He saw a General jump down from a small Mi-2 transport helicopter, a swaggering little man with a webbing holster at his waist and a lanyard round his neck, and the camouflage tunic of the Airborne, and a scurrying aide at his heels. Come to tell them at the Taj Beg that the war's won? Go and tell the poor bastards who are waiting for a lift to Dushanbe that the war's won, they'd be happy to know that. Tell them it's all been worthwhile. Tell them there's nothing personal in their being flown out of a quiet airfield corner so they won't be seen by all the others, the whole and the healthy who've still got it coming.
He had been allocated a seat at 13.00 hours. The corporal on the Movements desk didn't give a fuck for a major in a hurry if that major had no priority order to travel. What couldn't wait until a 14.00 landing at Jalalabad? One bastard…
Hey, wait a minute, Pyotr Medev, that one bastard's dead. Vladdy said that one bastard was dead.
The caravan had come into the valley in the last hours of darkness.
They would rest under the trees and the scrub bushes, amongst the rocks, until the middle of the day. They would be gone by the early afternoon. The pack animals were taken to the river bed where the rains had made a small stream of clear water. The mules and horses would not be unloaded while they drank and while they scavenged for fodder. There were more than three hundred men accompanying the caravan, and not a woman amongst them. For some the uniform of the mujahidin was the traditional Tajik tribal costume, the flowing trousers, the tented shirts, the loose wound turbans. For some it was the dress of Nuristan, tighter grey blue trousers, puttee-bound shins, closer shirts, the rolled rim of the cap of the district. For some it was the dress of the modern fighter, courtesy of the Soviet Union and the Afghan Army, khaki trousers, heavy serge military tunics, woollen jumpers issued to the enemy for winter service, the close skull-fitting helmets taken from the slaughtered drivers of ambushed APCs.
A sharp bright morning with the dawn frost winkled away by the sunlight.
Barney was a mile down the valley from the main body of men and caravan animals, and their fires, and Ahmad Khan and his lieutenants who took tea with the travellers.
Where the valley side was steepest he had climbed five hundred feet to find for himself an eagle perch, a harrier's roost. The sound of radios carried from the valley's floor, popular songs from the Kabul government station, exhortations from the clandestine Resistance transmitter. He saw the movement of toy figures leading the horses and mules to a small river pool.
The launcher was on the rock beside him. Schumack was with Barney. Down in the valley was Mia Fiori.
Twice he had taken Schumack's spy glass and magnified the valley floor, but he could not find her. He had left her early in the morning, before the sun came. He had not seen her face when he had slipped from underneath the blanket that had covered them. She had been sleeping. He had bent low over her, and kissed her, kissed her between the eye and the ear. All through the night, Barney had held her close against his chest, held her tight in his sleep. In the middle of the night when the men who had come with the caravan had slept, and the men of Ahmad Khan had slept, and the pack animals were quiet, when the frost settled on their blanket, she had wriggled against him and pulled the tails of her blouse from her skirt waist and flicked her fingers amongst the buttons of her blouse and pulled it open, and Barney had felt the heat of her breasts and the warmth of her skin against the coarse cloth of his shirt. He had lain with her in his arms, sheltering her, and with her body warm against his, they had slept. In the morning, when he had woken, he had groped in the darkness to where Schumack had slept and found the man awake and sitting hunched against the cold, and they had gone to their eyrie above the valley.
He might die that morning. And if he died on the eagle's eyrie, on the valley walls, then he wouldn't have the memory of her face with him, not her face of that morning.
'You have to take the first one that comes.'
Barney shook away the picture of yesterday's girl and looked at Schumack. 'The first is the most dangerous.'
For answer, Schumack gestured with his claw away down the valley to the south. Barney heard the soft sounds of an aircraft engine.
'If they come and they get in amongst that lot then all your crap game's wasted. The only reason for you to be here is to take out the first one.'
'Then we'll be smashed,' Barney said.
'There's a war going on here, hero man. You're not playing ball in the park.'
There was the growing whine of the Antonov reconnaissance aircraft.
'What's down there, that's what's needed.' Schumack was matter of fact. 'If they don't have what's on the mule packs and the horse packs, then they're stuffed and screwed. You couldn't sit up here and watch that. You couldn't watch it happen while you're waiting for a safe shot. Christ, I couldn't…you couldn't.'
'The first one.'
'It's the way it is. There's no running from here, Captain Crispin, there's no fart face with gold scramble on his arm telling you to run.'
'Why did they light the fires?' Barney said bitterly.
'Because they don't care about dying…sounds crap and it's true. They're not afraid, like we are. They're daft buggers. If they cared about dying, do you think they'd still be going? We're soldiers. They're peasants. They're crap ignorant, and they don't care. Clever bastards like us, we care about getting zapped. We say time to move out, time to run. They're not smart, and that's why they're staying the course. No smart arse takes on a hundred thousand Soviets and the gunships and the Sukhois, that's not for clever bastards. Got the message, Captain?'
'Loud and clear.'
He saw the Antonov bank into a turn. He heard the cough splutter as its engine throttled back.
Schumack grabbed at Barney's hand.
'I hope you make it with the woman,' Schumack whispered. 'Truly I hope you do.'
'We'll take the first bastard that comes,' Barney said.
Alexander Hawthorne, First Secretary of the Information Section, had driven through the night to reach Chitral.
Rossiter had hated the hanging around, the waiting within sight of the Dreamland Hotel. He hurried forward as soon as he saw the Corps Diplomatique plates on the Land Rover and had intercepted the First Secretary as he still sat at the driving wheel. He must have seemed a scarecrow, and the diplomat had gawped at him. The heavy sacking bundle was handed over, a whisper of explanation that there was a letter enclosed, and Rossiter was gone. He had faded from Hawthorne's sight within a few moments, vanished into the daytime crowds of the Shahi Bazaar.
Hawthorne untied the bundle on the passenger seat behind him. Christ Almighty. Davies hadn't told him what he would be collecting, only that it was important to HMG. Bloody aircraft parts, the little bastard. Transporting aircraft parts across Pakistan, that was espionage in Alexander Hawthorne's book. Christ, the spook had a nerve…
The jumble of numeral patterns spilled onto the telex in Century House, the home of the Secret Intelligence Service that was the paymaster of Davies, the spook. A computer translated them into letters and words in a matter of seconds. One copy to the Assistant Secretary, Near East Desk. One copy for file. One copy for the immediate attention of the Director General. One copy to be couriered to the Ministry of Defence, eyes only to Brigadier Fotheringay.
'It will bloody well not happen again,' the Assistant Secretary bellowed at the astonished young man just down from Jesus, Cambridge. 'Never again will I have those army louts lumbering all over our parish, using us as bloody errand boys.'