Agent 6

Greater Province of Kabul City of Kabul Karta-i-Seh District Darulaman Boulevard

Since returning from the arrest of the deserting officer, Leo had smoked for several hours in an attempt to suppress an almost unbearable sense of restlessness. Listening to the plans hatched by the two lovers hoping to embark on an impossible journey reminded him not only of his own thwarted ambitions to reach New York but also the journeys he’d made with Raisa, across the Soviet Union and into Budapest. Witnessing their determination, misguided though it was, he was forced to ask whether he’d abandoned the dream of solving Raisa’s murder. He reminded himself of the conditions he’d been placed under. He could not leave Afghanistan without bringing ruin to his daughters back home in Moscow. Anyway, the advice he’d offered to Fyodor and Ara had been the truth: to reach Pakistan posed insurmountable difficulties. The roads were controlled by Soviet forces: the air was patrolled by fighters and helicopters, while the mountains and footpaths were governed by the Afghan insurgents, who’d kill a Soviet on sight, deserter or not. In the end, the couple hadn’t even made it out f Kabul. Yet there was something noble about their failure. He could not deny the romanticism of such a venture. He thought of Elena: it was the kind of plot she might have become embroiled in had she been born here in Kabul.

Gradually, in the midst of these thoughts, he became aware of a noise, an urgent knocking on the door. He didn’t lower his pipe, lying sprawled on his bed – curious as to whether the noise was real or imagined. He had no intention of getting up, content to wait and see. There was a second attempt, even more frantic this time, accompanied by a cry. It was a woman’s voice. Leo sucked deeply on his pipe and remained perfectly still, holding the precious smoke in his lungs. He made no move to stand, or open the door, passive and motionless. The voice called out his name:

– Leo Demidov!

He exhaled, regarding the opium-smoke shapes, before scratching the side of his unshaven face and deciding the woman was real, rather than imagined. Half-heartedly he called out:

– The door is unlocked.

His voice was barely a whisper. And she hadn’t heard. She knocked again. It took an enormous effort for him to raise his voice:

– The door is unlocked.

The door flung open and a woman caked in mud and dirt ran in. She shut the door, locking it, before falling to the floor in a weeping heap. Hair was strewn across her face, ragged and wild, she looked up at Leo. It was Nara Mir: his most promising student.

Though she was less than a few paces away, her body muddy and bruised, speaking directly to him – a pitiful figure that would surely elicit sympathy from any normal man – Leo felt disconnected from her. The experience was akin to being submerged under bathwater and looking up at this woman. They belonged to different worlds: his was warm and calm while her was troubled and cold. The sensation wasn’t indifference, or callous disregard. He wanted to know what she was saying and interested to know what had happened. Feeling the rush from his last inhalation, he sucked in deeply through his nose and imagined if gods existed they would watch mankind as Leo now watched Nara, distant observers of events unravelling before them.

Leo closed his eyes.

*

Nara stopped speaking. Her mentor, the inscrutable Leo Demidov, the man she’d come to in her hour of need, had taken one look at her distressed state and fallen asleep. She hadn’t been bundled up in his arms, comforted with a promise that she would be protected. Her teacher allowed her to remain on the floor, bloodied and bruised, without an offer of help or even an expression of concern. Oddly, the lack of attention had a calming effect. By some margin she was the most competent person in the room.

She stood up, moving towards the bed, regarding her mentor with a pipe protruding from his open palm, head and body slumped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She could smell opium. She hadn’t known that he was an addict but it seemed obvious now. He was erratic, absent-minded, unreliable but it was hard when judging a foreigner not to suppose their eccentricities were due to the fact that they were from another land.

Taking control, she assessed her situation. She was inside and behind a locked door. Had the streetlights not come on she might have been able to reach the apartment without being seen. As it was, she’d been chased all the way here, unable to shake her attacker. She hurried to the window, crouching down, looking out. Expecting to see just one person she discovered there was commotion on the street: at least five or six men. She couldn’t make out their faces. An angry gathering had formed at the foot of the steps. No doubt the sight of a half-clothed woman running into a Soviet adviser’s home at night had caught the attention of the neighbours. Her attacker had been only seconds behind her: he was already with the crowd, stirring their emotions. He would not give up. They were organizing a group, a lynch mob to kill them both, just as had happened in Herat, when Afghan women and Soviet advisers alike had been executed.

Mapping her position in the city in relation to government installations, Nara tried to work out where help might come from. The Soviet Embassy was at the southern end of Darulaman Boulevard. She needed a telephone. She retreated from the window, returning to Demidov on the bed. He was out cold. Abandoning her teacher, she searched the apartment, unable to find a telephone. For a man who believed that searching a person’s belongings would reveal details of their character it was odd that he owned so little. There was less furniture in his entire apartment than her room at home. Unless panic had blinded her, there was nothing of any use. She searched the apartment again, thinking that in her haste she must have missed the telephone. On the second search she found the socket and stared at it blankly until she understood he did not own a phone. It was characteristic of him. He would not want to be contacted or bothered. Their best chance of escape had vanished. Panic swelling in her chest, she dropped to her mentor’s side, shaking him violently by the scruff of the neck. If he didn’t own a phone maybe he owned a gun.

– Wake up!

His eyes rolled like two heavy stone slabs, briefly revealing the whites. Nara ran to the kitchen, filled a dirty glass with cold water, returned to the bed and threw it in his face.

*

Leo opened his eyes and touched the spots of water on his face. He’d forgotten the events of the last few minutes and when he looked up to see his most promising student standing at the foot of the bed he wondered what she was doing in his apartment. She was in a state of some disarray. How long had she been standing there and where had she come from? He tried to remember her name but couldn’t. Enveloped in a sensation of supreme comfort, all he wanted was to sleep. Feeling his eyes close, he asked, his voice croaky:

– Why are you here?

She crouched down, close to him. He noticed that her lip was bleeding and her cheek was bruised. She’d been beaten. Her voice was shrill and loud and it annoyed him to be disturbed in this way. She said:

– They tried to kill me. They broke into my home.

Leo felt the opium pipe roll out of his hand. He tried to catch it, closing his palm, but it was too late. His student cried out:

– Don’t you understand? They’re outside! They followed me here! We’re in danger!

Leo nodded but he was not sure what he was agreeing with. Breathing deeply, he watched as Nara took the candle and placed it under his outstretched hand. His skin began to burn.

There was a sensation that his brain slowly registered as pain. A patch th. Brn began to blister. He jerked his hand away, the fastest movement he’d made for hours, studying it as a bubble of red, angry skin took shape. Cracks appeared in his fragile opium shell. He felt sick, a confusion of pain and opium-contentment, the two sensations clashing. Standing up, unsteady on his feet, he was straddling two worlds: the opiate existence and the real world, where there was pain and grief and loss. Resting against the wall, the sickness grew stronger. He walked to the sink, running his hand under cold water. The pain came and went, then returned even stronger than before.

Leo managed to keep the nausea under control. He turned back to the room, regarding his protegee’s injury, slowly deducing the events that must have preceded her arrival. She was only partially dressed and he gestured at the few items of clothing in his possession, spread across the floor and a single chair.

– Take what you need.

While she rooted through his slim assortment of clothes, he asked:

– Who did this to you?

Before she could answer the apartment went dark. The power had been shut off.

Leo peered out over the city. There were lights on next door. His neighbours had electricity. The wires to the apartment must have been cut. He looked down at the street below. There were at least ten people outside.

– Who are they?

– I don’t know. Two men attacked me at home. I injured one. The other chased me.

– Did they speak to you?

– They’d found out I was working for the secret police.

He thought for a moment, examining the blister. Nara joined him, wearing his baggy grey trousers.

– Do you own a gun?

He shook his head, watching as Nara’s strength briefly left her, her expression seeming to collapse. For the first time she sounded helpless:

– What are we going to do?

If the mob broke in Leo knew his time in Afghanistan would count for nothing. The crowd would kill him without a second thought, seeing him as no different to the soldiers who’d recently arrived in Red Army uniforms.

Something struck the timber door. There was another heavy blow and a white zigzag line appeared. They would be inside in seconds.

Leo lifted up his mattress, leaning it against the door. At the base he piled up the bed sheets and his collection of books. He smashed his only chair, kicking the timber fragments onto the heap. Looking around for more things to burn he saw the collection of letters that he’d started composing for his daughters back home. There were at least fifty partially written pages, efforts at correspondence that he’d abandoned, disheartened by his inability to express himself – his writing came across as matter of fact and unemotional, detailing what the city looked like, or how he’d grown to enjoy a new type of food. He was incapable of putting into words the simple fact that he missed his daughters and regretted any anguish he’d caused by his absence.

Nara cried out:

– Leo!

The attackers continued to rain blows against the door. They were almost inside. Keeping the letters, Leo picked up the fat-bellied, old-fashioned kerosene lamp. He threw it against the door and it smashed. Kerosene poured down the timber. He picked up the candle, lighting the kerosene. Flames ran across the floor, up the mattress, over the wood. The mattress popped and spat, and in seconds the sheets were ablaze.

Grabbing the spare container of kerosene, he gestured for Nara to join him by the far window.

– Climb onto the roof.

The roof was lined with tin, supported by a timber frame. Nara knew it would burn. She said:

– The roof?

Leo nodded.

– We better hope someone saves us before it collapses.

Their attackers were no longer trying to break the door down, confused by the fire. As Nara pulled herself onto the roof, Leo collected his opium pipe. Perched on the window ledge, he threw the second container into the middle of the fire. The plastic quickly melted. Climbing up onto the roof, feeling a sudden rush of heat, he glanced back to see the mattress consumed with flames, billowing black smoke.

On the roof, he surveyed the substantial smoke trail rising into the night sky. A patrol might come in time. Nara was crouching in the corner of the roof furthest from the fire. Leo sat beside her. He now owned nothing in the world apart from the clothes he was wearing, the bundle of unfinished, inarticulate letters to his daughters and the opium pipe in his pocket. Legs crossed, he watched as the flames broke through a patch of roof. They did not have long. For the first time that night he behaved as any normal man might and put an arm around his injured student.