The Network

13

The mine clearers are brave men whom I respect. Their work is dangerous and by normal standards they are paid a pittance for it. Though they save countless lives, they don’t get the recognition they deserve and are frequently treated with suspicion or ridicule, especially in rural areas, by people who are too stupid to understand the importance of what they do.

They have never been introduced to the notion of life insurance. When one of their team is wounded or dies, the others contribute to a sum which is then delivered to the man’s wife, who may be able to live from it for a few months. But this is Afghanistan, and they are among the most privileged of the city’s employees.

We walk to their headquarters in Wazir the following morning, and are greeted with spine-crushing hugs from the manager, a burly and jovial Pashtun in his fifties who I’ve known for years. I call him Mr Raouf because he used to call me Mr Anthony, and the habit of using our first names stuck. Even as a junior member of the de-mining team his natural confidence and authority told me he’d do well, and I did everything to see he was promoted as swiftly as was fair. Now he’s the local director and has thirty men working under him.

‘Thanks be to God,’ he smiles, ‘life is good. You see how religious we have all become?’ he asks with an ironic chuckle, and tugs at his thick beard. It’s a decree of the Taliban that men let their beards grow. Being clean-shaven is associated with the irreligious devilry of the communists, who brought ruin to Afghanistan, though not everybody agrees. Like many Afghans, Raouf doesn’t see why not having a beard should make him less religious, and like any Afghan, he dislikes being told what to do.

Mr Raouf gives H and me a tour of the trust’s new facility in Wazir, then drives us to a training area on a hillside in the east of the city, where his men are learning to detect mines. We have lunch in his office, where the shelves are lined with a slightly macabre collection of deactivated anti-personnel mines.

‘In a few days,’ I tell him, ‘I need to drive to a place in the south-west of the country. I need a few reliable men who can help me and who will not talk about what they have done.’

‘Dorost. Right. They will be at your service,’ he says without hesitating. ‘What will you do in this place?’

‘I will make a big explosion.’

A smile spreads slowly over his face, and he strokes his beard as he nods admiringly at us both.

‘I am proud to help you,’ he says. ‘Especially for an explosion.’

To confirm that I will make it worth his while would be to offend him, so I don’t.

‘Your men will be generously rewarded,’ I say.

There’s a knock at the door and one of his staff announces that the men are ready for their afternoon game of soccer, but that they’re short of two men. Mr Raouf looks at us with a questioning twinkle in his eye, and we’re too surprised to refuse. I am lent a pair of boots several sizes too small, and hobble to the pitch outside. It’s a grassless stretch of land that’s as rough and hard as bulldozed rubble. The air is so thin I can’t seem to suck enough of it into my lungs. And since the Afghan body is made out of a substance harder and more durable than ordinary flesh and bone, when our shins and arms make contact with our opponents, H and I agree that it’s as if we’ve been hit with wooden bats.

We haven’t had so much fun for ages.

The mornings are quiet and cool, and on the balcony we soak up the rays of the sun like lizards. There’s little to suggest that the country is a place torn apart by conflict. The occasional rumble of artillery far to the north can be easily mistaken for distant thunder, and the sound of AK-47 fire on the outskirts of the city is indistinguishable from that of a horse trotting on tarmac, carried from afar on an uneven wind.

H busies himself with the equipment we’ll need for the overland journey, with which Mr Raouf has agreed to help us. We also receive a message from London to tell us that the special items we’ve requested are ready to be picked up. The friendly embassy is one of the few that has not been abandoned, and lies in the centre of town. We are given two large black nylon bags, which we take back home and unpack on the floor of a locked bedroom. It feels like Christmas, and we lift out the layers of supplies with the thrill of children who’ve never had presents before.

Uppermost are several maps of Afghanistan printed on silk, of the kind usually issued to special forces. They can be easily concealed without being damaged by crumpling up into a ball, and it doesn’t matter if they get wet because they can still be read and will dry in the open air within a few minutes. There’s a pair of two-way radios with chargers and adaptors for use in vehicles. There’s a modified weapons sight called a Kite which looks like a stubby telescope and will allow us to see in near-total darkness, and a second telephone which like my own switches to satellite frequencies when there’s no cellular signal. There’s a fifty-metre length of black nylon climbing rope, which I idly presume is for H in case he needs to abseil through any embassy windows. There are also two quick-draw plastic holsters and the pair of Brownings that H has been secretly dreaming of, together with several hundred rounds of 9-millimetre ammunition.

‘It’s like an Andy McFuck novel,’ says H with a grin, removing the magazine from one of the pistols and peering along the sights. ‘Not very deniable, though.’

I reach into the bag to see what’s left. In another moulded plastic carrying case there’s a Trimpack military GPS receiver and a metal mounting bracket for use in a vehicle. It’s not new and has seen a few years’ service, though God knows where. Then I find what looks like a man’s black leather belt, which is so unexpectedly heavy I need two hands to pull it free.

‘Feels like it’s full of gold,’ I joke.

‘It is full of gold,’ says H. He takes the belt and pulls open a long zip on the inside face, revealing a line of twenty solid gold sovereigns nestling in a waterproof sleeve. I don’t know the exact value of a sovereign, but each one must be worth several hundred dollars, so there’s roughly ten thousand dollars’ worth of gold in a belt. There are two. ‘Should get us a few kebabs,’ he says.

We hide the equipment in the roof space of the house and I mark it with the ultraviolet pen. Reminded of its usefulness, and as a further precaution, I also mark the handles on our bedroom doors. Even the tiniest variation in their position will be detectable, and tell us if our rooms have been visited in our absence.

The biggest present is yet to come. When we get the message from Mr Raouf’s office that there’s been a delivery H is mystified, but I already know what’s waiting for us. We drive with Mr Raouf in the trust’s pickup to an immense car and truck park in the north-west of the city. In so far as the Taliban have a customs clearance centre, this is it. It’s here that the goods that have survived the long drive from the Pakistani port of Karachi are finally unloaded and spread over an area the size of several football fields.

It’s guarded by two armoured personnel carriers at the gates. We drive past several thousand truck containers and vehicles and are escorted by an armed Talib to a succession of run-down offices. Endless paperwork is endlessly inspected and approved over equally endless pots of tea. But it’s worth the wait. Several hours later, we’re led to a long line of dusty pickup trucks with registration plates from Dubai where an unmistakable shape leaps out at me. The design hasn’t really changed for twenty-five years.

‘Meet son of Gerhardt,’ I say. My hand comes to rest on the bonnet of a Mercedes G400 CDI. It’s the more serious version. It has a four-litre turbocharged diesel V8 engine that generates 250 brake horsepower, which makes it rather more powerful and sophisticated than Gerhardt. It also costs about fifty times more.

‘How the bloody hell did you manage that?’ asks H.

‘Called in a favour.’

‘That’s quite a favour.’

It is. I don’t know how Gemayel has done it. I’m guessing that his friends in the Arab world have friends in the Taliban world, and things have been smoothed over at a high level.

Mr Raouf looks a bit disappointed.

‘Is this it?’ he asks, stroking his beard thoughtfully. I suspect he’s a Land Cruiser sort of man. The G-Wagen is unheard of in Afghanistan, where its talents are unknown, and its boxy profile has yet to become an object of desire. From carjackers and bandits whose idea of heaven is the cab of a Toyota Hilux, at least we’ll be less of a target. They’ll also be unlikely to know about its built-in satellite tracker.

I offer Mr Raouf the key but he defers with a grimace. He’ll drive back in the trust’s pickup, which is more to his taste.

H circles the vehicle and taps the greenish glass of one of the windows.

‘Bloody thing’s armoured.’

He’s right. I didn’t ask Gemayel for the armour, but he’s had it added anyway, which is a thoughtful gesture. All the windows look about half an inch thick, which will be useful if anyone is in the mood to have a snipe at us, because they’ll need a 50-calibre to get past these windows. We climb in. The armour makes the doors feel as though they weigh half a ton each, and the windows don’t come down. The interior smells of leather and dust, but has a luxurious feel, as if we’ve entered the private quarters of a billionaire’s yacht. I recognise and am at home with the basic layout, but there’s more buttons on the steering wheel alone than all the cars I’ve ever owned. For those with sensitive fingers, I notice, the steering wheel itself can be heated. The rear-view mirror darkens automatically in response to glare, and there are sensors to monitor the tyre pressures. My eye is caught by the satellite television and the triple electronic differential locks, which means I can drive it almost anywhere except a vertical rock face and watch a badly dubbed Arab soap opera beamed out of Dubai at the same time.

‘Shall we see how it goes?’ I ask H.

In Afghanistan cars sound as if they’re about to fall apart when you slam their doors. This one sounds as if we’ve just closed the hatch of a nuclear shelter. The engine starts first time and purrs. It’s done less than a thousand kilometres and is good for about another half-million. Mr Raouf drives ahead of us and heads back to the office, but I take the road to Kart-e Parwan and turn west around Aliabad hill. I have my reasons. As we reach the Deh Mazang crossroads by the zoo I turn onto the broad avenue that leads in a straight line to the presidential palace, nearly a mile away. The surface is scarred by shell and rocket blasts and the G weaves between the craters, handling magnificently.

It’s a surreal drive. We see the world through a greenish haze, silenced and deceptively harmless-looking, as if we’ve descended like aliens and are observing the life around us from a protective bubble. Some men on bicycles and the occasional taxi pass us in the opposite direction, but there’s no other traffic. Men haul at overloaded carts of timber and sacks, and ghost-like women in pale-blue burqas float past us as if carried on air.

I’ve never dared to visit this part of the city before because it was so vulnerable to attack and came under rocket fire almost daily when I was last in Kabul. The buildings on either side of the road are in a state of utter ruin. Floors, columns and lintels all sag and droop, held together only by the metal reinforcement inside them. Lesser structures are shattered and split and crumbling into the earth. There’s isn’t a square foot that hasn’t been riddled with gunfire. Sometimes we see the dark scar of a rocket blast that looks as if someone has thrown a bucket of paint against a wall, only it’s been caused by an explosion of white-hot metal.

We are in the centre of a capital city, but it looks more like one of the battlefields of the First World War. In the early 1990s the area was first devastated by Hekmatyar’s rockets, vast stockpiles of which were generously financed by American taxpayers and supplied by the CIA. Later it became the southern front of prolonged battles as the government’s rivals converged on the city from every direction except the north. They were fought off in a series of desperate counter-attacks organised by Massoud, whose exhausted forces were unable to counter the swift advance of the Taliban a year later.

Ahead, the palace looms. It’s a shell of a building now. The roof has been torn open in several places by rocket blasts, and resembles a botched attempt to open a tin can. The walls are saturated with bullet holes. I park nearby, and for a few minutes H and I wander around the deserted arcades of the lower floor, where kings and heads of state were once received and where our feet now crunch the fragments of its shattered walls.

Then we return to the G, circle the palace on a dusty track and drive north again along the equally devastated Jade-ye Maiwand, named after the battle in which the British 66th Foot were decisively defeated by Afghan forces in 1880. The Afghans were rallied, so the story goes, by a Pashtun woman called Malalai.

As we near the house, we round a final bend and nearly collide with an ageing Land Rover, whose occupants gawp at us with a look of horror. It’s the BBC’s official car, and I recognise the pale and scarved face of the Kabul correspondent. I’ve had a bit of a crush on her ever since she interviewed me years ago in Islamabad, when I was on my way home and Kabul was going to hell. I feel guilty at not stopping to say hello, but it’s better that H and I remain as invisible as possible. I don’t want a journalist to be able to position us in Kabul just before a rather large act of sabotage is committed.

Back at the guest house I park the G in the garage and put a new lock on the door.

‘Looks a bit like a hearse,’ says H, ‘but very impressive. Let’s look at the manual and check the consumption. We need to sort out how much fuel we need.’

You never quite know what a person has gone through in life to make him what he is. This is especially true in Afghanistan, where no one has escaped the effects of more than twenty years of war without some sort of scar. I don’t want to pry too much into this young man’s life, but he’s a sullen character and I wonder what’s made him that way.

He comes to the house after dusk but before curfew begins. I’d prefer him not to know where we’re staying, but H and I agree it’s a necessary risk, and it would somehow be a breach of Afghan protocol to show mistrust. He’s supposed to be our ally, after all. Sattar is a member of the tribal intelligence unit raised by the CIA. He’s the only one who can provide a link to Orpheus because he’s the one who made contact with him in Jalalabad and knows what he looks like, though he knows nothing of my connection with him.

‘You remember this man?’ I ask, showing him the photograph taken of Manny earlier in the year.

‘The foreigner,’ he says.

‘You can deliver him a message?’

‘Sure.’

‘How will you do it?’

‘I will just do it,’ he says. ‘It will take a few days.’

‘You speak good English, Sattar.’

‘I learned at University of Kabul.’

‘I thought the university was closed.’

‘It was open when I was there.’ He smiles but only with the lower part of his face.

I’m not entirely sure I believe him. I don’t know when the university was last teaching English, but I’ve never met an Afghan who made the same claim and was under fifty years old. I wonder whether his English wasn’t acquired from a spell with the Afghan secret police or the Pakistani ISI, the intelligence service on which the Americans rely too much. And I know it’s wrong to expect him to be cheerful so that he better fits my idea of how Afghans should be, but he noticeably lacks the friendliness and spontaneity of nearly every Afghan I’ve known, and the combination of these things amounts to a kind of private suspicion. It’s not such an odd feeling to have towards someone who you know is a spy.

We talk over the situation around the country and discuss the best route to take for the operation, though I don’t reveal the exact location of where we’re going. He suggests as a precaution that we travel via Bamiyan, where the Taliban have a regional headquarters and can give us a letter of safe passage through the area under their control. I can’t help suspecting that this might be the trap that is waiting to be set for us, but I thank him for the suggestion.

‘What is the message?’ he asks.

I take out a fifty-afghani banknote, almost worthless in itself.

‘Give him this note,’ I say, ‘and this one only. Tell him it comes from England.’

He looks at it with an expression of disappointment. He doesn’t know that I’ve made several tiny holes in the note with the point of a needle. There’s one in the centre of the note, over the engraving of the Darul Aman Palace, and several more over the serial numbers in the corners. It’s taken me a while to find a note which contains the right numbers, but I’ve got about a thousand of them.

If Manny gets the note and knows it’s from me, he’ll know that there’s a message contained in it somehow, and will examine it minutely for clues. He’ll find the pinprick that shows him I want to meet at the ruined Darul Aman Palace. Then he’ll look at the numbers and realise they represent the time, 1800, and the days of the week, indicated by the Persian initials for Monday and Tuesday. I space the holes so that even under inspection they’ll look as though they were made by a staple, and add Manny’s initials to garble the signal. Only he will recognise them and know to eliminate them from the message.

‘How will I know if you’ve delivered it?’

‘You just wait,’ he says.

So I wait. The weekend passes. H and I visit the famous walled gardens of the sixteenth-century ruler Babur, who despite conquering much of Afghanistan and India expressed the wish to be buried in his beloved Kabul. Once the most popular venue in the city, the park is deserted but for an elderly guardian, and his shrine is peppered with bullet marks. We also pay a visit to the former British embassy, once the grandest foreign residence in Kabul. It’s a burned-out shell now, and the emerald lawns have turned to dust.

On the Monday I take a taxi to a suburb in the south of the city called Deh Qalandar and walk the final stretch alone to the ruined palace. The giant rooms have long ago been stripped of their furniture and fittings and are strewn with smashed masonry, plaster and glass. I wait an hour, but no one comes. I return again at the same time the following day. There are a few children playing in the rubble, but there is no one to meet me. Realising how slim the chances are of re-establishing contact with Manny in this way, and dwelling on the many factors that make it unlikely, my sense of expectation begins to waver.

‘Don’t let it get to you,’ says H, who spent a good deal of his time in Northern Ireland waiting in unmarked cars for informers who never showed up. He knows I’m hoping to meet a source useful to London, but he knows nothing of my history with Manny and can’t know how disappointed I am.

On the Thursday a message comes from Mr Raouf. Our supplies are ready, which means it’s time to get the operation underway. We drive to the trust’s headquarters, where Mr Raouf is waiting for us, beaming mischieviously. He leads us to a storeroom and throws aside a dusty tarpaulin to reveal several metal trunks.

‘Befarmaid.’ He grins, stretching out his hand. ‘Be my guest.’

We unpack the trunks with a feeling of awe. There are several wooden boxes of plastic explosive, each containing half a dozen blocks the size of small bricks wrapped in brown waterproof paper to keep out moisture. I recognise the type. It’s Iranian Composition 4, C4 for short, made from the high explosive RDX with a small percentage of non-explosive plasticiser which allows it to be cut or shaped. It has a detonation velocity of nearly 30,000 feet per second, which makes it more powerful than dynamite and an ideal demolition charge.

There’s a long roll of waterproof blasting fuse resembling thin black rope, which H calls time fuse. The design hasn’t changed much since Guy Fawkes’ time. It’s a modified form of gunpowder, wrapped in a waterproof fabric sheath to enable it to burn underwater if necessary. It’s this that will give us our time delay, though we’ll have to test its burning rate to see what length we’ll eventually need.

H lifts out what look like two rolls of bright orange electrical extension lead. It’s detonating cord, filled with the high explosive PETN and sealed in plastic. There are different strengths of detcord but a six-inch length has about the same power as a military blasting cap and a few turns will sever a telephone pole when detonated. We’ll use it to link the charges so that they detonate simultaneously. Then there’s a further box of lesser but essential accessories: masking tape for securing detonators to the detcord, a pair of crimping tools, some old-fashioned time-delay explosive pencils and non-electric ignitors. H takes out a block of the plastic, sniffs and squeezes it, and fits it back into its box.

‘Let’s see the dets,’ he says to Mr Raouf.

For safety, detonators are always stored separately from the charges they will eventually initiate. Mr Raouf has put them in a safe in his office, from which he returns bearing a small red metal case with a black and yellow sticker on the front depicting a skull and crossbones. There are twelve cigarette-sized detonators inside, six in each half of the case, separated by individual clips. H nods approvingly.

‘We can blow up a small town with this lot,’ he says. ‘You need to thank your mate. What about the other stuff?’

Mr Raouf leads us across the storeroom to another pile of equipment. There are some camping supplies and tarpaulins, several military-looking sleeping bags, a length of steel towing cable and half a dozen jerrycans for our extra fuel.

‘Khub ast?’ Asks Mr Raouf. ‘Alright?’

He’s supplied everything we need for a minor expedition.

Very khub indeed, I’m thinking. From my map pocket I take out a fat packet of hundred-dollar bills and press it into Mr Raouf’s hand. He makes a brief effort to refuse it, saying the whole thing is a gift to me as a friend, but we both know this is a ritual. Then he tucks it away into his jacket because he’s too polite to count it in front of me, but I know what he’ll be doing a few minutes after we’ve left.

He sends three men to the house that afternoon so that we can meet and talk over the general plan. H and I like them all at once. The oldest is called Sher Del, and has worked as a mine clearer for several years. His name means Lion Heart. He’s in his forties but looks at least a decade older and served as a soldier in the Afghan army before defecting to the mujaheddin during the Soviet occupation. He has dark hair but his beard is nearly white, and he has the indestructible look of a seasoned warrior. His swift physical reactions are allied to a habit of directness which, tempered by long experience, lends him a quality of charm and worldly reassurance.

His colleagues are younger men, in their late twenties or early thirties, though they have the old-fashioned civility of an earlier generation. Aref is one of the trust’s managers and speaks passable English. He’s tall and thin, has a hawkish nose and a thick black beard, but his voice is soft and almost feminine. His mind enjoys details and concepts, and he translates for me, with both care and precision, into Pashtu for the others. Momen is another mine clearer, and reminds me of an Afghan version of Friar Tuck. He is stocky and always seems to be smiling, and his beard is dyed orange with henna. ‘I could have been a doctor,’ he complains with a rueful grin, ‘or an engineer. But in Afghanistan there is nothing but war. Afghans are all donkeys,’ he jokes, and the others laugh. ‘They are too stupid to stop fighting each other.’

We look at maps. Our destination is in the south-west of the country and most easily reached from the southern city of Kandahar. But there will be checkpoints along the way, around the city and beyond it, and our convoy will not escape attention. Sooner or later we’ll be searched and the purpose of our mission will fall under scrutiny. It’s a risk we can’t take. We’ll travel through the remote centre of the country, and although it will take much longer, we’ll be much lower on anyone’s radar.

All the men agree that, given the military situation, it’s probably a good idea to travel via Bamiyan and get onward permission from the local Taliban commander there. We’ll take the southern route from Kabul through Wardak province, because to the north there’s fighting and the environment is more dangerous. There’s some discussion about the famous Buddhas, which were destroyed earlier in the year.

‘It was wrong to destroy them,’ says Sher Del. I ask him why. ‘Because no other Afghan rulers destroyed them before, and before our time the people were better Muslims than now. So what right did the Taliban have to destroy them?’

‘All the rich countries were unhappy that the idols were destroyed,’ says Momen. ‘But they didn’t care about all the Afghans who were being killed.’

He has a point. Before their destruction, most outsiders didn’t even know the Buddhas existed, much less that their faces had been removed hundreds of years ago. Now nearly everyone has heard of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but few know of the Taliban’s massacre of thousands of Hazaras at roughly the same time, of the levelling of southern Kabul by Hekmatyar a few years earlier along with the loss of perhaps 20,000 human lives, or the carnage unleashed on the Afghans by the Soviet army and its communist underlings.

‘The Buddhas were destroyed on the orders of al-Qaeda,’ says Aref, ‘to make the world angry. Afghanistan will be much better when the Arabs have gone.’

After everything I’ve heard of the Taliban it seems like a kind of madness to introduce ourselves to their commander in Bamiyan, but the men are all for it. I feel a twinge of guilt at having suspected Sattar of leading us into a trap because it sounds like his advice was sensible after all. It involves a longer route, but I agree to it.

From Bamiyan, we’ll head west to Yakawlang and then across the mountains to Panjab. This much everybody agrees on. But the route after that is a little confused, which is not surprising because there aren’t actually any roads, but dusty and unmaintained tracks instead. The men’s fingers trace over the approximate route, but only Aref is really interested in the details.

I’m not too worried because the Afghan way of moving cross-country is simply to ask the route from whoever’s coming in the opposite direction. The maps of the country are in people’s minds, not on paper, and trying to follow a map too closely in Afghanistan is an almost sure way to get lost.

The following day Mr Raouf approves our request to test the explosives. His team is clearing a minefield an hour’s drive east of Kabul, in the vicinity of an old Soviet military position. We drive there together two days later. Mr Raouf proudly introduces us to the men at the site, who are mapping the cleared areas and marking the perimeter of the danger zone with stones daubed in red paint. An unexploded mortar round has been found and Mr Raouf allows us to place a charge next to it. Explosives are generally arranged in the form of a chain, each successive part creating a larger explosion, so we want to use as many of the components as possible to see if they all function as they’re supposed to. So we take a slice of the plastic from one of the blocks, wrap it in a length of detcord, tape a detonator to the free end of the detcord, and finally attach a short length of blasting fuse to the detonator.

The area is cleared and from somewhere comes the wail of a siren. Our little team, along with a dozen other men from the local group, stare fixedly at the point where I lit the fuse several hundred yards away. Thirty seconds later a brown cloud of dust leaps from the ground and a moment later there’s a spectacular bang as the sound wave reaches us. There are grins all round. All the components of the chain have performed as they should. It’s as if our faith has been restored in the purpose of the op, and now at last it’s within our reach. Back at the trust’s HQ we load the explosives into the G and return it to the safety of the garage at the house.

We send a report to London and receive a signal from Macavity approving our forward passage. We’re nearly ready to move now, but I must try to make contact with Manny one last time before we go. On the Monday, once again, I change into my shalwar kameez so as to be relatively invisible, adjust my nylon belt and holster and slide home the loaded Browning. I put my phone in one pocket, one of the silk E amp; E maps in the other, and walk ten minutes from the house before hailing a taxi.

There is no one waiting for me at the palace, and once again I have to struggle with my disappointment. I have one more day to try, and then we’ll have to move because we can’t wait another week. Apart from anything else, I’m not happy about the risk of our meeting place having been compromised, which increases as more time passes.

For the final time I repeat the process the following day. The taxi driver asks if I’m Iranian, and I tell him I’ve grown up in Iran but come back recently. He gets talking about his life.

‘I fought with Massoud in Panjshir at the time of the jihad,’ he says, referring to the period of the Soviet occupation. ‘I was wounded and went to live with my cousin in Mazar. After he was killed I had to fight with Dostam. When we came to fight in Kabul I was captured by the government and my brother paid for my release with his house. Then the Taliban accused me of being a spy and tortured me. They put me in a freezing basement and beat me with cables. My uncle gave them his house, so they let me go. I was lucky. What is there to come back to?’ he asks cynically, waving a hand towards the destruction on either side of the road.

I reach the palace at exactly six o’ clock. There’s no one around. I walk across the central courtyard and marvel as I always do at the volume of gunfire that must have once filled the air. But it’s silent now, and nothing stirs but the light breeze that so often rises in the moments just before dusk. I observe my feelings of disappointment as if from afar. The first few times I came I was full of expectation, but the emotion’s gone now and I’m forced to admit that I’m merely a solitary spectator at a forgotten battlefield of which the world knows nothing.

I’m full of morbid thoughts about the uselessness of the destruction around me and the folly of the people who inflicted such misery on themselves, albeit with considerable help from abroad. I walk on impulse along the arcade of the eastern wing and enter one of the ruined rooms. The empty windows stare back at me, but then something catches my eye. It’s a tiny fire, burning at the far end of the building. It’s in the north-east corner of the building and corresponds exactly, I now realise, to the position of the pinprick I made in the note.

I hear the crunch of my footsteps amplified by the bare walls as I approach the flickering light, beside which a human shape is crouching. For a moment I allow myself to believe that at last Manny has made an appearance, then curse myself again because I know it can’t be him. The figure is wrapped in a dark pattu and doesn’t move as I approach. But the coincidence won’t let my mind rest, and I have to make sure.

‘Peace be to you, watandar. May this traveller warm his hands on your fire?’

In a slow gesture, as slow as a man on the point of death, a lean and dark-skinned arm emerges from the shadowy bundle as if to offer me the place opposite. A ripple of shock passes through me as I register how thin the arm is, like that of a starving man. There’s not enough light to make out the face, and a nightmarish train of thoughts suddenly spins across my mind. Perhaps it really is Manny, but he’s been disfigured or suffered some cruel affliction that’s left him withered and prematurely aged.

‘Manny?’ I say his name experimentally, because I’m not sure. I can just make out the grey bundle of beard that hangs from a chin and the vague contours of a face within the shadows. The outstretched hand looks horribly old, and repeats the beckoning motion for me to sit. I’m only a few feet from him, and the fire is between us. The stone floor is cold.

‘Manny? Say something, Manny. You’re scaring the shit out of me.’

Then with unexpected suddenness the face looks up at me. It’s not Manny. It’s a half-toothless old man, whose gaunt and almost fleshless face looks into mine as the flames bring to life a mad glint in his eyes, and from his ruined gums comes a wheezing cackle.

‘Oh Christ.’ I leap up in fright. ‘Oh Christ.’ My heart’s pounding and the spell is broken. I take several steps backwards, slipping on the rubble as the old man’s dreadful laughter subsides.

And then I hear the voice.

‘As you were, Captain.’

I whirl around in reflex, and my right hand flies by instinct to the grip of the Browning. Behind me, ten feet away and emerging from behind one of the plaster pillars, I see Manny, dressed in a black shalwar with a pattu thrown over one shoulder. He’s tanned and lean and has a full beard, but it’s him, unmistakably, and he’s smiling now and throws his arms open towards me.

‘You bastard. You absolute bastard,’ I say. ‘Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to stay in touch?’

‘Sent you a postcard,’ he says as we walk towards each other. We embrace, and I feel his chest trembling, as he does mine, with the breathless rush of feeling somewhere beyond laughter and tears that expresses all the long-awaited relief of deliverance.

Sometimes, just sometimes, your hopes are exceeded beyond all measure. What you dared to hope for is not only granted but heaped up with unexpected dividends you haven’t been able to imagine. It’s akin to falling in love with someone whom it seems likely will never glance at you, and then finding that your feelings are reciprocated with even greater intensity.

I had thought Manny dead, or at best imprisoned or gone mad. But I’ve seen him in the flesh now, and I still can’t really believe that he’s alive. It’s not only that. He’s sane. His sense of humour is intact. My greatest fear, worse than the fear that he’d been killed, was that he might have become like the men he’d been living among.

‘We have our way and they have theirs,’ he says when I share this fear with him. ‘They are human too,’ he adds. And though he has the odd habit of speaking in Pashtu when he gets excited and cursing in his prison Chechen, his mind seems whole and healthy.

‘It’s time to come home,’ I tell him.

‘Home,’ he repeats, as if dimly recalling an old friend. ‘Yes. I need to come home.’

‘When we’re back from the op I’ll get you out.’

He looks at me and shakes his head as if I haven’t understood.

‘I can’t just disappear.’

‘Why not?’

‘I need to die,’ he says, and for a moment I’m full of dread.

‘You don’t need to die,’ I tell him.

‘Why are you so stupid? I need to be seen to die. If I just disappear I’ll be considered compromised. All the plans I know will be changed. All this will be useless.’

From his pocket he produces a memory disk the size of a cigarette lighter. I’ve never seen one like this before.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

He holds it up solemnly between us with the fingers of both hands, in the manner of a priest about to administer the sacrament.

‘Unless we stop it,’ he says, ‘it’s the future.’ The light is fading now. ‘Can you get the contents to London, flash priority?’

‘What’s on it?’

‘It’s better I don’t tell you. There’s no time to explain now. It’s everything I know. They’ve got plans you can’t imagine. Huge attacks. New York, London.’ He shakes his head. ‘The Sheikh wants a war, a global war. This is how he’s going to get it.’

I can’t help thinking as he speaks that perhaps he’s grown too enthused by the ambitions of the men whose world he’s managed to infliltrate. I doubt whether Islamic militants, especially those living in a remote corner of Afghanistan, have either the means or know-how to provoke what he calls a global war.

‘I can’t stay here much longer,’ he says.

I tell him about the operation, unfolding the silk map and pointing out the location of the fort and the route we’re planning to take there.

‘Are you sure it’s there?’ he asks emphatically. ‘My firqat was in Sangin until a month ago. I know the men in that area.’ He strokes his beard thoughtfully. ‘The Stingers,’ he says quietly. ‘I’ve been wondering where they were being kept. They’ve got plans for those.’

‘So have I,’ I say.

His finger swerves over the map as he studies it closely. Then he looks up at me, his finger still tapping the map where it’s come to rest.

‘We need to make a plan,’ he says.

It’s dusk when I leave. I walk for a long way before finding a taxi, which drops me at the Shirpur crossroads. No one pays any attention to me as I walk the quarter-mile to Wazir. The entire city seems to be hurrying home to safety as darkness falls. I experience a sense of bemusement that no one can detect the torrent that’s racing through my head as I endlessly repeat to myself the details of my recent encounter. As I walk I’m making a list of the things I’ve talked about with Manny, linking them against mental images that rhyme with the numbers one to ten, which I’ll write up more fully when I’m back at the house.

With one hand I’m turning over the flash disk in my pocket, hardly daring to believe the significance of its contents. I don’t have the software to examine it myself but I can email it from the trust’s office and wait for a reply. I run my hand absent-mindedly against the stone wall beside me and feel its warmth, even though the sun has set. Then I reach the roundabout in Wazir and cross into the grid of streets beyond.

Up ahead I see the fruit stall that I pass in the daytime. There’s a tall Talib who looks like he’s buying fruit, and parked on the opposite side of the street is a signature Toyota pickup. For a moment I think of turning around and taking a different street because I don’t want to tangle with anyone. But the moment the thought takes shape I dismiss it because I’m just an invisible Afghan peasant and I must act as if I’m just that and not a fugitive.

As I draw nearer I realise there’s something going on between the Talib and the boy who runs the stall. The Talib has said something to him in Pashtu and now repeats it, but the boy doesn’t respond, so he asks again but this time he yells it. I’m close enough now to see the boy’s expression. He’s just looking down at his feet, scared as hell and not daring to answer.

So the Talib hits him. His right hand flies up and slaps the boy violently on the side of his head. The boy winces and holds his hand to his ear and mumbles what I take to be an apology. That’s probably the end of it, but the scene has caught my eye, and without realising it I’ve stopped.

Mistake.

In the greater context of things a man slapping a boy is not much to be concerned about. Especially in Afghanistan. It’s a tough country and the boy has probably been dealt worse punishments. And it’s none of my business. But it’s an unprovoked act and I feel a disproportionate sense of outrage at the sight of someone being bullied, and I’m allowing it to show.

In another place at another time it wouldn’t matter. I’d say, ‘Pick on someone your own size,’ and the other man would say, ‘Get lost,’ and that would be the end of it. But this is Afghanistan and its people are at war and the Taliban have come to Kabul to show who’s in charge.

The Talib notices me a few yards away and his head turns. He has a huge black turban and a thick black beard, and the strange thing is he’s strikingly handsome. But his expression tells me he’s an arrogant belligerent bastard, and for the second or two that our eyes meet I want him to know that’s exactly what I think of him. I realise that I’ve let my gaze linger an instant too long, issuing thereby a silent challenge. I’ve unwittingly threatened his pride, and the pride of an Afghan is not a thing to underestimate. I look away but it’s too late.

‘What are you looking at?’ He’s speaking Pashtu, which I don’t understand, but the question is obvious.

I walk past him, and his body turns to face mine.

‘I’m talking to you,’ he says.

I raise a hand in a gesture of dismissal, to indicate that I meant nothing and that I’m leaving him in peace. My back is turned to him now. He calls after me but I keep walking because it’s not a moment for confrontation. With a military map in my underwear, encrypted computer files and a weapon on my waist, it’ll be a challenge to pass myself off as a passer-by. But he’s not letting it go.

Behind me I hear his boots on the ground. He’s running towards me. I turn around and raise my hands to my throat and make a strangling noise to let him know I can’t talk properly. He stops just short of me and he’s staring at me with a look of both anger and curiosity. I pull desperately at my throat to convince him I can’t talk and turn away again, and it’s just as I turn that I feel the first blow.

The strange thing is that the pain erupts not from my back but my stomach, and I look down in astonishment as my hands clutch the front of my body in reflex. It feels like a powerful electric shock and as I begin to double over in agony I’m just able to turn enough to see what’s caused the blow. The Talib is standing behind me with a length of thick black electrical cable in his right hand, which I now realise has whipped over my arm and across my abdomen.

I can’t speak. Nothing comes out of my mouth. I stare at him in astonishment, and his hand comes up in a lightning motion. The wire hits my other arm, curls over it and sends another electrifying jolt of pain across my back. Where the cable has struck it feels as if a red-hot piece of metal has been pressed against me, and I’m gripping my sides trying not to speak, because I mustn’t.

I’m amazed at how quickly pain affects the consciousness. There’s a few gawping bystanders now, gathering at the periphery of the street, but as I take in the sight of them they already seem unreal, like characters in a dream the significance of which I don’t really understand. The Talib is yelling at me, but I don’t understand and I can’t respond. I hear only a weird, animal-like moan of anguish escape me, but my attacker wants more, and the cable leaps out at me once again, delivering another burning jolt to my wrist, arm and back, and making me stumble down into the dirt.

I can’t take much more of this. If he hits me again I know I’ll be in too much pain to function. I can run, but another Talib who’s been sitting in the cab of the Toyota has got out now, and has an AK in his hands, half-raised into a firing position just to let everybody know this is their business and nobody else’s. I’ll have to shoot him first, while my vision is still good and my hand steady. But if I do, my options are not too good. I can run through this maze of streets, but I won’t escape for long. If I’m not killed, I’ll be found soon enough and the entire op will be ruined. I may or may not have time to conceal the flash disk somewhere, but I’ll then have to find a way to transmit its location to H or someone I can trust.

I can’t bear the prospect of all this. If I own up to being a foreigner he’ll stop hitting me, but I’ll be taken prisoner and searched and my map and weapon will incriminate me. God knows what will happen to me if I end up in a Taliban prison. Every scenario spells disaster.

I’m lying in the road now, propping myself up with one arm, looking him in the face, deciding that if his hand goes up again, I’ll roll to my left and shoot the one with the AK who’s leaning against the door of the pickup. He won’t be expecting it. For the moment he’s just enjoying the sight of his friend beating the hell out of an unlucky passer-by. Then, unless he acquiesces very quickly and very politely, I’ll shoot the one with the cable.

He walks towards me with a menacing swagger. Slowly, as if nursing my ribs, I move my hand under my shalwar to the holster, and find the grip of the Browning. Safety off, finger to the trigger.

‘What have you got to say for yourself now, you Panjshiri son of a whore?’ he says, or something very like it.

In a movement calculated to cause further terror, he winds an extra turn of cable over the hand that holds it, and runs his other hand along its length, as if preparing it for its next journey. But it never comes. At the moment he’s about to hit me again and, though he doesn’t know it, to be shot twice through the chest, there’s a high-pitched squeal of brakes from a few feet behind him, where a car has pulled up alongside the Toyota. At the sight of it I experience a strange sense of recognition. It takes me a few seconds before I realise why, but I get there in the end. It’s the BBC Land Rover on its way home, and behind the windscreen I can clearly see the female passenger, leaning across from her seat and honking the horn to get everybody’s attention.

She gets out, strides up to the Talib with the cable and with a minimum of ceremony introduces herself as the BBC corres-pondent and asks what the hell is going on. She has no idea it’s me, but sees only an apparently defenceless man lying in the street and a big Talib looming over him with an electric cable in his hand. She’s blathering fearlessly at him and the effect is so dramatic I’m transfixed by the spectacle. At the sight of this obviously mad, shrill foreign woman, the murderous warrior turns into a sullen schoolboy who looks as if he’s just been caught by the headmistress behind the bike sheds. He skulks with his partner back to the cab of the pickup without even looking at me, and as I stagger to the pavement the pickup roars angrily away.

Then, summoning her interpreter, she marches over to me. I avoid meeting her eye.

‘Bastards,’ she mutters in English. ‘What have they done to you?’

I’m still gripping my sides in pain.

‘Khub ast,’ I growl. ‘It’s alright.’

I try to keep my face turned from her towards the shadow. But as she looks at me, her expression turns from one of concern to curiosity.

‘I know you,’ she says quizzically. She’s squatting beside me. ‘Don’t I know you?’

I want to shake my head, but I mustn’t show that I’ve understood.

‘Zekriya,’ she calls to her driver, who’s been sensible enough to stay clear of the fray, ‘ask him if he’s alright, can you?’

‘Khub ast,’ I repeat, disguising my voice with a wince of pain.

‘That is so weird,’ I hear her say with a sigh as she stands up and walks back towards the Land Rover. ‘He looks just like someone I know. Zek?’ she calls with her hands on her hips. ‘Ask him if he’ll agree to an interview. Honestly, these poor bloody people.’