Amber (26 page)

I flicked the cigarette away; watched it bounce on the dusty ground, scattering sparks.

‘Leave me be,' I said.

Vassily grabbed my arm as I turned away.

‘Comrade, listen to me. She is not worth it. She's putting you in danger, filling your head with nonsense.'

I shook his hand off my arm and left him sitting outside the hut. Already the walls we had built had begun to crumble; the roof was covered with dust and stones. It looked as if it had been there for years. Purple clouds rolled down from the knot of mountains, advancing across the plain towards us. A hot gust of wind blew up the dirt. I tasted the moisture in the air, the coming of the rain.

It reached us later that afternoon. It moved across the base like a sodden blanket dragged down from the mountains. The water ran away in a million little rivulets, pooled in every dip in the earth, battered the walls of our huts, eating them away. I sat on my bunk smoking, listening to its thunderous beat on the roof of corrugated tin, drowning out the hard rock pounding from Kolya's cassette player. Kolya lay slumped in the corner, grinning stupidly.

‘Legend says opium poppies sprang from the tears of Aphrodite,' he had told me, apropos of nothing, one evening, as he smoked in the stifling heat, a thick, oily cloud hanging darkly around his head. ‘Mourning for Adonis.'

The rain pummelled the earth, warm waves of water irrigating the new crop of poppy fields. Aphrodite's tears, I thought listlessly, as I lay on the bunk. I wrote a letter to Zena and gave it to Sasha, who would be escorting the supply convoy the following week. When Sasha returned he brought a reply with him. I sat on my bunk with the envelope before me, not daring to open it.

‘Antanas,' she wrote, ‘try as I might, I cannot erase you from my mind. You think I'm being cruel, when I am only trying to do what is right. What will become of us? I remember our nights together and long to have you here again. I try not to think these things because they can bring no good. Call me when next you come to Jalalabad.'

But when I next volunteered for escort duty, Lieutenant Zhuralev rejected me, putting me instead on guard duty. Angrily, I confronted Vassily.

‘What have you been telling Zhuralev?' I demanded.

He shrugged his shoulders, turning from me.

‘I don't know what you are talking about,' he said.

‘You know what I am talking about.'

‘Listen, comrade,' he said, ‘it's for your own good.'

‘It's none of your fucking business,' I shouted.

I lashed out at him. Vassily stepped back, a furious look crossing his face. He slipped on the wet earth, sliding to his hands and knees. Standing slowly, he faced me, raising his fists. His eyes burnt angrily and his trousers were dark with mud. I threw another punch at him. It hit him hard and he flinched. For a moment he stared at me, perfectly still, like a snake on a rock disturbed in its sleep. The punch he threw knocked me from my feet. I heard the sharp smack as his fist connected with my jaw, felt the pain as my neck wrenched suddenly. Felt the mud sliding beneath my body, the dirty water in my eyes, in my mouth.

‘Antanas,' Vassily said, bending over me, his voice shaking with concern. ‘Comrade, are you OK? Can you hear me?'

My eyelids flickered open, and I gazed up at him; saw his large face, his dark beard quivering in the air above me. I was acutely aware that my head was resting in a puddle, the water seeping into my ear, but I could feel no pain. Vassily lifted me from the earth and carried me over to the medical hut. I heard his voice, apologetically explaining to the medic what had happened.

‘Stick him over there,' the medic responded, unconcerned.

Gently, Vassily lowered me on to a bed. He bent over me, staring at me anxiously, listening to my breathing, feeling my pulse. The medic came over and pushed him out of the way. Roughly, he seized an eyelid, pressed it back and shone a torch into my eye. He repeated the process with the other.

‘How you feeling?' he asked me with evident lack of interest. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. I nodded, sending little pains shivering down my spine. ‘Fine,' I said.

‘Split lip.' He felt my jaw. ‘Nothing broken. Concussion, perhaps.' He held up three fingers. ‘How many fingers?' he asked.

‘Three.'

‘Better shape than me.' The medic grinned, dropping his hand. ‘Rest for a couple of hours, you'll be fine.'

Later Vassily seemed mortified by what had happened.

‘It's nothing,' I said.

‘About the girl,' he said. When I raised my eyebrows, he held up his hands. ‘Please, I just wanted to say, it is not my business. I apologise, comrade.'

Vassily approached me the next weekend I had leave and offered to take me to Jalalabad with him. I left him with Kirov at their favourite café, and hurried over to the hospital, hoping the hurried message I had sent had got through. Zena was waiting, sheltering from the rain beneath the spread branches of an old oak. She smiled. We stood for a moment, awkward in each other's presence. Then, taking my hand, she led me out into the rain.

‘Come,' she said, ‘I have somebody to meet.'

We caught a tram across the town, its lights glittering in the dark, rain-swept streets, to a district close to the river. I alighted from the tram, nervous, feeling conspicuous in my uniform. I swung my Kalashnikov around from my shoulder and followed Zena, who was hurrying towards the doorway of a newly built apartment block.

A young boy of about six opened the door when Zena knocked softly. He gazed up at us, eyes wide. Zena whispered something to him and he disappeared.

A moment later a young woman appeared in his place. She opened the door with a smile and ushered us into a small, tidy apartment. When I entered she looked apprehensive. She drew Zena aside and I heard the quiet, guttural tones of their whispered Pashtu. When they emerged, she shook my hand and greeted me in perfect Russian. Her hand was slim and cool.

The young woman was earnest and intelligent. Her hair, which was long, was tied back under a colourful scarf. Purposefully, she moved around the tiny kitchen, boiling water for coffee and tidying as she talked. Zena sat by the table, listening to her quietly.

‘Even here in Jalalabad,' the young woman said, ‘there are girls who are not getting an education, though legally their families could be punished for preventing it. But in the villages there has been little movement on the issue. And it isn't just the education, there are the clinics and medical care that women in rural areas need, and are being denied.'

I sipped my coffee and said nothing. After a while the young woman settled on a chair by the table. She folded her hands in her lap, and spoke in her quiet, educated voice. Mainly she spoke in Russian for my benefit, but occasionally she slipped into Pashtu; sometimes Zena interpreted and sometimes she did not. From the doorway of the kitchen the young boy watched me, his eyes fixed on my gun, which stood by the side of my chair. When I offered him a sweet, he ducked away, out of sight.

We left a little while later, hurrying out of the apartment block and down the wet street towards the tram stop.

‘You realise,' Zena said, breathing heavily as we hurried, ‘that I was putting Aisha in some danger taking you to see her. She was worried that I had brought you.'

‘Why did you take me, then?' I asked, puzzled.

She stopped at the side of the road, the water running across the toes of her shoes, her hair plastered against her skull, dripping from her cheeks.

‘I wanted you to understand the gulf between us,' she said, ‘the risk we pose to each other.'

‘I would never do anything to harm you,' I said. ‘Or your friends.'

‘I know,' she said, ‘I trust you. That is why I took you.'

I pulled her close to me, felt her sodden clothes against me, smelt the wetness of her hair, kissed her skin slick with rain, salty.

‘Aisha is a member of Rawa – the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,' Zena told me as she towelled her hair dry, later, in her room. ‘Earlier this year Meena, who founded the organisation, was murdered in Quetta, in Pakistan. The police there have done nothing to discover who killed her. Some claim it was KHAD agents, others the mujahidin. They were probably working together.'

‘And you?' I asked, sitting on the edge of her bed, wrapped in a towel, while my clothes dried. Zena shook her head.

‘Her organisation can do little here around Jalalabad, there is too much opposition. It's ridiculous for them to be taking a stand against the communist government; they are tying their arms behind their backs. It makes more sense to work with you Soviets.'

‘Is that why you were willing to see me?' I joked.

‘No,' she said, softly. She reached over and stroked my cheek. ‘I have missed you.'

‘There is a small school in a village,' she said later, as we lay in the darkness, our bodies close, illuminated by a sliver of moon that had broken through the thick covering of cloud. ‘The village is called Ghazis. I will be going out with the Agitprop Brigade. I'll take books and paper out to the teacher there. It's not a big deal, but it really does make a difference.'

I left her early the next morning to meet Vassily. She called me back as I opened the door.

‘I can trust you?' she whispered, seriously.

I stroked her ruffled hair, and kissed her.

‘Zena,' I said, ‘you know you can trust me.'

She smiled. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I know.'

Vassily was drinking coffee and smoking when I pushed open the door of the café. In the corner Kirov was talking with a small Afghani, dressed in shabby Western clothes. They looked up when I entered, and seeing me glanced over towards Vassily. I slipped into the chair opposite Vassily and nodded across towards the dark corner of the café where Kirov was sitting.

‘Who's the shady character Kirov is with?'

Vassily turned, as if he had been unaware that Kirov was sitting behind him. He shrugged but said nothing.

‘Why are you such a friend of Kirov?' I asked him.

‘He's an evil bastard, but he has his uses,' Vassily said. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke. ‘He has his uses.'

‘Do you have any money to pay for a taxi?' Kolya asked, as we left the apartment block, slipping out through the back door again.

‘A little,' I said.

We walked down to the railway station, keeping to the damp darkness of the backstreets, our eyes and ears alert for signs that we were being followed. In front of the station Kolya found a taxi cab. The driver was sleeping on the back seat and Kolya rapped on the window, waking him.

‘Zverynas district,' Kolya said, reading Vassily's scribble. ‘Birutes Street, by the bridge.'

I climbed into the cab behind him. The driver, wiping the sleep from his eyes, started the engine.

‘It was the bracelet that was the start of it,' Kolya said.

‘The start of what?'

‘Of everything. Of what happened in Ghazis.'

‘How so?'

‘What did Vassily tell you about the bracelet?'

‘He did not tell me much. Only that he got it in Ghazis, from a merchant there.'

The taxi slipped into the thin stream of cars rounding the traffic island outside the railway station and sped down the hill towards Pylimo. As we passed the apartment where I had met Kolya, I noticed the young woman he had been with opening the door of the block. Kolya did not seem to see her.

‘It was Hashim, of course, who set up the deal,' Kolya continued. ‘Normally Hashim would approach Vassily directly. This time, however, it was Kirov who came to Vassily with news of the bracelet.'

There was little traffic on the road and we made good progress, driving out across the river on Jasinskio, and into Zverynas.

‘If we had known from the beginning the true cost, I am sure Vassily would have had nothing to do with it. Kirov, of course, was not going to reveal the nature of the deal until Vassily was well and truly hooked.

‘Hashim teased Vassily when Kirov took us to see him. “This piece I have found,” he said, “it will wet your dick.”

‘Vassily was sceptical and wanted to know what kind of piece it was, but when Hashim tried to speak about it, Kirov stopped him. It came at a good time, Kirov explained. The piece was, at that moment, in a village to the east of Jalalabad, having been intercepted before it was smuggled over the border into Pakistan. Kirov had never been too interested in the jewellery – it was just one of the many things he was involved in, and was not as profitable as prostitution or drugs – but he had some other business in Ghazis that made the jewel useful.

‘When Vassily pressed them to tell him more about the jewel, Hashim told him it was an amber bracelet that was thought to have belonged to the Amir Timor – to Tamerlane. This immediately excited Vassily.

‘The Agitprop Brigade were going out to the villages along the Peshawar road, Kirov told us, and Zhuralev would have to put together a division to escort them. It ‘ was easy enough to volunteer; nobody wanted the job.

‘When Vassily asked what they were expected to pay for the jewel, Hashim told him they wanted an AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher, mortars and a 12.7-millimetre heavy machine gun. Vassily snorted, but Hashim raised his hands, as if the demands were nothing to do with him. Finally Vassily sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “This stuff your friends have unearthed had better be worth my while,” he said.

‘“It will make you ejaculate,” Hashim told him with a grin.'

The taxi stopped at the end of Birutes. The road was quiet. Few lights illuminated the windows of the large houses. A dog barked, woken by the noise of the taxi. I paid the driver.

‘Should I wait?' he asked.

Kolya shook his head.

The earth sloped away from the road, down towards the river, invisible in the pitch darkness. It was possible to hear its faint murmur as it flowed swiftly around the edge of the forest. On the high footbridge spanning the river, street lamps burnt dimly. The trees of Vingis Park were darkly visible against the gloom of the cloudy night sky. After looking at Vassily's instructions a moment longer, Kolya waved his hand in the direction of the other side of the river.