He sat, alone with his thoughts and his doubt, on a smoothed rock.
It was just a job, the training of an Afghan resistance group to shoot down a Soviet helicopter with a man-portable surface-to-air missile. But a job should always be done well. That was his own training. And these bastards weren't ready.
The stars glimmered down at him, down at him and down at the high wilderness of Afghanistan where the helicopters flew and where a group would be badly savaged if they went before Barney Crispin was satisfied that they were ready.
There was just enough reflection from the apples and pears painting above the bookshelf in the living room for Howard Rossiter to comb his hair. He had the problem of all balding men who seek to cut a dash, to comb back and to hell with it, to comb forward and pretend. He was buggered if he knew what to do about Crispin's whining.
He heard the sharp rap at the front door. He felt a shiver — ridiculous, but he felt it. He went to the front door. Through the glass he could see the young man standing under the verandah light. Slim, European, familiar in a vague way. Rossiter opened the door.
'Yes?'
'Can I come in?'
'Who are you?'
'You don't remember me…? I brought you a crate. You've a short memory.'
Rossiter remembered the messenger boy from the High Commission in Islamabad. Complacent little prig. It was the drawling, satisfied voice he recognized.
'I've come to mark your card.'
'So mark it,' Rossiter said crisply.
'Easy, sir…' The 'sir' was a sneer. 'I've just flogged up from Islamabad. My name's Davies, I've come to mark it before you drop us all in the shit, which is what you seem to be trying to do.'
'Have your say, Mr Davies, then please go away.'
The spook was in no hurry. He walked easily round the room, stopped with his back to the opened door of Barney's room. Confident, relaxed, amusing himself. He wore slacks and a short-sleeved shirt.
'What did you say your name was?'
'I didn't say what my name was,' Rossiter said.
'I've come to tell you that you're attracting attention.'
Rossiter felt the draught in his stomach. 'Who's been asking?'
'Security in Islamabad…who you are, what you're doing here?'
'What's been your answer?'
'Not easy to answer when we're in the dark…that you're something to do with the charities. As yet Security hasn't shifted itself sufficiently to find out more, why you're spending time with one of the groups, as yet…'
'If I was into the charities then I'd be meeting groups.'
'The people you're with, I'm told, aren't the ones who'd be interested in blankets and sacks of grain. Anyway there's a setup for charities and you've ignored it. You're making a bit of a ripple. And it's a crap group.'
Rossiter's lips were close set, pinched. He spoke with a whistle between his teeth, and he was late for picking the woman up, for phoning his taxi. 'You'd better tell me.'
'I thought you knew all the answers. The ones who do the fighting are round Kabul, round Kandahar, round Jalalabad — round where the Soviets are. The ones who talk about the fighting are round Peshawar. You're with the talkers. If the best you could find was them, then you're pretty useless. You wanted to be told.'
'We have a high level government clearance.'
'If you hadn't had, I'd have seen to it that you were out on your necks by now.'
'How long do we have?'
'Perhaps a week. I've said I'll check you out with the charities in London…not for your bloody sakes I'm doing it. I got a packet of fallout last time we had idiots here and nothing more to send home than those backpacks in a cardboard box courtesy of the Yanks.'
'We'll be quiet for a week, after that we're on our bikes,' Rossiter was trying to smile and failing.
Davies returned a warm and winning smile. 'What's the real game — what's the radio for?'
'I was just going out when you came.'
The smile slipped from Davies' face. Quickly he turned, twisted, went fast into Barney's bedroom. Before Rossiter had reacted, the spook had found the manual that was under Barney's pillow. Rossiter tried to shake it from him, and was shrugged away. He stood by the door, panting.
'It's a fucking manual for missiles…' the spook whispered in wonderment. 'Ground-to-fucking-air missiles.'
Rossiter went back into the living room. 'You have to forget what you saw.'
The spook was breathing heavily, he followed Rossiter. 'I'll tell you something. The weapons that come through Pakistan are controlled. There's not a drought and there's not a flood. There's just enough to keep it going. Too little and the war ends, too much and the war escalates into Pakistan. That's the understanding and it suits everybody.'
Rossiter had regained his composure. 'Don't give me that rubbish. If ground-to-air missiles suit your government, then they suit you.'
'What comic strip did they dig you out from?'
'Just run along like a good lad and keep your friends in Islamabad stalled for a week while you wait for verification of us from the charities…' Rossiter managed a smile now, an ice smile. 'That would be the best thing you could do.'
The spook, Davies, on the payroll of the Secret Intelligence Service and running the Islamabad desk while his chief was on long leave and who was nominally a Second Secretary (Consular/Visas) at the High Commission, walked out of the living room and into the night without a word.
Rossiter heard the start of a car's engine. As soon as it was gone he slapped his hands together to control his trembling. Rossiter knew what he would do. First he went to his bedroom and stripped off the blanket from his bed, then took more blankets from the top shelf of the wardrobe. Inside Barney's bedroom he manhandled the crate from under the iron frame and lifted off the crate top. He wrapped four missiles in the blankets, and hid with them the launch control unit and the loaded Polaroid camera and the spare film cassettes and a carton of flash bulbs.
The sweat dripped and ran on his body, he could not control the trembling. When he was asked over the telephone for the destination of the taxi he required, he gave first the Peshawar address of the group's camp and second the street of the International Red Cross compound.
Three hours before dawn the Volkswagen van started out for the town of Parachinar in the blunt salient of Pakistan territory jutting into Afghanistan and eighty miles from Peshawar. Against the leather sandals of the men, spread on the floor, were four Redeye missiles in their protective casing and launch unit, and Howard Rossiter's blankets. Gul Bahdur sat beside the driver, nestled close to his shoulder, the Polaroid hanging around his neck, and recited silently the words that he had memorised.
'Underneath the gunner's seat, behind armoured doors…'
Over the holed, winding road it was a six hours' drive to Parachinar, where they would eat and then sleep. Later they would drive for another hour and then leave the van and collect the small arms that were not carried in the refugee camps; and start the climb to the Kurram Pass.
'Beside that is the radio command guidance antenna. Above the gunner's position.'
Soon the boy was asleep, cuddled by the warmth and motion of the van.
In an hour it would be light.
Barney left the Land Rover in the road, walked briskly towards the darkened bungalow. He felt no tiredness. He felt as if he had been resurrected by the commune under the stars. He wondered if Rossiter would now agree with good grace to give him the extra week, and he thought how he would use it and how he would insist on organising the group to be certain that only one man had the responsibility of firing Redeye.
He let himself into the living room. He went silently towards his room. He heard a woman's giggle, and a deeper laugh, and a whisper for quiet, and the metalled heaving of a bed.