Agent 6 (29 page)

Looking back, she saw black smoke ballooning through the trees, rolling towards them like the edge of an evil cloud. Suddenly the cloud broke apart – a flock of mountain ponies burst through the smoke. Their eyes were huge, their manes on fire, skin blackened and burnt. Some were blind, or blind with panic, crashing head-on with the narrow trunks of the apricot trees, the trees splintering, the ponies dropping to the ground. Their hooves ripped up the soil. One pony continued to run even with its stomach gashed open, charging past, while another collapsed to the ground beside them, legs buckling underneath it, tongue hanging out.

The mechanical thumping noise returned. One of the flying machines pushed through the black cloud, hovering directly overhead. Sayed ran faster, his eyes wild with same panic as the ponies crashing about them on either side. There was nowhere to hide.

Zabi saw the irrigation channel ahead. Before they could reach it, a third explosion – the ground collapsing and giving way, every clod of soil, every leaf vibrating. Sayed threw her forward. For a moment she was in the air, then crashing down, landing in the channel, smashing through the surface, submerged beneath the freezing current. She rolled over, looking up through the water. There was no sign of Sayed. A burning pony leaped overhead, hooves clipping the concrete walls. The blue sky disappeared, replaced by fire. The freezing water began to bubble and boil.

Greater Province of Kabul
City of Kabul
Jada-e-Maiwand District
Microrayon Apartment Complex
Three Days Later

The apartment was newly constructed, government-created accommodation. The interior smelled of fresh paint and glue. Leo tried to open the window but it had been bolted shut, perhaps for his security since the Soviet-made glass was shatterproof, each pane costing more to import than an Afghan glassblower earned in a year. He rested against the window, watching as the sunset refracted through dense city smog, transforming a layer of dirt and dust into patterns of red and orange light. He was on the fifth floor, the top floor of what would be, were it situated in the outskirts of Moscow, an anonymous concrete block of apartments unworthy of a second look. But in Kabul the building’s blandness was notable, a foreign anomaly based on Soviet designs entirely unlike the traditional stucco buildings. Built at breakneck speed, using none of the local trades or traditional craftsmanship, these apartment blocks had sprung up across the Jada-e-Maiwand district after the invasion as if from spores. This particular building, finished only last week, had a barbed-wire perimeter fence with security spotlights and was patrolled by Soviet soldiers, not Afghans, a measure of the mistrust between the two forces. Fearing further reprisals after the brutal public spectacle of Dost Mohammad’s death, Soviet personnel, including advisers, had been moved into secure compounds. Leo’s protests had been overruled. There were to be no exceptions. In a matter of hours they’d created an occupation-force ghetto, exactly the legacy of division and suspicion that Dost Mohammad wanted to leave behind.

Upon moving in Leo had immediately unscrewed the four doors between the rooms, stacking them on the floor. With the doors removed, there was an area in the living room where he could see the entire apartment, could confirm that the rooms were empty, preventing his imagination from tormenting him with the memories of his family. Even so, this layout was far too close to the home he’d shared with Raisa and the girls, a duplication of a typical Soviet apartment, ready furnished with plywood bookcases and wardrobes. Leo had nothing to unpack. All his possessions were on the coffee table, the bundle of unfinished letters to his daughters and his opium pipe. He’d decided not to collect the letters he’d received from Elena and Zoya for the sole reason that he couldn’t stop reading them – he’d comb through the contents repeatedly until the words and sentences broke down, no longer making sense. With each reading his uncertainty regarding their true meaning grew, forcing him to read them once more, creating an obsessive cycle. He’d cross-reference letters, wondering why Zoya had only written eight hundred words this time when normally she wrote over a thousand, or wondering if Elena’s style had become colder towards him, whether her final remark –
With love
– was written sincerely or out of a sense of reluctant duty. It was impossible to be sure of the tone. On one hot summer’s night he’d read a single, one-page letter from Elena, with her neat small handwriting, several hundred times, and would have read it several hundred more times if the opium hadn’t sent him to sleep. After that, he’d taken to reading a letter no more than three times before burning it, but he had not received a new letter for several months now. The absence of communication might be down to the unreliable nature of delivery – a stack of three or four could arrive together – but more likely it was because he hadn’t responded to the last one. He found it increasingly difficult to compose his thoughts, frustratedcross-refeis attempts, starting a hundred times and hating everything he said.

Pacing the coarse synthetic fitted carpet, an aberration in this country since carpets filled with dirt and dust in days, Leo needed to smoke as a matter of urgency. As he prepared his stash, faint music could be heard from the adjacent apartment, coming from his new neighbour: Nara Mir.

After the attempted arrest of Dost Mohammad, Leo had accompanied his only surviving student back to her family home to help collect her belongings, the most important of which – her books on Marxism – had been hidden outside in the failed hope that her parents wouldn’t find them. Two Soviet soldiers provided protection. By the time they were ready to leave a crowd had gathered, pushing up to the edge of the vehicle. The soldiers fired shots into the air to disperse the mob while Leo bundled Nara into the car. As they drove through the crowd, a small plastic bag hit the windscreen. Acid leaked out and the glass smoked and melted. Leo ordered the soldiers to continue driving, not to get out of the car, sensing that the provocation was a prelude to an ambush. Nara remained calm, despised by the community she’d once been part of. In response to her exile, she practised her Russian.

— My Russian is not good. I would like to make it better. From now we must speak more Russian.

For the rest of the journey, as the windscreen bubbled and hissed, she read her Russian phrase book as though nothing were wrong.

Curious at the sound of this music, Leo found the discipline to delay smoking, slipping on his flip-flops. He entered the corridor and knocked on her door. Nara opened up, releasing the several heavy locks. She was wearing her uniform despite being off duty. She’d been granted the privilege of Soviet-level accommodation primarily because she was an important symbol of the insurgents’ failure to kill all the trainee officers, rather than a gesture of equality between the two forces. She was a talisman of the occupation, and they intended to protect her. Outside the barbed-wire fence and guard patrols she would only last a few hours.

On the living-room table was a bulky cassette player. Nara asked, in Russian:

— Is the music too . . . big?

She couldn’t find the word and changed into Dari.

—
Is it too loud?

—
No.

The music was bootleg Western pop, the kind that could be found in markets, spread out on shawls, with photocopied album covers, shipped in from other countries, sold at an enormous mark-ups, intended for the occupation force. Leo had no idea what the music was, or who the singer might be. The singing was English: the accent was American. The man had an excellent voice. Nara asked, genuinely nervous:

— Is it a mistake for a Communist to purchase the music of an American singer?

Leo shook his head.

—
I don’t think anyone is going to mind.

—
The captain gave me an allowance. I have never had my own money before. I spent it. I spent it all in a single afternoon. I kept buying things I didn’t need until the money was gone. Was I wrong to do that?

—
No.

On >—
The singer is called Sam Cooke. Have you heard of him?

—
I don’t follow music.

They listen for a few more moments before Leo said:

— I knew an American singer once. He was a Communist and he visited Moscow many years ago when I was a young man. I provided security for him. He was called Jesse Austin. His voice sounded a little like this man’s voice. Except Jesse Austin didn’t sing pop songs.

Nara took a pen and pad from the living-room table, writing down the name JESSE AUSTIN, as if he were a suspect she needed to investigate.

— I will try to find him in the bazaar tomorrow.

Leo had never thought of looking for his music.

— If you find it, let me know. We can listen together.

Leo glanced around her apartment, at her Communist books now on display on the shelves, books that she’d once been forced to hide in the brickwork of an alleyway, the books that had infuriated her parents and brought about the attempt on her life. She owned very little else: the apartment was almost as empty as Leo’s. The song finished. The tape crackled. A new song began. Nara said:

— Your life in Moscow must be very different from your life here ?

Leo nodded, uneasy at the turn the conversation had taken.

—
It was.

—
Do you miss your family?

She’d never asked about his personal life before and he didn’t like her asking about it now. He was about to say goodnight and return to his apartment when she added:

— They’re going to execute my father.

Leo’s irritation melted away. He said:

— Yes. I know.

—
My mother will be imprisoned. So will my brother. I’ve never lived without my family before.

—
It will be hard.

She looked into Leo’s eyes with a pitiful mixture of loneliness and resolve.

— Does it get easier?

Leo shook his head.

— You find ways of coping.

Leo had not entered the apartment, remaining on the threshold, not wishing to embarrass her sense of propriety. She had not invited him in. It would be culturally inappropriate. However, he sensed that she did not want him to leave and wanted him to ask permission to come inside. She could not bring herself to make the request. Finally, Leo said:

— Try to get some sleep.

He turned and left, forcing himself not to look back to see if she was watching him.

Reaching the front door, Leo paused. He pictured her alone in that stark, freshly painted, soulless apartment. It was ridiculous that he should think of going back. She’d lost her family. Of course she wanted company. Was it precisely because she was alone tht he wanted to be with her? The two of them were in the same position, alone, outsiders. It didn’t need to become awkward. What was wrong with them becoming friends? He slowly turned around.

Nara was at the door. She had not shut it but she was not looking at Leo. Captain Vashchenko was at the end of the corridor, a map rolled up under his arm, walking towards them.

— I need to speak to both of you. Let’s talk in Leo’s apartment.

Nara waited until the captain had passed her before leaving her apartment, hiding behind him. Leo did not have a chance to catch her expression.

Inside his apartment, the captain spread out the map on the table, paying no attention as Leo tidied away his opium pipe. The captain took out his gun, using it to weigh the map down. It showed mountains and a valley near the city of Jalalabad, not far from the Pakistan border. The captain explained:

— I presumed a connection between the murders in Kabul and the failed bombing of the Sarobi Dam. I was correct. Dost Mohammad was behind the murders in Kabul. We found the body of Samir Mohammad at the dam, a known bomb-maker. The two men are brothers. According to our source, there are four brothers in total, a young boy called Sayed and a fighter called Fahad, a man feared as a great warrior. This family is a unit of insurrection. Their target is the stability of Kabul. Three days ago we sent a team to their home village, not far from Jalalabad. Hind helicopters were supposed to provide air support for a ground team. We’re told that the villagers opened fire. The helicopters retaliated. The conflict escalated.

He paused, glancing at Leo.

— Several hundred are dead, including women and children. We now have a problem of a different kind. Stories of the massacre have spread throughout the region. We fear they will inflame the insurgency, not just in the province where it took place but also in Kabul. News of the massacre has reached the capital. People are accusing us of striking the village as an act of revenge. Many of our Afghan allies are upset. They see our response as disproportionate.

Leo guessed where the captain was going.

— You have military internal affairs. Let them investigate. Make a show of justice.

— This isn’t about an investigation of our personnel. They were doing their job. This is a public-relations exercise. We need to go into the region and perform some kind of conciliatory gesture. You are our most experienced adviser, you understand these people. These terrorists are causing more problems dead than they did when they were alive. I want you to broker some kind of peace, some kind of compensation.

Considering the premise absurd, Leo scratched his stubble.

— Captain, I’ll be frank with you. Going to this village is a waste of time. They don’t want anything from us, except that we leave their country. I don’t have your authorization to offer that, do I?

Taking his gun, but leaving the map, the captain didn’t register Leo’s objection, saying:

— We leave first thing tomorrow morning. I need people to negotiate, people I trust, which is why I want Nara Mir to come with us. She’s proved herself to be a promising agent. It would be good to have at least one Afghan, for the sake of appearances.

Departing as abruptly as he arrived, he stopped by the door, looking back at the two of them.

— You will translate everything I said for her, won’t you?

The captain shut the door, leaving the two of them alone together.