He took the bundle in both hands and slung it over his shoulder, and put the letter in his top pocket. He led the way back to the bungalow.
Gul Bahdur told him, as they walked, of the smoke that had crawled from a cave, of the tethered mule and of stone-filled clothes beside a river bed, and of the light streak across a valley, and of the destruction of the helicopters. The boy told him of the bombers' run on the village, and of the helicopter strikes that had followed.
Rossiter said nothing, nothing for him to say, a world beyond his comprehension.
Gul Bahdur told him about an American called Maxie Schumack who had one hand and one claw. He told him about a nurse from Europe who worked without medicine in the village. He seemed hardly to hear the boy. The bundle concerned him. If there was anything to be saved from the awfulness of the boy's stories then that salvation lay in the bundle. How to shift it, how to get it away from Chitral, those were the new, furious preoccupations of Howard Rossiter. If he failed to get it away then he had destroyed himself, and broken Barney Crispin. The boy was telling him of a guerrilla leader called Ahmad Khan, and of a Soviet pilot whose testicles had been ripped from his body, but Rossiter no longer listened.
Rossiter stopped at the gate to the bungalow. He gripped Gul Bahdur's shoulders, placed him beside the gate, and went on alone up the driveway. He paused at the window.
The girls were sitting up on the mattress, smoking. He saw his tooth marks, a double weal, in Amanda's shoulder. He felt a growing outrage. He saw what he thought was an incarnation of the Devil. He saw Katie teasing the nipple of her friend.
Tears thundered in Rossiter's eyes. He pounded open the kitchen door. The room ahead of him was a moisture blur. He swept into the room. His feet were close to the mattress.
'Go away!' he screamed. He turned his back on them, could not look down into their faces. 'Go away, you little bitches…'
He heard behind him the scurry of their movement.
'Away…'
He heard the sounds of their dressing, the whispering of their clothes, the clatter of their sandals, the sweeping up of their belongings.
'Away, out, out, out!' Rossiter shrieked.
He heard the crash of the kitchen door heaved open. He heard their feet sliding on the mud and gravel of the driveway. Then he turned, and saw the mattress and the brief powder blue pants discarded on the linoleum. He picked up the pants and pocketed them.
Rossiter went back to the gateway to collect Gul Bahdur. The boy said nothing of the two phantom shapes that had run past him, loud in their laughter.
Later, when he had examined the contents of the sacking cloth bundle, when he had stared into the clear quality of the Polaroid photographs, when he had glanced over the notes describing the Mi-24 cockpit interior, he left the boy in the bungalow and set off again for the Dreamland.
At the hotel he found a telephone. He waited twenty minutes for the connection to the Night Duty Officer at the High Commission in Islamabad. He asked for a message to be passed as a matter of urgency to Mr Davies. It was past office hours, the caller would appreciate, Mr Davies had gone home.
'Just do it,' Rossiter said.
When he was outside again, it was raining. He tucked his neck down into his chest. If it was raining in Chitral, then snow would be falling on the high mountain passes over the border. He wiped the rain droplets from his nose and started to run, a slow shambling run back to the bungalow.
Barney and Schumack were a thousand yards ahead of the column. He walked with the loaded launcher across his shoulder and with the last of the missile tubes strapped to his back pack, and with the AK-47 assault rifle hanging at his side.
There was now a plan, negotiated by Schumack. The column was moving south and Barney would be ahead and clear of the column, and if the helicopters surprised them, flew north up the valley, they would pass over Barney on the attack run, and he would have the chance to fire on the engine exhausts. The two DShK machine guns wobbled on the wheels inside the column, one in the centre and one in the rear. If the helicopters came, then the DShK fire would draw their attention. That was the extent of the plan.
Mia was away behind him, with the children and the one woman who had come with her from Atinam.
The column was moving to a place near the centre of the valley where a side valley came down from the west and where a side valley rose up to the east. It was a place where the main trail from the Pakistan border crossed the valley on the route to the liberated zones of the Panjshir. The big caravan of munitions would come down the side valley from the east and the men would rest their animals in the valley before climbing again to the west. In one day, or in two days, or in three days the caravan would arrive. The men who would come with the caravan were not of Ahmad Khan's allegiance. But the code of Pushtunwalah ruled in the valleys and the mountains, the hospitality to a traveller, the sharing of bread and meat. The code dictated that Ahmad Khan would fight to his last man, to his last round of ammunition, to ensure the caravan a safe crossing of his valley. For the caravan's sake Ahmad Khan allowed Barney Crispin to walk with his column.
Barney was aware of Schumack's exhaustion. He didn't suggest the American should carry the spare missile. Usually when they walked together Barney was a yard or two ahead, sometimes now he had to stop to allow himself to be caught. The claw was hurting Schumack. He seemed to wring the claw more frequently and to pinch at the flesh above the strapping as if that squeezed a poison out of his arm. Deepening age lines at the eyes and a slower step and a wheezing breath.
'Why don't you come out with me, when I go with her?'
'I'm not running.'
'It's not running away, to come out of this place.'
'I've done my running, did it for Sam. We ran out of 'Nam, holding our arses and running like we were scared. We ran in Kabul all the way down to the airport to load "Spike" Dubs' body on the transport because we'd screwed saving him. We ran out of Desert One before we'd even started. You ever run away, hero man? It's dirty as shit. Doesn't count that some mother with tabs on his shoulder, gold on his cuffs, tells you it's not running, that it's strategic withdrawal or tactical abort. I'm not running any more and, thank Christ, Sam can't tell me to run any more.'
'Your gut's in trouble, hell only knows what insects you've got crawling around inside you.'
'If I come out where do I go? Back to Sam? They had us run out of 'Nam after we'd filled 55,000 bags, takes some counting when you're running, fifty-five thousand stiffs and, nine years later, they've just got round to remembering the fifty-five thousand who couldn't run when they gave the shout. Back in Sam, they treat them like crap, those who ran when they were told. Treat them like they're some sort of mother disgrace. You ever been in Sam, Barney? It's diseased. It's all queers and pervs and hippies and weirdos. It's rotten like my gut, it's rotten with running.'
'Do you have no one to go back to?'
'No one.' A whistle of breath between Schumack's teeth. 'I'm past running to go looking for someone.'
Barney turned, still walking, to look at Schumack. He saw the strain and the tiredness. He saw a man who stamped his feet onto the rock path to keep up his speed.
He saw the pallor of the stubbled cheeks and the dark eye caves.
'Will the helicopters come for the caravan?'
'Sure. The Antonov'll find them. That mother always finds them. When the Antonov recce finds them, then we'll have the helicopters come. Specially after you've missed twice.' A dry laugh from Schumack.
Barney could not remember how many days ago he had come to the valley, but there had been flowers between the rocks then, the pink of the wild roses and the mauve blue of the violets. Now he saw no flowers. He saw the grey green brown of the rocks and the scrub bushes and the trees that were losing their foliage.