A Covert War

TWENTY ONE

It was late afternoon as Abdul pulled off the main highway north of Charika and brought the Landcruiser rumbling down on to a dirt road. They were immediately surrounded in a cloud of dust as the wheels bit into the dry, sandy rock that had seen the passage of weather and traffic over many years and had crumbled beneath the onslaught. The hills rose up on either side of the road, but soon those on the east side began to lose their height against the mountains that were rising up in the west.

The green valley they were driving into began to lose its colour as the light faded. Although they passed several dwellings, most of them looked unoccupied. Marcus wondered idly how much of that was to do with the war, and how much was to do with the locals going off in search of work in the towns and cities.

Their journey up to Charika had been uneventful. It had taken them about five hours. There hadn’t been much talking; mainly small talk when they did open their mouths. From time to time they passed small convoys of army trucks and armed vehicles. Most of them were American. Occasionally they would see a British convoy, but because they were not travelling through the British Zone, they didn’t expect to come across many.

Susan had been thinking of her brother more and more as the journey progressed. Abdul had assured her that her brother was alive and well, and would be released to her as soon as he had received instructions from the British when and where they could complete the handover? providing the guarantees had been put in place.

Marcus had asked Abdul why he could even contemplate leaving Afghanistan and seeking political asylum in England when he had such a powerbase in this country. Abdul had explained that he was under threat from what he called ‘discontents’ in his province, and that he believed his life was forfeit because of the increasing pressure from the American and British presence in Afghanistan.

Abdul didn’t elaborate, but he did believe the Americans had been actively trying to kill him. And he also believed that Janov was jostling for position and had the Americans on his side. For Abdul that was too powerful an opposition; asylum in Britain was the only way out.

Suddenly Abdul spun the wheel of the Landcruiser and it tilted over as he drove on to a rutted track. Susan clung to Marcus as the Landcruiser bucked and rolled over the uneven ground. After what seemed like an eternity to Susan and Marcus, Abdul pulled into a yard and up alongside a plain wall, about two metres high. The rudimentary brickwork could be plainly seen even in the half light.

The dust swept past them in a cloud as Abdul stepped on the brakes and brought the Landcruiser to a halt. He killed the engine and got out of the car. Then he turned to Susan and Marcus and beckoned them to follow him.

Susan now felt extremely nervous and excited. She knew she was about to see her brother, the man she believed long ago to be dead. And as she followed Abdul through the open gateway, she prayed that this would not be a false dawn for her or for David.

There was a light burning inside the single storey dwelling. No sound could be heard save for the occasional sound of an animal somewhere behind the house. Abdul walked up to the front door and rattled his fist on it noisily, calling out something in Farsi.

The door was opened almost immediately by one of Abdul’s lieutenants. They greeted each other warmly. Abdul’s man stepped back and let the three of them pass through the door. They then followed him in to a room which was sparsely furnished. Abdul asked Marcus and Susan to sit down. Marcus sat on an old, wooden chair, leaving the one remaining chair that had a cushion for Susan. She sat on it, rigid and bolt upright. Abdul left the room saying nothing. Two minutes later he returned with a stranger.

The man was dressed in traditional dress; the pakol hat and chapan jacket over baggy pantaloons. He had a full beard that showed some grey. His eyebrows were dark and shaggy and seemed to merge with the deep furrows across his brow. Beneath those eyebrows were eyes of piercing blue, and just to the side of one eye was a scar that climbed up beneath the pakol hat.

Susan rose slowly to her feet.

‘David?’ she said softly, the question in her voice showed her disbelief. ‘Is it really you?’

He stepped forward and held his arms out wide. ‘Susan.’ He couldn’t get another word out because the tears burst from his eyes and his voice choked on his sobs.

Susan ran across the room and threw herself at him, sobbing wildly. ‘David! David!’

Marcus stood up. What he was witnessing, no- one would ever have believed possible. But he saw it with his own eyes; Susan and David reunited. What was it, he wondered had brought Susan this far, her own dogged perseverance? Chance encounters?

He thought back to his office in Oliver’s Yard in London and the grubby letter she had with her. Now the writer of that horrifying passage was standing in front of them, alive and well. But not yet free.

Susan stepped back from her brother’s embrace. She put her hand to his face and wiped his tears with her thumb, brushing them aside like a doting mother.

‘Oh David, what have they done to you?’

He took hold of her hand and held on to it. ‘I never thought I would live to see this day.’ He looked over at Abdul. ‘He has looked after me well because I was worth something to him.’ He looked back at Susan. ‘Believe me, I’m fine. All I need is to get home to England and pick up my life again.’

Abdul stepped forward and separated the two of them. ‘Time for talking later; now we must eat. Tomorrow I want to know what your government intends to do.’

Susan felt a ripple of fear in her stomach. She had absolutely no authority whatsoever to negotiate David’s release on her government’s behalf, and she had no idea how Abdul would react to that.

She looked at David and thought how dreadful it would be if she was unable to persuade Abdul to release her brother.

Susan spent the next hour sick to the stomach. She tried to eat the food put before her, but her appetite had disappeared. David was in very high spirits, naturally and kept her and Marcus entertained, if that was the right word with details of his captivity. He never mentioned Shakira once.

But one thing Susan did notice, despite her fretful condition, was that Marcus was unusually quiet. Whenever he responded to something David had said, it was monosyllabic. And when David told them something funny, she thought that Marcus’s laugh was affected. She knew how she herself felt, but had a suspicion that Marcus’s thoughts were not in the room but elsewhere. It was if he was planning something, and that began to worry Susan intensely.

After the evening meal, Abdul allowed Susan and David to spend a little more time together before taking him away and shackling him in a room somewhere. Then he returned and showed Marcus and Susan where they would be sleeping.

Marcus couldn’t sleep; he daren’t sleep because of what he was planning. He knew that Susan would not be able to negotiate her brother’s release simply because she had sent a text message to Cavendish; no, it was much more involved than that.

His best guess was that someone in the government would ask to meet Abdul on neutral ground, which was hardly likely in Afghanistan. Abdul would sense duplicity in that because that was the way governments played the rules. This would antagonise Abdul and he would more than likely take Susan and himself as hostages and use the three of them, David included, as bargaining chips.

He thought about Cavendish and realised the man had sent them into the lion’s den deliberately and was probably relying on some inspiration from Marcus. Perhaps he thought that David would help, but then Cavendish had no idea how fit and strong his former agent was.

The more he thought about it, the more Marcus realised that their lives were almost certainly forfeit unless he could think of something. And it was these thoughts that had been running through his mind the moment he had seen David. And the more he thought about what would probably happen, the angrier he became.

He looked at his watch and could see from the luminous dial that it was almost four o’clock in the morning and soon the dawn light would begin to fill the house. Hopefully everybody in the house would be asleep, although he guessed that Abdul would have posted a guard. It surprised him that Abdul didn’t have a small army with him, but then if the Arab was expecting to be welcomed into the arms of the British Government, he probably would not have wanted his loyal band of thugs watching.

Marcus got out of bed and walked on the balls of his feet to the door. He opened it carefully, surprised that it was not locked and peered out along the corridor that ran the length of the house. He saw a shadowy figure walking towards the short passage that led to the front doors of the house. Marcus had no idea who it was.

He slipped quietly out of the room and closed the door behind him, then tip-toed carefully down to the corner of the short passage. Peering round the corner he saw the figure closing the front door. From his body language, he was closing it like a thief would when entering somebody’s house and didn’t want to be heard.

As the figure disappeared from view, Marcus walked quickly up to the door and edged it open. He looked through the narrow gap and could see the front yard bathed in the half-light between night and dawn. He could see one of Abdul’s men. Habib, apparently asleep on a log, judging from his crumpled shape.

What followed next, Marcus could hardly believe. The figure he had watched leaving the house was Kareem. He suddenly thrust something into Habib’s neck. Then he wrapped his arm around the man’s head and stabbed him again. He let him slump to the ground.

Marcus knew then that they were all in terrible danger and his earlier misgivings about Abdul had taken on a new twist; although he doubted that Abdul had anything to do with what he had just witnessed.

Marcus kept the door open just a little and saw Kareem drag Habib’s body into the sparse undergrowth that struggled for survival alongside the track. As soon as he had disappeared, Marcus stepped out of the house and sprinted across the yard, into the undergrowth and threw himself at Kareem.

It was over within seconds; Marcus had achieved the element of total surprise and knocked Kareem senseless with a chopping blow to the jaw line beneath the ear. Kareem slumped on to the bloody body of Habib in a gruesome parody of endearing friendship.

Marcus stripped the Kareem of his clothes and tied him to the body of his comrade in arms, shoving the tails of the man’s shirt in his mouth and gagging him securely. All the while Marcus was doing this, he kept asking himself the same question; why did he kill Habib?

Marcus could only make guesses and ponder on the imponderable, but that would not get him any further. His next problem was how to tackle Abdul and secure David’s and their own freedom. He had no idea where Abdul was sleeping. Nor did he have any idea where David was, but he intended finding him.

He went back into the house, holding the AK47 that he had picked up from the dead man across his chest, finger across the trigger guard and went back to his room. Once he was in there he knelt beside Susan’s bed, kept the AK47 out of sight and shook Susan awake. As she sat up he put his fingers to his own lips and one hand on hers.

‘Get dressed,’ he whispered. ‘We’re leaving and we’re taking David with us.’

Susan caught on very quickly. She too had realised that they had been taken into a situation which was beyond them, and she guessed that Marcus was taking matters into his own hands. She nodded at him and scrambled out from under the single blanket that covered her.

Marcus took a little time to admire Susan’s delightful curves before leaning over towards her and planting a big kiss on her lips. Then he went over to the door before she could say anything in protest.

Marcus reasoned that Abdul would have put David in the room furthest away from the front door. And he also believed that Abdul would probably sleep in the adjacent room. So he walked to the far end of the passageway and tried the door at the end.

It was locked.

He tried the door opposite. That too was locked.

It left him with no alternative. He crashed his foot against the first door, bringing it hard against the lock. The door was old and weak; it gave instantly, opening with a resounding crash as it swung back and hit the wall.

Marcus ran into the room. It was empty.

He turned and lashed out at the other door which gave in too. As he rushed into that room he saw Abdul reaching across to the chair beside his bed. Marcus could see his AK47 hanging across the back.

He kicked the chair away and shoved the barrel of his own weapon into Abdul’s face.

‘Don’t move!’

Abdul froze. ‘You’re going to die,’ he muttered through gritted teeth.

Marcus slugged him. Abdul slumped back on the bed, not quite unconscious but certainly dazed. Marcus then knelt on top of Abdul with one knee and held him like that until he had regained some of his senses.

‘Now listen. I am going to stand up. You are going to tell me where the key is to David’s chains. Then David, Susan and I are going to leave.’

Abdul shook his head. ‘No, you are going to die.’

Marcus hit him again. ‘Don’t keep saying that. Where’s the key?’

David was sitting up by this time. ‘It’s on the table over there,’ he told Marcus pointing to the table at the far side of the room.

Marcus picked up Abdul’s weapon from the back of the fallen chair and passed it to David. ‘I hope you know how to use this,’ he said. He then went across to the table and picked the key up. Within two minutes, David was standing beside Marcus. Both men were looking at Abdul.

‘Well,’ David said, a little breathlessly. ‘You seem to have control of the situation. What do we do now?’

Marcus glanced quickly at David. ‘What we do now is tie him up, and then we leave with Susan.’

‘What about Abdul’s men. Where are they?’

‘One is dead and the other is tied up.’

‘You?’ David said without finishing.

Marcus shook his head. ‘No, one of Abdul’s faithful minders killed the other one. I watched him do it.’

Abdul’s expression clouded over when he heard what Marcus had said. He began to sit up but Marcus shoved him down again. ‘Stay there!’

‘Why are you lying about my men?’ he asked.

Marcus shook his head. ‘I’m not, believe me. One of your men is a traitor to you. He killed his friend.’

He handed David his AK 47.

‘Watch him while I tie him up.’

Marcus spent a couple of minutes making sure Abdul could not move. Then he took the AK47 back from David. He was about to say something to David when suddenly there was a crash and a scream. Marcus spun round and made a quick sprint for the door.

He got out into the passageway and stopped. At the far end, now reasonably light because of the dawn beginning to seep into the sky, he could see Susan. She was struggling fiercely trying to free herself from the man who was holding her.

In the man’s other hand was a gun. He lifted it and pointed at Susan’s head. Then he called down the corridor to Marcus.

‘Put your gun down, or I will shoot her.’

Marcus felt his whole body slump in despair and disbelief. He knew the voice of the man who had just spoken to him.

It was Maggot.