Curiosity, he supposed.
They were Amanda and Katie. He was Howard Rossiter and his friends called him Ross.
They were at the end of six months that had seen them through Nepal and Kashmir and now illegally into Pakistan. Ross was doing some research, that's what he called it.
'You're very young to be here.'
'We've finished school,' said Amanda.
'Done your "A" Levels?'
'Christ, not that sort of school,' said Katie.
Rossiter knew the accent. He knew the sort of girl. Sometimes an official of his level at FCO was hauled out at a weekend to take a brief down to the home of a Deputy Under Secretary, down to the countryside of Hampshire or Sussex or Gloucestershire. They all had daughters who drawled that accent.
'Where are you staying?'
'Tenting at the moment.'
'In this weather?'
'Have you a better idea?'
For the next ten minutes Howard Rossiter of Foreign and Commonwealth Office chatted up two eighteen-year-olds. But then everything about his behaviour would have shocked those of his employers who had previously held up his name as a watchword in reliability.
'I might see you about,' Rossiter said.
'If you wanted a smoke.'
'If you ever get lonely.'
'If I want a smoke and if I'm feeling lonely,' Rossiter said.
'What are you researching, Ross,' Amanda asked.
'Bits and pieces.'
They'd go like bloody rattlesnakes, the pair of them. Any good looking girl from the privileged classes went like a rattlesnake in Rossiter's mind. That was the bloody trouble, it was all in the bloody mind. Except for the nurse in Peshawar…that hadn't been in the mind, that had been on his lap on his bed until Barney Crispin had made a famous entrance. He hadn't thought of Barney for half a day. Shadows falling, time for the night manager to come on duty at the Dreamland. Time to think of Captain Crispin.
'Christ, he's probably a spy,' Katie said, and they all laughed.
'I'll see you about,' Rossiter said.
'You look as though you could do with a smoke.'
'You look lonely enough.'
'Perhaps another time…'and he hurried on his way.
One thing to think about it, another to do it. Thinking about it, lovely little tits, sweet little backsides, would see him through a couple of days, waiting on word of Barney. Shadows falling on the streets of Chitral. The lights of Toyota jeeps cutting the gloom. A little rain and the clouds promising more. He bumped into a tribesman, an old man in white floppy trousers and an embroidered waistcoat, with spectacles perched on his nose. He tried to make an apology. The old man stared at him as if the Englishness in Rossiter's voice fitted no other part of him. He'd screwed himself, hadn't he? He'd chucked up the pension and the Pay As You Earn taxed salary. And all for Barney Crispin who was away behind the lines with a Redeye launcher. Try telling Pearl and the kids and the neighbours and Personnel at FCO.
He wondered what a smoke would be like. He wondered how Amanda and Katie would cope with his loneliness.
There was no message for him at the Dreamland Hotel.
The black car and the chauffeur were enough to cause a ripple of curtain lace in Larchwood Avenue. There hadn't been a death and there wasn't about to be a wedding at the Rossiters that any of the neighbours knew of. The street lights were on, they threw enough light for the watchers to see the Brigadier head from his car for the front wicket gate of No. 97. The Brigadier wore a three-piece pin stripe, and below his pressed trouser turn-ups, his black shoes were brilliantly polished. He was looking at the front door for a light, and so did not see the dog mess in his path. There was a glimmer of light in the depths beyond the frosted glass. There was an overgrown flowerbed on one side of the path, and on the other a square of unmown grass bright with dandelions…and the woodwork needed a spruce of paint. He rang the bell, heard the chime, and wondered what Rossiter earned in a year.
The door opened and a teenage boy confronted the Brigadier. The boy's hair was short and spiked up like a dandy brush. The boy looked him up and down.
'Who are you?'
'Fotheringay, Brigadier Fotheringay.' He smiled sweetly. 'Is your mother at home — Mrs Rossiter?'
'Mum…there's a man here,' the boy shouted to the back of the hall, and then ducked into the front room and closed the door. He stood alone. He looked down at his feet. Bugger, and the dog mess had smeared the carpet and up the heel of his shoe.
He was back outside, wiping the sole and heel on the grass when he saw she had come to the door.
'Yes.'
'Mrs Rossiter?'
'I'm Mrs Rossiter.'
He didn't really know what he had expected to find when he had made the decision to drive down to see her. She was a small, tired-looking woman, wearing carpet slippers and an apron. She was carrying rubber gloves. Her hair was grey-streaked. The Brigadier surprised himself: he felt a moment of sympathy for this woman.
'Can I come back in?'
They stood in the hall together. She invited him no further. She looked at him as suspiciously as if he had come to check the television licence.
'It's about your husband, Mrs Rossiter.'
'What's he done?'
'I am sure you know your husband has been away on assignment for Foreign and Commonwealth. He's gone missing, Mrs Rossiter,' the Brigadier blurted it out. 'We don't know where he is.'
'How should I know where he is?'
'I wondered if you'd had any postcards,' the Brigadier said lamely.
'From him? When did we ever have postcards?'
'If you'd had any communication with him, if he'd given any indication of his thinking…'
'Be a fine time for him to start.' And then: 'Is Ross all right?'
'I've no reason to think he isn't…he's just gone missing. I can tell you in strictest confidence, Mrs Rossiter, that he's gone missing in rather odd circumstances. That is to say in flagrant disregard of the most clear instruction to return home.'
'Ross has gone missing…?'
He saw she was crumbling, he saw the wobble in her throat, and the biting at her lip. He was a fool to have come. 'But you've heard nothing from him?'
'We never hear, not when he's away. He'd never talk to us about his work, not even when he's at home, never has. He's all right, you're sure…?'
The Brigadier smiled emptily. 'I'm sure he's all right. I'm sure there's nothing for you to worry about. There'll be an explanation. As soon as I have word, you'll be told. That's a promise.' He was backing for the door. 'I'm very sorry to have troubled you.'
He let himself out. He heard her sob through the frosted glass, and made his way circumspectly back to his car.
Rossiter was the Brigadier's man, and the Brigadier knew nothing of him. He'd have bet his best horse that Rossiter would have obeyed every bloody instruction given him. Either Rossiter was dead or he would have lost the horse that he loved.
The boy had been walking for a day, he would walk through most of the night. Without the mules he could not have attempted the forced march into the high passes and plateaus that would lead him between the villages of Weigal to the south and Kamdesh to the north. Ascent, and descent, climb and fall, valley and cliff face. Now that the sun had slipped away and the light had faded there was only the occasional grey glimmer of the path in front of him when the cloud broke to make a window for the moon. Instinct and memory kept him on the path.
Hours after the darkness had come there was a confirmation for Gul Bahdur that he had taken the correct track, the one that would steer him between the outposts of habitation in this wilderness. A caravan of men and mules and horses and munitions came towards him. Eerie ghost voices at first, and the scrape of hooves, and no faces and no beasts to marry with the sounds until he was upon them. Gul Bahdur was given bread to chew and some dried fruit, and he spoke of the destruction of four helicopters, and he said that aerial patrols were scarce in the valley ahead and that when the helicopters came it was in squadron force.