“So no hearts?” Madsen said.
“No one in Afghanistan really understood why ISAF were there. Not even everyone in ISAF. But no one believes that ISAF were there solely to bring democracy and happiness to a country that has no concept of democracy, nor any interest in the values it represents. The Afghans say what they think we want to hear as long as we help them with drinking water, supplies and mine clearance. But apart from that, we can go to hell. And I’m not just talking about people sympathetic to the Taliban.”
“So why did you go?”
“If you want to get on in the Army, you need to have been part of ISAF.”
“And you wanted to get on?”
“There’s no other way. If you stop, you die. The Army has a slow, painful and humiliating death in store for anyone who thinks they can stop striving to get ahead.”
“Tell me about Kabul.”
“Kabul.” Bohr shifted position in his chair. “Strays.”
“Strays?”
“They’re everywhere. Stray dogs.”
“You mean literally, not...”
Bohr shook his head with a smile. No sunlight in his eyes this time. “The Afghans have far too many masters. The dogs live off rubbish. There’s a lot of rubbish. The city smells of exhaust fumes. And burning. They burn everything to keep warm. Rubbish, oil, wood. It snows in Kabul. It always seemed to make the city look greyer. There are a few decent buildings, of course. The Presidential Palace. The Serene Hotel is five-star, apparently. The Babur Gardens are nice. But what you see most of when you drive around the city are simple, shabby buildings, one or two storeys, and shops where they sell all manner of things. Or Russian architecture at its most depressing.” Bohr shook his head. “I’ve seen pictures of Kabul before the Soviet invasion. And what they say is true, Kabul really was beautiful once.”
“But not when you were living there?”
“We didn’t really live in Kabul, but in tents just outside. Very nice tents, almost like houses. But our offices were in ordinary buildings. We didn’t have air con in the tents, just fans. They weren’t often on, anyway, because it gets cold at night. But the days could get so hot that it was impossible to move outside. Not as bad as fifty humid degrees in Basra in Iraq, but all the same, Kabul in summer could be hell.”
“But you still went back...” Madsen looked down at his notes. “Three times? On twelve-month tours?”
“One twelve, two six.”
“You and your family were obviously aware of the risks of going into a war zone. With regard to both mental health and close relationships.”
“I was told about that, yes. That the only things you get from Afghanistan are shredded nerves, divorce, and a promotion to colonel just before you retire if you manage to avoid alcoholism.”
“But...”
“My course was staked out. I had been invested in. Officer training at the Military Academy. There are no limits to what people are willing to do if you give them a feeling that they’ve been chosen. Getting sent to the moon in a tin can in the sixties was pretty much a suicide mission, and everyone knew it. NASA asked only the best pilots to volunteer for their astronaut programme, the ones who had brilliant prospects in an age when pilots — civilian as well as military — had the same sort of status as film stars and footballers. They didn’t ask the fearless, thrill-seeking younger pilots, but the more experienced, steady ones. The ones who knew what risk was, and had no desire to seek it out. Married pilots, who had maybe just had a child or two. In short: the ones with everything to lose. How many of them do you think turned down their country’s offer to commit suicide in public?”
“Was that why you went?”
Bohr shrugged. “It was probably a mixture of personal ambition and idealism. But I don’t really remember the proportions anymore.”
“What do you remember most about coming home again?”
Bohr gave a wry smile. “That my wife always had to retrain me. Remind me that I didn’t have to say ‘understood’ when she asked me to buy milk. That I should dress properly. When you haven’t worn anything but a field uniform for years because of the heat, a suit feels... constricting. And that in social situations you’re expected to shake hands with women, even if they’re wearing hijabs.”
“Shall we talk about killing?”
Bohr tugged at his tie and looked at the time. He took a slow, deep breath. “Shall we?”
“We’ve still got time.”
Bohr closed his eyes for a moment. Opened them again. “Killing is complicated. And extremely simple. When we select soldiers for an elite unit like Special Forces, they don’t just have to fulfil a set of physical and mental criteria. They also have to be able to kill. So we’re looking for people who are capable of maintaining enough distance to kill. You’ve probably seen films and television programmes about recruitment to specialist units, like the Rangers, where it’s mostly about stress management, solving tasks without food or sleep, behaving like a soldier under emotional and physical stress. When I was a rank-and-file soldier, there wasn’t much focus on killing, on the individual’s ability to take a life and deal with that. We know more about that now. We know that people who are going to kill have to know themselves. They mustn’t be surprised by their own feelings. It isn’t true that it’s unnatural to kill a member of the same species, it’s actually perfectly natural. It happens in nature all the time. Most people obviously feel a certain reluctance, which is also logical from an evolutionary perspective. But that reluctance can be overcome when the circumstances demand it. In fact, being able to kill is actually a sign of good health, because it demonstrates a capacity for self-control. If there’s one thing my soldiers in Special Forces had in common, it was the fact that they were extremely relaxed about killing. But I’d happily slap anyone who accused a single one of them of being a psychopath.”
“Just slap them?” Madsen asked with a wry smile.
Bohr didn’t answer.
“I’d like you to talk a little more directly about your own problem,” Madsen said. “Your own killing. I see from my notes that you called yourself a freak last time. But you didn’t want to go into that in any more depth.”
Bohr nodded.
“I can see that you’re concerned, and I can only repeat what I’ve said before about being under an oath of complete confidentiality.”
Bohr rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I know, but I’m starting to run short of time if I’m going to make it to a meeting at work.”
Madsen nodded. Apart from purely professional curiosity, the business of working out where the problem was, it was rare that he ever felt curious about his patients’ stories per se. But this was different, and he hoped his face wasn’t showing the disappointment he felt. “Well, let’s call it a day, then. And if you’d rather not talk about it at all...”
“I want to talk about it, I...” Bohr stopped. Buttoned his jacket. “I need to talk about it to someone. If I don’t...”