In Honour Bound

The camp was a collection of tents pegged out under trees a quarter of a mile from the nearest empty village. Eight tents, all sand-brown and carrying the stencilled markings of Afghan Army and Soviet equipment. Captured weapons, captured ammunition, captured tents. After Schumack and the girl had gone, Barney went back to the tent that he had shared with them and Gul Bahdur. He looked down at where she had slept, separated from himself and Maxie Schumack by the boy whose back had been to her as if she might eat him in the darkness. He saw the place on the rug where her curled body had been.

The boy read him. He had opened the tent flap and pulled a face at Barney. 'The Chief will talk to you.'

A quick grin from Barney. The meeting that was the make or the break.

He followed Gul Bahdur out of the tent.

His name was Ahmad Khan. He was the leader of the mujahidin in the valley. He was his own master and he acknowledged no superior. The Hizbi-i-Islami Central Committee in Peshawar exercised a fragile hold on his activities provided that weapon and ammunition were supplied to him above what he took from his enemy. In his territory his authority was undisputed.

He was not from these mountains. He was a man of the city, from Kabul. He was twenty-five years old. Barney found a slight, spare man with moustache, with full lips and a jutting clean-shaven chin. He wore a black turban, wound loosely and with the end hanging like a tail on his shoulder. His dress was a grey check sports jacket without front buttons, torn at the right elbow, cotton jeans, a pair of jogging shoes bright blue and white. He sat on the ground a little way from the tents and alone.

Barney came to him, sat crosslegged in front of him.

'I speak English, I was taught English at the Lycee Istiqual in Kabul. Later I worked with an Englishman, an engineer. Before I came here I had begun to be a schoolmaster. My English is good?'

'Excellent,' Barney said. He waved Gul Bahdur away, saw the boy hesitate and then drift back from them, out of earshot and disappointed.

'Who are you?' The eyes were unwavering.

'I am Barney Crispin…'

'And who is Barney Crispin? His name tells me nothing.'

He had known since Parachinar that the question would be asked, but he had never been clear what would be his answer. The eyes stared into him.

'I am British.'

'Who pays you?' A soft singing voice that demanded an answer.

'I am Barney Crispin, I am British, and I have the weapons to shoot down eight helicopters.'

'You were sent here by the government of Britain?'

Barney offered no reply.

'Why does the government of Britain wish to help us shoot down eight helicopters?'

Barney gazed into his face, saw the clear lines of white teeth, saw the flies that haloed his head.

'You do not have to know, I do not have to know. If you allow me to stay, then the helicopters will have their power over your valley destroyed. At the moment the helicopters are safe from you. With the missiles that I have, the safety of the helicopters is ended. Why I am here is not important to you.'

'I decide what is important to me.'

Barney recognised the twist of anger.

'What is important to you is that I destroy eight helicopters, that I change the pattern for flying of all the helicopters that come to this valley.'

'What is important to me, I decide that. Why should I not take your missiles and send you away?'

'Because you are not trained to use the missile. You might hit one, if you were very lucky. You are not competent to hit eight. That is why you won't send me away.'

'What is the missile?'

'It is the American Redeye missile. It is satisfactory but not modern. If the missiles have not been destroyed by the journey here, if there is no malfunction, then the missile is effective.'

'What is the principle of the missile?'

'Heat-seeker. It targets onto the engine exhaust vent. Do you understand that?'

'I was trained to be a schoolmaster. I am not ignorant.'

'It is necessary to pick with great care the moment of firing.'

'Eight helicopters only?'

'How many have you shot down this year?'

It was Ahmad Khan's turn to peer into Barney's face, and not reply.

'Not even one?'

The drone of the flies, the flutter of a single bird, the tumble fall of a distant stone on the valley's walls.

'If you have not shot down one helicopter how can you refuse the opportunity to shoot down eight helicopters?'

'You guarantee eight?'

'I guarantee my best efforts, eight times.'

'Can the helicopter avoid the missile?'

'If the pilot is cleverer than I am, then he has that chance. If he is not cleverer his helicopter is dead. You want to know what is in it for me? I want the opportunity to strip the first helicopter, not for its weapons, for its electronics. That is all that I ask in exchange for the opportunity to travel with you.'

'I tell you what I think…you are a military trained man, you are sent here by your government…'

'That's not the point…'

'Hear me out.' A blaze in the eyes. 'The little of the truth you have told me is that you wish to strip the first helicopter that is not destroyed on crashing. Not all of the truth is that you say you will stay until you have fired eight missiles. I believe you at the first, I do not believe you at the second. If you are a soldier then you will have an order, when you have achieved that order you will run away with your prize.'

'You have my promise.'

'Why should I value your promise? You come to kill a helicopter, to take its working parts. The knowledge will not help me, nor my people. That knowledge is for you, for your own people.'

'You can have my word, my hand.'

'Last year from a village north of here a helicopter was shot down, from above, perhaps it was a lucky shot, the Soviets came the next day with their airborne troops. They caught a dozen of the men of the village, they chained them together, they put petrol over them, they set fire to them.'

'Try me,' Barney said, as if he had not heard.

'What do I have to do, to try you?'

'You have to bring the helicopters to your valley.'

A snort of derision from Ahmad Khan. 'The helicopters come. I do not have to bring them. When the mujahidin are in the high valleys the helicopters cannot reach them, but the mujahidin must come down into my valley, and when the helicopters come they do not come at my bidding.'

'I tell you this, Ahmad Khan, before the snow falls, if you will trust me, the helicopters will not fly with impunity to this valley.'

'We have been fighting for four years. We shall fight on here after you have gone. In our struggle for liberation you mean nothing to us.'

'A helicopter destroyed is more than you have managed.'

'You take a freedom with me.' A flaring anger, loud at his mouth, bright in his eyes. 'We did not ask you to come here. We do not need the sacrifices that the help you offer will demand of us.'

'That is the talk of an obstinate man,' Barney said.

Ahmad Khan stiffened his back straight. His hand clasped at something through the thickness of his jacket, perhaps a pistol, perhaps a knife. Barney felt a strange confidence.

'You dare to call me obstinate?' Ahmad Khan spat the question at Barney.

'If you send me away then I call you an obstinate fool.'

'To us you are an unbeliever. You do not have the faith of Islam, you have no commitment to our freedom. You seek only to help yourself.'

'In helping myself I help you,' Barney said evenly. 'How often do the helicopters come?'

'Every two days, every three days, every day, it changes, but I do not want your help.'