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.
The sofas are blue — remember it took us a month of shopping to find just the right shade? Darling, they have told me that if the money isn't ready by Saturday, they will kill me. Please make sure all the funds from Patrick or whoever come in by electronic transfer — no checks — so the money is ready to move. I will give you details of how and where as soon as you tell me you're ready. I love you. Dx
Siobhan's email, in contrast, was all over the place. I imagined her sitting at the island sobbing into her alcohol.
I WILL HAVE THE MONEY… patricks nearly got everything sorted… i will have the money darling… please tell them to hold on I have it, it will be ready for them anywhere anytime… please tell them not to harm you, i will have their money. When you reply, wherever you are, we'll have good news — I promise. I love you. Please tell me what happened to John's black BMW last winter. Please show me you are still alive. I love you…