Girling glanced from her to her husband, but his head hung heavily on his chest.
‘Leave us alone,’ she said. ‘You are not welcome here. Get out and don’t ever come back.’
Girling got up and walked out without saying another word.
It was dark when he left the apartment and all the children had gone.
‘Attention,’ Shabanov commanded.
Within the cavernous structure of the long-abandoned anti-blast shelter, his voice carried effortlessly. There was a sharp noise, like parachute silk snapping in the wind, as the Pathfinders and Spetsnaz troops obeyed his command.
Shabanov and Ulm stood side by side on a hastily erected podium made out of crates disgorged from the C-5 Galaxies. The Pathfinders’ own transports had come and gone the day before.
‘Pathfinders,’ Shabanov said. ‘Do not let your feelings stand before the success of our mission. The fact that it is I and not Colonel Ulm who addresses you is an accident of fate, sealed by the politicians of our two countries. It is not important who leads the operation. American or Soviet, his nationality does not matter. If we are successful, we will all share the credit. Try to understand the significance of this moment. Study your colleagues from Spetsnaz and you will see men no different from you.
‘We have around a week to prepare for the Angels of Judgement. There will be moments when you question my authority. So, let me give you an insight into the GRU’s intelligence. The Angels of Judgement have training, they have sophisticated weapons, and they have a fanatical devotion to their leader — not to mention their religion — that we cannot comprehend. The Soviet Army was guilty of complacency when we went into Afghanistan. But we Afghantsi learnt our lesson, didn’t we, Ruslan?’ Shabanov turned to a sergeant in the front row.
Starshina Ruslan Bitov, a great ox of a man, raised his right hand. Ulm saw that only two fingers remained. Bitov grinned. ‘But they buried the bastard with my thumb up his arse, Comrade Colonel.’
‘Bitov was fortunate,’ Shabanov said. ‘The Angels of Judgement will show us no mercy when we go looking for our captive comrades. In one week, we will have to be drilled to perfection. The focus of your attention during this period will be a mock-up of Judgement’s camp, to be constructed by my engineers in the desert. It will take time to find a valley that mirrors the one in which the Judgement has made its base; and it will take time to erect the camp itself. In the mean time, we drill. We drill until we have got it right.’
Shabanov drove his fist into the open palm of his hand. ‘One, we fly in to the Sword’s camp. Two-’ the fist rammed home again ‘-we locate and secure the hostages. Three, we annihilate the terrorists.’
Shabanov’s knuckles whitened.
‘Because my men have been hand-picked, among other things, for their linguistic ability, English will be adopted as standard.’ Shabanov turned to address his own men. ‘Any deviation from this rule will entail punishment.’
There was a sudden roar from outside as the first of the two An-124s thundered down the runway and lifted into the night sky. Shabanov paused until both aircraft had departed, the sound of their engines receding into the night as they set course for their operating base in Soviet Central Asia.
‘In summary, by the end of our training you will be neither American nor Soviet,’ Shabanov said. ‘You will learn to work together, to think together, to trust each other. Such co-operation only comes with practice.
‘So, I want you assembled here at midnight. You will be organized into pairs — one Soviet for every American — and flown by helicopter to separate locations in the desert, one hundred and twenty kilometres from here. It is a classic evade and escape exercise — E and E, as you Pathfinders call it. Each team will make its way back, undetected, within forty hours of the drop-off. Those late back will be made to do the exercise again. Perhaps, too, they will forfeit their place on the mission. I have no room for men who are not fit.’
Ulm studied his men. It was rough, but they could take it. They had endured worse.
‘And to make it more interesting,’ Shabanov said, ‘our helicopters will fly combat patrols into the desert to find you. Anyone located will be made to repeat the exercise. And they, too, may find themselves dropped from the mission.’
The Russian took a step backwards. ‘I suggest you rest now. It will certainly be the last you get for two days.’
The taxi, an Egyptian licence-built Fiat that had seen better days, clattered noisily along 26th of July Street.
Girling took in the skyline and plotted the differences over the past three years. The number of luxury hotels had almost doubled; so, too, had the lean-tos and corrugated-iron shanties.
The driver pulled up outside the Khan. After the sombre observances of the holy day, the market was alive with festivity.
Girling paid the fare, crossed the road and took stock. The Khan stretched away in front of him, a sprawling mass of stalls and shops built up around the tiny streets — some no broader than a man’s shoulders — that were the capillaries of the ancient bazaar. The arteries that fed them were five main thoroughfares, one of which was the Street of the Judges. Girling consulted the map he had found in Stansell’s apartment. By his reckoning, Kareem’s coffee house lay a few hundred yards distant and straight ahead. As the crow flies. He knew that nothing would be quite that simple at ground level.
That he saw no other foreigners did not surprise him. Although a popular tourist attraction by day, the Khan was not the safest place in town for an ‘agnabi to be walking alone after dark.
Girling pulled up the collar of his jacket and plunged into the market. Most of the shop shutters were drawn. He navigated by the pools of light thrown by hurricane lamps and the occasional string of low-wattage bulbs across the entranceways to the coffee houses. In the dark, there was little to distinguish him as an ‘agnabi. He kept going, twisting and weaving along the tiny streets, mixing with the people as he went. Eventually the alley opened up into a main street. The openness of his surroundings, the blazing lights and the hordes of people suddenly made him feel quite naked. The shops, stalls, and coffee houses lay interspersed amid the mosques and the ancient mausoleums shown on the map. He had arrived at the Street of the Judges. He looked left and right, scouring the billboards for a sight of Kareem’s. People had begun to stop and stare. It was with immense relief that he spotted the coffee house fifty yards from him on the opposite side of the street.
He brushed past the tables on the pavement, past the old men smoking their water-pipes and into the bright, strip-lit interior. No sooner had he reached the back of the shop than the chatter stopped. Girling found himself the object of uniform curiosity. The only waiter, a middle-aged man with brown teeth and a lazy eye, stopped what he was doing and turned round.
‘We closed,’ he said. ‘Too late.’ He tapped his wrist where a watch should have been.
‘I’m looking for Mansour,’ Girling said.
Lazy-eye frowned and shook his head quickly from side to side, as Egyptians do when they are confused, or claim to be.
‘Old Mansour,’ Girling said. ‘I was told he worked here.’
‘No Mansour here,’ Lazy-eye said.
‘I was told-’
‘No. You leave now.’
Girling hesitated. In the mirror on the wall in front of him he saw three customers get to their feet. Each was too well-built for his liking. They began weaving a passage through the tables towards him.
Girling held his hands up. ‘OK, I’m going,’ he said to the waiter. ‘Aruh,’ he reiterated in Arabic, gesturing towards the door.