'Let me take you out when I go.'
'Did I ever tell you about Kabul?'
'No, but you will,' Barney said lightly.
'You're not my fucking officer — don't you piss on me. We are the most powerful nation on earth, that's what Washington calls us, and the Ambassador is the representative of the most powerful nation on earth, got it Captain Crispin? In Kabul we had less clout than a black used to have in Baton Rouge. Three shites had the Ambassador in a hotel room, and the Soviets were running the "rescue" show. Some fucking rescue. The Soviets wouldn't let us up the stairs to the landing where our Ambassador was held, they wouldn't talk to us, wouldn't let us talk to him. They shut every fucking door on us. We were shouting, "Stall and play for time and delay", and the Soviets were arming up the attack squad, machine guns and rockets and automatic rifles. We wanted to play the old softly softly, they were going to storm before it was even decent. We were the most powerful nation on earth and we couldn't shift those mothers, but those crap Ivans ignored us — they pissed on us. I don't know whether they shot our Ambassador themselves, or whether the Afghans did, or whether the gooks who'd taken him did. He was pretty dead by the time they let us get to him, damn near dead. I'll give you a long word you didn't know I had. I hate impotence. I hate fannying about, if that's easier for you. So, no, I'm not going.'
'I understand.'
'I didn't ask your opinion, hero man, I was telling you.'
'I understand what you're saying, but there has to be somewhere better for you than here.'
There was no reply. Barney heard only the stamp of Schumack's boots and the rasp of the breath in his throat.
The British High Commission in Islamabad is run on rigid and compartmentalised tracks.
To the Night Security Officer who had taken Rossiter's call, Davies the spook was Mr Davies with the rank of Second Secretary and member of Consular and Visas. No way that a Night Security Officer, with 22 years service in the Black Watch behind him and a Regimental Sergeant Major's stripes thrown in, was going to shift himself after office hours by telephoning a Second Secretary. Not for him to know who was the High Commission's spook in residence. And the message for Mr Davies was incomprehensible. The message paper was folded, left in Davies' pigeon hole, and since the spook did not come to the High Commission until late the following afternoon, that message had already gathered a fine film of dust.
'Package to collect 3550 lands of dreams 7156, Miss Howard.'
That was the message.
Enough to make the spook weep. All right, yes, security men had a tail on him in Islamabad. All right, yes, there was a tap on his telephone. But this was so ghastly, so melodramatic. He'd known as soon as he met Rossiter that the man was lacking a scintilla of style.
From his map of Pakistan he traced out the coordination of 35 50 North 71 56 East. His finger nail converged on the place name of Chitral. Bloody Howard Rossiter up on the bloody border. He took from a shelf a well worn 'Pakistan — a Travel Survival Kit'—too right, everything was survival in Pakistan. Under 'Accommodation and places to eat in Chitral' he found a one line reference to the Dreamland Hotel on Shahi Bazaar. Not very sophisticated Mister Howard bloody Rossiter, and a piece of luck that the lumbering fool on night duty at the High Commission hadn't put the message over his home telephone. He wouldn't have reckoned that the cracking of this code would have taken Pakistan Security five minutes more than it had taken him.
Not that the spook could make the trip up country, not with the tail that had been on him since Rossiter and his Action Man had disappeared. The new fellow in Information would enjoy a drive out of town. He could take the High Commission Land Rover.
The spook had heard the rumour from the Americans, where else, that in one valley in Laghman province helicopters had been shot down. They dropped their silver about and they heard the most. He looked at his map. Laghman province and Chitral were not adjacent, but not a million miles.
'Alexander…? Davies here…I need a spot of help. I wonder if you could pop up before you shut your shop for the night…it'll keep till I see you. Cheers.'
It would be a job for the Diplomatic Bag. And after he'd bagged the package then he'd have to find a way of shipping the bloody undesirables out, new passport, overland into India, and all the rest of the paraphernalia…
Bugger London, bugger them for messing about on his patch.
He strode away down the corridors of the Taj Beg, out into the autumn light, past the sentries in their spick-span uniforms that never saw the shit filth of combat, past the fat arse staff officers who knew fuck-all of the war in the mountains, past the MilPol jeep with the lolling shites who rounded up the fighting men when they were on a Twenty Four in Kabul and looking for hash or tail, past all the cretin apparatus that thought the war was winnable.
Go where my pilots go, pigs. The silent shout from Medev. See how you fucking like it. Fly between the tight arse valley walls and see if you're so sure. Fly through the ground fire cones of shells and smell your shit-heavy pants when you've landed.
From the debriefing staff pigs, Medev reckoned he had received the barest of understanding on the problems of flying helicopters inside a confined valley space and against a ground-to-air missile marksman. He had lost four helicopters. He had lost eight crewmen. His pilots were not novices, he was told, they were expected to have assimilated the training received in Warsaw Pact exercises where they flew over simulated Redeye and Stinger and Blowpipe battlefields. But where were the flares he'd requested a clear week earlier? Why weren't the flares sent from Begram or Central Equipment Depot? Why did he have to use distress flares? Because no bastard would get off his arse. None of the pigs were impressed by the engine exhaust baffles.
The bandits had won a victory, he was told, but the losses were insupportable. But the bastard was dead, Medev had shouted back at his interrogators, the bastard was chopped.
Medev was not a celebrity. To them he was just a commander who had taken fierce casualties.
Still seething, he boarded the shuttle bus between the Taj Beg headquarters and the secure accommodation provided for staffers and visiting field men. There was an armed guard beside the driver, half awake and half asleep, and half dead he'd be if he were on his feet in area Delta.
He wore his best dress uniform. He wore medal ribbons on his chest. He wore his cap jauntily. He wore a polished leather pistol holster on a polished leather belt.
The bus dropped him by the entry to the old city's bazaar.
He waited on the pavement after the bus had gone for a group of his countrymen to form. He would not go into that bastard warren bazaar on his own. There were some off-duty soldiers. He saw the red flash of the Mechanized Infantry, the Army's donkeys. Two out of half a dozen were armed. Little more than boys, any of them, about eighteen years old. They led the way into the first of the narrow bazaar streets, and Medev followed a few metres behind. There were three civilians behind him, a hundred metres behind. He felt safe.
The anger sidled away from him as he walked the bazaar street, threaded his way through the people and the smells and the indifference. In her last letter his wife had sent him a list of items she wanted him to bring back. What did the silly cow think he was going to do? Hire a lorry and drive over the Oxus river bridge at Termez, and take a north west left turn for Tashkent and Orenburg and Kuybyshev and Ryazan and Moscow, two and a half thousand klicks…chests, carpets, cotton materials, a refrigerator…did she think the squadron commander of Eight Nine Two had a line in looting on the side? Silly cow…