsidiary. He wanted everyone to know he was in with the in-crowd. He just had to be a fixer.

He finished his Coke and started to say his goodbyes to the barman. I powered up the mobile, left some cash from my sock on the table, and followed, dragging my Bergen by one of its straps.

He'd got to the top of the stairs.

'Hello, mate — I was told you're the fixer. You working for anyone this week?'

He adjusted his baseball cap so it covered his eyes. 'I have work, but maybe if you need someone I could…'

His English was good.

I held up a hand as I climbed the stairs. 'It's you I need. I want you to track a mobile phone for me. It's in the city somewhere.'

'I'm sorry, I wouldn't know how to do that.' He headed on up, but I held his arm. 'Look, mate. You're a fixer. The only reason you can do the job is you know the Taliban — you might even have been one. Otherwise you'd get fuck-all fixed, wouldn't you?'

'I have to go—'

I held up the cash so it was level with his eyes and close enough to smell. 'I got two hundred for you now and two hundred more when you tell me where the number is. Get one of your Tali mates to do the same for me as they do for the guys in the mountains.'

He didn't think too much about it before the wad disappeared into his jeans.

'Do you want the name?'

'No. I know his fucking name. He owes me money and I want it back. How long will it take?'

I kept a grip on the fixer's arm to make sure he came with me. I guided him up the gravel and towards the glass entrance.

'Maybe half an hour.'

As we started up the steps the guy with the brown teeth swung the gates open and a wagon rolled into the compound.

Next to the Martini-Henrys was a table with newspapers, postcards and pens. I copied Basma's number from the mobile on to a hotel business card.

'Talk to your mates. If they get a location, you'll get another two hundred.'

He took the card and disappeared into the dining area. His mobile was already to his ear.

I went to the desk at the other end of the hallway. My white-shirted mate was there, studying the computer. 'I'm sorry, sir. No Polish man. He hasn't been here for over one year.'

He got another ten dollars. 'Thanks anyway.'

A side-door took me out into the garden. The two big Serbs were still sitting and enjoying their cigarettes. Small bats darted about over a tiled veranda overhanging a set of rooms along the side of the lodge. The ducks rooted in the long shadows cast by the lights.

Serbs are to war as Jocks are to kilts and whisky. They'd finished their own in the 1990s, but had had a finger in everyone else's ever since. They weren't the type to lay down their arms and take up bookkeeping positions in a Belgrade bank.

As I walked across the grass towards them I gave a nod and a smile. 'Evening.'

They stared, waiting to find out what the fuck I wanted while they sucked away at their cigarettes and admired the red glows in front of their faces. They were ready for a night out by the smell of them. It was heavy cologne all the way.

'I need a weapon. I'm heading south. Do you know where I can get one, and quick? I'll pay.'

Top Lip couldn't have been less interested. Mr Sheen looked me up and down as if I shouldn't even be near them, let alone talking. 'Cowboy or newsman?'

'Cowboy.'

I hated that shit. They'd been watching far too many films. They waffled between themselves. It wasn't intense; it wasn't as if there was a law against having guns here. Top Lip was just telling Mr Sheen to fuck me off. But there seemed to be a good enough reason for helping me. Top Lip finally shrugged and Mr Sheen pulled out a pen. He beckoned for my hand. He gripped it with his rough and massive one and wrote straight on to the skin. If he'd pressed any harder it would have turned into a tattoo. 'Don't go until early hours. No one will let you in. Tell him I sent you.'

'What's your name?'

He blanked me. 'Just tell him. If you can't find it, you shouldn't be allowed to ride.'

I nodded my thanks and left. I could see the fixer in the dining area as I headed for the bar. He'd just finished his call.

55

Back in the pub a waiter walked past me with two heaped plates of steak, chips and peas, and a bottle of ketchup. An early dinner for the big lads, who were now flexing away at the girls' table.

More drinkers had arrived. All three of the thirty-something males propping up the bar looked like they'd gone native. Their faces had maybe three months' growth, and they wore all the local gear — baggy trousers, waistcoats, cowpats and shirts down to their knees. They weren't taking the whole thing to extremes, though: one was in the process of ordering them Guinnesses and shots of Famous Grouse. Until I heard them shooting the shit, I couldn't make up my mind whether they were serious players or members of a ZZ Top tribute band.

Cigarettes came out as they perched on stools and waffled on about being down south, and how they were coming up against the Taliban and getting some awesome film. Everything was fucking awesome, man — and I mean awesome.

They lifted their shot glasses and toasted each other, then tilted back their heads and wiped their beards with the back of a hand in true Afghan fashion. With their suntanned faces, they certainly looked the part. They would have passed as Taliban at a glance, and that was probably all they needed.

I wandered over. 'How long you guys been back from Helmand?'

'Five days, man.'

The one who'd ordered the drinks had the longest and bushiest beard of the three. Cigarette ash distributed itself generously across it as he bounced a Marlboro up and down on his lips. 'We go back in another two.'

'You seen a Polish journo about? Dominik Condratowicz?'

'Shit, man, I know who he is — he's like a fucking superhero. He here now?'

'You seen him?'

'No, but you know what? Two fucking guys came here last week, maybe Saturday, who knows? Anyways, they were high, man, up on H, and they were shouting for him. Pushing every fucker around saying they know he's in the city, wanting to kill the guy or something fucked-up like that.'

'American?'

'Yeah, well, one of them, anyways…'

He pointed over at the two guys flexing, eating and chatting up the two women, all at the same time. 'Some of those contract guys? They had to run to their wagons and draw down to get them outta here.'

'You know who they were? You seen them before?'

'No, man, no one knew them. The American, big guy — and a Brit. They were like just fucked-up and crazy.' His eyes lit up and he pointed his cigarette at me. 'You know what? He talked like you.'

'What did he look like, the American? You said he was tall.'

'Yeah, like six six, fucking huge ginger guy, fucked-up skin. But, hey, they'd really gone local, know what I'm saying?'

'What about the Brit? He's smaller, right?'

'Yeah, your size. His hair and face, man, it was like matted and fucked-up.' He turned to his mates and grinned. 'We're like fucking dinner-party guests compared to those guys.'

All three got into their cans and drank to that. I said my goodbyes, good luck down south and all that shit, and headed back upstairs. The only sound was the crunch of my boots on the gravel.

American spelling… American looking for Dom…

The fixer was waiting by the rifle rack. 'The phone is in Khushal Mena. Well, it was when it was located. It might have been in parked car, or maybe the owner was in friend's house.'

'Where's this Khushal?' I dumped my Bergen and took out the map. I grabbed another pen and let him show me.

'On Ghazni Street, where it meets Sarak Street.' He circled the map. 'There.'

It was on the west side of the city, near the polytechnic. If it was still standing.

He got his other two hundred and left without a thank-you. Fair enough. He hadn't got one either.

It was just before seven as I sat on the steps and watched him climb into his Honda 4x4 and head out of the gates.

I put a new Thierry Henry into my mobile. Just like a soldier's weapon and Pete's camera battery, it also needed to be fully loaded.

Magreb's phone was soon ringing in my ear. He answered quickly.

'Hello, mate, it's Nick.'

He was a very happy bunny. Maybe there would be some work. 'You found the Gandamack OK, Mr Nick?'

'No drama, thanks to you. Can you pick me up? You'll be finished by about three in the morning. That OK?'

'Of course, Mr Nick. I sleep in kitchen.'

'Listen, I need you to bring some stuff. I want a set of local clothes. You know, hat, waistcoat, shemag, like the SIM-card seller but without the overcoats, yeah? I want to look like him.'

'Not be clean, maybe.'

'No problem, mate. I'll pay you for them. I'll wait for you inside.'

'Good idea, Mr Nick.'

I closed down and went into the deserted dining room. I took my Nick Stone passport from my boot and slipped ten hundred-dollar bills inside. When I left again a few seconds later, the side-table was minus one of its jars of Marmite.

Then I became the world's greatest admirer of Martini-Henry rifles. I went over to the rack and almost caressed them. Each one had been lovingly restored; there wasn't a speck of rust to be seen.

I checked the corridor for bodies and CCTV before realizing my bootlaces needed retying. I bent down, and quickly shoved the slim bundle behind the rifle rack, right at the bottom where it met the floor. I wedged it in deep, but all it would take to retrieve it was a bent coat-hanger.

Sitting on the steps again, I watched as wagons rolled into the compound, their occupants looking forward to a good night out.

56

Magreb took just one glance at the map and we were off. He knew exactly where he was going, even if he didn't know what was there. I left him to it and sifted through the bundle of Gunga Din gear he'd left on the back seat. It was perfect. I wondered if a certain SIM-card salesman had gone home tonight a few dollars richer but bollock naked under his three overcoats.

We passed Flower Street. It was all lit up and packed with people.

'Thanks for these, mate. I think I'll go local from now on.'

He turned his head and gave me a big, long smile. The Hiace swerved. I'd have preferred him to keep his eyes on the road.

There was no street-lighting as we drove through the embassy area. Vehicle headlights and the security lights on the walls and inside the compounds were doing that job.

'How much do you get paid a day?'

'Eleven dollars, maybe.'

We passed another compound. This one was protected by a sangar, and probably stuffed with Filipinos and CCTV. It didn't look military or diplomatic. Maybe it was one of the private security companies. The big lads might be back hitting the weights in there later if they didn't score.

'OK, here's the deal, Magreb. One hundred a day.'

We swerved again. His face lit up and he took a breath to say something but I raised a hand. 'But only if you concentrate on the fucking road, OK?'

He grinned, but his brow creased as he turned back to the road. 'But what about my work?'

'I'm only going to need you from time to time, and for a couple of days. We'll do it at night. I'll pay for each night whether I use you or not, OK?'

An emphatic nod said fucking right it's OK. And not just maybe.

'Make sure you have your phone with you all the time, so if I'm desperate I can call you.'

He nodded again.

A couple of police 4x4s screamed past, the kind of Toyota flatbeds the muj and later the Taliban had liked to cruise round in. These ones were straight from the showroom. They'd had seats installed on the back so four or five police could sit with their weapons pointing out.

Magreb gestured to his left. 'British embassy, maybe.'

As if I couldn't have guessed. High walls and razor wire weren't enough for the FCO. The set-up looked more like the Old State Building in Basra. HESCOs surrounded it, and a big sangar stuck out on both corners. The barrels of SA80s moved about above the sandbags. Fuck knows how bunkered down the US embassy must have looked.

Magreb wove in and out of the traffic as if he'd receive a bonus if he got there quicker. Maybe he would. Fuck it, it wasn't my money.

I looked behind us at the car seat. 'How old are your kids?'

'Five years, four, three, and two, maybe.'

I slapped him on the shoulder. 'I think you need to spend more time out of the house, mate.'

He didn't really understand but grinned anyway.

We hit a busy junction. Neon glowed. Strings of lightbulbs festooned the fronts of shops selling food, TVs and clothes. Hundreds of locals were out strolling, listening to the music blaring from bootleg music shops, or just sitting drinking tea.

'Where do you live, Magreb? Near the hotel?'

'No, no.' He tapped his window. 'Up there, maybe.'

I looked past him to see headlights climbing steeply in the distance. The two peaks were floodlit, and a couple of mini-lighthouses flashed a warning for short-sighted pilots.

A couple of minutes later, we were almost where we needed to be, maybe. That was what Magreb said, anyway.

We'd driven into an area of dark, narrow residential streets formed from rocks compressed into the mud. Every house hid behind a concrete-block wall. The Hiace lurched in a pothole and we bounced in our seats. There was no street-lighting, and no one about. The only noise as our engine closed down came from a dog going apeshit and the drone of traffic on the main, two or three blocks away.

I sparked up the phone and once more made sure my number would show. 'I'm going to jump out for a while, mate. It could be five minutes, it could be an hour — I'm not sure. You OK to wait here?'

He looked at me wide-eyed. 'For hundred dollar? Maybe!'

I closed the door behind me and stood against a wall. He might be my new mate, but he didn't need to know what was happening, for both our sakes.

The phone rang. I hoped she'd answer. I didn't want to start jumping over walls to find her refuge.

Within five or six rings her voice was in my ear. 'I told you not to call again.'

There was no time to beat about the bush. 'Basma, listen to me — Dominik's in the shit and I need your help. I was with him in Iraq. I was there to get him out of the shit, and that's why I'm here now. You're the only one who can help me do that. I'm outside your house right now. Come out and meet me. I don't want to have to come in.'

There was hesitation. 'Where did you say you are?'

'Right outside. On Ghazni where it meets Sarak.'

More hesitation. 'OK, wait.'

I listened for the rattle of a steel door or to see some light or movement. It took a few minutes, but at last I heard bolts being thrown. The sound came from further down on Ghazni. I ran the fifteen or so metres just to be there the moment she appeared. It was a set of wooden gates, wide enough for vehicles. They were blue, and the paint was peeling.

The right one opened just a few inches. It was on a chain. I moved my face close to the gap. 'Basma, I'm Nick.'

The door closed, the chain rattled, then it opened properly. She came out on to the street and closed it hurriedly behind her, as if that was going to stop me. It wasn't locked.

We stood there awkwardly, like a couple of teenagers on the doorstep after our first date. She came to about chest height, and was even better-looking in the flesh than she had been onscreen.

'Who are you, Nick?'

'I told you, a friend. I was in Basra with him.' Dom seemed to know all the beautiful women. She wasn't local but Arab. 'Dom's missing. He's probably here in the city. Has he made contact with you? Did he come and see you a few days ago? Don't fuck me about, I'm trying to save his life.'

She put her hands to her mouth, but not very convincingly. What I was telling her wasn't news.

She lowered them slowly. 'Do you know what's happened to him?'

'He's been kidnapped. Did he come and see you?' I studied her face. 'He did, didn't he?'

She nodded and sank back against the door.

Now the chink in the armour was exposed, it was time to scream in. 'He came straight here from Basra. You know why? He tell you?'

She tried to look blank. She wasn't very good at this stuff.

I stabbed a finger towards her, stopping just short of her shoulder. 'I've got no fucking time to piss about. I'm here to get him out of the shit. Do you want to help me or not? Did he come and see you?'

She nodded. 'Yes, he was staying here. He wanted somewhere he wouldn't be spotted.'

'Glad we cleared that up. Now, why was he here?'

No more evasion. She gave me eye to eye. 'He's investigating heroin-trafficking. He was trying to fix a meeting with someone from the Taliban. He said they're supplying heroin to the British.'

My finger came up for another stab but she beat me to it. 'No, he didn't say who it was. He didn't want to tell me because he wanted to protect me. All I know is that it's to do with the British. People high up in the embassy, right here in the city. I told him it was madness trying to expose such things, but Dominik said he had a film as security.'

'What did he say about the film? Did he mention Dublin?'

She shook her head. 'I'm sorry, that was all he told me.'

'Tell me about his movements. When did you last see him?'

'He was in and out a lot, mainly at night. He didn't want to be recognized. He said he was seeing fixers, trying to find somebody who could get him a meeting with the main Taliban dealer. I don't think he did — he was getting quite frustrated. Then he went out on Monday night and never returned. I've been worried sick. I didn't know whether to report him missing… I didn't want to go to the embassy because of the connection…'

Her voice trailed off and her hand came up to her mouth once more. This time the shock was genuine. 'Oh, Nick, do you think the British have him in one of their secret prisons? We hear about them… People never come out of those places.'

'Stop there — no, they definitely don't have him. He's been kidnapped. I'm here to get him out.'

A heli rattled high over the city, its navigation lights flashing like strobes. I waited for its noise to fade.

'Basma, there's an American and a Brit been looking for him. They've gone totally local — beards, Afghan dress. The American's very tall, and has ginger hair. You know anything about them?'

Her eyes widened. 'James. Noah James. An animal.' She looked away. She was no longer scared or sad, she was angry. 'They're the scum that sprang up after the Taliban. They use the city like some big anarchy theme park.'

'Why would they be looking for Dom? Are they dealers?'

'Of a kind.' She put both hands together and rested them on her chest. 'The documentary he did about the refuge… he exposed them for what they are. Dominik found some of the girls they'd been keeping high on heroin and brought them here to safety. They hate him, they hate me. We've had to move the safe-house twice because they tracked us down.'

'Where do they hang out?'

'I don't know. They closed down after the film came out, but they'd have started up again somewhere else. Bringing young girls off the hills, turning them into addicts, making them prostitute themselves or carry drugs round the city…'

'How many of them?'

'Sorry, I don't know. They find each other. They gravitate together like pack animals.'

I risked a hand on her shoulder. 'Listen, Basma, it's going to be OK. Nobody knows I'm in the city. Nobody knows I've come to see you. Don't tell anyone. I'll contact you soon. I will get him back.'

I ran back to the Hiace, climbed in next to Magreb and closed the door gently. 'Back to the hotel, mate. We've got a while before we go out again.'

He turned his head. 'The lady — she is… special friend, maybe?'

I laughed. 'No, mate, maybe not. I'm just trying to arrange a reunion, that's all.'

57

It was only nine, still too early to go and visit J's Bar. At least, that was what I thought the Serb had scribbled on my hand. I'd have to wait at least another couple of hours to find out for sure. After dropping me back at the hotel, Magreb had gone to see his family. He was picking me up again at 0215. Maybe.

The plan was to get a weapon, then stake out AM Net until whoever was sending the emails showed up.

I sparked up the laptop and searched for J's Bar on my map, Google and Google Earth. There was no reference to it anywhere — no blogs from journalists talking about the city, no mention of it in news articles, no nothing. I wasn't surprised. It was probably illegal, and that would have nothing to do with being able to obtain a weapon from the place. It would have to do with it selling alcohol.

The address was in the Kartayi Seh district, a couple of Ks south of TV Hill, and a block or two the other side of the Kabul river. According to my map, the Russian embassy was down there too. I wondered why Putin's boys were so far away from the rest of them. Maybe there just wasn't much call for their services, these days. After all their years of liberating the country, they would hardly be flavour of the month. Only a matter of time before the Brits and Americans moved in next door, then.

I'd done as much checking as I could. Finally I could eat, and room service was just snacks.

The only restaurant open downstairs was the Silk Route. It served South East Asian food. I could see from the doorway that almost every table was packed with the élite. Afghan businessmen and diplomats were easy spots. And even in suits and ties instead of uniform, the senior military looked like senior military. This was where the country was being reinvented. This was where the aid, arms and oil clans gathered and had a chat over a couple of hundred dollars' worth of noodles and stir-fry to make sure the reinvention suited the West. I wondered how many multi-million-dollar contracts were changing hands, and how much of the proceeds was getting kicked back under the table.

I was shown to a table for two. The spare white napkin and cutlery were whisked away, and they asked if I wanted the little flower to stay. I didn't, so they took that too. My Pepsi arrived very quickly with some bread.

Three middle-aged women were at the next table, talking to an Afghan man with a Donald Trump-style comb-over. He was dressed like he belonged to the MCC, in a blazer, striped tie and white shirt, and maybe he did. He spoke slowly and carefully in that I'm-foreign-but-I've-been-to-Oxford sort of accent.

The three women wore neatly tailored trouser suits, and tackled their clear chestnut soup like woodpeckers. I knew that was what it was because they'd spent so long discussing it that my green curry had turned up before they'd even made their decision. I also couldn't help overhearing that they had another friend coming, who'd told them to carry on and order. He'd be there when he could.

I concentrated on the table so I didn't have accidental eye-to-eye. In environments like this, everybody thinks they're all part of the same club and wants to draw you into their conversation — even if you're wearing a long-sleeved blue T-shirt and jeans. It can lead very soon to 'Who are you?' and 'What do you do?' and you can find you're digging yourself into a hole.

Two of the women were American, the other a Brit. The Yank at one end of the table had a shock of white hair, more through stress than age by the sound of it. 'I still find the mere sight of a gun so… painful and so… upsetting.' She looked like she was going to burst into tears. Fucking hell, if she'd been here more than a week no wonder she'd ended up with Albert Einstein's barnet.

I got among the curry as the waffle next door went off the pain-in-the-arse scale. They went on about the 'big building project', the 'big factory project' and then the 'big road project'. Mrs Einstein nodded earnestly. 'The sooner they learn our way of doing things, the sooner we can go home.'

Donald sat there nodding and agreeing, but deep down all five of us knew no one was going anywhere in a hurry.

The chat switched to ISAF and its success or failure in the war being waged just a couple of hours away in the mountains. I loved armchair generals. I could listen to them all day. The Brit one even threw in a mention of the Great Game. So many people loved to trot out that old line to illustrate the region's geographical significance and their suddenly acquired detailed knowledge of it. Whatever, there was no disputing Kabul had become one of war's latest boomtowns. Apart from the rebuilding contracts, the whole world knew they were already prospecting for oil up in the north.

I managed to finish not only the curry but also apple strudel and a coffee quicker than they did their starter, and they'd been there when I arrived. I'd often wondered if I had a bit of Arab in me. When it came to food, I just wanted to eat, belch and fuck off.

I also had to prepare and pack my Bergen for tomorrow. Once Magreb picked me up, I wouldn't be back until Saturday. By the morning, I'd either have got Dom back or he'd be dead.

'Hello, Nick, this is a strange place to write about being' — the Australian who'd sat next to me on the plane put his fingers in the air to make the quote sign as he sat and joined them — 'Outside the Comfort Zone…' He gave me one of those knowing nods that diplomats do in films.

I left him with his friends. I felt more at home with Magreb.

58

Magreb had parked the Hiace between two truck containers while I checked my map. We were looking out over a sort of village square a couple of hundred metres wide. In the middle stood a small 1950s Russian anti-tank gun with a steel plate at either side of the barrel. The rubber tyres were decaying; it seemed to be there as decoration. Maybe the people of Russia couldn't afford to donate a shiny new Toyota.

The road we'd taken off the main drag south was tarmac and pothole-free. The two-storey, flat-roofed concrete houses either side of it seemed a lot more upscale than round Basma's way. All of them sheltered behind walls, security lights and rolls of razor wire. Many had plywood guard huts. A couple looked like they'd been on the wrong end of a B52's payload, but even so, the rubble had been neatly swept up and piled inside their remains.

Headlights came up the road behind us and carved through the square. The beam bounced along the different-coloured walls before eventually reaching the gates of the corner house. They swung open.

'That has to be J's, mate.' I showed him my hand. 'House fifty, blue gates, in the corner.'

The area might be high-rent by Kabul standards but Magreb didn't like being there. 'Mr Nick, I hear about this place. Is dangerous, maybe. Bad people come here. Very bad. I wait, maybe, take you back to hotel, be safe.'

Two silhouettes moved round the vehicle to check it before it drove inside.

'Don't worry about it, mate. Just drop me off and I'll give you a call later, yeah?'

The headlights splashed across more vehicles inside the compound, and I saw house lights still further on. The gates closed as I pulled out three hundred-dollar bills and tried to hand them over. 'This is for tonight and the next two. Remember, I said I'd pay you anyway.'

He took them, but gave two back. 'You pay me when I work, Mr Nick.' He pocketed the equivalent of nine days' pay and the rest went back into my jeans.

I climbed out and lifted my Bergen from the footwell. 'OK, mate. But in my book, if you're on standby for a call, that's working.'

He held out a hand to stop me closing the door just yet. 'You really not want me wait and take you back to hotel? Your friend look too nice be with man who go to this place.'

More headlights bounced towards us from the main.

'I'll call you tomorrow. Go on, mate. Go and get your head down.'

I closed the door gently and took the Hiace's place between the containers as Magreb drove off.

An Italian armoured-vehicle two-ship trundled into the square, probably a neighbour-hood-watch thing to make the residents feel safe. Two guys on.50 cals stuck out of the tops. They did a lap before heading off to look good elsewhere.

I had a quick scratch of the sutures, swung the Bergen over my shoulder, then moved out of the gap and made my way across the packed-mud square. At the gate of number fifty, I could hear the steady thump of music. I gave it a couple of bangs.

A small peephole slid open. It was too dark to see eyes.

'No car? You no car?'

'I live just round the corner, mate. No need. You letting me in or what?'

The gate opened just enough for me to slip through. A Tilley lamp hissed away inside yet another plywood guardhouse. Blankets were heaped on the floor. A kettle steamed above a portable gas burner.

The music got louder and light spilt from a door fifty or so metres away. Vehicles looked more abandoned than parked, like the place was so hot the punters couldn't wait to get in.

59

The two guards were bearded lads in their fifties. They toted AKs and had Osprey, but without the collars and bat-wings.

They shone their torches to draw my attention to a couple of printed signs, covered with dirty plastic and pinned to the plywood of their hut.

One said: Two more killed last week. No more weapons allowed in the house. Leave them in your vehicles. We will search you.

And the other: If you have a gun or no folding money, you get no drink or fun with the honey.

They pointed at my Bergen. 'In here, leave here.'

I smiled as I dropped it from my shoulder. 'No, no, mate, I'm going to keep it with me. You can search it here, yeah?' I stepped inside and unzipped the top. 'See? No guns.'

One knelt and had a rummage while I held up my hands for the other to frisk me. It wasn't a very good search: Afghans don't like touching strangers that intimately. They hold hands with each other as they walk down the road, but they aren't too keen to feel someone's bollocks to see if there's a little revolver nestling between his legs.

My Gunga Din gear came out and was piled on the floor, along with my map, my bum-bag, now stuffed with money instead of toilet paper, and the Yes Man's phone wrapped up in a black-and-white shemag, the sort the two girls in the Gandamack should have had. None of it raised an eyebrow. All they were interested in was weapons.

Next out was my jar of Marmite. The guy held it up like he thought it was high explosive.

I smiled and squatted down next to him. I undid the lid and mimed digging in with an imaginary spoon. 'Mmm, yum-yum.' I dipped in a finger and gave it a suck. I offered him some. He took a sniff and recoiled. The other lad had a taste, and looked like he was going to throw up.

'You either love it, mate, or hate it.' I packed it away as if I'd been given permission to go.

I shook them both by the hand before I turned and left.

The music got even louder as I picked my way round the vehicles and towards the large two-storey house.

Two more beards sat cradling AKs on the doorstep. They had no body armour, and looked bored. They waved me through.

I pushed open the heavy wooden door and felt like I was about to step into a Wild West saloon. A thick fug of cigarette smoke hung in the air, but this being Kabul, it was sickly sweet. Instead of a pianist on a honky-tonk, Justin Timberlake yelled from invisible speakers. Or maybe Justin was actually there — it was impossible to see much beyond the end of your nose.

The whole of the ground floor seemed to consist of one huge room. Old sofas and armchairs were dotted around on bare, beer-soaked floorboards. Dining- and coffee-tables had been stained and bleached by years of spillages and cigarette burns.

There was a sea of faces, and every guy was white. The girls looked Pakistani. Some were dressed in green Russian uniforms with drunken-sailor type hats. Some were in saris. The rest catered for other tastes as they tottered round serving drinks in high heels, ripped fishnets and tight mini-skirts.

There were lots of wide eyes, sunk behind gaunt cheeks, just like in any other opium den on the planet.

60

I ventured further in and found it wasn't just whores and punters having fun. Small monkeys, about a foot from head to tail, jumped about the place dressed in little camouflage uniforms. Miniature plastic AKs were strapped to their backs. They jumped on tables and grabbed drinks or cigarettes. One was smoking a joint. Another soaked its face fur with beer as it tried to drink from a can.

I headed towards the one boy who looked as though he still paid fleeting visits to my planet. He had a straggly beard that came down to his chest and made him look like he should be taking over Middle Earth from the Good Wizard. His hair was tied back in a ponytail. He stood behind a makeshift bar in the corner.

Bottles were stacked on shelves. Pictures, flags, college pennants, all sorts were plastered across the wall: Union flags, Stars and Stripes, soccer teams, American-football sides. A poster showed Mel Gibson doing his Braveheart thing. His face was peppered with 9mm holes. The ceiling was the same. There were so many strike marks it looked like a dartboard. This room had seen a few party-size bursts, that was for sure. Either the president was too shit scared to shut the place down or he was a regular.

I could hear Brits, Americans, French, Italians. There were other languages I couldn't make out over the music, but then I heard one I did recognize, even with Justin going full blast.

The Serbs sat on a sofa; each had a whore on his lap. Mr Sheen's fifteen-year-old wore a sari that was up round her waist. Top Lip's was in Red Star gear. She kept stroking his long greasy hair away from his sweating face. Mr Sheen pushed his girl out the way so he could gob off to his mate. Then he leant back and shouted at a group of three guys I took to be Americans. He jabbed a finger at them and repeated himself, but they ignored him and carried on laughing and drinking.

The whole lot were probably freelancers, bounty-hunters drawn here from all over the world like gold prospectors to the Klondike. Only here the prize was Osama, al-Qaeda and any of the Taliban leadership. There was still a price of something like fifty million dollars on bin Laden's head, but most of these guys wouldn't have a clue where to start.

I'd played with the idea of coming here myself for a while, until I did a little digging. It soon became clear I'd be hanging around like this lot. Some had resorted to séances in one of Osama's old houses in the city, the one he'd used to accommodate wives number one and two. They'd legged it when the Americans started bombing, leaving behind just an old bra and a kettle.

Their landlord, the next-door neighbour, wasn't happy. Bin Laden owed him five hundred dollars in rent so he had to make up the cash somehow. He came up with the ingenious idea of installing a few local Mystic Megs, lighting a couple of candles and charging bounty-hunters through the nose to come and get guidance from the other side.

Nobody challenged me. In a place like this nobody asks you your business, and nobody gives you eye-to-eye. Not that most of the guys there tonight could have focused that well anyway.

A couple of monkeys sat and licked at puddles of beer. Maybe they'd had their cans confiscated.

Pictures ripped from magazines were stuck to the wall. The Tora Bora caves getting the good news from a squadron of B52s. Members of the Northern Alliance grinning as they propped up dead Taliban. A double-page spread from a porn mag of two guys and a girl, with Bush's and Musharraf's heads stuck over the men's at either end, and Blair as the meat in the sandwich.

The bar was built entirely from old steel mortar-round containers. They were a bit rusty, but the Cyrillic writing was still visible. The top was a couple of beer-soaked planks.

A couple of girls in laddered fishnets took drinks away on trays. My eyes stung from the smoke. The wizard behind the bar took a long look at my Bergen. 'You planning to stay the weekend, man?' The shelf behind him was packed with whisky bottles. A monkey, either drugged or drunk, lay flat out on his back, an arm and a leg dangling into space. The bottles had been relabelled with pictures from magazines. Hitler stood in the Bavarian mountains. Mussolini looked dead hard with his helmet on. Bin Laden, in his robes and combat jacket, nursed his AK beneath the CNN logo.

'No, mate.' I had to lean across the bar and meet him half-way to make sure I could be heard. 'I was told I could buy protection here. I'm heading south and I need at least a short.'

He certainly had enough protection at his feet. Parked on the lowest shelf was an HK53, a sort of 5.56 version of the MP5. It was loaded with a thirty-round mag and two more, taped together, head-to-toe, sat within easy reach.

61

'You on Osama watch?'

'Nah, just fishing about for work.'

The look on his face said he'd heard that one too many times before. 'You're going the wrong way, man. He's up north.'

I smiled and waited for a yes or no. If he didn't have a weapon, I'd try my luck in the car park. But it would be risky with the guards out there, and I had no time to fuck about.

He pointed through an open doorway that led to the back of the house. The door had been removed — or pulled off its hinges. 'Up the stairs, look for Stu.'

Justin finally shut up and some Indian music came on. A couple of girls in saris got up and began gyrating. The wizard gripped my arm. 'I'm telling you, he's with those Pakistani bitches way up north, getting high and laughing at us all, man.'

The flat-out monkey awoke with a jolt, maybe startled by the change of music. He rolled right off the shelf and landed in a puddle of beer on the floor. He got to his feet and staggered away to war, leaving his hat behind. But, like a good soldier, he kept his weapon with him.

The corridor took me to a set of stairs. A naked bulb burnt on the landing. The noise filtering down was a mix of drunken shouts and girly squeals.

Somebody had propped a mannequin against the wall at the top of the stairs. They'd given him a rubber bin Laden mask. An unlit cigarette dangled from the mouth, and he was plastered with lipstick and eye-shadow. The finishing touch was a pair of fake women's breasts, the sort the local dickhead would wear while cooking a barbecue.

A rough Jock voice came from a room at the far end. I followed it. That door was missing too. The ones either side of it were intact and closed. From behind them came the rhythmic pounding of mattress springs and a chorus of moans and groans.

The open room was piled high with six packs of plastic two-litre water-bottles. The bare floorboards were riddled with holes. The wood was splintered inwards. No wonder weapons weren't allowed downstairs. Punters who'd come up for a shag would have ended up with their bollocks shot off. Not much repeat business in that.

The walls were plastered with more pictures and magazine cuttings. The connecting door to my right seemed to be a shrine to Jonathan 'Jack' Idema. I remembered him. He'd become world news when he'd got caught running his own private interrogation centre a few years ago. During his trial, he said he'd been given a passport and visa by an unnamed American agency. He claimed he'd been fitted up — the FBI was out to get him because he refused to name the sources who had tipped him off about a nuclear smuggling operation in Lithuania.

Idema might have been away with the fairies, but his victims weren't. The pictures on the door showed what the police had found inside his homemade torture chamber. Three Afghans hung upside down from the ceiling, naked and totally covered with blisters and burns from boiling water. Another eighteen or nineteen were found dead in a trunk. They'd crammed the poor fuckers in there and locked the lid. Three more were in a cupboard, their flesh whipped raw.

The pictures could have come straight from the Yes Man's folder.

62

The shrine shifted suddenly as the connecting door opened. One of the girls came out carrying a red plastic bowl, some liquid soap and an old grey towel that had probably once been white.

The picture on the door was now at an angle but I could still see our mate Jack in court, pointing and ranting from the dock. He had a beard, and wore sunglasses and combat fatigues with US flags stitched all over them. I remembered him claiming he'd been working for the US government and had received orders from Donald Rumsfeld. Nothing to do with multimillion- dollar bounties, of course. Fuck it, I might still have a go myself when this was over.

I passed the door to see a stained stripy mattress. Sprawled across it, an overweight and hairy white man scratched his bollocks with one hand and smoked with the other. Next to his pile of clothes on the floor, a used condom leaked its contents.

'Stu?'

His well-fed head lifted from the mattress long enough for him to suck in another lungful of nicotine. 'Fuck off.' His French accent certainly didn't belong to a Stu.

I carried on to the end of the corridor.

'Stu?'

The guy in the open room was playing chess with a young local lad, maybe fifteen at a push. Their board lay across a couple of cases of Miller Lite.

His head jerked up. 'Aye?'

It was a challenge, not an answer, and it came straight from the Gorbals. He had a wiry grey barnet and a beard that needed a good trim. So did his nostril hair, which grew straight into his moustache. He was early sixties, with pale skin and a nose that had been broken so many times it was almost flat. I nodded appreciatively at his blue Hawaiian shirt. 'Nice. The guy from downstairs sent me. I'm looking for a short. I was in the Gandamack and—'

'I know.' His eyes were back on the chessboard but he put up a hand. 'They called. The two of them want to shoot up for free if I sell you something. What am I? A fucking charity?' His head came up slowly. 'You people, you never give up, do you? Why have you come all this fucking way? English, I suppose?'

His attention went back to the chessboard. The white pieces were carved soldiers, Western-style, with helmets and body armour.

He stood up and waffled in local to the boy. Whatever he was saying, it sounded along the lines of 'Move any of these and you're history.'

I looked at the black pieces. They had turbans, beards and Gunga Din kit.

He looked me up and down as he came towards me. 'You've come to play big boys' games and you don't even have the brains to sort yourself out with a fucking weapon. What are you, son? A fucking bank clerk, thinking all this shite is some sort of great adventure?'

He needed a dental plan even more than Magreb. The few teeth that weren't black had an inch of nicotine on them. And he stank.

I nodded and smiled. He had what I wanted. 'I just need a weapon.'

'You got money?'

I stepped back from his BO. 'Enough.'

'What are we waiting for, then?' He turned back to the light-skinned boy and gave him another warning. He left the room and I followed. I grabbed a bottle of water from a pack that was already ripped open.

We passed the sound of more humping and grunting and headed downstairs. We went through the bar just as the dancing girls, now semi-naked, were having some fun with empty beer bottles. I followed the Jock through a door, into what would once have been the kitchen.

Two girls stood next to the sink, chatting away together and soaping themselves with flannels as if we weren't there.

The Jock led me across to two rusty and disconnected chest freezers with hasps and padlocks drilled into them. He unlocked one and lifted the lid to expose longs and shorts of all makes and sizes.

This place didn't do pub grub.

63

I dug around in what amounted to a big collection of rust.

'The semi-auto pistols are two hundred. Revolvers one fifty. AKs two fifty. Anything else, I'll tell you.'

'You heard of a Polish guy, Dominik Condratowicz?'

He leant against the other freezer, eyeing the two girls. They were now up on chairs and squatting over the sink to give themselves a final rinse with running water.

'No. That who you gonna kill with one of these fucking things?'

I picked out an old MP5 and fished about for some mags. There were two. 'You got any nine-millimetre for this?'

He slapped the freezer beneath him but kept his eyes on the girls. One was towelling herself and the one I'd seen upstairs was giving her makeup a bit of a retouch, ready for the next round. 'I've got to keep the fucking lot locked up. Fucking thieving bastards.'

The MP5 was knackered and rusty. I needed to look inside to check it had the basics — like a firing pin. These Heckler & Kochs were very quick to disassemble. I pushed back on the two pins at the rear, which opened up the backplate and one end of the pistol grip.

He was taking an interest in me now that he saw I knew what I was doing.

I pulled out the working parts. There was nothing but rust around the chamber, and so much corrosion in the barrel I could only just about see light through it.

'What about Noah James?'

The Jock's eyes jerked away from the girls. He went ballistic. 'Fucking animal! You anything to do with him?'

'No, just heard he was about. You know where?'

I started to reassemble the weapon.

His finger came up to my face. As long as his breath stayed away that was fine. 'I don't fucking know and don't care. If they come here again I'll do Kabul a favour and kill the shites myself.'

'He come in with the Brit?'

'Joey fucking Wallings. Arsehole used to work here. He was a good lad until the gear got him.' The Jock mimed injecting his arm. 'Fucked him up and he started running with James. They tried to sell me Afghan whores. So smacked up, some of them, they could hardly stand.' He pointed at the legs and heads of the girls at the sink. 'Fucking burns all over them, whip-marks, cuts… They stole them from villages, sick fucks.'

He sat on the freezer and lit a Chesterfield with a Zippo. He sucked deeply to calm himself. His eyes flicked down towards the MP5. 'You not interested?'

I shook my head and put the weapon back in the freezer.

'Well, maybe you're not some bank clerk.' He nodded at the weapons. 'They're all shite.'

I spotted a mini Uzi, like the regular Uzi only a lot shorter. It was stuck under a pile of rusty old.303 Lee Enfields, probably left over from the Second World War.

I pulled it out to discover it was a Mini-Ero, a shameless copy. This one was the older version, with pistol grip safety and mag housing, and big chunky working parts that operated on the blowback system. The only difference I could see was that the safety-catch markings were in Serbo-Croat.

The girls left and Stu helped himself to a handful of arse from both on their way out.

The Mini-Ero wasn't in bad nick. A bit rusty, but at least it had a firing pin.

I'd always thought the Uzi overrated. After the Six Day War it got rave reviews it didn't deserve. Both the Uzi and the mini Uzi were heavy for their size. Almost every comparable weapon did the same job more efficiently. It was just marketing that made the weapon so popular in the eyes of people who didn't use them. Bank clerks and south London drug-dealers would be the only people ignorant enough to part with good money for one.

There were three mags taped round the barrel. 'I'll take this and two hundred nine-millimetre. How much is that going to set me back?'

Whatever the figure should have been, he probably doubled it. 'Three hundred.'

No point haggling. 'Done.'

He unlocked the freezer as I put the weapon back together. I took off my Bergen, bunged in the bottle of water, and waited to add the weapon, mags and rounds.

'You going south for long?' He handed me four cardboard boxes of fifty 9mm and I ripped one open. I'd always found it easy to speed-load, even as a boy soldier. Many guys try to position the rounds in their hands so that the percussion cap is going to be fed in first, but the easiest thing is to pick the things up and turn them between your thumb and forefinger as you press them into the magazine.

'Don't know.'

'Well, son' — he locked up the ammo freezer— 'you come back with that thing and I'll buy it back. But I don't give money, we just trade with honey.'

He locked up the first freezer and came over to do the same to the second. I moved the magazines and kit. 'That's how half of these shites pay. Some, they come in, they've got fuck-all left but their weapons.'

I shrugged. 'Maybe I'll bring it back.'

'I'm not sticking my nose in your business, son, but that James shite and his like — stay away from them. They're fucking acid.'

I finished the first mag.

'You liked my chessboard, didn't you?'

'Yeah, nice.'

'My boy.' He was grinning. 'He carved them. He's good at that sort of thing. It's a special edition, black Taliban, white ISAF. I'm going to try and get it marketed.'

He took a last drag and flicked the butt on to the floor. 'You see, son, you got the Taliban pawns in turbans, but the ISAF pawns, none of them match. That's because we spend so much time out here wondering if they're on the same fucking side.'

I was treated to another flash of his black stumps. 'If it was going to be true to life, obviously the Taliban king would be missing — there'd just be a video of him in a cave. And no Taliban knights, no Taliban castles. They'd all be bishops, see — mad mullahs.

'And once the ISAF pieces were set up, most of them would refuse to move from their own squares. The bishops, well, they'd have to be paid regularly or they'd move over to the Taliban side. Are you getting this, son?'

I sort of was and sort of wasn't, but I nodded anyway to make him feel a bit better. I finished loading the last mag and counted out three hundred-dollar bills.

'Sorry for being a bit of a shite with you in the beginning, son. But when they called they said you were one of those cowboys. People like that, they come here and fuck it up for everybody else who's trying to make a living.'

'No worries, mate.'

The money went into his jeans pocket.

I shoved the mags and spare ammunition into my Bergen and he fired up another Chesterfield.

The other side of the door, somebody loosed off a double-tap in the bar. The music kept playing, but the background noise changed. Girls screamed. Men shouted, more pissed off than afraid.

I threw everything except the weapon and a mag on top of the Gunga Din outfit and hoisted the Bergen on to my back.

Somebody out there yelled for calm, but the monkeys weren't having any of it. They screeched their heads off.

There was another shot, then a burst of.53 on automatic drowned them out.

64

The cocking handle was sited on the top of the weapon. I shoved a mag into the housing in the pistol grip and listened for it to click home, then pulled back.

The Jock was off the Richter scale. 'I'm trying to run a fucking business here!'

He stormed out and I went straight to the back door. I'd got what I'd come for. Time to fuck off. But everything round the back was more than just locked: nails had been punched through the door into the frame. I decided to wait for things to calm down in the bar. It wasn't my fight.

I went to the part-open door. Stu was trying to make himself heard over the music. The two Serbs were up on their feet and carrying. Mr Sheen had rammed his pistol into the fifteen-year-old's mouth. She was on the sofa, her head pushed hard against the backrest. Her chest heaved with fright and tears streamed down her face.

One of the Americans he'd been yelling at before lay motionless on the floor behind her. He had a hole in the side of his head that leaked on to the wood.

The old wizard lay in a pool of blood this side of the bar. His.53 lay next to him, the empty cases scattered about.

Everybody else had faded to the edges, but Stu was as close to the Serb as he could get. 'Fuck off, and don't come back. I don't want no more of your shite. Go!'

They weren't impressed. Top Lip pointed his weapon at Stu's head. Like Mr Sheen's, it looked to be a PPK, a small weapon, easy to hide down by your bollocks. 'No. We're staying.'

Mr Sheen nodded back to the body and his three mates hovering round it. 'That fuck started this. They should be kicked out. Kick them out now, or we will kill your whore.'

Stu was coming to the boil. 'I don't think you heard me right, son. I'm not having no more of your shite—'

Mr Sheen pulled the trigger.

Settee stuffing exploded behind her head, then got soaked with blood and brain. The monkeys' screeches filled the air once more.

Fuck this. Stu was about to get it and I might be stuck here all night.

Gripping the Mini-Ero like it was a pistol, arm straight out, right hand on the pistol grip, left hand over right and pushing back with a bent arm to make a stable platform for the weapon, I kicked the door wide open and charged into the room.

The two of them were straight ahead of me, maybe eight or nine metres away.

I stood ready to fire, the web of my hand hard against the pistol grip to release the safety, both eyes open, legs shoulder-width apart, left foot forward, left toe pointing where I was intending to shoot. Almost the classic shooting-range stance, so there could be no doubt that I knew what I was doing.

They swung to face me. There was fuck-all to say. They knew what was required. But Stu didn't want them to be in any doubt. 'I told you — fuck off, don't come back. Fucking animals.'

He was just noise to them. It was me they stared at.

Would I? Would I open up?

My eyes broadcast I would. They were clear — and the weapon stayed rock steady.

They exchanged a glance. Very slowly, their PPKs came down. Without saying a word, they walked to the door. Mr Sheen wiped the girl's blood off his hands on a seat cover on his way out.

Stu bellowed for his son. He came running downstairs. Then, as the Serbs' wagon sparked up, he called for the guards. They stumbled in and he barked commands. They shouldered their AKs and started dragging the bodies away.

Stu looked from them to his boy, and then to me. He stretched out a hand. In it was my three hundred.

'I owe you, lad. Fucking animals, they should leave that sort of shit out on the street.'

The guards were getting very busy now the shooting had stopped. They grabbed hold of the wizard's feet and dragged him past. We both looked down.

Stu spat on his face. 'He was also a shite. He gave two of the girls gonorrhoea last month.'

The boy came over to his father and he slapped him affectionately round the back of his head. 'One of them's his mother.'

I followed the body outside and stepped back into the shadows as the Serbs' 4x4 screamed out of the compound.

I pulled out the mobile and dialled. 'I'm going to AM Net. I'll phone you when I get there. Be ready for the call.'

I threw the phone back into the Bergen and got out the Gunga Din gear. I wasn't going to use Magreb. I didn't want him hurt. He also needed to keep his job, and if things got noisy I didn't want to be worrying about him.

I had a long walk ahead.

65

The old guy who'd joined me on the left-hand bench under the corrugated-iron canopy pointed at the manic traffic and waved his arm with disgust. I agreed. Then he said something else and clearly expected an answer. I pointed at my ear and made a strangled sound. He nodded knowingly and looked to the other bench for someone to chat to just as the Yes Man's phone vibrated in my hand. I pushed my head down under my shemag. Now I was mad as well as deaf and dumb.

'No sign?' He sounded edgy. 'You still have eyes on?'

I cupped my hand over the phone to make doubly sure this stayed local. 'Don't call unless he's online. I'm trying to do my fucking job. You just stand by and do yours.'

I cut the call. It wasn't the time to worry about him being a bit sensitive about profanity.

One of the young lads who'd been fanning the fire in the metal trough last night came out of the kebab shop carrying a tray. He went into AM Net.

I was facing the end of Flower Street, on the other side of Jadayi Sulh. Further down the main to my left, on the next junction, was the Iranian embassy. My new mates outside were probably having a hot brew as they sat and watched the traffic. I was almost becoming a local.

The only thing that mattered right now was finding whoever was sending Siobhan the emails and follow him — or her. The target might be on foot or might have a vehicle. A vehicle would be nice. I could just go back to the fixer and he'd find out the registered keeper. Even in places like Baghdad it was simple to trace a driver by his plate. US patrols were tasked to hunt specifically for unlicensed or unplated vehicles. It's one of the first things that had to be done to show some semblance of order. Every self-respecting terrorist or kidnapper operating in a city knows to keep his paperwork up to date. In the early days, too many got pulled over with a truckload of explosives or bodies wrapped in gaffer-tape in the boot.

An explosion rumbled up from the south, the direction of TV Hill. Nobody paid a blind bit of attention. Even the sparrows stayed chirping in the trees. The old guys on the bench had a bit of a tut to each other and waved their arms, but that was about it. They left me out of their gang this time.

It had been a long night's walk from the Jock's place. After changing into the Gunga Din gear, I'd used the bottle of water to mix scoops of Marmite into a lumpy cream that I worked into my face and hands. It stained me up a treat, but I smelt like a toasted sandwich.

I'd got here three hours ago. The shop had opened just before seven. Only four people had gone in — and one of those had been the old man who'd opened the shutters and now sat sipping his tea. The other three had been smartly dressed, Western-style, and in and out within ten minutes.

Soon afterwards the old men started filling up the benches. Nobody gave my Marmite tan a second glance. Some took a second or two to give me the once-over, same as they would with any stranger, but then they got on with their lives. They'd been there the best part of an hour. It couldn't be a bus stop. Maybe they were queuing up to ask where I got my aftershave.

The plan was simple. I sat there and kept the trigger on AM Net, while the Yes Man stagged on in London, waiting for the next email to be sent. There would be a fifteen-second delay between Siobhan receiving it and it popping up on his screen.

This wasn't an ideal spot to be keeping the trigger from because of the main in between. Vehicles cut my view and the target became unsighted for seconds at a time. But it was the best I could do. Anywhere else, I'd stand out like a bulldog's bollocks.

Flower Street was too narrow to hang about unobtrusively, and there were no options left or right close enough to the target where I could step back into the shadows. If the target came out of AM Net and headed my way, we'd have a head-on.

I couldn't just walk up and down the street, waiting. This was the city of kidnappers and suicide-bombers. Their kids were running around delivering tea and cooking kebabs. So there I sat with the main drag between me and the target.

Sirens warbled. The gates to my left swung open and two Merc ambulances screamed out, heading south. The traffic stopped briefly to let them through, then the trigger on the shop disappeared intermittently again as more vehicles drove between us.

There were a lot of old jeeps that had been rebuilt to carry sixteen people on the tail-bed. They obviously kept these things on the road until they finally fell apart. There was plenty of old Russian gear still about as well: big trucks with bulbous noses that were made in the 1980s but might have been at the siege of Stalingrad. They laboured up and down blocking my view, overloaded with bricks and rubble.

My normal clothes, the map, the Mini-Ero and mags were stuffed into my Bergen, which I'd kept on my back. The straps were loosened so it fell back and rested on the top of the bench. My arm itched and I hadn't resisted much up to now.

The young lad came back out of the target with an empty tray. I could have done with a brew right now. I eyed the two old guys selling tea on the corner at the other side of the road, under the sign pointing to AM Net. They'd sparked it up about an hour ago and were doing a brisk trade. If only…

Another guy went into AM Net — maybe young, I couldn't tell under the beard and cowpat.

I gripped the phone.

A knackered truck pulled up at the kerb and a gang of workers with shovels clambered out. They moved further along and started having a go at the ditches. A few had black and white shemags like mine, but all wore orange fluorescent jackets over their other gear. Health and Safety had even weaselled their way into Kabul. They should have had a look round the back of the Jock's place.

He came back out of AM Net. The Yes Man hadn't rung.

I used the phone to give the sutures another rub instead. The traffic was binding, sometimes stopping altogether and blocking my view.

It was just after half eight when I felt more vibrations in my hand.

I got my head down again but strained to keep my eyes on target. 'They online?'

'Yes…' He hesitated, perhaps checking monitors. 'Is it him? Do you have Dominik?'

'No.' I kept my eyes on AM Net, waiting for the sender to sign off and come out.

'The email has confirmed proof of life. The tree fell on John's BMW in the storm last winter.'

The traffic snarled in front of me again. I kept my head pressed firmly to the phone.

The Yes Man read out the reply word for word as it came up on his screen. ' "They — are — getting — impatient — please — hurry…"' Shit. Two trucks blocked my line of sight. I'd lost the trigger again. I cut him short. 'I don't give a fuck what's being said. Call me when the link closes down.'

'Just has.'

I closed down, too, and slipped the phone back into my pocket. I got up, resisting the temptation to run like a lunatic. I smiled goodbye to my friends and stepped off the pavement.

I squeezed between the two trucks and reached the other side by the tea stall. I checked right, then left, then back up towards the embassy, as if I was meeting a friend. There was no one but pepper-pots and kids within the time and distance anyone could have walked from AM Net.

I played phone call to the mate and glanced through the target window as I crossed Flower towards it.

I could see the old man near the window, but no one else.

I'd fucked up big-time.

66

The young lad brushed past me with another tray of tea glasses. He disappeared into a baker's as I started checking down Flower. There was fuck all else I could do.

I walked quickly down the street, head up. I was going to have to risk appearing suspicious. If I didn't find anyone who looked like a possible target I was fucked anyway.

A group of surly young guys who were probably best mates with the ones chasing me last night moved towards me, but carried on past.

It was no more than a hundred to the junction where my reception committee had been waiting. It was much busier than this stretch.

My arms were pumping now. The main was a blur of orange-and-whites.

Bodies milled on both corners, talking and smoking. Women with shopping bags wove their way through.

I stopped and looked around. One cowpat, moving across Flower in the distance, was taller, much taller than the others.

I ran.

A taxi pulled up, an old Mazda estate, and I saw him slide into the back seat. As it pulled away, I couldn't believe what I was about to do. I waved frantically at the nearest orange-and-white and did the same.

67

I jumped into the back. The driver had a white beard and black teeth, and looked about eighty. He waffled some kind of greeting. I shoved my hand into my bum-bag and dragged out a bundle of bills. 'Let's go! That taxi! Follow, follow!'

I waved my hand urgently but he seemed more interested in the stink of Marmite. I shoved a couple of tens into his gnarled brown hand. 'Let's go! Chop-chop!'

He finally pulled away. He studied me in his rear-view, which had enough beads hanging off it to decorate a mosque.

The Yes Man's mobile vibrated in my baggy pockets. Fuck him, he could wait.

I leant forward between the two front seats, eyes skinned for the Mazda. I tried to stay all smiles as I gave his bony old shoulder a friendly squeeze. 'That's it, matey, let's go get that wagon!'

I shoved another note at him.

It was just after nine. The sun was behind us. TV Hill was on the left. We were heading west.

The road narrowed. The shops petered out. Concrete, flat-roofed two-storey houses took their place. I peered through the dusty, cracked windscreen but there was no sign of the orange-and-white estate.

A vehicle pulled out of our lane up ahead and cut left across the oncoming traffic.

'There! That taxi! Follow that taxi!'

I waved my hands and tried to get him to see what I wanted. He didn't understand until I produced another ten.

The orange-and-white disappeared down a compacted-rock road. It was definitely two up. A large body sat rear right. It didn't move, didn't check behind.

I rolled down the window. The noise and heat of the outside world rushed in. 'That's it. Left, yeah? That taxi, yeah?'

He grinned knowingly as he spun the wheel to get in among the oncoming traffic. He'd probably seen that bloke with a beard pull the same stunt in a hundred Bollywood films as he fought big-time crime in downtown Delhi.

He got halfway across the road and slammed on the brakes. I pitched forward. Two gleaming white GMC suburbans, all blacked-out glass, sped towards us. Red and blue lights flashed behind radiator grilles to tell us to keep the fuck out of the way. These boys were stopping for no one.

We turned in their wake. TV Hill was now ahead. We were heading south.

I kept eyes on target. The plume of dust that billowed behind it was maybe a hundred and fifty further ahead. A gang of kids cleaning cars had to jump out of the way as we slewed across the gravel.

The orange-and-white hung another left.

'That's it, matey!'

Our car slowed. He still faced forward, but gave me a sideways glance.

'Dodgy bastard!' I jammed another ten his way and he chuckled as we picked up speed.

We followed the Mazda through the residential area, sometimes fifty behind, sometimes more. A main drag was coming up in the distance, but I could see a tailback stretching almost all the way to us. I ripped off my Bergen and grabbed the map.

TV Hill was now about a K ahead. I could clearly see the antennae farms on the two peaks. The main had to be Salang Wat. A left would take us back to the city centre. A right would take us north-west — out of the city and off the edge of the world.

We crept towards the main. The target was now about four vehicles in front.

The driver was chatting away now as if I was his long-lost brother. He smiled and sniffed the air. I could tell he was dying to ask the aftershave question.

Fuck it. I dug in the Bergen, eyes never off the target, got hold of the Marmite jar and opened it. I held it out so he could have a smell. He winced. It was official: Afghans definitely didn't like the stuff.

We rolled forward a couple of vehicle lengths. My face was covered with sweat, and that made the smell even worse. I could finally see the smouldering remains of a car bomb and the carnage it had created in the open-air market.

Italian armoured vehicles formed a partial roadblock, their.50 cals pointing every which way. Soldiers took cover in doorways while traffic cops in drunken-sailor hats shouted and pointed at the approaching traffic.

Body parts were scattered among the shattered metal and glass that surrounded the crater. Fire engines sprayed white foam as the larger pieces of the dead were retrieved and the injured were helped towards any available vehicle. The two Merc ambulances couldn't cope.

The market seemed to stretch all the way to the bottom of TV Hill. There it morphed into a shanty that reached most of the way to the summit. Somewhere in the sea of mud and corrugated iron lived Magreb, Mrs Magreb, and their four little boys.

68

The troops were diverting traffic to the right, out of town. The tailback had formed because everybody wanted to go left.

The area had been cordoned off big-time. Hundreds of shoppers and stall-holders were being herded away from the city side of the market.

The Yes Man's mobile kicked off again just as I saw our target raise his to his ear. I let it vibrate.

The street was wide and long, with a concrete central divide. Both sides were lined with what might one day be two-storey shops. Steel reinforcing rods stuck out of the first storey, like there was some Greek-style building tax dodge going on. Dead animals hung outside one, waiting to be skinned. Sparkling alloy wheels were piled outside another. The next down sold chip rolls.

Two helicopters circled our side of TV Hill. Police and military with white lollipops swarmed everywhere, marshalling the traffic like airport ground controllers.

The Mazda was only three ahead, but with so many orange-and-whites in the queue we blended in fine.

I checked the map again. Once we'd passed the hill, the diversion had to start heading south soon or we'd be up in the mountains.

We came to a spot where armoured vehicles had shifted the concrete blocks that divided the lanes. A cop in a drunken-sailor hat fed himself a chip roll with one hand and directed the traffic with the other. Sure enough, we headed south. We'd soon be in Khushal Mena, Basma's part of town.

It cost me another ten dollars. I tried five, but it seemed to make something go wrong with the throttle cable. At least he'd learnt one word of English. As I gave him the money he beamed. 'Matey! Matey!'

More armoured vehicles and Italians loomed. Their.50 cals kept the slow-moving wagon train channelled on the southbound road. A handpainted sign pointed to the former king's palace.

The mobile kicked off once more and this time I opened it up.

'Never cut me off again! What's happening?'

'I'm following a possible.' I didn't need to tell him where I was. He had the phone tagged.

'Who is he? What is he?'

'Don't know, but looking local.'

I could see farmland through the gaps between the bombed-out buildings. The rusting wreck of a Russian armoured personnel carrier lay stranded in a field. Wizened old men shepherded brown woolly sheep against the distant backdrop of snow-capped mountains.

'Where is he going?'

'Don't know. That's why I'm following him. Soon as I do, you will too.'

The traffic was picking up speed. On cue, Matey developed accelerator problems. I threw him another ten. Only fight the battles you can win.

It wasn't long before I was seeing what was left of the palace on the southern extreme of the city. It looked like Dresden after Bomber Harris had done his stuff. There was no way of telling which lot of liberators could take the credit: the Russians, the Taliban or the B52s.

Further down the road we had the makings of a military convention. Troops sat tightly inside their armoured vehicles and Humvees, body-armoured up, all the party gear pointing out at the traffic.

I could see why. About a K away on the plain to my right lay what had to be ISAFville: row upon row of 200-metre-long tented accommodation, vehicle compounds, HESCOs, razor wire, satellite dishes, the full Monty. They probably battened down their area like this every time a bomb went off.

The target was now just two ahead but the traffic had spread out as we finally headed back towards town. I knew where we were the moment we passed the Russian embassy. I wondered if I'd see the Jock carrying bodies out to the bins, still clearing up after last night.

We were soon at the river and the diversion lifted. It took a twenty this time to keep him moving. He must have sensed the end was in sight.

We stayed behind the Mazda as it approached the market, finishing up only about five hundred metres from where we'd started. The crowd was still being held back and had turned hostile. The Italians eyed them warily from behind their sunglasses.

The Mazda stopped. I squeezed the bony shoulder. 'Stop here, matey.'

Eyes on the Mazda, I grabbed my Bergen and shoved him one last ten. He could probably afford to drive straight home and begin his retirement.

I watched the target get out and skirt the crowd. It wasn't difficult: his cowpat was still a mile above the rest. He wasn't fucking around. He knew where he was going.

I followed, head down, eyes up, locking on to the back of his hat.

We reached a large car park among the cluster of flat-roofed, baked-mud dwellings that spread on up the hill.

He put his hands into his waistcoat pockets. He was searching for something. Keys…

Fuck.

He opened the driver's door of a battered black flatbed.

I spun round and broke into a run. Matey was still trying to turn round. I jumped in front of his bonnet, brandishing a twenty. His grin was bigger than ever.

69

As I jumped in, the black pickup had reached the last stretch of tarmac before the hill. Both of us soon hit the dirt road and started snaking through the shanty town.

We climbed steeply, past small, square, flat-roofed shacks. The cab lurched across ruts and potholes. The other wagon kicked up a dustcloud a couple of hundred metres ahead. The city was soon below us.

As we got higher, a few brick and concrete houses jutted out of the hillside. Boys played football with bare feet. Women sat in groups on terraces carved out of the slope. Every hundred metres or so, we hit a hairpin. The cab was just inches from a sheer drop down into the valley. The road must have been built as access to the antennae farms, and these families had piggybacked off it. There was no planning permission needed. It looked like they'd just scraped out a terrace with picks and shovels and used the spoil to build with.

I'd seen rougher and dirtier shanties than this in India and South America. At least some of the kids here were running round in school uniform, the boys in blue shirts, the girls in white headscarves. And the packed mud was swept scrupulously clean. It seemed there was a whole lot more civic pride up here than I'd ever seen down in the valley.

A rusting Soviet hulk, ripped apart by the muj, overshadowed the next bend. It might have been picked clean by the buzzards. We lost sight of the black pickup for a moment, then found it again as we completed a sharp left-hander.

It was parked up alongside a two-storey rectangular house that was set back from the track by about ten metres on higher ground. It had three windows on the upper floor at the front, and one each side of the front door below. All were boarded up. No smoke curled from the chimney. No electricity cables ran in from the road and there was nobody in sight.

The next three hundred metres cost me another ten dollars, but there were no turns, just more dead Russian armour. We crested the hill on the saddle, alongside a group of old guys sitting cross-legged in a huddle round a cooking-pot. They gave us a look and got straight back to the business of cooking up dinner.

The track forked left up to one of the antennae farms, and right to the other. The driver stopped, turned in his seat, and gave me a triumphant but toothless smile. I gave him a final ten. 'I'll get out here, matey.'

As he embarked on a many-point turn behind me, I walked towards the barbed-wire fence round the installation immediately above the target, but not so purposefully that it might rattle the AK-toting guards hanging out by its gate. Both antennae farms were key locations; they needed to be protected. The big green circular ISAF signs told everyone that.

Kabul was so far below me it looked like a map. I walked along the saddle. The Serena and most of the embassies were to the north, down to my right. To my left were the Jock's bar, the Russian embassy and, out on a limb at the southern edge of town, ISAF.

I stopped and admired the view until the taxi was out of sight. Then I went and sat by the wreck of a Russian communications truck, surrounded by artillery-shell casings and ammo boxes like big sardine cans with the tops peeled back.

I pulled out the Yes Man's mobile and looked south, towards the Kabul river. I wasn't going to have any problems with a signal up here. I couldn't move for satellite dishes.

The phone rang twice. The Yes Man came straight on. 'Have you found Condratowicz? Have you got him?'

'I've just housed a possible, that's all.'

'Where is he?'

One of the old guys left the crowd with a can in his hand and went through the motions of washing himself ready for prayer.

'Ali Abad mountain. They call it TV Hill.'

'Where on the hill? Any idea yet if our man's inside?'

'No. Have you got access to anything in the air? I need you to keep a trigger on it and see what happens down there.'

'Nick, I cannot involve any other agency.' His response came with several degrees of frost.

I didn't give a shit. 'Do you want him or not? I need help, and you've got it on tap. I don't know yet if the fucker's in there so find me an airborne Predator. The Americans are bound to have one or two up there. Don't worry about compromise. They do this shit all the time. Just say it's an antiterrorist op, for fuck's sake. You're the boss, aren't you? Think of something.'

One of the guards sauntered out on to the road. He had his weapon over his shoulder but wanted to take a closer look at the local gobbing off on his mobile.

The Yes Man said nothing.

'Just tap into whatever they have up there that covers the north side of the hill. Then get the operator to stand by. When I do a walk-past I can ID the exact building for them. If Dom's in there, this isn't going to be some fucking shoot-'em-up. I want to get in there, try and find him, then get us both out alive — and not get shot by ISAF in the process. And some of their boys are a stone's throw away from me at the top of this poxy hill. So fucking think of something.'

'OK, wait out.'

He cut off and, for the first time in a while, I did what he said. The old guy had finished splashing his face, neck and arms and was now getting down to a serious chat with Allah. I watched him touch his forehead to the ground, then stand and pray over the city.

Another guard joined the first, and they both headed down the road towards me.

They were Turks. Their national flag filled the top half of the arms that were busy waving me away.

70

I moved back towards the saddle, past yet another pile of old artillery casings. Those two hills had been Russian strongholds. If you dominated the high ground there, you dominated Kabul. And that was exactly why a guy in blue body armour was climbing the south side of the hill, probing the ground with what looked like a row of kitchen knives. If you were in the mood to build there, I guessed you decided which bit of slope you wanted to carve out, then got a guy in body armour from the council to come and dig up the mines for you.

The old guys were just dragging whatever they'd been cooking out of the pot. I couldn't see the target. It was down to my left somewhere, but the angle was too steep. What I did see were the scorched remains of a blue burqa. So much for liberation.

The mobile vibrated in my hand.

'You got something up there for me?'

'Yes, we have one tasked. It's overhead.'

I looked up, even though I knew I was wasting my time. The Predator's video cameras and forward-looking infrared (FLIR) thermal imaging would be doing their stuff from fifty thousand feet. The ground crew would be able to see me, big-time. Even through cloud they could read a newspaper at a bus stop. To a Predator, it was always a bright sunny day.

Once they had imagery, it could be bounced anywhere, including to my laptop in the Serena. Down in Helmand and the south, they circled 24/7. They watched and waited for the Taliban to come out of their caves, jump on their flatbeds and scream across the plains. The operator, hundreds of miles north in the ISAF camp, just marked the target with a laser beam and kicked off a couple of the Hellfires strapped to its wings.

'You got coverage?'

'I'm looking at pictures now.'

'Tell the operator to focus on the saddle between the two antennae farms. I'm on my own, facing north.'

I stood there like a dickhead while the Yes Man steered the operator on target.

'They want to confirm it's you.'

'I'll walk down the road on their go. Tell them I'm in local dress and I have a rucksack on my back. Apart from their boys with the guns, I'm the only fucker up here who's standing. The rest of them are sitting and eating.'

'He's ready.'

'I'm walking.' I headed down the track. A couple of the old guys waved at me as I passed. I kept my head down, mobile to my ear. 'That's a hundred and fifty short of the target. White rectangular, two storeys, flat roof.'

'We have you, Nick.'

'Fifty short. On my left, building about ten metres back from the road. There's a black four-by-four parked to the left of the target.'

'I can see a white building ahead of you now, Nick.'

'That's it. I'm about twenty short.'

'There's movement!' His voice shot up an octave. 'Movement from the back. Someone's heading towards the four-by-four.'

I swivelled my eyes under the shemag. A massive body appeared from the back of the house and opened the wagon's hatch.

He was no more than five metres away. I heard him mutter to himself as he sniffed and chugged up the contents of his lungs.

He bent forward slightly from the waist, as if his massive frame was weighing him down. His head was down, maybe to hide his scabbed-up face, but he looked aware. Both hands were stuck inside his clothing. One would be gripping a weapon.

His gingery beard was almost as big as the wizard's last night. He could be local. There were plenty of big Afghans running around here, even ginger ones with blue eyes.

He lifted out a case of bottled water and dropped it on to his sandalled feet. 'Fucking goddamn fucking shit!'

So, not a local, then.

A few more paces and he was unsighted. I heard the rear hatch slam shut behind me.

'He's going back to the rear of the house, Nick. He's opening the back door. He's now inside.'

'It's no longer a possible,' I said. 'That's the target.'

71

I came out of the shower still honking of Marmite but wearing a nice bathrobe. My arm was red and sore. My fault, I'd kept scratching.

The TV was tuned to an Iranian station. No need to buy any of those street-market DVDs of Americans getting blown to shit by IEDs. You could watch it all on state-sponsored news. I picked up the remote and flicked. It was all the normal shit. CNN, fuzzy HBO, some Russian channels, hundreds of Indian ones. I settled on some girls in bikinis playing beach cricket in Australia. I wondered what the boys up in the hills would make of it.

The Yes Man's mobile bounced across the desk where it was busy recharging next to my personal one.

'The latest imagery is with you. If he's in there, get him down into the city and away from ISAF before contacting me. I will arrange pickup and fly you both out within the hour.'

I fired up the laptop with my left hand. 'You need to make sure the unmanned aerial vehicle is retasked and not covering the hill. Neither of us would want anything recorded.'

'Agreed.'

The mobile cut and I powered it down. I picked up the personal one and tried Magreb. It just rang and rang. Maybe he was at a crucial stage with the stir-fry.

The downloads finished. I was looking at a series of black-and-white thermal images. The hotter the source, the whiter it showed. A live human, even fully clothed, would show as a precise silhouette.

The 4x4 glowed with varying intensities of white. The bonnet was bright. The exposed bit of exhaust pipe was incandescent.

Scaled against the 4x4, the target looked about twenty metres by ten. There were no power lines going in, not even at the back, and the steeply sloping ground at the rear wasn't enclosed.

I scrolled down. Two pathways led from the rear door. One went left, towards where the wagon was parked. The other branched off right, meandering round the contours of the high ground to the other houses, thirty to thirty-five away.

There were no windows or doors in the side walls, and no heat signature leaked from the windows at the rear. Either they were boarded up as securely as the front ones, or nothing was being generated.

The last picture showed a body — too small to be Noah — taking a piss near the back door. The bright liquid ran back towards the house.

The UAV hadn't done much to help, except to tell me there were at least two people in the house. I was going to have to recce the target close up. I needed to find a way to make covert entry, and if Dom was there, get him out without compromise. Like I'd told the Yes Man, this wasn't a shoot-'em-up and drag-him-out job. That one, I might just lose — especially when those Turks came legging it down the road to investigate.

The Mini-Ero lay on the bed next to the mags. I'd emptied them to give the springs a rest so they'd have a better chance of pushing the rounds up. If things did go noisy, Plan B called for lots of speed, aggression and surprise. I'd have to get in there, grip him and get us out — whatever state he was in.

I sat down as the girls changed ends or whatever they did in beach cricket, and started to load. I was going to use thirty rounds a mag instead of thirty-two. It was all about giving the springs a bit of leeway. I wished my forearm would give me some. It throbbed as I gripped the mag and fed in the nine-millimetre.

As I was loading the last mag, the room phone rang.

'Hello, Mr Nick. I see you call me, but the noise, I no hear it ring. I sorry. I worry about you in that place. I no want call you because you with your friend, maybe.'

I kept loading with the phone jammed between my ear and shoulder. 'Don't worry about that, mate. Last night was fine. There was no drama and I even got a lift back with the man I was trying to make the reunion with.'

'Very nice, Mr Nick. I go home very happy and wait for your call, maybe.'

'Why don't you come up to the room right now and I'll pay you for tonight's standby? I was going to call you in an hour or so anyway to say don't wait up — just have your mobile next to your bed.'

'OK, Mr Nick.'

I finished the mag and packed the Bergen. The personal phone was clear of Magreb's, Basma's and Kate's numbers. It had to be sterile. I had been running Magreb's number in my head all evening. It was pointless remembering Basma's as well. I'd only fuck the numbers up and wouldn't be able to contact anyone. I knew where she lived. That was enough for now.

I zipped it into the top flap, along with the hotel torch. My jeans and T-shirt went in too, along with the Mini-Ero. The Yes Man's mobile would be staying in the safe with the laptop. If I did find Dom, I was going to keep him to myself until I found out what the fuck was going on.

It wasn't long before there was a knock on the door. I ushered Magreb in, but he clearly felt uncomfortable invading an employer's personal space.

'Here you are, mate.'

He took just one of the two hundred-dollar bills. 'No, thank you, Mr Nick. Tomorrow money tomorrow, maybe.'

I almost had to force him to sit on one of the luxurious armchairs and drink some water. 'Whereabouts on the hill do you live, Magreb? You on that road that goes all the way up to the top?'

He took a sip. 'Not all way. Halfway, maybe. Near United Nation school.' He beamed with pride. 'My children will go school there and be doctor.'

I stood up to let him out and we shook hands. 'Have a great evening with your family, mate, and remember — keep that mobile with you.'

He headed for the door and I jumped ahead to open it for him. He gave me a smile, and I couldn't help noticing that the school-fees savings fund obviously took precedence over a dental plan.

He paused on the threshold. 'Mr Nick, you go where bad people are. But I know you not bad, you kind. I listening for your call, maybe.'

It would have made my night a whole lot easier if I'd got him to drive me up the hill and back down again with Dom. But he was a real person, the sort who had a real job and a real family who loved him. I didn't want to be responsible for fucking that up.

I'd walk from here to the target in local gear, then get changed.

72

The lights of the city twinkled below me. Above, the sky was clear and full of stars.

The wind was starting to pick up. It chilled the sweat on my back. I was still in local gear, but hadn't bothered with the Marmite this time. The shemag covered my face and I walked with my head down. Kabul wasn't exactly swamped with street-lighting.

A whole swathe of the city around the Gandamack was suddenly plunged into darkness. Even the embassies were affected. Then, one by one, lights came back on as their emergency generators kicked in.

It was pitch black up here, excepting the odd glimmer from an oil lamp spilling under a door or past the sacks most houses used as curtains. A couple of dogs barked at each other in the distance. Apart from that there was no sign of life as the road wound upwards.

I came across two knackered American school buses, painted white with UNHCR stencilling, parked on a tight hairpin. A stretch of hillside close by had been scooped out to make way for a big brick building. A blue board drilled into the concrete-block wall announced that I'd arrived at the UN school.

Magreb's Hiace was tucked in by the wall. Any of the five or six nearby houses could have been his.

I kept climbing, fingers crossed that his mobile was taped to his ear while he slept.

It was another fifteen minutes before I came parallel with the target house. Not even a pinprick of light leaked from the boarded-up windows.

The 4x4 was still outside, and didn't seem to have moved.

I carried on past, until I was sure I was out of line of sight of both the house and the Turks on the summit. Either might be on stag and equipped with night-viewing aids.

I slipped behind one of the Russian wrecks and changed. When the Gunga Din kit was back in the Bergen, I prepared the weapon.

A magazine was already loaded into the pistol grip. I pulled back on the cocking handle and the working parts stayed to the rear as I slid it back to the forward position. There would now be a round poking up from the magazine, ready to be snatched when I squeezed the trigger and the bolt went forward. I hoped I wouldn't have to use it. The ejection system was so poorly designed that, with the working parts held to the rear, the ejector-opening became a fucking big hole just waiting to suck in all kinds of shit and give you a stoppage.

I shoved the hotel torch into the front pocket of my trousers and a spare mag into each of the back ones. I felt in my sock for the cash and the Stevens passport. Finally I shouldered the Bergen, pulling the waist strap tight, and held the weapon vertically at my side to hide its silhouette. After a couple of jumps to check for noise, I started back downhill.

My mind was zoned in. The only thing in my head now was getting inside the target. And after that, nothing would matter but getting Dom out.

73

The target house, still in darkness, loomed on my left. Down in the valley, most of the Gandamack district was still plunged into darkness. The only ambient light up here came from the stars.

I walked carefully up to the wagon, bent down and touched its exhaust. It was cooler than the rocks after a day in the sun. A couple more dogs got pissed off with each other further up the hill.

I picked my way along the pathway towards the rear, lifting and lowering my feet in a slow-motion moon walk. I didn't want this to go noisy. There could be half a platoon inside for all I knew.

The back door was dead centre, like the front, with a window each side of it and three across the floor above. I stopped at the first window. It was boarded on the inside by what looked like scaffold planks. Whoever was in here was very determined to keep the rest of the world outside.

A key turned in the door.

I dropped to my knees and brought the weapon up, pushed the safety to its first click and squeezed my hand hard against the pistol-grip safety.

The door creaked open. Torchlight flooded out into the yard.

A shout came from deep inside the house. 'Shut that fucking door — keep the heat in, will ya?' The voice was American, and not sober.

The door opened wider. 'Yeah, yeah, fucking yeah.' This one spoke a lot like me. Joey and I were about to be introduced.

I lowered the Mini-Ero and laid it on the ground, then closed my hand round a rock.

A figure emerged, silhouetted in his own torchlight. His left hand was still on the door handle and he had something clutched in the right.

I jumped to my feet and grabbed whatever I could of him as the door slammed shut. I brought the rock down as hard and fast as I could. It hit the top of Joey's head with a dull crack. He groaned and I pulled him towards me, trying to control his fall. I toppled backwards with him on top of me, my Bergen taking the brunt. A long, matted beard covered my face and his blood trickled into my ear.

Joey was fucked and drowsy but not completely unconscious. A roll of toilet paper had dropped from his hand and flapped in the wind like a kite tail.

He groaned again as he started to come round. I smashed the rock against the back of his skull, rolled him over and brought it down a couple more times for good measure. The wind carried the sound of his death up the hill.

I patted him for keys, sat back and wiped his blood from my face and ear, then retrieved the Mini-Ero. I took out my torch, stepped back to the door.

Two deep breaths and I eased it open, weapon in my right hand, web pushing against the safety grip, finger on the trigger.

Immediately I smelt cannabis. I brought the torch up to the weapon and gripped it against the barrel so I'd be able to see what I was firing at.

The American kicked off the moment I moved inside. 'Turn that fucking light off, will ya?'

74

The room took up maybe two-thirds of the ground floor. There was a concrete staircase to the right.

I stayed behind the torch. Four sleeping-bags lay on roll mats. Three were occupied. A ginger head stuck out of one. I jerked the beam in his direction and he screwed up his eyes. Noah was not pleased. It really wasn't his night. 'Jesus, will you turn that fucking thing off?' A joint dangled from his lips as he spoke.

The other two bodies looked like maggots and were totally out of it. Scattered around them were syringes, spoons, all the rest of the paraphernalia, and a variety of weapons.

I could have just fired. But I needed to find out if Dom was there and get him out. I'd only deal with these guys if I had to. It would bring ISAF down like a ton of bricks — and, besides, I might lose.

I pushed the door closed with my foot. There was another near the staircase, leading to the remaining third of the ground floor. I headed towards it.

Noah's joint glowed in the darkness.

'Hey, Joey, man! Get me a Mars, will you?'

It was only a makeshift kitchen. No sink or oven, just some bottled water on a table next to a couple of butane gas rings, and a pile of dirty pots. Another table boasted a week's worth of half-eaten food, liberally punctured with dog ends, on a couple of haphazard piles of metal plates.

The torchbeam hit on a box of Mars bars.

'You picking the fucking cocoa beans, man?' Noah definitely had the munchies.

A reply of sorts came from upstairs. Moans and murmurs of pain. A stifled sob.

'Shut the fuck up, cunts, or it'll be beasty-beasty time again,' Noah yelled, then chuckled to himself.

I grabbed a Mars bar and stepped back into the room. I threw it to him, then swung the torch up the staircase.

The wrapper rustled. 'Yeah, go on, Joey. Strut your stuff, dude.'

As he chuckled some more, I followed the torchlight up. The smell was terrible, a mixture of sweat and shit and stale cannabis.

The beam illuminated a bare hallway with a door left and right. Another at the far end was heavily padlocked.

A pool of water had seeped under the door to the left. I switched off the torch. There was no light from under any of them. I switched it back on.

Weapon up, I stood in the puddle as I closed my other hand round the plastic handle. The moment it was ajar, I was hit by the stench of human shit.

Two naked bodies hung by their feet from the ceiling. One was still alive, though every inch of her was cut and blistered. She was able to support some of her weight by pushing herself up on the back of a chair. She screwed up her eyes against the torchlight and whimpered softly. I didn't understand what she was saying, but I knew she was begging. As I took a step closer, she sounded like she was praying.

Noah heard it, too. His laugh echoed round the building. ''Bout time that bitch learnt a little respect…'

The other girl was way out of Basma's reach. She hung like a tongue-dangling carcass in a slaughterhouse. Her teenaged body was covered with black scorchmarks and red blisters. In places, her skin peeled.

75

A flick of the torch revealed butane bottles, gas rings, a kettle. The fuckers made them watch the water come to the boil knowing what was about to happen.

I gave the live girl a slap. I had to make it sound like I'd come up here to carry on spreading the good news. Noah heard the scream and approved.

I left the door open and headed to the one opposite. It opened, but there was nothing inside except a tea chest in the corner. That left the padlocked room.

The keys hung from a nail punched into the doorframe. The reek of shit coming from the other side made me gag. I knew this wasn't going to be a good day out.

The Yale turned and I pulled open the door. The torchlight swept across a huddle of maybe twenty girls, heads bowed, bodies naked, emaciated, bruised and cut. Some were so young they didn't even have pubic hair.

The heads of the two nearest me were swollen from beatings. I pushed them aside. There was no sign of Dom. I moved through the middle of them. All they could see was torchlight, and they were flapping big-time. This wasn't whore-conditioning, this was sadistic shit. These fucks were enjoying this. That was why they were here in-country. They could get away with it.

I left the room and locked them back up for now. It had looked like a scene from a Nazi death camp, or the Idema pictures on the door at the Jock's. The guys hanging, burnt and whipped, the guys in the cupboard, the guy in the…

The hanging girl was still whimpering as I ran past and into the empty room. I shone my light on the tea chest.

Noah's laugh rolled up the stairs.

I ripped the nail holding the hasp closed and lifted the lid. The body was big, and white, its skin bruised and battered. They must have jumped up and down on the poor fucker to get him into this thing.

I leant closer. He was breathing.

I put down the weapon and torch, grabbed a handful of matted, blood-soaked hair and pulled. There was a moan. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but it was definitely Dom.

He rasped at me through swollen lips and gaps torn in his once perfect teeth. 'Please, please…' His eyes were so swollen they couldn't open.

I tipped the chest gently on to its side and pulled him out. He was cramped into a ball and his joints had locked. He couldn't unfold. Blood and saliva poured from his mouth as his begging went into overdrive.

It was Noah's kind of music.

'Only a few more hours, dude — he's gonna make us fucking millionaires!'

76

I ran back, unpadlocked the other room and threw the door open. The girls cowered in the corner, each not wanting to be the one the torchlight picked out.

'Go! Go! Get the fuck out!' I pointed the Mini-Ero at them, trying to get them sparked up.

A couple of heads lifted and stared. I dragged them out by their hair. 'Go on! Get the fuck out!' I left the rest to it. They looked too scared to move, but they'd get the idea.

I went back to Dom. He hadn't moved an inch. These fuckers hadn't any intention of releasing him, and he knew it.

The hanging girl managed a scream. I ran to her room and grabbed the chair. She started pleading, wondering what the fuck new kind of pain was coming her way. I climbed on the chair and told her to shut the fuck up.

'Yeah!' Noah liked to hear his mate Joey having fun.

Fighting to keep control of myself, I yanked on the rope knot that secured her to the ceiling hook and tried to break her fall as best I could.

She crawled across and ran her fingers over the dead girl's face. She wasn't going anywhere either.

I stopped in the hallway as the first two girls from the room scrambled towards me. They froze in the torchlight like petrified rabbits and I hurried them towards the stairs.

Dom hadn't moved. I leant down and put a hand on his shoulder. 'Come on, Fat Boy, come on. Dom, get up, we're moving.' I couldn't tell if he recognized the voice. It didn't matter either way. We could have a hug and a love-in later on, when he understood what was happening. I put my arm around him and took his weight.

More naked bodies hobbled past us as I staggered towards the stairs.

Noah had a sudden rush of blood. 'The bitches are getting away, man! Get the fucks, c'mon!'

There was more movement at the bottom of the stairs as the other maggots stirred. 'What the fuck, Joey?'

Dom's body began to unfold as naked, scared but now increasingly excited girls streamed past us to freedom.

Noah was outside, hitting the ones he caught, shouting at others melting into the darkness. The other two were out of their bags and joining in. It wouldn't be long before they stumbled across the real Joey. It was going to get noisy.

Weapon up, safety grip pushed in by the web of my right hand, I took my time going down the stairs.

'What the fuck…?'

They'd found him.

I waited halfway down, torch up in my left hand and parallel with the barrel, ready to light up the targets.

The first body stormed back in, shoving the girls aside to get to his maggot and weapon.

I waited some more. I wanted the full set.

The other two ran in. The moment they saw them, the girls still on the stairs below me were screaming. I thought my eardrums were about to explode.

I wanted the fourth body, but the other two already had weapons and soon they would have light.

I had to kick off now.

I hit the torch button and caught them both in a tunnel of light.

All I could do was stand my ground and fire, both eyes open, bringing the torch and weapon to bear on their centre mass.

Double-tap.

Double-tap.

It was almost like a range day, and had to be. Otherwise I would make mistakes and die.

Cordite filled my nostrils and the blast of the Mini-Ero filled my ears as I kept on firing into the killing area below me.

A thick cloud of cordite now hung in the torchlight and there was no movement from the bodies. The two bearded fuckers lay at the bottom of the stairs. The black-haired one had died with a sneer on his face; the brown-haired one with a look of utter shock.

I lowered the weapon. The remaining girls needed no second bidding to get the fuck out.

I cleared the doorway and moved outside, but Noah had gone. He'd left the others to it.

I had no time to lose. The Turks would be here soon and I wasn't going to waste time looking for the wagon keys only for them to follow me down the hill.

I ran back upstairs to Dom and gripped his arms. 'Get up! Help me, Dom. I can't do this alone!'

77

'My legs…'

He was trying, but not much of him was working yet.

I got him as far as the top of the stairs and had to move down three or four so I could get my shoulder under him and lift.

His feet bounced off each step as I went down. The torch lit the way, sweeping across two dead bodies and one very live one. Noah's massive frame filled the doorway.

'Fucking asshole!'

He ran at me.

I tried to avoid him, but with Dom's weight on me it wasn't going to happen.

He body-checked me. Dom slid off my shoulders as I stumbled over one of the dead and fell on to the concrete, syringe-strewn floor.

Noah threw himself on top of me. He wasn't bothered about grabbing a weapon. He was going to tear me apart with his bare hands.

'Asshole — fucking gonna die.'

He sat up, his entire weight pressing on my chest. His hands covered my face, then moved to my neck. I kicked and bucked to try to dislodge him, but it was like being trapped under a car. The Bergen dug into my back.

His huge fingers gripped my windpipe. I bucked again as he squeezed. I started to choke. My hands flew up to his wrists but I knew he was going to win.

I jerked my head from side to side.

'Fucking die.' His saliva sprayed across my face.

My hands dropped. My Adam's apple was being pushed deep into my throat and I couldn't breathe.

I felt a stabbing pain in my neck and chest. I thrashed and bucked, but more weakly than before. My right hand felt for a syringe. My brain was telling me to breathe, but I couldn't. I saw showers of white stars and the pain subsided. Not good. I gripped the syringe as the world blurred and faded and my head began to explode.

I focused on his eyes, or where they should have been in the shadow above me.

I swung my hand up and stabbed and stabbed.

He screamed and his scream became a howl. His hands loosened on my throat as Dom tried to pull him off me.

I kicked and pushed, looking for a weapon in the torchlight.

Coughing and retching, I scrambled to my feet.

Noah swept Dom aside and got to his knees. His agonized screams reverberated round the room.

I spotted the Mini-Ero's muzzle jutting out from beneath Dom's thigh. I grabbed his foot and pulled him away from Noah's flailing fists, then lunged for the weapon. I gripped the safety and squeezed off the rest of the mag.

Noah jerked like a puppet as he took the bursts, then toppled over on to his mates and lay still.

Everything went quiet for a second or two until real life elbowed its way through the door.

I could hear engines rumbling down the hill and hysterical girls begging for help.

I should have moved but all I could do for now was sit. My Adam's apple was still most of the way down my throat. I could hardly swallow.

Dom was moving, trying to curl up and protect himself. I heaved a blood-soaked sleeping-bag from under Noah.

'Help me, Dom. Come on.'

I pulled him up, got him on my shoulder. I threw the bag over him and headed through the door.

A cold wind blew and headlights bounced across the night sky. Searchlights swung left and right from the top of the Turks' vehicles.

I took the path to the right, the one that headed further uphill. I stepped over Joey's body. Light was flooding from the houses about thirty metres away. Contouring the ground with the heaviest weight I'd ever had on my shoulders, I staggered a few paces, stopped, made a fruitless attempt to get the sleeping-bag round him to protect him from the biting wind, and staggered some more.

My ankles twisted on the uneven footing. Dom felt like he was getting heavier and heavier. His legs bounced off the ground in front of me as I tried to shift his weight more evenly on my shoulders.

We made maybe two hundred more across the face of the mountain, still level with the house, and gradually lost ourselves in the darkness. I unloaded Dom on to the rocks. He didn't react. I got him tucked inside the maggot as best I could and zipped it up. I couldn't see if he had his eyes open. There was starlight, but my night vision hadn't kicked in yet.

I crouched down next to him. A horrible rasping noise came from the back of his throat. 'Oi, Drac — it's Nick. Nick Stone. It's over.'

The kidnap might be. But once I had him sorted out there were questions that needed answering.

He moved an arm inside the bag and tried to grab mine through the material. His grip was weak. His lips moved soundlessly. I thought he might be trying to thank me. I patted him through the bag. 'You owe me big-time.'

His breathing became shallow and rapid. A hand snaked out of the bag and tried to grip my shoulder. His chest heaved and tears streamed from his eyes.

The wind whipped the sweat from my face, then forced its way between my wet back and the Bergen. I was starting to freeze.

I looked up at the commotion round the target. The two wagons were static. The house was lit up like an historic monument. Girls were being wrapped in blankets and comforted. Soon they'd be drinking hot tea and getting medical attention.

I eased Dom's hand off my shoulder. 'Let's get you warm, eh? Not long now. We'll be out of here soon.'

I tried to zip him up some more but he was just too big. The top of the bag came up to his chest. I took off the Bergen and dug inside for the shemag. I wrapped it round his head, then packed away the Mini-Ero and mags. I'd need both hands to grip him now he was in the bag.

From down in the valley, a long line of flashing blue lights was making its way towards us. The cops would be over the moon. They could take the credit for busting yet another freelance torture chamber, and the dead men were all foreigners.

I pulled out the personal mobile and slipped it into the front pocket of my jeans before re-shouldering the Bergen. I gripped Dom in the nylon sleeping-bag and somehow got him back over my shoulder. 'Not far, mate. If they're not broken, your legs will be working by tonight, no drama.'

I started to pick my way downhill. The blue lights were nearly level with me now. Their headlights splashed across a couple of Turkish armoured trucks and their.50-cal gunners looked as though they'd shoot at anything that moved.

I pushed on for maybe another ten minutes, with the buildings and the road to my right, but I couldn't keep it up. Dom was just too fucking heavy.

I laid him on the ground again and sorted out the sleeping-bag. I held his head and leant in close again. 'Dom…' Fuck, I wasn't too sure who smelt worse. 'Dom, I'm going to check the road, OK? I'll be two minutes.'

I slid between two mud houses and made my way down towards Magreb's Hiace. It was locked. So were the two buses. The school was battened down. I needed to get into cover with Dom, and it wasn't just to keep him warm. The blue lights were still heading this way. In another couple of hours it would be light. Fuck the Yes Man, I'd deliver Dom when I was good and ready.

I moved back to the mud houses and sat under a corrugated lean-to with a pile of plastic bowls and a couple of old sacks. Below me, the Gandamack district was lit up again.

No curtains twitched in either house. Their inhabitants were either asleep or just wanted to get on with their lives and send their kids to school.

I powered up the mobile. It rang a couple of times, but I didn't hear where.

'Hello, mate, it's Nick. I'm going to need your van.'

78

'Mr Nick, I come to hotel now?'

'No need. I'm outside. I'm by the school.'

I could hear movement his end as he jumped out of bed and Mrs M gave him a hard time.

'You in the shooting, maybe?'

''Fraid so, mate. I just want your keys, OK? Can you meet me by the wagon? Keep the lights off in your house, OK?'

'I come now, Mr Nick.'

I closed down and went to the van.

A door opened just ahead and a skinny body in a pullover, trousers and flip-flops joined me. We ducked into cover as the flashing blue lights surged past, strobing the mud walls of the houses as they snaked up the hill.

His eyes widened. 'Mr Nick, your face — much blood…'

'Don't worry, mate. It's not mine.' I peeled off some notes. 'I just want your van. I'll pay you for it. I've got eight hundred dollars with me.' I grinned. 'You could buy three vans for that, maybe.'

He held up his hands. 'Please, Mr Nick, I no want your money. You already pay. I drive you hotel.'

I got down on one knee and fished in my sock. 'That's the problem, mate. I'm not going back. All that shooting up there… It was a prison. There were young girls being tortured and raped. My friend was a prisoner too. I came to get him out, and now I must find somewhere to hide him while he recovers. He's been badly hurt.'

I stood up and offered him the money.

'Let me pay for your van. My friend's behind the houses here. I don't want to involve you in this, mate.'

'No. I drive you. I drive you where you want. I you friend, Mr Nick.'

I punched his arm. I knew I was beaten. 'Give us a hand, then. His name's Dom.'

He followed me into the darkness behind the two houses. The flashing blues had almost reached the target. The Turks' searchlights kept sweeping the hillside.

'Mr Nick, I take you to my brother woodstore, maybe. Not far. In valley.' He looked down at the mess in the sleeping-bag. 'Oh…'

'Dom, this is my mate Magreb.'

He nodded weakly, then kept mumbling, 'Thank you,' over and over. I wished he'd shut the fuck up.

I turned back to Magreb. 'He'll be all right. Come on, let's get him to the van.'

I slid my hands under his armpits and Magreb took his legs. We staggered down the hill.

'You go to bar to find these bad people?'

'No. The people in the bar were all right.' I nodded in the direction of Noah's place. 'The bad ones were up there. So bad they weren't even allowed into the bar.'

'They dead now, Mr Nick?'

'Yes. Very.' I didn't want to beat about the bush. I needed him to know what he was getting himself into.

We lowered Dom on to the ground when we got back to the Hiace, and Magreb went to open the side-door. 'No, mate. We'd better get in the back and you cover us over.'

He didn't miss a trick. 'Checkpoint, maybe?' He opened the tailgate and we lifted Dom in. I followed and unzipped the bag to cover us both.

Magreb stood motionless at the back of the van.

I reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. 'You sure you want to do this?'

He leant towards me, his expression serious. 'I want my children live in peace, Mr Nick.' He pointed at the building beside us. 'I want them go school, be doctor, maybe. Those bad men, I no want here. I want leave us in peace. You make my home little safer now, Mr Nick. You my friend…'

I smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze before we went into gratitude overload. 'If we're stopped, act normal. Tell them you're going to work, OK?'

He nodded and stepped back. The tailgate closed, immediately sheltering us from the chill wind.

We huddled together in the space between the seat and the back of the vehicle. I held Dom against my chest to give him as much extra warmth as I could muster. His head rested just below my chin. He moistened his swollen lips and tried to talk. 'Peter… I did not kill him, Nick. I did not kill him…'

The van lurched off downhill and we were catapulted forward against the seats. I adjusted the Bergen lower down my back. 'Who did?'

'You must believe me…' His breath was warm and rancid.

'I know about the drugs, the FCO connection, all that shit. But what's so important about the Dublin film?'

'I did not kill Peter.' The boy was on a loop.

'Listen, mate. You need to level with me here. I need to know what the fuck's happening.'

Magreb had spotted a problem. 'Please, quiet, Mr Nick. Police…'

I found Dom's lips with my thumb and forefinger and held them tight. I hugged him to me, and tried to shuffle us a few inches lower. I checked that the bag was covering us as the brakes squealed and the wagon came to a standstill.

I could hear radio traffic. It got louder as Magreb rolled his window down. A voice gobbed off in Pashtun and Magreb responded in kind. It sounded like they were having an argument. It's that kind of language. Vehicles stopped, engines idled. The only words I could make out from Magreb were 'Serena' and 'hotel'.

Dom's breath rasped. I pressed my hand over his face as I heard footsteps making their way round the vehicle. A hazy light washed across the rear window and the cheap nylon sleeping-bag. Dom whimpered. I pulled his head more firmly against my chest. It was pointless flapping. There were only two things that could happen. Either they would find us or they wouldn't. All I could do was shut Dom up and wait.

The light faded and the footsteps moved back to the driver's window. There was another short exchange, and the van jolted forwards. We drove maybe fifty metres further down the track and then on to the metalled road. We were soon cruising along the flat of the valley. 'We're nearly there, Mr Nick.'

I lifted Dom's head and took my hand away from his mouth. Dribble poured down his chin and soon worked its way through my T-shirt.

'Siobhan?'

'She's OK. I saw her a few days ago.'

'Does she know I'm OK? Can I talk to her?'

'Not yet. Let's just get to my mate's brother's place, get your head straight. Then you're going to tell me what the fuck's going on.'

'Nick…' His stinking breath was just inches from my face again. 'I did not kill Peter, I swear.'

Magreb was getting a bit worried about the waffle. I didn't think he could hear Dom but he could certainly hear me. 'Mr Nick, please, quiet and stay down, maybe. Just few minutes. Thank you.'

We turned off the metalled road and bounced along another track. The brakes squealed and the van came to a halt. Everything went quiet. 'We here, Mr Nick.'

I didn't know why he was whispering. It wasn't as if he had a Stealth Hiace.

The tailgate opened and I pushed back the sleeping-bag. All I could see were huge wood-stacks, maybe fifteen metres high, tree-trunks, branches, bundles of twigs for tinder. I clambered out. In front of the wagon was a collection of corrugated-iron shacks. TV Hill was to our right, maybe a K away. The target was still floodlit and flashing blue like a UFO landing site.

Either side of us were runs of half-finished buildings, exposed reinforcing rods jutting into the starlit sky. A car drove past on the main the other side of the woodpiles.

We carried Dom over the tyre-rutted mud into one of the shacks. The place stank of old woodsmoke. We put him down on a pile of furry nylon carpets that had been spread across a minging old mattress tucked into the corner. Magreb lit an oil lamp. 'My brother get wood. Three days, maybe.'

There was a fireplace of sorts, with a badly sooted cooking-pot sitting on old embers. Hundreds of books were piled in one corner.

Magreb held the lamp over Dom. I touched his arm. 'Listen, mate, I'll get a fire going, heat up some water. You find some good stuff to drink, OK?'

It got him sparked up. 'Of course, Mr Nick. I get food also. I not long.'

As the rickety old door closed behind him I slipped the Bergen off my shoulders, took the lamp to the fireplace and tucked a couple of blankets round Dom.

The door creaked open again. 'Mr Nick?'

'What's the matter, mate?' As I opened my mouth I knew there were just too many footsteps.

The next thing I heard was 'Stay where you are, son — or you'll get it right now.'

I didn't need to turn to do a headcount. Where you had Sundance, you had Trainers.

'Now face me.'

They were both in the room, carrying shorts. Trainers kicked Magreb off towards the left of the shack. He wasn't controlling his fear too well. Dom just kept quiet and still.

Sundance and Trainers weren't interested in him, or even Magreb. I seemed to be the star of the show.

'Don't move a muscle, you fuck.'

A vehicle rolled over the mud towards us and pulled up. The engine stopped and doors opened.

Two more bodies joined us. Mr Sheen and Top Lip stopped for a moment and glared at me, then picked up Dom and my Bergen. Dom tried to put up a struggle rewarded by Mr Sheen with a blow to his face.

Magreb cowered, forehead down, knees up, arms wrapped round his legs.

Trainers covered as Sundance took a few steps towards me, a hand in his jeans. 'What's the matter with you, son? Do you really think you're so fucking clever you can do what the fuck you want?'

He threw something at me. The Yes Man's mobile glanced off my arm and fell to the ground. 'You thought you'd do your own thing, did you, and fuck everyone else?'

There was no point talking to these two but I couldn't resist it. 'If this is the courtesy car, what time's the flight?'

'Shut up, smartarse,' he snarled. 'Don't fuck me about or we'll drop you here and now. Then we'll do that fucking Pole.'

I kept my hands up and started moving. I wanted to get out of the building as quickly as possible. They might forget about Magreb curled up in the corner.

Sundance retrieved the mobile and came up behind me while Trainers moved towards Magreb. 'What about this fucking arse?'

Sundance didn't even draw breath. 'Drop the cunt.'

I swung round. 'He's just a fixer. You saw on Predator, he's no part of this.'

Magreb's head came up, eyes pleading. Trainers jammed the short against his forehead.

It was the last I saw of him.

Sundance bustled me outside to where a white GMC Suburban gleamed in the starlight.

A single shot rang out behind us.

Moments later, Trainers closed the door tidily behind him. He swapped a glance with Sundance and they burst out laughing.

The double doors at the back of the GMC were open and the passenger lights were on.

Sundance gave me a prod. 'They got big plans for you, son. No quick exit like Sunny Jim back there.'

I hesitated at the back doors. Dom was already inside the vehicle, curled up behind the rear seats.

'Get in.'

Mr Sheen was at the wheel. Top Lip rode shotgun. A thermal-imaging monitor from the Predator glowed in the footwell.

Both Serbs turned and stared at me in silence. It was the kind of silence that told me we were in a bottomless pit of shit.

I lay down next to Dom. Sundance pulled a taser from his coat, pushed it into my stomach and gave me a 100,000-volt helping of good news.

I shuddered for two or three seconds, then blacked out.

79

I lay half on Dom, my cheek against his stomach, and half on the floor of the wagon. A blur of light flashed through the window as we raced past a line of shops. My head spun. My insides still shuddered. Fuck knew what lay in store. But the first chance I got to escape, I'd grab it. Then I'd come back to kill these fuckers for what they'd done to Magreb. And not just maybe.

The GMC smelt as if it had been brought straight from the showroom. My face bounced off Dom and on to the carpet as Mr Sheen threw us into a series of sharp turns.

I moved my hand slowly towards Dom's. He gripped it tight. I hoped it felt as good for him as it did for me.

He tried pulling my head towards his, but he wasn't strong enough. He wanted to tell me something. I pushed down slowly on the carpet with my feet so I could get closer to him.

'I'm sorry, Nick,' he breathed. 'I thought you were with them — the Irish guys. They're the ones that killed Pete.'

'Sure?'

'They dragged us out of the camp…' He shook his head and I felt his tears sprinkle across my neck. 'They took us out… and they shot him… right in front of me…'

A voice yelled, 'Shut the fuck up,' and a fist appeared over the back seat and punched us apart.

Occasional bursts of street-light strobed across the vehicle. There seemed to be no other traffic. The automatic gearbox stayed in fourth. We were moving with speed and purpose, and the road was long and straight.

We slowed after fifteen minutes or so and the GMC hung a right and stopped. A gate creaked open. We rolled forward maybe a hundred across rough ground and stopped again. Mr Sheen's window powered down and there was a muted conversation with someone outside. Agate opened with a metallic creak. We rolled another few metres and stopped. Then Sundance and Trainers threw open the passenger doors and jumped out. A gust of freezing air took their place.

The heat had been a security blanket, even for that short space of time. Cold meant shit was about to happen.

Top Lip opened the back. It was pitch dark, but he pulled a pair of blacked-out ski goggles over my eyes for good measure. I felt my feet being gripped and then I was on the move. My hand slipped away from Dom's and I fell on to a pile of rubble.

Sundance said goodbye with his boot.

Two sets of hands grabbed me under the armpits, frogmarched me across a stretch of gravel, then bounced me up a couple of steps. There was no talking but plenty of grunts as they struggled to get through a doorway without letting me go.

I knew we were inside, because the screams and pleading echoed off the walls. I was being dragged along a corridor. I listened for Dom's voice, but he wasn't doing the begging. Unless someone already had his balls in a vice and he'd suddenly become fluent in Arabic.

I could smell cigarettes and kerosene. We halted, and a set of ear defenders was pulled over my head. That meant only one thing. Everything I'd heard so far, they'd wanted me to.

I could feel rough concrete under my boots now. They'd taken me into another part of the building. It was much colder here.

Hands pushed me to the ground, rolled me on to my back and tore off my boots and outer clothes. Something cold and hard bit into my shoulder muscles as a heel pressed against my chest and my boxers were pulled off.

I had no idea of the size of the room I was in, but I was naked and had no control, so the space around me suddenly felt large and I felt very small.

I was hauled back to my feet and swung round. My head slammed against a wall. But fighting back would get me nowhere. I'd only get filled in, and I needed to keep as fit as I could to get us the fuck out of here.

They repositioned me and kicked my legs apart. Then they made me lean forward until my outstretched hands touched the brick.

I breathed long and deeply to slow everything down. I tried to listen, but all I could hear was the sound of the blood pulsing through my head.

My hands went numb, then pins and needles kicked in.

I clung to the only positive thought that came within reach. At least there was a system. I wasn't being kicked to shit — not yet, anyway. I must be in a holding area. I'd probably stay there for most of the time now, between interrogations.

I found the sensory deprivation strangely comforting. Stripped of perception, all I could do was think, and I needed to do that big-time.

One thing was for sure. I'd been totally wrong about Sundance and Trainers. They did travel beyond the M25.

80

I was shivering, and not just from the cold. My muscles trembled from the effort of maintaining the stress position. I dared not move. I didn't want to find out what the punishment was. My sutured arm was aching severely. There wasn't enough blood working its way up there and I wanted to scratch it to death. The pain in my hands had passed the pins-and-needles stage. I knew they'd ballooned. There was going to be permanent damage unless I could relieve the pressure. I moved my left arm a fraction of an inch.

But even that was too much. A massive kick swept my legs from under me. I dropped, knees first, on to the harshly ridged concrete. Pain shot through me. I could feel my skin being forced open by the sharp edges. Unseen hands hauled me up again and slammed my hands back against the wall. I gritted my teeth, tensed my body, waiting for kicks that didn't come. I could feel the blood leaking down my legs.

Some time later they gripped me and pulled me away. They'd been waiting for the last possible moment before something went seriously wrong.

I was dragged off the concrete and back on to a flat, tiled floor. From the smell of cigarettes and kerosene I guessed we were back in the corridor.

We must have come to a door. One set of arms let me go, and the other shoved me between the shoulder-blades. Then both pushed down on my shoulders. My arse and bollocks hit a cold, hard chair.

This place was damp and musty. I could smell it, and feel it on my skin. The floor beneath my feet was hard and wet.

I kept my head down and gritted my teeth. I didn't want anything loose when the punches came.

Maybe a minute went by. They were fucking about, letting me flap.

Then somebody grabbed a fistful of hair and jerked back my head. The goggles and ear defenders were whipped away.

Now it would begin.

A body shuffled behind me. He bent down and shouted, 'Look up!' He was so close I could feel his breath on my neck.

I blinked uncontrollably. The room was lit as brightly as a TV studio. Strings of bulbs hung along the wall opposite me.

Sundance was walking away from me. I watched his brown leather boots and the bottoms of his jeans.

Trainers sparked up. His voice was surprisingly calm. 'You can make this hard or easy for yourself, son. The choice is yours.'

I tilted my head. He was in the far corner of the room, arranging himself a roll-up. Big chunks of plaster had fallen out of the wall behind him. What little rendering was left was covered with grime and various shades of dried blood.

I was sitting on a stackable plastic chair. Dark puddles had gathered across the pitted concrete floor.

My gaze shifted as he brought out his lighter. The door was covered with a steel plate, and had a little porthole that could be opened from the outside. This was looking horribly familiar.

I glanced up at the ceiling and saw a meat hook that hadn't been in the Yes Man's pictures.

The two of them shared a laugh, then Sundance came right up close. 'That's right, son, you've seen this place before. You've been rendered, son. You're a fucking terrorist now, so we can do whatever we want.' He slapped my face hard. 'Never thought you'd be one of those poor fuckers, eh? Next stop Guantánamo for you, son.'

I had more important things on my mind right now. 'Where's Dom?'

Sundance rolled his eyes. 'Getting more of the same.'

The door crashed open and Mr Sheen and Top Lip thrust themselves into the room. Top Lip had his hair tied back, ready for business. Sweat glistened on his forehead. I wondered if he'd been practising on Dom. He reeked of lemon-scented cologne.

He brought in a wooden stool. I admired the scars on his outstretched forearm as he shoved it down in front of me. He had the look of a man who was about to treat himself to a really good workout.

Mr Sheen was holding a device like a matt grey starship. It had three legs and a speaker suspended in the centre. A lead trailed behind him. It looked like somebody was about to make a conference call.

81

One thing was for sure. The Serbs and the Paddies weren't speaking to each other. Mr Sheen gave Sundance and Trainers a look that said fuck off in any language. Perhaps they didn't like smoking in the workplace.

The Irish both took an extra long drag of their roll-ups.

Mr Sheen put the starship on the stool and hit a button. A small red light blinked on.

The Serbs exchanged a glance and stood back, facing me, with their arms crossed.

We all waited. The smoke was making my eyes water.

After a minute or so the Yes Man's voice boomed out from the speaker. 'Why didn't you do as you were told, Stone? Do you really think I'd just let you wander off and do your own thing?'

'You kept the Predator tasked?'

He would have watched our two glowing bodies stumble down the hill and easily followed the Hiace across the valley.

'I've known you for too long not to. Now, consider your answer very carefully. Where is the film?'

I looked at the four of them and shrugged. 'I don't know.'

They were pleased. This conversation wasn't going to end with the call.

'I will ask you again, Stone. Where is the film? I want every copy.'

'What film? I haven't a clue what you're on about.'

'What did Condratowicz say to you on the way there?'

'Nothing. The fucker could hardly breathe. I think he was trying to say thanks, that's all.'

He sighed. 'Stone, I have a very low boredom threshold. I want to know where the film is. If you can't supply that information, then tell me where he's been hiding in Kabul. Who has he met, and why? You're his friend. He would tell you what's going on.'

'He's told me nothing.'

There was a longer sigh this time. 'I'm going to ask you just one more time. After that, I hand you over to the gentlemen in front of you. You've seen the photographs, you know the form.'

Of course I did. And I was scared. But I wasn't going to show it. I'd hide it for as long as possible.

I leant towards the machine. 'I don't know about any film and I don't know where he's been. I just came and found him, as you asked.'

'Have it your way, Stone. I can hold you both indefinitely. You're the one who told me to think of a reason to task Predator. The official view of Mr Condratowicz is that he's been helping the enemy by buying their drugs. That makes him a terrorist. And you're aiding and abetting. So now — final chance — I want to know.'

I stared down at the wet, crumbling concrete beneath my feet. 'Why would he tell me? It would have been Pete he told, if anyone. He was his mate. He was the one who—'

The Yes Man sighed. 'That's it, Stone. We've reached it — my threshold. You've insulted my intelligence long enough.

'I authorize Phase One.' He wasn't talking to me any more.

I stared at the conference phone. The red light died.

Sundance and Trainers headed for the door. 'We'll go see how your mate's new bruises are colouring up.'

Mr Sheen's desert boots squeaked towards me. He stood to my right, ready to beat the shit out of me if I moved. Fuck that, I wouldn't give him the pleasure. The only thought in my head was that Phase One sounded better than Phase Five and a whole lot better than Phase Ten.

He gobbed off in Serbo-Croat. Top Lip moved behind me and grabbed my wrists for Mr Sheen to plasticuff together. They continued chatting, as if they'd suddenly got some spare time on their hands, and couldn't quite make up their minds how best to use it.

The mouthful of saliva that hit my cheek took me totally by surprise. They reached down, pulled me off the chair and rotated me 180 degrees. I opened my eyes, but I didn't need to. I'd already seen the Yes Man's happy snap.

A tabletop with the legs removed had been bolted to an oil drum to make what looked like a party-size see-saw. Two buckets of water stood next to it, beneath a tap set into the wall. A huge roll of clingfilm lay on a pile of empty hessian sandbags.

The only difference between this and the picture was that a sack was already soaking in one of the buckets, ready for action.

82

I knew all too well how this worked. The gag reflex was an automatic reaction. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. All I could hope was that they knew what they were doing. That they'd take me to the edge, not push me right over it.

They shoved me, face up, on to the tabletop, my plasticuffed hands beneath me. They threw a thick webbing strap over my waist and pulled tight. My legs were clamped.

I kept my eyes closed. My chest heaved as I fought to fill my lungs with oxygen.

Water poured from the soaking hessian as Mr Sheen lifted it from the bucket. I managed one last big breath before it was pulled over my head. The wet sacking clung to my nose and mouth.

I fought it. I couldn't help myself. I blew hard from my mouth to try to get the stuff away from me.

The tabletop tilted and my head went down. A bucket of cold water was tipped over the sacking.

I couldn't breathe.

I told myself to keep calm. You're not drowning! You're not drowning!

But water poured into my nose and mouth and my body told me otherwise.

Take it easy! You'll be able to breathe again soon!

The seconds ticked by. I needed so badly to take a big breath. My reflexes took over.

I gagged.

Another bucket…

My body went ballistic. I tried to kick and buck. My hands scrabbled frantically at the plasticuffs. I was tearing holes in my own skin.

Another bucket…

Neither body nor brain could help me now. I gave in. I tried to breathe, and the more I tried to breathe, the more water I took in. I knew I could swallow it but I didn't; I kept trying to expel it, and then I ran out of air. My body jerked like I was being tasered again.

The tabletop see-sawed the other way and my head swung up. They pulled off the sack. I vomited water and bile and struggled to fill my lungs with air. Water poured out of my nose and mouth and snot streamed down my face. I'd never felt such relief.

They know what they're doing. They won't fuck up. They won't let you die. Everything's a reflex. Control t!

I screamed at them: 'I don't know anything!'

Nobody was listening. One punched my face and the sack went back on.

The table tilted again. And so did the bucket.

I was going to die. I wanted to blow out but I couldn't. I had nothing in my lungs to blow out with.

My strength drained like someone had thrown a switch. I had nothing left to fight with. I knew that death was just seconds away.

The table tilted but the sack didn't come off this time. I coughed and spluttered, puking up water and more bile.

Then, a miracle…

The straps were released. I slid off the table on to the floor. More freezing water was thrown over me, but I didn't care. The two of them kicked me against the wall. They didn't talk; they didn't need to. When it came to this kind of performance, the Serbs were best-in-breed.

I curled up with my face to the wall, hands still locked behind me. More water cascaded over me. I screamed into the sack: 'I don't know anything!' I started shivering.

I heard voices. One of them laughed. 'More soon, asshole.'

I was treated to a few more kicks in the back and the sack was whipped away. The goggles and ear defenders went straight back on.

I was off, I was moving.

I kept my eyes closed and every muscle clenched. I'd happily take a beating, if only they didn't put me back on that fucking thing.

They lifted me to my feet and half dragged, half carried me out of the room. We turned right, back along the corridor. My toes scraped and tore along the rutted concrete.

I was pushed to the floor, and the skin on my knees opened up again. Even that pain was bearable now.

I tried to sit back, and immediately got a kick in the ribs. I had to keep my thighs absolutely vertical and my back ramrod straight. My hands were throbbing again.

I didn't know who else was in there. I didn't know if or when I'd be back in the interrogation room. Another bucket of water was tipped over my head. I shivered uncontrollably. My thighs started to shake. My whole body trembled. My back was hurting after the kicking and with the effort of trying to keep it straight. Something had to give. I bent forward a little from the waist to relieve the pain.

Hands grabbed my shoulders and wrenched me back into the stress position. A couple of seconds later, I was deluged with another bucket of water and the shivers took hold.

83

The concrete ridges dug into my raw knees. I had to relieve the pain. I leant forward, but that just changed the angle of attack. I pretended to collapse.

Kicks rained in and I got hauled back into position.

I must have been there for another ten or fifteen minutes. My hands felt the size of watermelons, and pumped so full of blood they were within seconds of bursting.

I was grabbed under each armpit. A knife blade worked its way between the plasticuffs and my skin.

I was moved immediately. I was relieved to be out of the stress position, but dreading what might come next. The worst fear is the fear of the unknown. The stress positions, the cold water, the cold rooms, the holding area with the gravel, I knew all this technical stuff was designed to disorient me, get me worried, fuck me up. I knew it all and understood it, but it was still breaking me.

I tried to gauge how far we were moving along what I presumed was a corridor. Was I being taken back to the waterboarding room? If I wasn't, would that be good or bad? Anew room might be worse. Anew room might mean Phase Two.

The hands on my left let go of me, and the ones on my right pulled me through a doorway. My face banged against the frame.

The floor the other side was slick with water. I was turned and shoved down on a hard plastic chair. My hands were plasticuffed to its front legs.

I stayed hunched for a moment, teeth gritted, every muscle clenched. Then I eased myself forward to try to relieve the pressure on my plasticuffed hands. I'd lost all feeling in them.

My world was dark and silent. I tried to kid myself I felt safer that way. That instead of fearing the unknown, it was better just not to know.

Whatever was in the room with me, I couldn't hear it and I couldn't see it.

I could no longer smell lemon, but I could smell the sulphur of a struck match, then burning tobacco, and that was very bad news. These two knuckle-draggers didn't have the skill to cause pain and keep people alive at the same time.

84

The ear defenders and ski goggles were ripped away once more. The first thing I heard, even through the prison walls, was the sound of a large aircraft landing. I kept my eyes closed and stayed exactly where I was.

When I opened them again, Sundance and Trainers were looking at me from the other side of the cell. The speaker stood on a stool between us, its red light on.

We waited.

Sundance bent closer to it, as if he thought that was how you used these things. 'He's listening.'

He and Trainers stood back and each sucked at a roll-up. They were wearing fleeces to combat the cold. The room held their smoke at chest level.

The Yes Man got down to business. 'Do you know what the American vice-president called waterboarding?'

I couldn't be arsed to answer. It wasn't as if it was going to make my situation any better.

'A "dunk in the water", he said. He doesn't believe it's torture. Rather, a very important tool in the fight against terrorism. Do you know what I find incredible about that?'

Fuck him.

'It's that the Americans gaoled a Japanese officer in 1947 for waterboarding a US civilian during the war. They sentenced him to fifteen years' hard labour.'

He didn't wait for an answer. 'The only difficulty I have with the technique is that anyone will confess eventually — even to things he or she hasn't done. But where we want information, not a confession, I consider it very effective.'

The speaker boomed. He must have leant very close to his microphone. 'Where is the film?'

I stared at the floor. The bottoms of the chair legs had probably once been rubber-tipped. The steel had long since rusted from contact with the wet.

'I keep telling you — I don't know. I don't know what, when, who. I know fuck-all about what Dom's got himself into…'

'Of course, the problem we face is that some people get so desperate they begin telling you what they think you want to hear. I hope you won't waste our time by being one of those.'

'Look, I know fuck-all…'

'Stone, frankly, I've never liked you. You're arrogant, disrespectful and, even worse, you're disobedient. This is your last chance. My two men wanted to beat the life out of you, even before our Serbian friends began their work. But I said no. I wanted you to have the opportunity to save yourself.'

'Maybe I can find out from Dom. Put us together, give us some time. He trusts me.'

There was no response.

First there was total silence. Then I could make out his voice, but only faintly in the background, like he'd turned to talk to somebody else in his room, or take another call.

When he did speak again, there was an edge of triumph in his voice he couldn't disguise. 'Gentlemen—'

Trainers leant forward. 'Aye?'

'I've got the boy. Everything's changed. Repeat, I've got the boy. The Pole is now neutralized. Go and tell him. He'll take you straight to the film.'

'Stone?' Trainers was almost licking his lips.

'I have no further use for him. Kill him. Repeat, kill him.'

The red light went out. The two of them looked at each other.

I dropped my head.

Trainers laughed. 'You'll be more pissed off than that in a minute, boy.'

He moved behind me. The kick to the back of the chair was so hard I shot forward. My arse came right off the edge of the seat and dropped to the floor. The plasticuffs slid down the chair legs.

Sundance savoured the moment. 'Get on your knees and crawl to the board.'

I could hear them behind me, rocking the tabletop, playing with the straps.

'We're going to take you for a ride on this baby. But you should know, son, you're only getting a one-way ticket…'

My wrists strained against the metal. I closed my palms round the bottoms of the legs. I eased first one wrist free and then the other. I struggled to my knees.

'That's right, here, boy — walkies!'

I sprang to my feet and grabbed the seat of the chair. Swinging round, I squared up to them lion-tamer style, the chair positioned like a four-barrelled machine-gun.

Sundance's face hardened. 'Don't fuck about, son. You're only going to—'

It was his turn to be drowned out.

I yelled at the top of my voice and charged.

85

My shoulder sent Sundance flying. He lost his footing and tumbled over the waterboard.

Trainers' eyes widened as I hurtled him back against the wall. The tip of one of the legs dug into his stomach. He bellowed with pain and tried to grab it but I pushed as hard as I could.

His muscles couldn't resist any more. The skin gave suddenly, and the rough, rusty tip jumped forward six inches.

Sundance was struggling to his knees.

I let go of the chair. Trainers slid down the wall with the leg still embedded. His gaze was fixed on the entry wound. He looked puzzled.

I leant down and grabbed the wooden stool by one of its legs. The starship flew into the air as I swung the stool down hard on to the top of Sundance's skull. He dropped like I'd tasered him.

I clubbed him again, this time between the shoulders. The third blow smashed into the back of his neck.

His body convulsed like he was having a fit. Blood poured from his head. I brought it down again, crushing his temple. His hands jerked up momentarily, then dropped. He lay very still.

'Bastard! Bastard!' Trainers' cry was half scream, half groan.

He was slumped against the bottom of the wall like a drunk in a pool of piss. His legs were splayed and he'd kicked one of the buckets over. The chair leg still skewered him.

His eyes glazed as he gripped the leg but made no attempt to pull it out. Perhaps the rusty tip was acting like a barb.

I ran the three or four steps across to him and kicked into the seat where he'd had my bollocks just a few minutes before.

The leg jerked back into his stomach and wedged against something hard; his spine, maybe, or the wall. Fuck him. This one was for Magreb. Dark red, almost brown, deoxygenated blood oozed from his guts. I kicked again and again.

I stood over him for a second, my chest heaving. I knew I had to get moving, had to keep the initiative. But I also needed to stop, catch my breath and think. What was the plan? What the fuck was I going to do?

Get Dom, and get out.

Sundance stirred. He was coming round. I went back to him and brought the stool down once more on his head, then again to make sure he was going to be able to keep Trainers company.

I flipped him over and pulled off his fleece. I didn't feel the cold any more — adrenaline and fear had taken over — but I knew I'd need it soon. I pulled off his desert boots, unbuckled his belt and took off his jeans.

Trainers panted in the corner like a rabid dog. He was trying to suck air but his body didn't know how to any more. He'd lost too much blood. His eyes were empty.

I kicked the chair sideways and he slid slowly to the floor.

86

The hinges were on the right. The handle poked out of a hole drilled into a steel plate that covered the whole door. I put my ear to the metal but couldn't hear anybody on the other side.

I glanced back at the two bodies, then eased it open. Bright light poured in from the corridor. It was a couple of metres wide and fluorescent strip-lights dangled from nails and hooks on each wall. All the doors seemed to be steel-plated. Each had a spyhole, a foot-long bolt, and a puddle of water beneath it. There wasn't a sound.

To the right, about thirty metres away, the corridor led to what I assumed was the holding area.

I closed my door behind me and turned left. Sundance's laces dragged in the puddles. I made a mental note of which cell doors didn't have the bolts thrown. If Mr Sheen or one of his mates appeared, I'd need somewhere to hide.

After about ten metres I came to a pair of steel doors that were clearly newer than the building. I threw the bolts and pulled one open a couple of inches. The first thing I heard was a helicopter in a low hover.

I eased the door open some more, and stuck my head out. Sunlight blinded me. Two white GMC Suburbans were parked about fifteen metres away on the far side of a small compound. Beyond them was a pair of large, rickety gates set into a crumbling block wall.

Birds sang. I looked above me. There weren't any windows. It was a low-level industrial building. The paint was peeling and some of the concrete had crumbled away to reveal the rusty skeleton beneath.

I heard the beat of rotor blades and swung my head to the right. A Puma came into view about two hundred yards away, then disappeared behind the wall. As the engines wound down, I could see the top of a pole and a fluttering flag. I couldn't make out the country, but I'd already seen enough.

We were in ISAFland. Which meant we were comprehensively fucked.

87

I rebolted the door and moved back along the corridor, checking the spyholes left and right.

The first cell held an Arab in an orange jumpsuit. He'd only been given a blanket and a plastic bucket to piss in. A fluorescent light burned brightly in the ceiling. He sat cross-legged, reading the Koran.

In the cell opposite was a Pakistani lad. He was naked. Burn marks on his back had turned to weeping sores. His beard was long and ragged. He sobbed as he crouched on his haunches in a pool of his own shit.

The next few cells told much the same story. Some prisoners were naked, some clothed. Some had blankets, some lay shivering. One was chained to the wall by his ankles. Most were cut, swollen and scarred. Different strokes for different folks. The Serbs knew exactly what they were doing.

I didn't feel anything for any of the prisoners. They might have been caught planning to bomb the shit out of London, or have killed and maimed young squaddies out here or in Iraq. If some were innocent, that was tough. I couldn't save the world. I wasn't doing that well trying to save one man.

I carried on past the waterboarding room to where the corridor went off to the right. There were five or six doorways each side. I could hear voices coming from the second cell on the left. The door was ajar. A power lead ran through it from a socket in the corridor. A phone cable headed the other way towards another starship lying outside the last door on the right.

I moved very slowly, my shoulder skimming the wall. I'd come to the right place. As I got closer, the smell of lemon became more powerful. I lowered myself to my knees, then flat on my stomach. I inched my head towards the gap between door and frame.

It looked like the crew room. Two empty sleeping-bags lay on US Army cots. A TV and DVD combo sat on a chair in the corner. The voices came from badly dubbed porn. Beside it, against the wall, was a trestle table upon which two pistols lay in leather holsters, the kind you clipped under the waistband of your trousers. They were Sigs; I could tell by the grips. There was a pile of spare mags. Two mobile phones were plugged into rechargers connected to the extension lead. Brew kit and US Army MREs (meals ready to eat) sat next to a kettle and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel's.

I ran in, grabbed one of the Sigs and stuffed two spare mags into Sundance's jeans. I pulled back the top slide to see a brass casing already in the chamber. I pressed the mag-release catch. It dropped into my hand. The mag was full.

I tucked the bottom of the fleece into my waistband, threw the other weapon, spare mags and the two phones down the front of it, then moved back into the corridor.

88

I stepped over the starship and looked through the spyhole.

Dom was plasticuffed naked to a chair, just like I'd been. His face was drenched with blood. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I knew it wasn't making Mr Sheen at all happy. He raised an arm and gave him a hard, open-handed slap across the face. Flecks of blood flew like sweat from a boxer's face.

It looked like word hadn't reached them yet that the game was over. Or maybe they couldn't resist dishing out a little bit more punishment.

Behind me, in the crew room, the porn had progressed to the heavy-breathing stage. The air was filled with 'Yeah, baby, yeah' as Mr Sheen gave Dom some more. The force of his next punch tipped the chair on to its side. Top Lip leant down to haul Dom up. Mr Sheen's back was turned momentarily to the door.

I checked the mag was on tight, took a deep breath, and barged straight through.

Mr Sheen spun round. The Sig's foresight was focused on the centre mass of his blurred body. I lowered it and kicked off three rounds.

Top Lip launched himself across the two-metre gap between us. He cannoned into me and smashed me back against the wall. We dropped to the floor together and I kept firing.

The room fell quiet. Dom turned his head. His eyes struggled to focus.

'We're getting out. Can you walk yet?'

'I'll crawl, if that's what it takes.'

I tipped him on to his side and pulled the chair legs away from his plasticuffs. He pushed his aching body into a semi-stoop.

'Come on, let's go!'

I grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the door.

As we passed Mr Sheen, Dom raised a blood-encrusted foot to kick him in the face.

I stopped him short. A plan was taking shape in my head. 'No, mate. We need to keep him looking his best.'

I bent down and hoisted the body into a fireman's lift. I staggered for a moment under its weight.

When we got to the crew room the screen was a blur of writhing flesh.

'Grab the whisky off the table!' I leant against the wall. 'And a sleeping-bag.'

Dom wobbled out of the crew room with the bag round his shoulders. I grabbed his spare hand and hustled him towards the exit.

89

We stumbled as far as the double doors.

'Wait here!' I swung the right one open, blinked in the sunlight and staggered across to the nearest wagon. I dumped Mr Sheen in the front passenger seat and belted him up. I tipped some Jack Daniel's down his front, then laid the bottle on the dash tray.

I moved round and opened the rear doors, then ran back and dragged Dom across the compound. 'Lie down and shut the fuck up.'

He pulled the bag over his head as I slammed the door.

I sat in the driver's seat and changed mags on the used Sig, checked the other was made ready, then slid one under each thigh. Mr Sheen slumped next to me. He looked like he'd pissed himself.

I brushed back my hair with my fingers and zipped up the fleece, hoping the ISAF boys on the other side of the gates wouldn't look at me too closely. I made sure I had a fresh mag handy and hit the ignition.

I stopped two or three metres short of the gates. There were no quarter-circle scrape marks in the dirt this side. They must open outwards.

I jumped down from the cab and put my ear to the steel but heard nothing close by; no voices, no radio traffic, no guards complaining to each other or listening to Radio Kabul.

I pulled back the bolts and eased it open an inch or two. All I could see was HESCOs, tents and flagpoles. They were about two hundred metres away, the other side of the runway. I pushed the gate some more. It opened directly on to a dirt road. There were no guards.

I pushed it all the way, then did the same with the other and ran back to the GMC.

'Good news, mate — I'm pretty sure this joint isn't official. The ISAF set-up is the other side of the airfield. Keep down and keep quiet — I'll confirm in a second.'

Mr Sheen lolled next to me. I reached inside his coat pocket for his wallet. I pulled out a fistful of dollars and stowed them in my lap.

I drove through the open gates and turned left. The checkpoint was a hundred metres or so down the road. It was manned by a couple of old guys in suits, polo-neck jumpers and pancake hats. The drop-bar was two branches roped together and painted red and white.

We drew level. I grabbed a dollar bill from my lap. The old guy accepted the bribe with a nod.

The other guy began to lift the barrier.

He glanced up as he waved the GMC through, and frowned. He stopped the barrier halfway. There was no point putting my foot down. I lowered the window, tilted my head at Mr Sheen and the bottle on the dash, jiggled my wrist and rolled my eyes.

He looked in and immediately smelt the whisky. He shook his head with disapproval and waved the infidels through.

We drove out past the burnt-out shells of buildings. Wrecked Russian vehicles rusted at the roadside. The MiG in the middle of the roundabout still gleamed in the early-morning light.

90

We turned south on to a dead-straight road. Mr Sheen's head bobbed about beside me like it was on a spring. Dom was lying on the back seat. He'd sparked out straight away.

The dash clock said 10:28.

'Dom, get up here!' I fished in the front of the fleece and pulled out one of the mobile phones. 'Up here, mate. I need your help.'

I flicked open the lid. As it sparked up, a picture of Mr Sheen appeared, with his arm round a woman and two little boys making faces in front of them.

'Dom, for fuck's sake, get up! You've got to call Siobhan! Tell her to get out of the house!'

I saw his head jerk up in the rear-view mirror. 'Up here, mate, I need your help.'

He clambered painfully over to the seats behind me, then leant his head forward until it was more or less level with mine. His wounds were open and weeping.

'Listen, the mobile in your front room, in the drawer. You know the number?'

He looked puzzled. 'Finbar's old one. But why does—'

I passed him a phone. 'Siobhan must go somewhere safe. Where? A place you both know…'

He thought for a few moments. 'We had our honeymoon in a little B and B up in Donegal.'

'Think proof of life — tell me something just you two know about the place. Did something happen — unusual, funny, romantic — something you talk about even today?'

A smile flashed across his damaged face. 'The hot water always ran out after one bath. We had to share.'

'Dial whatever number you'd normally use for her, then give me the phone. I need to talk to her first.'

TV Hill appeared in the distance, dead centre of the windscreen. Bleached-out buildings lined both sides of the boulevard. We came to a run of stalls and shops.

He handed the phone to me. It rang three or four times before I got a very sleepy 'Hello?'

'Siobhan? It's Nick.'

'Nick?'

'You saw me Tuesday. I just need you to know Dom is safe.'

'Oh, my God—'

'Listen. This call's being monitored. You're in danger. Do you understand?'

There was silence.

'Listen carefully, Siobhan. I want you to leave the house right away. Get dressed, but don't waste time packing or doing anything else. Just grab that grey mobile from the drawer in the living room and any cash you have in the house. Then go and draw as much money as you can from an ATM. After that, don't use the card any more or pay for anything on credit. Don't phone, don't make contact with anyone. You understand?'

'Yes.'

'Don't say the name, but I want you to go to the place you and Dom had to share a bath every day because the hot water always ran out. Do you understand?'

'Yes.'

'Go there, wait, and keep the grey mobile on. Dom will make contact later. It could be an hour, it could be a few days. Do you understand?'

'Yes, but how is he? Where is he?'

'He's with me, and he's alive. I'm going to pass you over. Don't talk about where you're going and don't call this number afterwards.'

I passed it behind me.

High walls, razor wire and floodlights protected the buildings either side of us. Outside almost every one of them was a plywood guardhouse. The guards weren't interested in us. They just sat in the shade and stroked their beards.

Dom sobbed bits of his story to her. There were long silences as he tried to pull himself together.

'Dom, end the call. They could be triangulating. Our drama's not over yet.'

Reluctantly, he said goodbye and closed down. He went to hand the mobile back.

I shook my head. 'Chuck the fucking thing out!'

I thrust my hand into the fleece and passed him the other. 'This too!'

The window powered down and I watched them bounce along the road in the wing mirror.

I took the first available left. If they'd been quick off the mark and were tracking the phones, they'd assume we were still heading south, maybe to the Serena.

Where I really wanted to go was west, to Khushal Mena.

91

We drove down narrow residential streets with crumbling pavements, cars, donkeys and carts parked on each side. Dom bounced each time we hit a pothole.

'Where are we going, Nick?'

'Basma's.'

'We can't put Baz in danger…'

'Least of our problems. Predator could be up there now, breathing down our necks. We have to get off the streets. And listen, mate. Bad news.' I turned my head to get eye-to-eye. 'The guy who's tracking us? He has Finbar.' I looked back at the road. 'You've got to tell me everything. About this film, about Pete. Tell me what the fuck's going on.'

He gripped my shoulder. 'You think he'll try to get Siobhan as well?'

'Now he's lost us he'll cover his bases, believe me.'

He slumped across the rear seats. I took a couple more turns until TV Hill was to our left and I knew where we were. The market popped up on our right and we drove past the twisted and burnt-out hulk of the suicide-bomber's wagon.

I pushed past anything in the way, hitting the horn to fuck them off, just like this wagon would have done on a normal day.

It wasn't long before I saw the peak of a wood-stack and the reinforcement rods sticking out of the unfinished buildings either side. There were no vehicles parked on the hard mud in front of the corrugated-iron shacks. Magreb would be on the missing list for another three days, until his brother got back.

A handpainted sign at the roadside announced the polytechnic.

'Nearly there. I need navigation, mate.'

'Left here, Nick.' I could smell him at my right shoulder. A couple of open scabs glistened beneath his stubble.

One more junction and we came to Basma's road. I stopped outside the blue wooden gate and honked the horn twice. When nothing happened I jumped out. I could hear women's voices inside.

The gate opened an inch on the security chain. The mesh of a burqa pressed against the gap.

'Basma — get Basma.'

She didn't understand me, but I didn't have time to mess about. I shouldered the gate open. The woman ran shrieking towards the house, her burqa flapping behind her. Fuck it, we'd sort out the small print later.

I jumped back into the wagon and drove through the entrance. There was a parking area to the right. A wriggly-tin roof kept off the sun and snow. Under it was a knackered rusty red estate. I drove towards it and stopped just short.

'What is happening?' Basma was bearing down on me. 'You can't just barge in here like this!'

I ignored her.

I leant inside the estate and released the handbrake. With both feet out on the ground and just one hand on the wheel, I started pushing it out.

'Get out of here! Leave at once!'

The 1980s Datsun estate rolled out in a straight line because the wheel lock was on. It didn't matter. I only needed enough room to get the Suburban past it.

'I've got Dom!' I jabbed a finger. 'Get that gate closed!'

She started running, then stopped in her tracks. She ran back to the Suburban and looked inside. 'Oh, my God.'

Mr Sheen's face was pressed against the window.

'Fuck him. He's dead. Dom's in the back.'

I jumped in and drove the GMC under the wriggly tin. 'I'll get him inside — you get that fucking gate closed!'

92

'Was it Noah James?'

Basma helped me get Dom out of the wagon.

'Yeah — close the gate!'

She looked around but there were no pepper-pots to delegate to. They'd scattered to the main house or outbuildings. Washing hung from lines. Smoke curled from holes in the roofs.

Basma caught up with us again as we staggered up the path. There wasn't a stick of furniture in the entrance hall. The cracked and crumbling walls were bare. A naked bulb hung from the ceiling.

Frightened voices echoed further inside the house. Basma left us. 'Poor girls — I must tell them everything's OK.'

The first door on the right was open. 'In here, Nick.'

The bed in the corner had a lumpy mattress covered by a furry nylon blanket with pictures of lions. The old pillow didn't have a case and was stained yellow and brown. The light was fuzzy. The sun had to fight its way through a thick square of muslin over the window.

Dom dropped to his knees and tried to pull up one of the floorboards. His hands scrabbled but his fingers couldn't grip. I grabbed him, sat him on the bed and draped the green sleeping-bag round his shoulders. 'Just concentrate on keeping warm, mate. This board, yeah?'

I worked my fingers into the gap. The board lifted. Beneath it was a black nylon holdall. I lifted it out and took it to the bed.

I had to unzip it for him.

'The laptop, Nick.'

It was among the clothes and overnight stuff.

Basma struggled in with a bowl of water and rags in one hand, a small suitcase in the other. 'This is all I can do until the girls get some more heated up for a bath. We've got antiseptic cream but no antibiotics. The hospital can't give us any — they ran out weeks ago. The Americans have stopped supplies.'

She tried to dab at Dom's wounds, but he was too busy sparking up the laptop.

'What happened, Dominik? How did Noah find you?'

His eyes never left the screen. 'They set me up. I thought I was going to meet the Taliban. I fell for it.'

She looked up at me hopefully. 'Is Noah dead?'

'All of them.'

She didn't bother to hide her smile. 'Good.'

I turned to Dom. 'Basma told me you were looking for the guy in the Taliban who supplies the Brits with the gear. But which Brits?'

He fished around and pulled out a washbag. Among the kit was a plastic carrier-bag. 'This one…'

He unfolded it and produced a memory stick.

The clip kicked off outside what looked like the front door of 10 Downing Street. A tall, good-looking young guy with long blond hair went in with bags of shopping.

Dom's finger hovered over the image. 'Finbar.' He almost choked as he said the word.

I watched as the camera panned up to the top window. An older man in a white shirt stood with his back to the lens. Finbar walked into the room. The older man held him in his arms and they kissed. A few moments later, they moved out of shot.

Dom pressed the soft screen so hard where the older man had last been that the picture blurred. The film cut and zeroed in again on the large black door. It opened. Both of them stood just back from the threshold, talking. The older one had an overnight bag at his feet.

Dom's voice grated with sadness. 'Finbar had come out to us when he was seventeen. Then, after about a year, he was getting into drugs.'

He looked down. 'We tried to get him to rehab, but he just pushed us away. He took to disappearing for days on end. Eventually he told us he was moving in with a friend.'

My eyes hadn't left the screen. Whoever the older man was, Finbar was kissing him again.

'He wouldn't tell us who the friend was, even where he was living. Siobhan was out of her mind. She needed to know he wasn't killing himself.'

He was breathing heavily. 'We eventually found him.' He pressed the screen again. 'Here, in St Stephen's Green. We just wanted to keep contact, try and help him… Can you imagine how Siobhan felt? Seeing her son smacked up like that…'

He pulled at his blood-matted hair. 'Finbar finally said his friend was a businessman who came to the city a couple of times a month. Said he was in property development, a firm from London.' His eyes blazed. 'I wanted to see his face, this arsehole property developer from London who supplies young boys with drugs so he can… so he can…' He shook his head helplessly.

'You got Pete to film?'

'Yes. He said he was coming on Friday, for the weekend.'

'And who was it?'

'I don't know. That's the bizarre thing, Nick. I had his photograph, but even with all the resources at my disposal I couldn't get anyone to put a name to the face.'

He pressed pause. 'Nick, if I don't make it out of here, I want you at least to have seen his face. I don't know who he is, but I found out he's an immensely powerful man. Maybe you can trace him. I got started before, well, before…'

He bit at a scab on his lip. 'Siobhan's father made his fortune in the property boom. You saw our house? His wedding present to us. There's not much he doesn't know about Dublin property. As one line of enquiry, he got his guys to do some digging. The Land Registry showed the flat was owned by a legit UK company, but then there was all kinds of smoke and mirrors with offshore trusts and stuff in the Caymans, Panama, you name it. Everything was shielded behind nominees and God knows what else. They hit a brick wall.

'I had other irons in the fire. I talked to a contact at the Inland Revenue. He came back promptly and said a very strange thing. They said it was unwise to keep digging, it was a government matter. A government matter? What's the government got to do with offshore trusts and property companies?

'Then the wheels really started to come off. Moira sent us to Iraq, and I had to do everything by phone and email. We'd only been there a couple of days and I got word that the FCO had something for me. Remember when I thought they were going to give me an interview?

'I went to the compound. Basically, the shit hit the fan. I was told my enquiries in Dublin and Kabul had to stop. The whole drugs thing, off the agenda. Just like that. I told them they had no right to tell me what to do. Next thing I knew, those two Irish bastards were in the room. They told me to do as I was told or else.

'The following day I spoke to Siobhan and she said Finbar had gone walkabout again. She was contacting drug outreach programmes, hospitals. Nothing. He'd vanished into thin air.'

His voice trailed off. He was exhausted. It seemed to take everything he had just to hit play again.

I watched as Finbar and the property developer kissed once more, then the older man picked up his overnight bag and walked out on to the street.

He walked towards the camera, until he nearly filled the screen.

It was then that I realized who he was.

93

So much now made sense, and the little that didn't could wait.

We had to get moving.

'Basma, that red estate of yours — it still work?'

Dom jumped in before she could answer. 'Where are you going? To dump the body?'

'No, mate. The Gandamack.'

He made as if to stand, but the old guys outside the war-victims hospital would have got off their benches quicker. He sat down again and started ransacking his bag for clothes. 'I'm coming with you.'

'No. You're fucked. Look at the state of you.'

'Been past a mirror yourself lately?' He grabbed a pair of brown cargoes and shook them out. Basma pulled them over his feet. 'You going to upload the film to him from there?'

'The film? Why the fuck would I want to do that?'

'In exchange for Finbar's life. It's not such a bad deal…'

I shook my head. 'That's not the way it works, mate. It's not just the film that's the problem. It's everything that Finbar, you and Siobhan know. To them, Finbar's just a volatile, unreliable junkie. You're a journalist on a crusade. And Siobhan joins the dots. Will he let any of you, or me, stay alive? Will he fuck. It has to end here. Basma — the keys.'

Dom wetted his hair and tried to push it back. He could have had a full day at Champneys and it wouldn't have made much difference. He wasn't going to be back on the cover of Polish Hello! any day soon.

I splashed my face with water and tried to sort myself out. The Gandamack wasn't the Serena, but the way we looked we wouldn't even get past the gate.

I pulled a blue shirt from his bag and dumped the fleece. 'OK, Big Boy, if you're in, you do what I say when I say to do it, OK?'

He looked at me for a long time, then nodded.

I went to the rickety old wardrobe in the corner and opened the door. There weren't any clothes on the two or three wire coat-hangers that hung from the single wooden bar, but I wasn't after a coat.

I had to shield my eyes against the sunlight as I hit the yard. I looked up and gave the Predator the finger.

Dom wasn't too light on his feet but he was moving quicker down the path than he had when we'd come up it. I helped him into the back of the estate as Basma reappeared with an armful of maps. 'I'm coming too. You might need Pashtun. You'll have to drive, though. This country might have a new set of liberators, but we women still can't sit in the driver's seat. The police would pull us over. Everyone would stare. The older ones would throw stones. I'll sit in the back.'

I lifted a hand. 'Basma, you must stay here. I need you to make waves. I need you to put the word round that Dominik Condratowicz is going to expose corruption and drug-trafficking at the highest level. And we need you to keep Dom's laptop safe. We'll take the memory stick, but if anything goes wrong, if you don't hear from one of us within seven days, I want you to contact Kate at Dom's office and get the film to her. Email it, whatever she says. Tell her everything.

'And there's one other thing. The guy in the GMC…'

She smiled. 'My girls have already taken care of him. There's no shortage of willing hands round here when it comes to dumping men in holes in the ground.'

'Right here?'

'We have a cemetery round the back. We collect suicide victims from the hospitals and villages and give them a decent burial. We're the only ones who seem to care…'

I took the keys from her as two pepper-pots hurtled past us. As they swung the gates open I climbed into the wreck of a car and rolled down the window. 'Basma, thank you. But you're wrong about one thing. You're not the only ones…'

She leant in through the window and kissed us both on the cheek. 'May Allah protect you. He always makes sure the tank is full, so that's a good start.'

I fired up the protesting engine. 'Yeah, well, let's just hope the Taliban weren't watching, eh? That peck on the cheek could get you stoned to death.'

We started moving.

'And make sure you dump that wagon somewhere, preferably tonight.'

We rolled out on to the street, turned left and headed for the main.

94

Down by the market, the traffic was still paying no attention to the boys in the drunken-sailor hats, and they were still going berserk.

Dom was fighting the urge to nod off beside me.

We passed the woodstacks. We turned our heads in unison to stare at the little shack where Sundance and Trainers had caught up with us. I knew we were thinking the same thing. Magreb's wife faced a bleak future. In Afghanistan, widows are the lowest of the low. Those medical careers were going to be a long time coming.

Dom sighed heavily, and a tear rolled down his cheek. 'I've been so stupid… Peter, Magreb, Finbar… God knows who else… All because of my stupid bloody personal crusade…'

I concentrated hard on the road. 'He was never going to stop until he had the film. Once he'd destroyed that, it was always going to be your turn next.'

Dom stared miserably ahead. 'I thought it would solve everything. When the Irish guys said they wanted it, I bluffed and Peter played along. I said I didn't have it — not with me, anyway. That was when they dragged us out into the desert and shot Peter dead, right there in front of me.' He turned. 'And I still thought I could steal a march on them. Baz's girls had heard rumours about some big drugs deal going down between the Taliban and some Brits. I knew they must be the same Brits the FCO were trying to stop me investigating. I thought if I could make contact, find proof, whatever, I could put everything right…'

'And then Noah and his mate snapped you up and decided to skim themselves a nice little earner on the Dublin property market.' I put a hand on his shoulder.

Gym Tonic was coming up on our left. I took a few more twists and turns until we came to a crossroads. On the far side there was a high wall topped with razor wire. To the right I could see TV Hill.

I negotiated the junction and headed left. Moments later, we were passing the computer shop. I waited for a couple of workmen carrying buckets of rubble to get out of our way, then pulled up outside the pedestrian door to the right of the Gandamack gates.

'Stay here, mate. I won't be long. Ten minutes max. Any longer than that, take the car and get yourself back to Basma's. If I don't show up by tomorrow, get on the first plane out. You'll have to do it all on your own.'

I gave the gate a couple of punches. The slide was pulled back and a set of fiery Afghan eyes wanted to know what the fuck I wanted.

95

I gave Mr Winter Warfare a big smile, and as the door swung open I got a big row of brown teeth back. He was still dressed in the thick black polo-neck jumper, with even thicker stripy tank top. Five or six dusty 4x4s were jammed against each other in the courtyard. I followed the gravel path across the garden to the concrete steps.

I was hoping the reception desk would be unmanned, but the lad in the white shirt was right behind it, all smiles, a model of efficiency. I walked past the rack of Martini-Henrys. 'Hello, mate — everything good?'

'Yes, thank you, sir.'

'I'm looking for a guy I did some business with a few nights ago. Local, mid-thirties, clean-shaven, dresses quite Western — polo shirt and jeans. He was wearing a navy ball cap…'

His face lit up. 'Kellogg, Brown and Root?'

'That's the one. Could you do me a favour? Go and check if he's here? I said I'd meet him in the Hare and Hound, but I'm expecting a call and I don't get a signal down there.'

'Certainly, sir. Two minutes.'

'As long as it takes, mate.'

He headed past the weapon racks and back outside towards the steps that led to the basement.

If the fixer really was there, I'd consider taking him with us. A Pashtun speaker might come in handy. If I'd been on my own, I would have driven as close to the border as I could get without having to go through any checkpoints or controls, dumped the car and taken off on foot. I knew these mountains — not as well as the muj or the Taliban, perhaps — because I'd crossed them many times. But I had a semi-cripple in tow, and a seriously ticking clock. We had to get to an airport in Pakistan as quickly as we could. We didn't have any time to play with.

I'd become the world's greatest Martini-Henry admirer all over again. I went to the rack and almost caressed them as I pulled the coat-hanger from my pocket and straightened it out.

I checked the corridor for bodies and CCTV before realizing my bootlaces needed retying. I bent down, slid the wire behind the rack and fished. The slim bundle was where I'd left it. I grabbed my Nick Stone passport and ten hundred-dollar bills.

The young receptionist reappeared, shaking his head. 'He's not in the bar, sir. Can I take a message?'

I gave him the biggest grin I could manage. 'Tell him I was here, but I left early.'

I walked back to Basma's car.

96

Dom hadn't wasted his time. He'd wrapped a shemag round his head to hide his blond hair, and was studying the map spread out on his lap. He'd obviously done his stuff. 'Couldn't be easier, Nick. It's east on Jadayi Suhl, then a left when we hit Jadayi Awalimay. It's main road all the way to the Khyber Pass. A hundred miles, tops.'

I gunned the engine. 'It'll be a fucking sight less than a hundred if we've got a Predator overhead.'

I reversed down the alleyway and on to the street.

'How can we tell?'

'We can't. First we'll know about it is either ISAF putting in a flying roadblock up ahead, or a Hellfire missile up our arse.'

'Up the Khyber?' He grinned. 'Either way, nice knowing you, Nick. And I still haven't thanked you…'

'Later, mate, later.'

We passed Flower Street. It was packed.

We drove through the embassy area and past the compound protected by the sangar. I was tempted to stop and ask the big lads hitting the weights inside if they cared to come and ride shotgun.

A couple of Toyota flatbeds screamed past, with four or five police on the back of each, weapons pointing out. None of them gave a fuck about a battered red estate.

We passed the high walls and razor wire that surrounded the British embassy. The barrels of SA80s paraded back and forth behind the sandbags. Nine times out of ten this would have been a safe haven. We could have driven to the barrier, declared ourselves, and the ordeal would have been over. But right now some of the grey men behind those HESCOs wanted us dead. How many? I wondered. How far and how deep had this thing spread?

The estate lurched across a pothole and we bounced in our seats. We came to the main. I turned left, heading north.

Dom tapped the map. 'This parallels the airport road for a while, then veers north-east, then east.'

'About a hundred and sixty K max, right? You might as well get your head down, mate. Fuck knows, those scabs of yours could do with some beauty sleep. But a few things first. Assuming we get over the border, Islamabad's about the same distance the other side. We'll get flights from there. We'll go separately. You take British Airways, I'll take any other carrier I can. It'll make it harder for the Yes Man to lift us both. He has to do that to control the film, and it'll be easier and cleaner for him if he can do it this side of civilization.'

Dom started to settle. 'The Yes Man? The guy talking to me in the cell or the one with Finbar?'

'Both, mate. They're the same man. Listen, I know him. I knew the two Irish guys too. I don't know his name, never have, but I know he's dangerous, smart and doesn't give a shit about anyone.'

He sat up, ready to question me to death.

'Not now, mate. We've got too much real shit to deal with. Now…' I paused as he settled down again. 'Once in Dublin, we'll aim to be at Bertie's Pole at nine a.m. every day for three days. If neither of us turns up in that time, we have to assume the other's been lifted or something's gone wrong. You got that? I'm saying it now in case there's a roadblock round the next corner and we get separated. If we do, then, yeah, it was nice knowing you, too. Who shall I send my invoice to? You or Moira?'

He grinned. 'Moira, definitely. Then me, once she's rejected it.' His grin faded as a new thought came into his mind. 'Nick, there's a real complication to all this. The Yes Man and his team didn't ship their heroin into virgin territory. There's a turf war going on in Dublin, and it's him who sparked it.'

'PIRA won't be liking that one little bit.'

'Haven't you heard, Nick?' He raised an eyebrow. 'PIRA have been disbanded! They've handed in every single weapon they ever had and taken up landscape gardening…'

If his aching jaw had let him, he'd have laughed as hard as I did.

'A turf war is the best news I've had all week. It's going to help us get Finbar back. Now grab some kip. I'll wake you when we get to the border and I need your wallet. It's the most corrupt spot on earth. Last time I crossed here it cost a hundred bucks.'

I wasn't sure he'd heard the last bit. His shemag-draped head was banging against the window and he was snoring like a chain gun.

I checked the dash. The clock said it was midday. We had a full tank, and that was plenty for the distance we had to cover. We'd be going at a fuel-efficient pace anyway because I didn't want to be conspicuous or get involved in even the slightest accident.

There was nothing much else I could do now but resist the temptation to search for Predator-shaped specks on the horizon.